Forever annoyed at people being so willing to believe the Roman defamation of Cleopatra. Alexandria was an ancient super power under her rule, because she managed to get support from the Egyptian people for the first time really in her families 300 year odd dynasty. She was a huge threat to Rome at that point, and the only documentation of her being a coquettish seductress hell bent on ruining everything come from Roman historians and writers of the time. But the Arabic texts tell a very different story. There’s not any mention of anything like that, instead it’s documentation that talks about her being a philosopher and enjoying being surrounded by scholars.
Cleopatra succeeded where most of the Ptolemaic dynasty failed. By having better command of the Egyptian language, religion and social dynamics; she won the support of Egypt rather than endless rebellions. The coins minted under her rule, and the statues built from them show a woman who wasn’t some stunning queen. She was incredibly intelligent, and ambitious as proven by her attempt to unify Rome and Egypt through her son Caesarion.
It’s 2015, can we please stop taking biased accounts as facts and writing Cleopatra off as someone who fucked her way to power, as opposed to a woman who was actually extremely politically intelligent and who was so much so, that she quite literally terrified the Romans as a very real potential threat to their position as a world power? Thanks.
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