Historical Heartthrobs: 50 Timeless Crushes from Cleopatra to Camus

Cleopatra: Excerpt

In art, plays, and films over the centuries, the life of Cleopatra has taken on an almost mythic quality due to the volatile nature of her love life, but at the root of her fame was her political power as the last real leader of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt.

Cleopatra’s Life Story

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first century BCE, Cleopatra was the daughter of King Ptolemy XII Auletes. In an atmosphere where royal hierarchy was of the utmost importance, her youth was spent preparing for her ascension to the throne. Upon her father’s death, she accepted the queendom with her teen brother—and husband—Ptolemy XIII, but the power struggle proved too much for the siblings. When Cleopatra attempted to oust Ptolemy XIII from the throne, he took revenge by having her run out of the palace in Alexandria. (Talk about annoying little brothers!) Cleopatra wasn’t having it, though, and removed all mention of Ptolemy XIII from every legal document in her home and otherwise refused to acknowledge him until the fateful day when she was exiled to Syria by “he who could not be named.” At this point, Cleopatra had had enough of these internal squabbles and sought help from the most powerful force on the planet at the time: the Roman Empire. It wasn’t going to be easy to gain access to the emperor, but Cleopatra had an idea that was possessed of both practicality and panache. Legend has it that she had herself delivered, inside a rug, directly to Julius Caesar himself—and finding herself in his presence, she immediately began to plead her case.

Once she had the Roman dictator’s support (not to mention that of the massive army she had built up while in Syria), Cleopatra renewed her assault on the throne. By the time the fighting was over, her brother had drowned in the Nile and she was back in business—and in power. Although Egyptian law did not allow Cleopatra, as a woman, to rule alone, she was able to skirt this legal hindrance by marrying another brother, Ptolemy XIV, which, however, did nothing to disrupt her romance with Caesar. Caesar and Cleopatra took a famous trip down the Nile together, and Cleopatra subsequently gave birth to a son (whom historians assume was Caesar’s) in June, 47 BCE. When Caesar was assassinated in court, the coquettish Cleo headed back to Egypt and soon revived her spirits (and her prospects) by forming a new alliance with Caesar’s presumed successor, Mark Antony. And as if she weren’t already busy enough, she managed, between trysts, to keep Egypt independent and thriving—a thorny task amid a Roman Empire eager to dominate—and quickly rose in power. Her loyalty to Antony was now cemented by the births of their three children, and she put into place trading systems with India and Arabia to boost the ancient equivalent of Egypt’s GDP.

In the end, however, the alliance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra wasn’t strong enough to resist the powerful alliance of the Roman Senate and their own candidate for power, Octavian (later Caesar Augustus). Cleopatra’s life always had a lot of drama, but in the end it became a tragedy: Antony stabbed himself to death in 30 BCE, and Cleopatra followed in his wake, allegedly committing suicide by snakebite. (Yowch!)

The Story of Her Sex Life

Cleopatra’s sex life was her political life, and vice versa, she used every resource at her disposal in her effort to consolidate her own personal power and to help Egypt survive a period of great upheaval.

Still, leaving aside for a moment her accomplishments, the list of names in her little black book is truly startling: Though her marriage to her brother constitutes her first romantic relationship in principle, there was little romance to be found there, judging from her legendary dalliances. After he was set aside, she moved on to Julius Caesar, the preeminent Roman dictator and perhaps the only other person whose power could match her own. From the day she literally rolled into his court, she had him wrapped around her finger, and they matched each other not only in dark wit but also, conveniently, in political agendas. After a visit to Cleopatra’s native land, Caesar was floored by its efficiency and used Cleopatra’s Egypt as a model for his own reforms in Rome.

With a reputation for admiring strong and capable women (which was unusual in ancient Rome), Mark Antony was the perfect match for the wayward Cleopatra once Caesar was out of the picture. They were a match made in heaven until they met their hellish end.

Why She Matters

Cleopatra was an intelligent, pragmatic, and politically astute ruler at a time when positions of power were generally just not held by women. And although her legacy has shifted over time (reflecting, by turns, the Roman view, the Egyptian view, the romantic and cinematic prejudices, and the still developing historical record), she did, very clearly, “change the face of the world”—to borrow the words of Blaise Pascal. She fought for Egyptian independence at a time when Rome appeared ready to swallow the known world, worked to make the Egyptian economy more dynamic, and managed relations between East and West like few rulers have before or since. She was irreplaceable.

Best Feature: Her self-confidence.

Cleopatra’s historical legacy as a sex object boils down to the fact that she would not be denied. She asked for what she wanted when she wanted it, and when she didn’t get what she asked for, she looked somewhere else. When her brother kicked her out of the country, she assembled an entire army to take back her rightful place. When one vital political alliance died, she immediately hooked up with another. No matter how unfortunate the situation, Cleopatra never lacked in self-belief and always kept moving forward.

Heat Factor: 4 (scale of 1-5)

Hot enough to melt more than one world leader (and also hot enough to burn the world down if things turned against her).

We can’t know for sure what Cleopatra really looked like, and there may have been debate about how attractive she was, but accounts of the time make it clear that there could be no debating her impact on other people. She was bold and seductive in equal measure, and she never failed to use whatever sex appeal she did have to her advantage. But that kind of confidence, while certainly sexy, can be problematic when the situation becomes desperate.

Elizabeth Taylor Portrayal

Among the dozens of on-screen portrayals of Cleopatra, the most memorable was that of Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film Cleopatra. With her hair in a black braided wig accompanied by an elaborate gold headpiece, Taylor gave a performance that cemented Cleopatra’s reputation as a gorgeous seductress in the public’s mind.

QUOTABLES

“She controlled virtually the entire Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands.” - biographer Stacy Schiff

“Her actual beauty in itself was not so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence . . . was irresistible. . . . The character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching.” - Plutarch

**Excerpted from Historical Heartthrobs: 50 Timeless Crushes – from Cleopatra to Camus (ISBN: 9781936976102) with permission of the publisher, Zest Books. Text copyright (c) Kelly Murphy 2014.**