![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But Antony was meeting a very evolved Cleopatra. He had first met Cleopatra in Rome when she had been the young mistress of his mentor Caesar (the two had a son Caesarion). In 41 BC, Antony sent for Cleopatra while he was staying in the magnificent city of Tarsus, near the coast of what is now Turkey. Antony was put in charge of the Empire’s rowdy Eastern territories. In the wake of Caesar’s assassination, Antony formed an uneasy Triumvirate in 43 BC with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Caesar’s nephew Octavian to rule the sprawling Roman Republic. Politician and soldier Antony, supposedly descended from Hercules, was “broad-shouldered, bull-necked, ridiculously handsome, with a thick head of curls and aquiline features.”īoisterous, mirthful, moody and lustful, Antony had been a favorite of Caesar. Cleopatra was the divine Ptolemaic ruler of prosperous Egypt – brilliant, silver-tongued, charming, scholarly and the richest person in the Mediterranean. Their love story had started over 10 years earlier when both were in their prime. Antony first met Cleopatra when she was 'still a girl and inexperienced' Usually, a master of self-possession, she is losing her mind. As he slowly slips away Cleopatra wails, beating her chest, smearing herself in his blood. In her arms is her lover, the Roman general and statesman Mark Antony (83 -30 BC), who is dying of a self-inflicted stab wound. In the golden city of Alexandria, Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC), Queen of Egypt, holes up in her self-made mausoleum, as her arch-nemesis Octavian (later known as Augustus), Emperor of Rome, closes in. It is an ending so epic that Shakespeare himself couldn’t better it. ![]()
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