Cleopatra Was A Sage and A Scholar, Portrayed As A Seductress
All our knowledge about Cleopatra came from enemy sources
Most people know Cleopatra as the last Ptolemaic Pharoah and the legendary woman who managed to secure sole rule of Egypt before it all came crashing down. Her legacy as a charismatic queen who seduced Caesar and Mark Anthony is well known, but is this really all there is to her? A woman who used her feminine charms to win the hearts of powerful men?
We sometimes forget that history is written by the victors, and in the case of Cleopatra, much of what we know comes from Roman sources whose authors had an agenda to make her look bad.
After all, she was not only from Egypt but also a woman, two traits that were distasteful to contemporary Romans.
The idea that any single woman could wield power, let alone rule as queen, was unheard of in the ‘civilised world’ and rather than looking at Cleopatra’s virtues as an individual, Roman historians tried to tarnish her reputation.
But when we look beneath the scandalous rumours, we start to see something different. To really understand Cleopatra, we need to look at her life before the Roman civil war, before she became queen and before she started to become well known in the Roman world.
