How Did Cleopatra Work?

Many of our ideas about Cleopatra are based in contemporary propaganda and later pop culture, from Shakespeare to cinema. Learn the truth behind some of these myths in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/cleopatra.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Vogelbaum here for being one of the most famous women
in history. The real Cleopatra, who lived from the years
sixty nine to thirty BCE, is shrouded in mystery. She

(00:22):
ruled Egypt for twenty two of those years, commanded riches
unrivaled in the ancient world, and bore children to two
of the most powerful men in Rome. Yet the stories
of her passed down over the centuries. Cleopatra as the cunning,
wanton s doctress were mostly propaganda written by her enemies before.

(00:44):
The article of this episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke with Prudence Jones, a history professor at Montclair State
University and author of Cleopatra a source Book. So today
let's do some mythbusting. First off, Cleopatra was not Egyptian.
She was the last in a long line of Macedonian

(01:04):
Greek kings and queens who ruled Egypt starting with the
conquest of Alexander the Great in three thirty two BCE.
After Alexander's death, his general Ptolemy the First was installed
as the King of Egypt, which he ruled as a
Greek from the Hellenistic capital of Alexandria. Cleopatra, born over
two hundred fifty years later, was a daughter of Ptolemy

(01:27):
the seventh. The identity of Cleopatra's mother is unknown, though
it's thought to have been Cleopatra the Fifth, who was
Ptolemy the seventh wife and also his sister or half sister,
as was common among Egyptian royalty at the time. Although
Cleopatra was not ethnically Egyptian, she made explicit overtures to

(01:49):
Egyptian religion and culture, such as identifying herself with the
goddess Isith. She was also the first queen in the
centuries long dynasty to bother to learn how to speak Egyptian.
Jones said, the rest weren't very motivated. Indeed, Cleopatra wowed
with brains and charm, not just beauty. The Roman enemies

(02:13):
of Egypt sought to denigrate Cleopatra by painting her as
a harleck queen who bewitched great men like Julius Caesar
and Mark Antony with her physical beauty alone. But even
the Roman historian Plutarch, writing a century after Cleopatra's death,
reported that there was much more to Cleopatra than her looks,

(02:33):
he said, to converse with her, had an irresistible charm,
and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse,
and the character which was somehow diffused about her behavior
towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was a
sweetness also in the tones of her voice and her tongue.
Like an instrument of many strings. She could readily turn

(02:56):
to whatever language she pleased, so that she very seldom
had need an interpreter. In addition to speaking Greek and Egyptian,
Cleopatra was fluent in at least six other languages. A
highly educated woman, she published two known texts, one on
the care of the body and the other on weights

(03:16):
and measures for medicine and trade. Compared with the military
mind of Antony, who was Jones said, not known for
being the sharpest tack in the box, Cleopatra was famous
for her intellect. Along those lines, her love affair with
Caesar was a strategic alliance. Cleopatra was not the lascivious

(03:39):
fury described by some Roman poets, ruled only by her
promiscuous passions. She had only two romantic partners in her
short thirty nine year life, and both relationships were political
as well as personal. According to Jones, when Cleopatra took
the Egyptian throne at eighteen, she inherited a kingdom in

(03:59):
the line. Rome was the ascendant power in the Mediterranean,
and Egypt's independence was under threat, and to make matters worse,
her younger brother and co ruler and husband It's complicated,
was trying to push her out. When Julius Caesar came
to Egypt in pursuit of his rival Pompey, Cleopatra saw

(04:22):
opportunity to win a powerful Roman ally. Accuding to Plutarch's
famous account, a middle aged Caesar first laid eyes on
Cleopatra when she smuggled himself into his quarters and tumbled
out of a carpet or, more likely a basket of laundry.
The young Cleopatra won Caesar's affections, took back the throne,

(04:42):
and sealed the alliance with the birth of a son,
whom she not so subtly named Cesarean, meaning Little Caesar.
She now had family ties to Rome. Cleopatra's later relationship
with Mark Antony, who was second in command to Caesar,
was immortalized by Shakespeare in the play Antony and Cleopatra

(05:02):
as one of the most legendary and tragic love affairs
in history, but it too, primarily served a political purpose.
Egypt may have enjoyed great wealth and resources, but after
Caesar's assassination, Cleopatra knew that her kingdom was still at
the whim of Rome, the reigning superpower. Jones explained. Cleopatra

(05:25):
was well aware then in order for Egypt to remain
independent at all, it needed a powerful protector. Caesar's death
had left a power vacuum in Rome, and two prominent men,
Octavian being Caesar's chosen heir and nephew, and Antony, the
ambitious politician in general, were fighting a civil war to

(05:45):
fill it. Octavian had the financial backing of the Senate,
but Antony desperately needed money to pay his troops. Once again,
Cleopatra saw an inn she was the richest woman in
the world. In exchange for her her financial support, Antony
became Egypt's ally and defender against Roman encroachment, and he

(06:06):
and Cleopatra, who eventually married, had three more heirs. This
brings us to one last myth, though, the double suicide
of Antony and Cleopatra, as recorded by Plutarch, provided a
suitably tragic ending to Shakespeare's play, but although it was

(06:26):
based on true events, it probably didn't go down exactly
as Shakespeare wrote it. In the play, Anthony, A, falsely
believing Cleopatra to be dead after a failed sea battle
against Octavian A, falls on his own sword and eventually
dies in her arms from the wound. Cleopatra, not willing

(06:46):
to be paraded in the streets of Rome as a
prisoner of war, has a poisonous snake smuggled into her corners.
In the final scene of the play, she hugs the
snake to her breast. Plutarch's version is a bit different,
but even he admitted that there were various accounts of
Cleopatra's death and that quote the truth of the matter

(07:08):
no one knows, for it was also said that she
carried about poison in a hollow comb and kept the
comb hidden in her hair. Modern scholars say that poison
would have been a much simpler and faster way to go,
but that Cleopatra likely included the more dramatic snake story
in her suicide note. After Cleopatra's death, Egypt became a

(07:31):
province of the Roman Empire, and the rest, as they say,
is history. Today's episode is based on the article five
things Everyone gets wrong about Cleopatra on how Stuffworks dot Com,
written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced

(07:52):
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.