Cleopatra (c. 68-30 BC)

The head of Cleopatra I, Queen of Egypt in the first century BC, on a coin.

Queen of Egypt 51-48 and 47-30 BC. When the Roman general Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt, he restored Cleopatra to the throne from which she had been ousted. Cleopatra and Caesar became lovers and she went with him to Rome. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC she returned to Alexandria and resumed her position as queen of Egypt. In 41 BC she was joined there by Mark Antony, one of Rome's rulers. In 31 BC Rome declared war on Egypt and scored a decisive victory in the naval Battle of Actium off the west coast of Greece. Cleopatra fled with her 60 ships to Egypt; Antony abandoned the struggle and followed her. Both he and Cleopatra committed suicide.

Cleopatra was Macedonian, and the last ruler of the Macedonian dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 323 until annexation by Rome 31. She succeeded her father Ptolemy XII jointly with her brother Ptolemy XIII, and they ruled together from 51 to 49 BC, when she was expelled by him.

Her reinstatement in 48 BC by Caesar caused a war between Caesar and Ptolemy XIII, who was defeated and killed. The younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, was elevated to the throne and married to her, in the tradition of the pharaohs, although she actually lived with Caesar and they had a son, Ptolemy XV, known as Caesarion (he was later killed by Octavian).

After Caesar's death, Cleopatra and Mark Antony had three sons. In 32 BC he divorced his wife Octavia, the sister of Octavian, who then induced the Roman senate to declare war on Egypt. Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra recounts that Cleopatra killed herself with an asp (poisonous snake) after Antony's suicide.

Film versions of her life were made in 1934 and 1963.

Cleopatra

Opera by Johann Mattheson (libretto by F C Feustking), first produced at the Theatre beim Gänsemarkt, Hamburg, Germany, on 20 October 1704. The story is based on Shakespeare's play and the events described in Plutarch's Lives.