Cleopatra: Drama Queen or fearless female leader?

She was born in 69 BC in Alexandria, and when she passed away 39 years later, Queen Cleopatra VII had ruled Egypt for 22 years with more courage and charisma than most male leaders before her. A shrewd strategist, a skilled diplomat and a dazzling self-promoter, she had been the last and greatest Egyptian pharaoh. With glamour and grandeur, Cleopatra had claimed her role in world politics, controlling nearly the entire eastern Mediterranean coast at the height of her power.

Having been forced to marry twice – to her brothers! – she had raged a brutal civil war against one and poisoned the other. She had formed diplomatic and dynastic bonds with two powerful Roman men: Julius Caesar, with whom she had one son; and Marcus Antonius, who would be her lover for more than a decade and the father of three more children.

Many times, Cleopatra would come back with a vengeance after nearly losing it all, but the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. against Julius Caesar’s heir Octavius proved to be her final downfall.

With her death on August 12, 30 B.C., allegedly from a poisonous snake bite, the living goddess became the world’s first celebrity. But who was Cleopatra really? With no official portraits or records left, after centuries of propaganda and gossip, it’s hard to tell. Was she a Drama Queen or a fearless female leader? A lover or a fighter? We believe she was all that and much, much more.

Here are 5 aspects of her remarkable life that you may surprise you:

1. Cleopatra may have felt and looked about as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor who played her in the 1963 blockbuster. Her name, like her heritage, was entirely and proudly Macedonian; ‘Cleopatra’ means ‘Glory of Her Fatherland‘ in Greek. In other words, casting Angelina Jolie to play her in a remake wouldn’t be such a far stretch…

2. A silver-tongued linguist, Cleopatra spoke nine other languages besides her native Greek: Ethiopian, Arabic, Hebrew, Parthian, Latin, Syrian, Median, Trogodyte and Egyptian. Being well-versed in subjects such as arithmetic, music, medicine and astrology, she even wrote a book: a medical treatise called ‘Cosmetics‘. As far as we know, there was no mention of donkey milk.

3. “You have a way of mixing passion and politics,” Julius Caesar told Cleopatra in the movie ‘Cleopatra’. Romantic interests aside, Cleopatra used her procreative abilities to her political benefit, exactly as a man would have. It gave her power, and a lot of freedom. It made her a feminist avant la lettre. What queen needed a husband when she could have babies with Rome’s most powerful statesmen?

4. Cleopatra may be one of the most recognizable figures in history – the blunt glossy bangs, the snake, the dark-rimmed eyes! – but we have little idea of what she actually looked like. Only her coin portraits – issued in her lifetime, and which she likely approved – can be accepted as authentic and show the almond-shaped eyes a prominent nose you would expect. Much more importantly: they show confidence and power.

5. A poisonous snake? If Cleopatra had really killed herself, she wouldn’t have used a wild animal for the job. Too messy and inefficient for the meticulous planner she was. Looking at the peaceful state they supposedly found her in, a lethal potion of hemlock and opium is more likely. But that, of course, would have been a much less sensational end.

As the writer Stacy Schiff wrote: “Eve, Medusa, Electra, and the Erinyes; when a woman teams up with a snake, a moral storm threatens somewhere.”

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