While the last pharaoh of Egypt – Cleopatra VII – is renowned, little is known about the children she shared with two of the most-celebrated men of Rome: Gaius Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Her dramatic death with Mark Antony in 30 BC is usually considered to be the end of her story, yet four of her children survived her.
Caesar and Caesarion
The exact date of Cleopatra’s birth is unknown. Marriage between siblings was prevalent in the Ptolemaic Dynasty, and internecine rivalry took a deadly form. After the death of her father Ptolemy XII Auletes in 51 BC, Cleopatra faced the rival aspirations of two brothers and a sister, all hungry for power. This was the complex family scenario that confronted Julius Caesar when he arrived in Egypt in 48 BC.
The young Cleopatra whom Caesar encountered in Alexandria was undoubtedly unlike the women of Rome. The royal women of the Ptolemaic Dynasty had long shared power, some even ruling in their own right. In a city famed as a centre of scholarship, Cleopatra would have been highly educated, and was known for her intellect and her command of languages. In Roman society, by contrast, women were subordinate to men. To the Romans, Cleopatra’s position as ruling queen would have been seen as unnatural, and the Ptolemaic tradition of incest considered abhorrent.
