THEME: Hellenistic diplomacy THEME CAUGHT BETWEEN EGYPT AND ROME

By the first century BC, the Roman Republic dominated the Mediterranean. Out of Alexander the Great’s successors, only the Ptolemaic dynasty still stood, surviving in part because of its alliance with Rome. Egypt’s agricultural wealth also made it an object of desire for ambitious Roman conquerors, forcing later Ptolemaic rulers to carefully maintain the goodwill of powerful Roman politicians for their own safety.

Cleopatra came to power in 52 BC at the age of eighteen, after the death of her father Ptolemy XII, a weak ruler who relied on Roman support to keep his crown, cultivating ties with Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony. Cleopatra inherited his debts to Roman politicians, and, consequently, her early reign was preoccupied with managing these debts, while also vying to keep political power out of the hands of her younger brother Ptolemy XIII.

Civil wars in Egypt and Rome

As Cleopatra came to the throne, Rome was under the shadow of a looming civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Like many of her contemporaries, she took note of the increasing consolidation of Rome’s political and military power into the hands of a few men. Her first real dilemma came a little later