( Meet history's top ten, red-hot power couples.)Īt the end of 46 B.C., Cleopatra visited Rome at Caesar’s invitation, bringing Caesarion and all the royal pageantry of her court. Egyptian priests began to teach that the god Amun had incarnated himself in the person of Caesar, the most powerful man in the world at the time, to father the baby prince. and openly proclaimed Julius Caesar the father. to Ethiopia.” By the time Caesar left Egypt, Cleopatra was pregnant. Plutarch wrote: “ often feasted with her until dawn and they would have sailed together. Son of Rome and Egyptįor two months Cleopatra entertained Caesar, revealing to him the charms that both the Nile Valley and she herself had to offer. To consolidate the alliance, Cleopatra invited Caesar, 30 years her senior, to stay in Egypt with her. She would co-rule, in name, with a younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. The young king was killed, and Caesar placed the 21-year-old Cleopatra VII on the throne. He supported her claim to the throne, sparking an uprising of Ptolemy’s supporters who were defeated. She smuggled herself into Alexandria for a meeting with Caesar and won him to her cause. This gross miscalculation on the young pharaoh’s part was a prime opportunity for Cleopatra and her forces. how Caesar had “turned away in horror presented the head of Pompey, but he accepted Pompey’s seal-ring, and shed tears over it.” Caesar was saddened and disgusted: Ancient historian Plutarch wrote in the first century A.D. In a reversal, the young Ptolemy had Pompey executed and presented his head to Julius Caesar when he swept into Egypt later that year. In the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C., Caesar defeated Pompey, who fled to Alexandria. Far from the capital, Cleopatra established her own base of operations where she raised an army and bided her time. Pompey needed Egypt and decided to back Ptolemy XIII over his sister, who went into exile. Two of its great military heroes, Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, were engaged in a civil war and were looking for alliances. Two years later, Ptolemy’s advisers tried to move against Cleopatra to make the young boy the sole ruler.Īs the two Egyptian siblings were squabbling over their throne, Rome was in the middle of its own power struggle. The Ptolemaic kings and queens had a long family tradition of competing for the throne: sibling against sibling or parent against child. ( Watch how Cleopatra achieved immortality through her personal story of love and tragedy.)Īfter their father’s death in 51 B.C., Ptolemy and his sister were symbolically wed, but there was no love between them, familial or otherwise. Because Egypt had become a Roman protectorate during the elder Ptolemy’s rule, Romans had a say in who would be ruling Egypt. They would serve together under the guardianship of Rome. Caesarion’s story began when his grandfather, Ptolemy XII, named his two oldest children, 18-year-old Cleopatra and 10-year-old Ptolemy XIII, as co-heirs.
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