Cleopatra short biography

Antony again met with Cleopatra to obtain funds for his long-delayed military campaign against the kingdom of Parthia. They again became lovers, and Cleopatra gave birth to another son, Ptolemy Philadelphos, in 36 B. In a public celebration in 34 B. In late 32 B. On September 2, 31 B. He fell on his sword, and died just as news arrived that the rumor had been false.

On August 12, 30 B. The means of her death is uncertain, but Plutarch and other writers advanced the theory that she used a poisonous snake known as the asp, a symbol of divine royalty, to commit suicide at age You can opt out at any cleopatra short biography. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States. Your Profile.

Cleopatra, who had been exiled by her brother, was reinstalled as queen with Roman military support. In 41 BC, Mark Antony, at that time in dispute with Caesar's adopted son Octavian over the succession to the Roman leadership, began both a political and romantic alliance with Cleopatra. They subsequently had three children - two sons and a daughter.

Octavian was victorious and Cleopatra and Mark Antony fled to Egypt. Octavian pursued them and captured Alexandria in 30 BC. With his soldiers deserting him, Mark Antony took his own life and Cleopatra chose the same course, committing suicide on 12 August 30 BC. Cleopatra perhaps started to view Antony as a liability by the late summer of 31 BC, when she prepared to leave Egypt to her son Caesarion.

Cleopatra had Caesarion enter into the ranks of the ephebiwhich, along with reliefs on a stele from Koptos dated 21 September 31 BC, demonstrated that Cleopatra was now grooming her son to become the sole ruler of Egypt. Cleopatra hid herself in her tomb with her close attendants and sent a message to Antony that she had committed suicide.

Octavian entered Alexandria, occupied the palace, and seized Cleopatra's three youngest children. Octavian was said to have been angered by this outcome but had Cleopatra buried in royal fashion next to Antony in her tomb. Cleopatra decided in her last moments to send Caesarion away to Upper Egypt, perhaps with plans to flee to Kushite NubiaEthiopia, or India.

Following the tradition of Macedonian rulersCleopatra ruled Egypt and other territories such as Cyprus as an absolute monarchserving as the sole lawgiver of her kingdom. Cleopatra was directly involved in the administrative affairs of her domain, [ ] tackling crises such as famine by ordering royal granaries to distribute food to the starving populace during a drought at the beginning of her reign.

After her suicide, Cleopatra's three surviving children, Cleopatra Selene IIAlexander Heliosand Ptolemy Philadelphuswere sent to Rome with Octavian's sister Octavia the Youngera former wife of their father, as their guardian. Cleopatra Selene II died c. Although almost 50 ancient works of Roman historiography mention Cleopatra, these often include only terse accounts of the Battle of Actium, her suicide, and Augustan propaganda about her personal deficiencies.

The Jewish Roman historian Josephuswriting in the 1st century AD, provides valuable information on the life of Cleopatra via her diplomatic relationship with Herod the Great. Cleopatra is barely mentioned in De Bello Alexandrinothe memoirs of an unknown staff officer who served under Caesar. The historians StraboVelleiusValerius MaximusPliny the Elderand Appianwhile not offering accounts as full as Plutarch, Josephus, or Dio, provided some details of her life that had not survived in other historical records.

Cleopatra's gender has perhaps led to her depiction as a minor if not insignificant figure in ancient, medieval, and even modern historiography about ancient Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. Cleopatra was depicted in various ancient works of art, in the Egyptian as well as Hellenistic-Greek and Roman styles. For instance, there was once a large gilded bronze statue of Cleopatra inside the Temple of Venus Genetrix in Rome, the first time that a living person had their statue placed next to that of a deity in a Roman temple.

Since the s scholars have debated whether or not the Esquiline Venus —discovered in on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and housed in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums —is a depiction of Cleopatra, based on the statue's hairstyle and facial featuresapparent royal diadem worn over the head, and the uraeus Egyptian cobra wrapped around the base.

Surviving coinage of Cleopatra's reign include specimens from every regnal year, from 51 to 30 BC. Her strong, almost masculine facial features in these particular coins are strikingly different from the smoother, softer, and perhaps idealized sculpted images of her in either the Egyptian or Hellenistic styles. The inscriptions on the coins are written in Greek, but also in the nominative case of Roman coins rather than the cleopatra short biography case of Greek coins, in addition to having the letters placed in a circular fashion along the edges of the coin instead of across it horizontally or vertically as was customary for Greek ones.

Various coins, such as a silver tetradrachm minted sometime after Cleopatra's marriage with Antony in 37 BC, depict her wearing a royal diadem and a 'melon' hairstyle. Of the surviving Greco-Roman-style busts and heads of Cleopatra, [ note 68 ] the sculpture known as the " Berlin Cleopatra ", located in the Antikensammlung Berlin collection at the Altes Museum, possesses her full nose, whereas the head known as the " Vatican Cleopatra ", located in the Vatican Museums, is damaged with a missing nose.

A third sculpted portrait of Cleopatra accepted by scholars as being authentic survives at the Archaeological Museum of CherchellAlgeria. Other possible sculpted depictions of Cleopatra include one in the British MuseumLondon, made of limestone, which perhaps only depicts a woman in her entourage during her trip to Rome. Roller speculates that the British Museum head, along with those in the Egyptian MuseumCairo, the Capitoline Museums, and in the private collection of Maurice Nahmen, while having similar facial features and hairstyles as the Berlin portrait but lacking a royal diadem, most likely represent members of the royal court or even Roman women imitating Cleopatra's popular hairstyle.

The woman in the painting wears a royal diadem over her head and is strikingly similar in appearance to the Vatican Cleopatra, which bears possible marks on the marble of its left cheek where a cupid's arm may have been torn off.

Cleopatra short biography: Egyptian queen of the Ptolemaic

Behind her golden diadem, crowned with a red jewel, is a translucent veil with crinkles that suggest the "melon" hairstyle favored by the queen. Another painting from Pompeiidated to the early 1st century AD and located in the House of Giuseppe II, contains a possible depiction of Cleopatra with her son Caesarion, both wearing royal diadems while she reclines and consumes poison in an act of suicide.

Sophonisba was also a more obscure figure when the painting was made, while Cleopatra's suicide was far more famous. In a now lost encaustic painting was discovered in the Temple of Serapis at Hadrian's Villanear Tivoli, LazioItaly, that depicted Cleopatra committing suicide with an asp biting her bare chest. The Portland Vasea Roman cameo glass vase dated to the Augustan period and now in the British Museum, includes a possible depiction of Cleopatra with Antony.

A large Ptolemaic black basalt statue measuring centimetres 41 in in height, now in the Hermitage MuseumSaint Petersburgis thought to represent Arsinoe II, wife of Ptolemy IIbut recent analysis has indicated that it could depict her descendant Cleopatra due to the three uraei adorning her headdress, an increase from the two used by Arsinoe II to symbolize her rule over Lower and Upper Egypt.

In modern times Cleopatra has become an icon of popular culture, [ ] a reputation shaped by theatrical representations dating back to the Renaissance as well as paintings and films. Chaucer highlighted Cleopatra's relationships with only two men as hardly the life of a seductress and wrote his works partly in reaction to the negative depiction of Cleopatra in De Mulieribus Claris and De Casibus Virorum IllustriumLatin works by the 14th-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio.

Cleopatra appeared in miniatures for illuminated manuscriptssuch as a depiction of her and Antony lying in a Gothic-style tomb by the Boucicaut Master in In the performing arts, the death of Elizabeth I of England inand the German publication in of alleged letters of Cleopatra, inspired Samuel Daniel to alter and republish his play Cleopatra in In Victorian BritainCleopatra was highly associated with many aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and her image was used to market various household products, including oil lamps, lithographspostcards and cigarettes.

Burnand 's Antony and Cleopatra offered satirical depictions of the queen connecting her and the environment she lived in with the modern age. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was considered canonical by the Victorian era. Whereas myths about Cleopatra persist in popular media, important aspects of her career go largely unnoticed, such as her command of naval forces and administrative acts.

Publications on ancient Greek medicine attributed to her are, likely to be the work of a physician by the same name writing in the late first century AD. Rowland, who highlights that the "Berenice called Cleopatra" cited by the 3rd- or 4th-century female Roman physician Metrodora was likely conflated by medieval scholars as referring to Cleopatra.

Cleopatra belonged to the Macedonian Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies[ 7 ] [ ] [ ] [ note 79 ] their European origins tracing back to northern Greece. Cleopatra I Syra was the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty known for certain to have introduced some non-Greek ancestry. Stacy Schiff writes that Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek with some Persian ancestry, arguing that it was rare for the Ptolemies to have an Egyptian mistress.

Roller speculates that Cleopatra could have been the cleopatra short biography of a theoretical half-Macedonian-Greek, half-Egyptian woman from Memphis in northern Egypt belonging to a family of priests dedicated to Ptah a hypothesis not generally accepted in scholarship[ note 87 ] but contends that whatever Cleopatra's ancestry, she valued her Greek Ptolemaic heritage the most.

Claims that Cleopatra was an illegitimate child never appeared in Roman propaganda against her.

Cleopatra short biography: Cleopatra VII was part of

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. Queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC. For other uses, see Cleopatra disambiguation. Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. See list. Royal titulary. Horus name Wr. Death and legacy.

Main article: Early life of Cleopatra. Reign and exile of Ptolemy XII. Further information: First Triumvirate. Main article: Reign of Cleopatra. Left: A limestone stele dedicated by a Greek man named Onnophris depicting a male pharaohbut honouring a queen Cleopatra probably Cleopatra VIIlocated in the LouvreParis [ note 26 ]. Relationship with Julius Caesar.

Liberators' civil war. Further information: Liberators' civil war. Relationship with Mark Antony. Main article: Donations of Alexandria. Main article: Battle of Actium. Main article: Death of Cleopatra. Cleopatra's kingdom and role as a monarch. Further information: Ptolemaic coinage and Ancient Greek coinage. Roman literature and historiography.

Further information: Roman historiographyGreek historiographyLatin literatureand Latin poetry.

Cleopatra short biography: › royalty › cleopatra-vii.

Further information: List of cultural depictions of Cleopatra. However, Ptolemy soon had Cleopatra exiled, leaving him in sole charge. When Pompey fled to Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, he was murdered on the orders of Ptolemy. Ptolemy had hoped to curry favour with Caesar, but when Caesar arrived in Alexandria, he was enraged at the murder of a Roman consul by a foreign subject.

It enabled Cleopatra to be reinstalled as Queen. Although she was brought up to speak Greek like her family, she also made an effort to learn Egyptian and later only spoke only in the native tongue of her subjects. Together Cleopatra and Mark Anthony had three children. In his pursuit of power, Octavian claimed that Mark Anthony would give away Rome to this Egyptian Queen, who seemed to have Mark Anthony under her spell.