And the Rest Is History Read Online Free

and intelligence. The only claim she had to looks was a large nose, which was considered a mark of beauty in her epoch.
    In 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the steps of the Forum on the ides of March. His death would change the course of history as well as Cleopatra’s own life.
    After Caesar’s death, the general Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony), became, along with Octavian, one of the three leaders of Rome. Fearing an eventual power struggle with Octavian, Marc arranged for a meeting with the Egyptian queen, hoping to gain a powerful political ally. He was to gain far more.
    When Cleopatra received Antony’s summons for an interview, she vowed to seduce him in the same fashion as she had done her former Roman general. She needed the protection of the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world to safeguard her throne and secure the succession of Caesarion. She staged the entrance of the millennium.
    Cleopatra sailed down the river in a gilded barge, adorned with swelling sails of Tyrian purple. The ship was filled with such a quantity of rose petals that the Romans knew of her arrival before she appeared on their horizon. The oars were silver, drawn by servant girls clad as nymphs. The boat drew near the shore to the accompaniment of the music of flutes and harps. Against this frame, Cleopatra lay on a divan beneath a canopy of gold, dressed in the garb of Venus, fanned by boys clad as Cupid.
    The first time Cleopatra met Antony was when he came to dine on her palace barge. He was immediately enraptured by the seductress. The queen, who had most likely given herself to Caesar only for political expediency, became the paramour of Antony—but this time, it was for love. The couple spent all their time together, which led to Antony’s neglect of his legions.
    When Cleopatra returned to Alexandria, she did so with Antony, who abandoned his military campaign to follow her. According to Plutarch, Cleopatra “played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him. At night she would go rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their windows, dressed like a servant-woman, for Antony also went in servant’s disguise ... However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined good-humoredly and kindly in his frolic and play.”
    Not so the Romans. They viewed her as a lustful seductress who employed sex and sorcery to seduce their two greatest generals. Marc Antony had fallen far from the magnificent orator whose eulogy for Caesar had made him the most celebrated of his countrymen.
    Finally, after a year Antony pulled himself away from Cleopatra to rejoin his legions in Rome. When he arrived, to help make amends, he agreed to wed Octavian’s sister, Octavia, though his heart lay in Egypt. The messengers who conveyed this information to Cleopatra probably did so with the greatest of trepidation, as she was known to kill those who brought disturbing news (giving birth to the expression “Don’t kill the messenger”). She was particularly unhappy with the timing of her lover’s nuptials, as she was pregnant with his twins, Alexander Helios (“The Sun”), and Cleopatra Selene (“The Moon”).
    In his own country, Antony was caught in an emotional tug-of-war, endlessly torn between his two mistresses: Rome and Cleopatra. Unable to deny the latter, he headed to Asia Minor and sent for Cleopatra to join him. There he married her under Egyptian law, which allowed polygamy, and announced the paternity of his son and daughter. As a wedding present he presented her with the Roman dominions of Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Crete. She was delighted with the gifts; Octavian, however, did not share the sentiment.
    The couple began presenting themselves as divine and bedecked themselves as Osiris and Isis. Disgusted with these actions, Rome, as much as it once idolized Antony, now vilified him. Antony, by falling into Cleopatra’s arms, had