It was important for the entire Middle East and Southern Europe to see stability in the region’s most wealthy nation. Caesar, Cleopatra, and Ptolemy XIV went to Rome in a combination victory parade, diplomatic mission, and trade voyage. These years were stable in Egypt while Caesar’s power grew in Rome. In reality, though Ceaser lived with Cleopatra, and she soon bore him a son, Caesarion. Never one to rule alone, her youngest brother Ptolemy XIV, age 12, was appointed co-ruler. The rebellious forces were routed in a battle along the banks of the Nile and her brother drowned trying to escape. Ptolemy’s forces surrounded the Alexandrian palace and kept them under siege for more than a year until Roman forces arrived and drove them from the city.
Regardless, Caesar declared both Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, at 22, as joint rulers, but that didn’t quite work out. Caesar needed Egypt’s wealth, while Cleopatra needed Rome’s protection. Caesar had lost his only daughter and suffered from terrible nightmares Cleopatra, estranged from her younger siblings, had lost her mother, two sisters, and the father who had taught her politics. Both had a knack for persuading ordinary people to love them, yet both were to a certain extent lonely and insecure. Both were ruthlessly ambitious and both were prepared to take prodigious risks to achieve their ambitions. She goes on to write: Caesar was older and more experienced in all aspects of life than Cleopatra, but the two nevertheless had much in common. And he had a reputation for sexual excess that his legionaries repeated with awe and pride: he was “every woman’s man and every man’s woman.” Caesar was known to be both good-humored and amusing. An excellent politician, orator, and author, a superb horseman, and an extremely successful, though by no means, infallible general. Cleopatra would have understood that she was facing a man of exceptional drive and ambition. Tyldesley highlights the man Cleopatra met: Caesar was the supreme celebrity of his age, known by reputation throughout the civilized world.
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She was dressed regally in flowing robes, perfect make-up, and, as always full of charm and wit.
Her brother’s forces managed to surround the castle to keep Cleopatra from meeting with Caesar, but she snuck into the castle by boat, through the docks, and surprised him in his room. Ptolemy XIII had allowed Ceasar’s rival, Pompey, to be murdered on his shores so Ceasar did owe him a debt.
The loser would presumably be assassinated, exiled, or commit suicide. The prospect of civil war put that in jeopardy so Ceasar was sent to decide on whom to appoint to the throne. Rome had a vested interest in Egypt, and let them maintain self-autonomy on the condition that its ample harvests kept the empire fed. A brewing civil war between the two leaders, their factions, and their armies threatened to tear Egypt apart. But he was a minor, and for the first year and a half of their joint reign, Cleopatra becomes the effective monarch, while her brother was pushed into the background.īut that only lasted a few years. Tyldesley surmises: Husband or brother, Ptolemy, as king, should have been the dominant partner in the relationship. They inherited an insecure land suffering from high inflation and unreliable Nile floods, and their father’s extensive debts. When in 51, Auletes died an apparently natural death, the throne passed as he had planned to the eighteen-year-old Cleopatra and her eldest brother the ten-year-old Ptolemy XIII. As a result, Auletes sacrificed his dignity, saved his crown, and bought Egypt a few more years of independence. Seizing his moment, Auletes (Cleopatra’s father) offered Pompey and Caesar 6,000 sliver talents, an almost unimaginable sum, the equivalent of half of Egypt’s entire annual revenue, in exchange for recognition as Egypt’s true king. In Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt, Joyce Tyldesley writes: In 60 Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar united to form the first triumvirate.
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