They had three children together.© Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, ruling Egypt from 51 BC - 30 BC.
Real julius caesar and cleopatra full#
By Roman standards, it was an illegal marriage, but it also appeared to be a happy one, full of evenings spent drinking, feasting, and playing games. Like her affair with Caesar, Cleopatra needed Antony for protection and he needed her for her money, but they also seemed to genuinely love each other. As soon as Antony saw Cleopatra as the goddess, he was hooked. She had done her homework and knew that Mark Antony believed himself to be the living embodiment of the Greek god Dionysus, so s he arrived at the meeting in a golden barge with purple sails and dressed like the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In 41 B.C., she heard the Roman general Mark Antony was in Egypt, and d esiring another Roman strongman to protect her and the crown, Cleopatra arranged to meet with him. Her exotic beauty had made her popular in Rome and a fashion icon to Roman women, but she knew she would never be one of them, so she felt she had no choice but to return to her homeland.īack in Egypt, her unhappy subjects and constant threats against her life awaited her once more. After his death, Cleopatra no longer felt welcome in her adopted home. Still, Cleopatra had a pretty sweet setup in Rome, living on one of Caesar's vast estates and being showered with gifts, such as the golden statue of her likeness Caesar erected in the city.Īs everyone who managed to stay even half-awake in their high school English class can tell you, Julius Caesar was assassinated by his own cohorts on March 15, 44 B.C. In Rome, Cleopatra had to settle for the life of a mistress, as Caesar was already married when they began their affair and Roman law forbid the leader's marriage to a foreigner anyway. The Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt kept Cleopatra under their guard, but when Caesarion was one year old, the queen fled with him to Rome and back into Caesar's arms. It was a dangerous time for the queen: Cleopatra's alliance with the Roman ruler made her unpopular in her own country, and this sentiment only increased after Caesarion was born. She gave birth to Caesarion, the only male heir Caesar ever had, on June 24, 47 B.C. Cleopatra was perhaps the richest woman in the world at that time, and her wealth would provide Caesar with all the resources he needed to return to Rome and seize power back for himself.Ĭaesar and Cleopatra sealed their alliance by taking a cruise along the Nile River in her posh royal barge, and by the time the new power couple returned to Alexandria, she was pregnant with his child. The 54-year-old Caesar was so captivated by the lovely young queen that the two quickly became lovers and allies.Ĭleopatra and Ptolemy XIII may have needed Caesar for his military might, but Caesar had his own reasons for allying himself with the Egyptian queen, aside from her considerable charms. Once inside, the carpet was unfurled, and the rest is history. In a now-famous story, since Cleopatra's brother-husband forbid her to meet the Roman leader, she instructed a trusted servant to roll her into a carpet and carry it into Caesar's bedchamber under the guise of presenting him with a gift. He needn't have bothered: When he arrived in Egypt, he was presented with Pompey's severed head by the nation's 10-year-old king, an attempt to secure Caesar's allegiance as Ptolemy XIII plotted to oust his co-ruler and sister-wife.Ĭleopatra also recognized that Caesar could be the key to maintaining control of Egypt, so she hatched a scheme of her own.
After a civil war, Julius Caesar was determined to capture his enemy, a general named Pompey, pursuing him around Europe and into Egypt.
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