Читать книгу The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody - Will Cuppy - Страница 14

CLEOPATRA VII, Queen of Egypt, was the daughter of Ptolemy XIII. The name of her mother is unknown and it doesn’t matter, as nobody with a grain of sense would have bothered with Ptolemy XIII. He was called Ptolemy the Piper because he sat around playing the flute all day long. The Egyptians drove him out of the country, but of course he came back. He died in 51 B.C., leaving Egypt to Cleopatra and her ten-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIV.¹

Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV were always quarreling, and she didn’t seem to click with the right politicians.² Cleopatra was put off her half of the throne and fled to Syria to save her life. She was twenty-one years old at this time and very unhappy. She felt she was not getting anywhere.

Then Julius Cæsar, greatest of the Romans, arrived in Egypt on business, and Cleopatra returned to see him about things.³ Cleopatra had herself carried into his presence in a roll of bedding and spent the rest of the night telling him about her trip. So he put her back on the throne with Ptolemy XV, another of her young brothers, Ptolemy XIV having been drowned somehow. Ptolemy XV didn’t live long. Cleopatra poisoned him, but you mustn’t hold it against her, for it was royal etiquette to poison as many of the family as you could. Cleopatra did not poison her sister Arsinoë. She had someone else do it.⁴