Cleopatra VII (69–30 BC) was the last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and the final pharaoh of ancient Egypt: a multilingual, highly educated queen who allied first with Julius Caesar and then with Mark Antony to preserve her kingdom’s independence from an expanding Rome.
After defeat at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, she and Antony took their own lives, and Egypt became a Roman province. Almost everything the world “thinks” of her — seductress, sorceress — comes from the propaganda of the man who defeated her, Octavian, the future Augustus.
