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- Cleopatra Queen of Egypt
- 51-48 and 47-30 BC. When the Roman general
- Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt, he restored
- her to the throne from which she had been
- ousted. Cleopatra and Caesar became lovers
- and she went with him to Rome. After Caesar's
- assassination 44 BC she returned to
- Alexandria and resumed her position as queen
- of Egypt. In 41 BC she was joined there by
- Mark Antony, one of Rome's rulers. In 31 BC
- Rome declared war on Egypt and scored a
- decisive victory in the naval Battle of
- Actium off the W coast of Greece. Cleopatra
- fled with her 60 ships to Egypt; Antony
- abandoned the struggle and followed her. Both
- he and Cleopatra committed suicide. Cleopatra
- was Macedonian, and the last ruler of the
- Macedonian dynasty, which ruled Egypt from
- 323 until annexation by Rome 31. She
- succeeded her father Ptolemy XII jointly with
- her brother Ptolemy XIII, and they ruled
- together from 51 to 49 BC, when she was
- expelled by him. Her reinstatement in 48 BC
- by Caesar caused a war between Caesar and her
- brother, who was defeated and killed. The
- younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, was elevated to
- the throne and married to her, in the
- tradition of the pharaohs, although she
- actually lived with Caesar and they had a
- son, Ptolemy XV, known as Caesarion (he was
- later killed by Octavian). After Caesar's
- death, Cleopatra and Mark Antony had three
- sons, and he divorced in 32 BC his wife
- Octavia. She was the sister of Octavian, the
- ruler of Rome, who then declared war on
- Egypt. Shakespeare's play Antony and
- Cleopatra recounts that Cleopatra killed
- herself with an asp (poisonous snake) after
- Antony's suicide.
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