Cleopatra VII

Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last of the Ptolemies, a Greek dynasty that had ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries, and the only one of her line who bothered to learn the Egyptian tongue. She came to a throne riven by intrigue and held it through one of the most dangerous moments in history, when Rome's civil wars threatened to swallow her kingdom whole. She was a scholar as much as a sovereign, fluent in many languages, versed in mathematics and medicine, and shrewd enough to make herself indispensable to the most powerful men alive.

Her alliances with Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony were partnerships of politics and passion both, gambles to keep Egypt independent against the rising tide of Roman power. For a time it worked; for a time Alexandria glittered as the cultural heart of the Mediterranean. But the tide came in. Defeated at Actium and cornered by Octavian, she chose death on her own terms rather than be paraded as a trophy through the streets of Rome.

Rome's historians, her enemies, wrote her down as a seductress, and the legend has clung for two thousand years. We honor instead the ruler beneath the myth — the brilliant, multilingual queen who fought to the last to keep her ancient kingdom free, and who has fascinated the world ever since.