How the West Rewrote Cleopatra

By Heather Thorn

As one of the ancient world’s most famous leaders, Queen Cleopatra VII and her reputation have captivated us for centuries: the mesmerizing femme-fatale leader and seductress with eyes lined in dark kohl. Her beauty was an irresistible power that held the hands of formidable men on the way to their downfall. Western tradition presents Cleopatra as more seductive than smart, focusing on her allure and attractiveness rather than her attributes as an active leader of Egypt. Despite Cleopatra being one of the most memorable and recognizable historical figures, much of the information about her remains shrouded in depictions of her insatiable sexuality.

Cleopatra was a savvy politician, known not only for her intelligence and cunning in Ancient Egypt, but also for her benevolent leadership throughout her 22-year reign. She was fluent in ancient Egyptian, remaining the first and only Ptolemaic ruler in their 300-year reign to learn the language. In total, she could speak nine languages. As an independent monarch, Cleopatra returned Egypt to its former glory through her political alliances and substantial knowledge of economics, linguistics, law, and military strategy.

But for all of Cleopatra’s intellectual qualities as Egypt’s monarch, it is her sexuality and relationships with men that she is largely remembered for in Western tradition. She has gone down in history as one of the most infamous seductresses, her romantic life intertwined with two of the Roman Empire’s most influential men: Julius Caesar, Roman general and dictator of the Roman Republic, and Mark Antony, powerful military leader and statesman. Following the death of her father, Cleopatra ascended the throne at the age of 18 alongside her younger brother, whom she married that same year. Cleopatra’s reign would end up being the last of the Ptolemaic Pharaohs, as she would discover the instability awaiting her. Rome’s military and political power was rapidly expanding and threatening Egypt’s declining territorial control, and internal court conflict turned into a civil war: Cleopatra against her brother.

Forced into exile and needing an ally, Cleopatra found one in the most powerful man of the Mediterranean world: Julius Caesar. When Cleopatra visited him to win his financial support, she secured the help of a trusted servant to carry her into his palace undetected. Out of a bundle of dirty laundry she emerged, and as the story goes, Caesar was transfixed at the sight of her.

In a life-or-death situation, the diplomatic maneuver offered Cleopatra her one shot at defeating her brother. Roman writers depicted the dirty sack of bedclothes as a lavishly decorative rug to frame Cleopatra as seductive—and retellings ran with it. Joseph L.
Mankiewicz’s 1963 Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, cemented the scene as cinematically glamorous. The rug is swept under Cleopatra’s feet and out she tumbles effortlessly, not a hair out of place or a smear of her thick eyeliner to be seen.

The dramatization of Cleopatra’s covert palace entrance downplays the reciprocal necessity of her and Caesar’s political alliance. Both sides reaped benefits by winning the civil war against Cleopatra’s brother; Cleopatra gained protection from her brother’s armies while Caesar restored Roman power by funding his armies with Egypt’s wealth and resources.

Ultimately, Cleopatra politically aligned with and married Marc Antony, leader of Rome’s eastern provinces. Their marriage was an equal one between independent monarchs—as opposed to a relationship between rulers of a dominant and weaker territory—that allowed Cleopatra to return Egypt to its former state of prosperity. Under their alliance, she leveraged Egypt’s supplies and funds in exchange for the reacquisition of Egyptian territories, established trade with Eastern nations to grow Egypt’s economy, and ensured Egypt’s position as a world power. In addition, their enduring political relationship resulted in three children who Cleopatra guaranteed would have power along with their own territories.

However, upon Rome’s defeat of Egypt in the Battle of Actium, all other opportunities for Cleopatra to secure and advance Egypt’s power were depleted. Following Antony’s suicide, Cleopatra followed suit with her own honorable suicide—refusing to be taken captive and instead ending her life on her terms. History was left to be rewritten by the victors. The adopted son of Caesar, Octavian, would go on to smear Cleopatra’s reputation and vilify her as a seductress whose allure Mark Antony couldn’t tear himself away from. Roman revisionist narratives depict Cleopatra as villainous, manipulative, and a woman who preyed upon Roman leaders.

The recasting of Cleopatra’s political alliance as sexual domination is a framing that Hollywood has clung to. Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934) portrays Cleopatra as fair-skinned with feminine features, and their alliance as an extravagant love affair. She seduces Antony in a lavish set-up, using promiscuity for power as an unstoppable “femme fatale.” By legitimizing Cleopatra as a politically powerful woman explicitly because of her desirability, Western media diminishes the terms by which she’s remembered. She was more than the constructed caricature she has been reduced to: that of a manipulative monarch set on seducing powerful men.

Yet Cleopatra remains only one example of the dangerous intersection of women and power, one that rewrites narratives in order to downplay women’s achievements. Other historical “femme fatales” including Wu Zetian (China’s only female emperor who ruled in her own right), Anne Boleyn (Henry VIII’s wife and consequent scape-goat of the English Reformation), Marie Antoinette (infamous French monarch systemically targeted by accusations of pornography, pro-
miscuity, and incest) and Mata Hari (an exotic dancer executed upon suspicion of luring inside information from men during World War I), have also seen their narratives rewritten in a way that emphasizes or erases female achievements while serving patriarchal politics. YM