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Cleopatra: Heroine or Harlot?

Bust of Cleopatra, at the Royal Ontario Museum
Bust of Cleopatra, at the Royal Ontario Museum

Cleopatra: Heroine or Harlot?

Derek Shank

Labyrinth: An online journal published by the Classical Studies Department of the University of Waterloo, Issue 91 (2010)

Abstract 

Cleopatra VII has captured the imaginations of people throughout the centuries, as she once captured the affections of Caesar and Antony in the first century BC. She has been portrayed as villainous, treacherous, and lecherous, but also as benevolent, intelligent, and elegant. The question remains: what was the historical Cleopatra really like? Sources on her are problematic, as no contemporary biography of her exists. The most detailed sources, Plutarch?s Life of Antony and Cassius Dio’s Roman History, were written much later, and often share the same pro-Augustan, anti-Cleopatran bias as other Roman literary sources. Coins, inscriptions, and papyri can only tell so much.



Nonetheless, through a general survey of such sources as are available, it is possible to gain an understanding of Cleopatra’s nature: throughout her life, she was an ambitious and intelligent woman with a firm grasp of politics. Despite the scant quantity of evidence that exists regarding Cleopatra‟s early life, her  ambition is evident even at this stage, through her struggle with her brother Ptolemy XIII  over control of the Egyptian throne. However, to what extent Cleopatra actually ruled during this period is disputed. Near the end of the reign of Cleopatra‟s father Ptolemy
XII Auletes in 51 BC, papyrus fragments refer to the date as the “the thirtieth year of Auletes which is the first year of Cleopatra.”

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