whose bedroom she famously had herself smuggled by being rolled up in a carpet when he came to Egypt in 47 B.C.
Rarely apart after that for the remaining years of Caesar’s life, the couple had a son (Caesarion), and both he and his mother returned to Rome with Caesar. Until the day of Caesar’s death, Cleopatra lived with him in his villa in Rome, a symbol to his political opponents of Caesar’s intent to be a king himself in his own right.
Inbred Bastard
A direct descendant of Ptolemy I, Cleopatra VII was the product of centuries of inbreeding. The Ptolemaic dynasty had adopted the previous Egyptian royal policy of marrying royal children to each other (the idea being that royal children in Egypt possessed no other social equals on earth to whom they could be married, and if one royal parent made for a child blessed by the gods, then a child with two royal parents would be doubly blessed). Genetics being completely unknown at the time, the Ptolemys couldn’t possibly know the likely outcome: a royal family who proved “selfish, greedy, murderous, weak, stupid, vicious, sensual, vengeful,” in the words of one modern historian. In contrast, Cleopatra, the intelligent, shrewd exception who proved the rule, shone all the brighter. This fit in with her billing herself as “the New Isis.”
Getting out of Rome one step ahead of a Roman mob after Caesar’s assassination, Cleopatra settled in for a fight once back in Egypt. When summoned to a meeting with Rome’s newest eastern warlord, Marcus Antonius, she made a grand entrance that entranced the loutish Antonius.
The two made common cause against Antonius’s rival Octavian, and whether or not theirs was the passionate love match recorded by both history and Shakespeare, they had three children together. Also together they ruled the east for a decade, until finally forced into yet another civil war with Octavian, who defeated them at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
Within a year, the both of them had committed suicide; their children were either killed or adopted into the family of Octavian, and Egypt had become a Roman province.
Say this for Cleopatra, though: she didn’t lack for either brains or courage, and she came within an ace of winning!
25
LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, KING OF ROME
That’s
Superbus
, Not
Superb
(REIGNED 535–509 B.C.)
By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!
—Lucius Junius Brutus (attributed by the Roman historian Livy)
Tarquin the Proud (“Superbus” is Latin for “proud” or “haughty”), also known as Tarquin the Cruel, was the seventh and final king of Rome. Supposedly descended both from a noble Etruscan (modern-day Tuscany) and a Greek adventurer from Corinth, Tarquin was also, according to the Roman historian and propagandist Livy, a tyrant who ruled without either seeking or taking the advice of the Roman senate, a vicious, bloodthirsty conqueror who ordered up wholesale slaughter, and a murderer who conspired with his sister-in-law Tullia to kill his brother (her husband) and his own wife (her sister), then eventually the king (her father!)
Once Tarquin and Tullia had gotten rid of brother, sister, and father (namely anyone who could stand in their way of ruling Rome), they set about consolidating their power. The Etruscan kings who ruled before Tarquin are supposed to have been smart enough to listen to Rome’s “advisory council” called the “senate,” and thus have given at least the illusion that they gave a fig for what “the people” thought about how they were governed.
Not so Tarquin. He set himself up as an autocrat, ignoring the senate and ruling through military might alone. He was reputed to be a great conqueror, in addition
Rarely apart after that for the remaining years of Caesar’s life, the couple had a son (Caesarion), and both he and his mother returned to Rome with Caesar. Until the day of Caesar’s death, Cleopatra lived with him in his villa in Rome, a symbol to his political opponents of Caesar’s intent to be a king himself in his own right.
Inbred Bastard
A direct descendant of Ptolemy I, Cleopatra VII was the product of centuries of inbreeding. The Ptolemaic dynasty had adopted the previous Egyptian royal policy of marrying royal children to each other (the idea being that royal children in Egypt possessed no other social equals on earth to whom they could be married, and if one royal parent made for a child blessed by the gods, then a child with two royal parents would be doubly blessed). Genetics being completely unknown at the time, the Ptolemys couldn’t possibly know the likely outcome: a royal family who proved “selfish, greedy, murderous, weak, stupid, vicious, sensual, vengeful,” in the words of one modern historian. In contrast, Cleopatra, the intelligent, shrewd exception who proved the rule, shone all the brighter. This fit in with her billing herself as “the New Isis.”
Getting out of Rome one step ahead of a Roman mob after Caesar’s assassination, Cleopatra settled in for a fight once back in Egypt. When summoned to a meeting with Rome’s newest eastern warlord, Marcus Antonius, she made a grand entrance that entranced the loutish Antonius.
The two made common cause against Antonius’s rival Octavian, and whether or not theirs was the passionate love match recorded by both history and Shakespeare, they had three children together. Also together they ruled the east for a decade, until finally forced into yet another civil war with Octavian, who defeated them at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
Within a year, the both of them had committed suicide; their children were either killed or adopted into the family of Octavian, and Egypt had become a Roman province.
Say this for Cleopatra, though: she didn’t lack for either brains or courage, and she came within an ace of winning!
25
LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, KING OF ROME
That’s
Superbus
, Not
Superb
(REIGNED 535–509 B.C.)
By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!
—Lucius Junius Brutus (attributed by the Roman historian Livy)
Tarquin the Proud (“Superbus” is Latin for “proud” or “haughty”), also known as Tarquin the Cruel, was the seventh and final king of Rome. Supposedly descended both from a noble Etruscan (modern-day Tuscany) and a Greek adventurer from Corinth, Tarquin was also, according to the Roman historian and propagandist Livy, a tyrant who ruled without either seeking or taking the advice of the Roman senate, a vicious, bloodthirsty conqueror who ordered up wholesale slaughter, and a murderer who conspired with his sister-in-law Tullia to kill his brother (her husband) and his own wife (her sister), then eventually the king (her father!)
Once Tarquin and Tullia had gotten rid of brother, sister, and father (namely anyone who could stand in their way of ruling Rome), they set about consolidating their power. The Etruscan kings who ruled before Tarquin are supposed to have been smart enough to listen to Rome’s “advisory council” called the “senate,” and thus have given at least the illusion that they gave a fig for what “the people” thought about how they were governed.
Not so Tarquin. He set himself up as an autocrat, ignoring the senate and ruling through military might alone. He was reputed to be a great conqueror, in addition
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