Cleopatra? She was just one of SEVEN!
The Cleopatras Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Wildfire £25
Everyone knows about Cleopatra. She is the Egyptian siren who seduced Caesar and Mark Antony. She has been a central character in plays by
Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, and in an opera by Handel. She has been portrayed by a succession of Hollywood’s most glamorous female stars, most notably Elizabeth Taylor.
In truth, as Lloyd LlewellynJones points out in this erudite but immensely readable book, she was ‘no great beauty’. She was, however, ‘a woman of some physical charm, high intellect and spellbinding charisma’.
What fewer people know is that she was the last in a line of regal Cleopatras – the seventh (and final) queen to bear the name.
The dynasty to which all the Egyptian Cleopatras belonged was Greek in origin, founded by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great’s generals who had carved out his own kingdom in Egypt. Bewilderingly, nearly every male ruler that followed was also called Ptolemy. Nearly every queen was Cleopatra. Llewellyn-Jones’s lucid narrative guides readers gently through the confusion.
What he makes clear is the general uselessness of most of Ptolemy I’s successors, which offered the female rulers the chance to shine. They proved themselves skilled politicians and were often the dominant figures in the kingdom.
One of the few male rulers who showed any competency was Ptolemy VIII, known as ‘Potbelly’ for his size, who was capable of astonishing ruthlessness. When Cleopatra II celebrated her 55th birthday, Potbelly sent a present of a large, decorated box. Inside it was the dismembered body of her son, whom the pharaoh had decided was a threat to his power.
Cleopatra II was Potbelly’s sister. She was also at one time his wife. Incest was commonplace in the Ptolemaic dynasty. Cleopatra V, for example, was at various times married to her uncle, her father and her stepson. The last marriage was not a success. Ptolemy XI murdered her 19 days after the wedding.
To most societies, incest is taboo. To the Ptolemies and Cleopatras it was a way of demonstrating their transcendence of ordinary human behaviour.
Cleopatra VII, the one we all know, was married to two of her brothers, though her most famous relationships were with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and it was the power of Rome that brought an end to the dynasty. Alliance with Mark Antony put Cleopatra on the wrong side in the Roman struggle for power. She met her death, in legend via a serpent’s fangs, and Egypt became a province of Rome.