The Murder of Cleopatra (10 page)

Auletes wasn't the first pharaoh or Ptolemy to kill off his family or rivals to the throne in order to succeed to power. Here is a condensed history of Ptolemy intra-family annihilation that may be a bit overwhelming with the many similar names and titles and intrigues. I present this compilation not to detail each specific event or to present an analysis of these goings on, but to acquaint you with the vicious past activities of the Ptolemies that would educate Cleopatra on methods of dealing with threats to her continuation as a ruler. Do not worry about who did what and when, but rather allow the violence of the years leading up to Cleopatra's rule to set the tone for her entrance into Ptolemaic history.

Let us begin with the sister of Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II. She eventually ended up marrying her brother, the then king of Egypt, but she first married the elderly king Lysimachos, who controlled all of Macedonia in 285 BCE. Wanting one of her own three sons with the king to be successor to the throne, she got the king to poison his own very capable eldest son from his first wife on trumped up treason charges. After King Lysimachos was killed in battle, Arsinoe II married her half brother, Ptolemy Keraunos, son of Ptolemy I, who then killed Arsinoe's two younger sons after she and her sons conspired against him. Arsinoe's eldest son went into hiding. Never one to give up, Arsinoe II then went to her other brother, Ptolemy II, in Alexandria; encouraged him to exile his wife (Arsinoe I); and promptly married him. She became quite an influential queen. This incestuous marriage in the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Arsinoe II to her brother Ptolemy II was a fine example to the young Cleopatra that ruthlessness and determination are necessary if one wants to be an important part of the ruling family.

Ptolemy III, son of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe I, took over the throne in 246 BCE and promptly married his sister, Berenice II. When he died, his twenty-year-old
son, Ptolemy IV, took over and immediately married his sister, Arsinoe III. The most powerful man in his court, Sosibios, who quite frankly was dictating what the young pharaoh would do, quickly murdered the top three members of the ruling family, including the pharaoh's mother, to ensure his continued control of the king. It is at this point that the downfall of the Ptolemies began. Ptolemy IV wasn't terribly good at his administrative duties, and he preferred partying to handling more important matters. When he died at age forty, he left a son, Ptolemy V, as the new king at age six.

Unfortunately for Egypt, Sosibios also died soon thereafter, leaving an even nastier man in his stead, an Alexandrian by the name of Agathoklos, to watch over the new little king as regent. He swiftly eliminated Arsinoe III, the pharaoh's mother, capturing the place of power for himself. But apparently his bad behavior wasn't appreciated by the Alexandrian mob that, in 203 BCE, executed him in the stadium along with his family. Cleopatra would learn from this that the Alexandrians could turn on their leaders and the results could be extremely unpleasant. Thereafter the “mob” was to be considered a serious threat. Even after Octavian came to Egypt and defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, he was very well aware of the power the Egyptian people held, and he made good use of his time winning their favor. As we will see later in this story of Cleopatra's death, there was good reason for him to want to appease this group and not incur their wrath over his mistreatment of their beloved queen.

Ptolemy V, who succeeded his father, Ptolemy IV, actually didn't marry his sister. At sixteen years of age, he married a Syrian named Cleopatra I, who was just ten years old. His rule was an unmitigated disaster during which he managed to lose most of Egypt's foreign possessions in Europe and in Asia. When he died,
his
six-year-old son, Ptolemy VI, was placed on the throne and ruled jointly with his mother, Cleopatra I. After his mother died and he was all of eleven years old, Ptolemy VI married his little sister, Cleopatra II. It was
during the administration of Ptolemy VI that Rome gained a foothold in Egyptian fortunes and would continue to be both a thorn in Egypt's side as well as a necessary partner.

The power struggles continued when Ptolemy VIII, younger brother of Ptolemy VI, also became a coruler in a triumvirate of the two brothers and their sister, Cleopatra II. In a struggle for power between the two brothers, Ptolemy VI found himself ruling Cyprus with his sister-wife Cleopatra II, and Ptolemy VIII became sole ruler of Egypt. The lone pharaoh wasn't well liked; he was a tyrannical king and was hated for it. The Alexandrians wanted the older brother back. They drove Ptolemy VIII out and had Ptolemy VI as their pharaoh for a year, but then Ptolemy VIII made a play for the position of pharaoh again with an assassination attempt on his brother and won back the spot. Meanwhile, in an attempt to regain Syria, Ptolemy VI fell from his horse and died. Ptolemy VIII then married his widow-sister, Cleopatra II. Ever the loving brother, he had his nephew murdered in his mother's arms during the wedding celebration. He let his wife-sister live. Then he married his niece, Cleopatra III, setting the stage for massive bitterness and hatred between mother and daughter as he now had them both as wives.

After a nasty bit of time as a ruling threesome, a fire was set to the palace and Ptolemy VIII fled with his second wife, Cleopatra III, to Cyprus. Cleopatra II, his first wife, became the sole ruler. This quite displeased Ptolemy VIII, so he had his own son with Cleopatra II brutally murdered right in front of him and sent the body parts back to Alexandria to his first wife as a birthday present. When Ptolemy VIII died, the throne went to Cleopatra III. The murders continued. Cleopatra III and her son Ptolemy X had a falling out, and after ousting him, she relented and allowed him to return to Egypt, after which he had her murdered. Ptolemy X was eventually driven out of Egypt and killed. His elder brother, Ptolemy IX, came back from Cyprus (where he had been forced to flee). He actually died of natural causes in his bed, and his daughter Cleopatra Berenike III became pharaoh. She ruled for one year, then married her stepson, Ptolemy
XI. Ptolemy XI ruled with her for fifteen days before he murdered her. He was then dragged out by the mob to the gymnasium and killed.

If you are now exhausted by reading these machinations of the Ptolemies, we are thankfully nearing Cleopatra VII's time. With their rulers both dead, the Alexandrian elite put Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII (also known as Auletes the flute player), in power, after which he married his sister, Cleopatra V (some say Cleopatra VI). Berenike IV was born to them, then Cleopatra VI (some call her Cleopatra Tryphaena), then Cleopatra VII and her other three siblings—Arsinoe IV, Ptolemy XIII, and Ptolemy XIV. By the time she reached adulthood, Cleopatra VII fully represented the Ptolemy mind-set: their high level of intelligence, their incredible lust for power, and their desire to keep Egypt as a separate country or at least not completely under the thumb of another country. When Cleopatra VII arrived on the scene, in spite of the decline of the country, she still saw herself assuming a seat of great power and wealth, and she would put all her Ptolemaic abilities to work. It was in her nature and, quite frankly, it is not clear that she had much of a choice; it was rule or be destroyed, kill or be killed. She would either step up and take control of the reins of power or be eliminated; and once she assumed the role of pharaoh, there would always be efforts afoot to unseat her. She wasn't likely to come out like a fighter in the early rounds and then go out with a whimper. Cleopatra VII was a Ptolemy through and through.

Cleopatra inherited quite an array of problems when she was born into the Ptolemaic Dynasty in 69 BCE. She had a reported fool for a father, not one of the more accomplished or acclaimed Ptolemies in the long line of rulers; a country on the verge of being gobbled up by Rome; and far too many siblings in a fight for the throne to have a good chance of winning it (she had two older sisters who could claim it first, two brothers who no doubt would be preferred as rulers due to their gender, and one younger but very aggressive sister who couldn't be discounted as a threat). That she won out is a testament to her aggressiveness and astuteness—neither of which she seemed to have inherited from her father, so the earlier Cleopatras must have been running solidly in her blood.

Her father, Auletes, was not chosen by his father to ascend the throne. He was rather a desperation choice by the Alexandrians since the recently killed couple left no children. Auletes was the elder son of one of the Ptolemies who had been in hiding in Syria, and his mother was not of royal lineage (
that
Ptolemy was not expecting to be pharaoh), but Alexandrian elites had to pick someone, some Ptolemy, and he was the best they thought they could do. All they could hope was that he wouldn't be a total failure in the role. It is important to remember that although the pharaohs held great power, they did not actually rule entirely alone; they had the Alexandrian elite, the high priests, and a great many administrators who kept the country
afloat when they were flagging in their duties, off fighting wars, or hiding from familial attempts to assassinate them. Even Cleopatra had times when she left the management of Egypt in the hands of others when she spent time in Rome with Julius Caesar or was off in battle with Mark Antony. Her father, Auletes, Ptolemy XII, would not have lasted any time at all on the throne if there were not others around to mind the store for him.

Cleopatra's father was well aware—he wasn't totally ignorant of the facts—that the Alexandrian mob put him in his place of power and they could just as easily remove him. Since that mob was always quite fickle and contentious, he needed some strong backing to keep him on the throne, and the only place he could get it from was Rome. He could be a temporary patsy, one to be totally used by the Romans without any say or sway, or he could be a puppet, meaning he could at least levy some favors to his and Egypt's benefit. He chose to be a puppet.

It all worked rather well for Ptolemy XII, bribing the Roman officials on a regular basis; that Lagide treasury and taxes kept him going for quite a while since his ascension to the throne in 80 BCE. In fact, rather than having Egypt become a mere province of Rome, he managed to bribe his way to having the Romans title him “King,” so he was able to continue as pharaoh and keep Egypt a sovereign country. To be fair to him, considering that all the other countries in the Mediterranean were fully under Roman dominance even if they were nominally independent, Egypt was still solidly under its own rule and Alexandria was still their own city and the one port the Romans didn't control. But, as always seems to occur when one has to keep forking over money to virtual loan sharks, the price keeps increasing over time. In 58 BCE, Ptolemy XII ceded Cyprus to Rome, and the Ptolemy family member ruling there at the time took poison rather than endure the insult. Cyprus remained in Roman hands until Caesar returned it to Cleopatra ten years later.

Giving away Cyprus was Ptolemy XII's undoing, at least temporarily, and it was a massive loss to Egypt because this move permitted
Rome to assert its military power over Egyptian territory. The Alexandrians did not take kindly to the pharaoh's decision, and they revolted. The king had to flee the country, leaving the mob to put Egypt in the hands of his firstborn daughter, Berenike IV (there is no clear record of whether her mother was already dead or died soon after leaving Berenike IV at the top of the succession). The Alexandrians presented Berenike IV with a husband so she would not be ruling as a female alone on the throne. She clearly didn't like their choice, since she had him strangled.

Berenike IV lasted three years as queen. One advantage her father had was that he was liked by the Romans, so he had their support. With the Roman army behind him, he reentered Egypt, wreaked major violence and destruction, killed off Berenike IV, and regained the throne. Admittedly, now that he was so indebted to the Romans, he was rather more a governor than a king, but he still had the title and he was satisfied with that. Now he had no coregent since his wife was dead, so he appointed Cleopatra VII, who was his next-oldest child (the elder Cleopatra disappeared from history and we do not know why). Cleopatra was quite a bit older than her younger siblings. Auletes died just four years later, and Cleopatra, at age eighteen, was at the pinnacle of power.

In spite of the requirement of having the eldest of the brothers, Ptolemy XIII, appointed to rule with her (he was her husband), she was eight years older than the boy and fully able to rule on her own. She didn't take kindly to having him tag along, so she ousted him from the position and ruled alone for the next eighteen months. One thing she knew, she could not beat the Romans at their military game at this point, so she had to take up where her father left off and do damage control by working with the Roman oppressors in the hope that they would give up Egypt entirely. Like her father, she chose survival, but she had one advantage over him. Cleopatra was quite clever, and she knew how to play the cards she was dealt to her best advantage. She would continue to do so throughout her reign, up until the very end; she wasn't about to fold her hand if she could see
any way to play to the best of her ability, and she would bluff if necessary. She would eliminate every other foe in the game and keep a few aces up her sleeves by winning key Alexandrians, Romans, and the priests over to her side. She was a brilliant strategist, even at the young age at which she became coregent.