Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
sailing in a gorgeous barge covered in silver and gold and with purple sails to meet Antony ...
finally, a dramatic end of suicide by snake bite after her military defeat by Octavian. She chose death over submission..................
It's not that the rest of your post is unimportant. It is, but I wanted to shed a little light on Cleo's shortcomings.
With regard to her sailing ability: When she and MA were engaged in battle with Augustus and it became apparent that they (Cleo and MA) were losing, they set sail and never looked back, not even to count how many of their gigantic three story ships they had lost. Poor form, I think, and not the stuff true leaders are made of.
Her suicide: Just as you say; fangs to the breast. But before she did this, she sent word to Mark, through her staff, that she had committed suicide already. She was hoping that Mark would surrender and Augustus would call off the dogs thereby saving her skin. Didn't work. Mark was horrified and saw no reason to go on without her.
He promptly took a sword to his own belly, and laid down to die. But he didn't die. And after a while he stopped bleeding, too. He lay there in agony begging for someone to kill him until someone thought to tell him that, after all, they were just kidding about Cleo, and she was right upstairs.
Too weak and in too much pain to walk, he had himself lifted out the window and upstairs to be with Cleo. And there he died. Myself, I'd have choked the crap out of her, but Mark was a better man than me and let the Asp do its thing. I would have had the creature bite her on the butt, though, as a symbol of where truly self serving people often get bitten.
Did she speak Egyptian? I thought she did not. A minor point, I guess, since she proved that she could speak and language she wanted to speak.
And she wasn't very nice to her little sister, Arsinoe. She let Arsinoe get captured and dragged away by Julius Caesar. Julius paraded her through Rome with the idea of killing her in the arena, but the people had mercy (Arsinoe was maybe 14 years old) and Julius let her live in exile. Later Mark Antony found her and killed her, probably as a favor to Cleo.
I would not have done that to my little sister.....
great post, but in reality the importance of women varies inversely with historical distance. Plus history from 2000 years ago is inherently unreliable. Regarding Shakespeare, we have zero extant writings of his. There are still debates about who really authored his works, and that was only 400 years ago.
'Fascinating' is entirely subjective, but my vote would be for someone in the last 200 years. Maybe Maggie Thatcher, maybe even Oprah Winfrey.
Your point is well taken. Centuries tend to alter and embellish the facts of biography. We can only extrapolate the facts from the most contemporary writings and compare the various histories.
I deliberately chose the word fascinating as opposed to "greatest" or "most important" or "most accomplished." In my view Madame Marie Curie, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Hillary Rodham Clinton are notable but not "fascinating." For First Ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt was fascinating from my point of view.
With regard to her sailing ability: When she and MA were engaged in battle with Augustus and it became apparent that they (Cleo and MA) were losing, they set sail and never looked back, not even to count how many of their gigantic three story ships they had lost. Poor form, I think, and not the stuff true leaders are made of ...
And she wasn't very nice to her little sister, Arsinoe. She let Arsinoe get captured and dragged away by Julius Caesar. Julius paraded her through Rome with the idea of killing her in the arena, but the people had mercy (Arsinoe was maybe 14 years old) and Julius let her live in exile. Later Mark Antony found her and killed her, probably as a favor to Cleo.
I would not have done that to my little sister.....
Thanks for your comments.
Concerning the retreat from Actium, you must remember that until relatively recently almost the only histories we had came from the writings of her bitter enemies: the Romans. Most historians today (read Michael Grant, Duane Roller, Joyce Tyldesley, Stacy Schiff, etc.) have refuted and dismissed the tale circulated by her enemies that Cleo and Antony fled the battle in a cowardly fashion, but made a strategic retreat with a flotilla of warships that could be saved. The battle was lost already and there was no reason for them to stay and be killed and destroyed.
No, Cleo was not "nice." She was ruthless and ambitious, you might say even blood thirsty. She was the product of the most dysfunctional family in history - a family where brothers killed sisters, fathers killed sons and daughters and children killed their parents. Her father killed her older sister Berenice (who usurped the throne from him). Her brother tried to assassinate her. Cleo may or may not of been responsible for the death of her youngest brother (and husband). She certainly goaded Antony's minions to kill Arsinoe, but there is real evidence that little sister was conspiring at her home in exile in Ephesus to overthrow Cleo. During the Alexandrian Civil War, Arsinoe was at first Cleo's ally and went into exile with her, but changed sides and joined forces with Ptolemy in the revolt against Caesar and Cleo. Cleo must have felt bitterly betrayed.
I have always been fascinated by the story of Isabella I of Castille. Although her religious beliefs are quite dated, she was very infleuential in the rise of Europe in the 16th Century.
And mother to Catherine of Aragon.........the first wife of Henry viii......
Too much of a religious zealot for me.....the inquisition and the expulsion from Spain of the Jews........
For me probably Elizabeth 1.....the Act of Supremacy which ended the authority of the pope in England.....the writings (Shakespeare, Marlow etc), the discoveries and explorations, the artists, Holbein etc....
And the nice thing is everything is documented (except her sex life) and makes for fascinating reading.
Their is so much speculation with her,but she seemed awesome.
How so? We learn almost nothing of her in the gospels, the majority of the mentions of her coming during the birth and infancy of Jesus in Luke.. Outside of the birth and infancy narrative, she is mentioned once in Mathew, once only in Mark, and that was simply noting that she was the mother of Jesus, and twice in John, the first where she points out to Jesus that they have run out of wine at the wedding feast of Cana, the other her keeping vigil at the cross while Jesus is being executed.
What is there to admire? We have no details of her life, no description of her personality, no narrative of her deeds, no collections of her thoughts. Beyond being identified as the mother of Jesus and the story about the virgin birth, she is a complete blank to history.
Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar. One of a series of monarchs who successfully kept European colonists out of Madagascar for a century, and best known for her savage and probably insane repression of Christianity, but later recognized as an effective and progressive administrator of the country's affairs.
Queen Cleopatra VII Thea Philopater - better known as simply Cleopatra. I would argue that she is the most famous woman of all classical antiquity. Few women in human history has inspired more controversy, books, plays, movies, operas, works of art, poetry as this great lady.
[/i]
She wouldn't be my choice but one of her contemporaries would (after Elizabeth 1).....Livia, wife of Augustus Ceasar.....a truly fascinating woman....mother of the Emperor Tiberius, grandmother of the Emperors Caligula and Claudius and great grandmother to the Emperor Nero......
The Tacitus Annals written by the historian Tacitus are supposed to be a fairly accurate presentation of the facts as he had access to the Senate records of the time. In them there are hints of Livia's ruthlessness.... it's just a shame the books about Caligula's reign are missing.
She wouldn't be my choice but one of her contemporaries would (after Elizabeth 1).....Livia, wife of Augustus Ceasar.....a truly fascinating woman....mother of the Emperor Tiberius, grandmother of the Emperors Caligula and Claudius and great grandmother to the Emperor Nero......
The Tacitus Annals written by the historian Tacitus are supposed to be a fairly accurate presentation of the facts as he had access to the Senate records of the time. In them there are hints of Livia's ruthlessness.... it's just a shame the books about Caligula's reign are missing.
Livia.
Any chance that she has been reincarnated in the form of Hillary Clinton?
Their is so much speculation with her,but she seemed awesome.
How about Queen Maya, the mother of the Buddha? (Buddhists properly call her Sri Maha Maya Devi, in deference as a holy saintly 'goddess' who miraculously gave birth to Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became supremely enlightened and thus became The Buddha).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
