Like most monarchs of her time, Cleopatra saw herself as divine from birth she and other members of her family were declared to be gods and goddesses. Another theory is that she drank a poisonous tonic. In the Death of Cleopatra, by Guido Cagnacci (an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period), a popular theory on how Cleopatra killed herself is brought to life that she was bitten by an asp on her breast. 'She was clearly using all her talents from the moment she arrived on the world stage before Caesar,' says Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, author of a forthcoming biography, Cleopatra the Great. The image of young Cleopatra tumbling out of an unfurled carpet has been dramatized in nearly every film about her, from the silent era to a 1999 TV miniseries, but it was also a key scene in the real Cleopatra's staging of her own life. She persuaded her servant Apollodoros to wrap her in a carpet (or, according to some sources, a sack used for storing bedclothes), which he then presented to the 52-year old Roman.

Aware that Caesar's diplomatic intervention could help her regain the throne, Cleopatra hatched a scheme to sneak herself into the palace for an audience with Caesar. But Ptolemy XIII's forces barred the return of the king's sister to Alexandria. Caesar took up residence at Alexandria's royal palace and summoned the warring siblings for a peace conference, which he planned to arbitrate.

For decades Egypt had been a subservient ally to Rome, and preserving the stability of the Nile Valley, with its great agricultural wealth, was in Rome's economic interest. Meanwhile, pursuing a military rival who had fled to Egypt, the Roman general Julius Caesar arrived at Alexandria in the summer of 48 B.C., and found himself drawn into the Egyptian family feud.

The queen, then in her early twenties, fled to Syria and returned with a mercenary army, setting up camp just outside the capital.

In 49 B.C., Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII-also her husband and, by the terms of their father's will, her co-ruler-had driven his sister from the palace at Alexandria after Cleopatra attempted to make herself the sole sovereign. The struggle with her teenage brother over the throne of Egypt was not going as well as Cleopatra VII had hoped.

Cleopatra a life