Cleopatra
Authors: Joyce Tyldesley
CLEOPATRA
ALSO BY JOYCE TYLDESLEY
For Adults
Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt
Hatchepsut: the Female Pharaoh
Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen
The Mummy
Ramesses: Egypt’s Greatest Pharaoh
Judgement of the Pharaoh: Crime and Punishment in Ancient Egypt
The Private Lives of the Pharaohs
Egypt’s Golden Empire
Pyramids: The Real Story Behind Egypt’s Most Ancient Monuments
Tales from Ancient Egypt
Egypt: How a Lost Civilization was Rediscovered
Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt
Egyptian Games and Sports
For children
Mummy Mysteries: The Secret World of Tutankhamun
and the Pharaohs
Egypt (Insiders)
Stories from Ancient Egypt
CLEOPATRA
LAST QUEEN OF EGYPT
JOYCE TYLDESLEY
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
Copyright © 2008 by Joyce Tyldesley
First published in the United States in 2008 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in Great Britain in 2008 by Profile Books Ltd
All rights reserved.
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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
HC ISBN: 978-0-465-00940-4
PB ISBN: 978-0-465-01892-5
LCCN: 2008921307
British ISBN: 978 1 86197 965 0
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Dedicated to the memory of my late father,
William Randolph Tyldesley
CHAPTER THREE
Alexandria-next-to-Egypt
CHAPTER FOUR
Cleopatra and Julius Caesar
CHAPTER SIX
Cleopatra and Mark Antony
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cleopatra’s Children
CHAPTER NINE
History Becomes Legend
P
ersonal names are a potential minefield for the student of ancient history. I have aimed at clarity for those new to the Ptolemaic age, and can only apologise in advance to those who may feel that I have made irrational, inconsistent or unscholarly decisions. Throughout the book I have favoured the traditional spelling Cleopatra rather than the more authentic but less widely known Kleopatra. Similarly, when using Roman names I have opted for the more familiar modern variants: Caesar instead of Gaius Julius (Iulius) Caesar, Antony instead of Marcus Antonius, and so on. Octavian was, as Mark Antony so rudely noted, a boy who owed everything to his name. Soon after Cleopatra’s suicide, Octavian (initially Gaius Octavius; later Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus) took the title Imperator and the name Caesar Augustus. To avoid confusion I refer to him as Octavian throughout. As a general rule, I use the ‘-os’ ending for those of Greek heritage, so that, for example, Cleopatra’s youngest son becomes Ptolemy Philadelphos rather than the Latinised Ptolemy Philadelphus, but I retain the ‘-us’ ending for those, like Herodotus, who are today widely known by the Latin version of their name.