This course focuses on Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE), the far-famed last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and a key powerbroker during a period of important political change. Her legacy in the western world emphasizes her actions as a “romantic” agent, a deployer of “feminine wiles”, a hostile representation drawn by her opponents. A broader examination of Cleopatra’s context demonstrates her connections to a number of dynamic royal women in the Hellenistic world, all image-makers in their own right, wielding female authority and patronage in a cosmopolitan, multicultural world. This course will sift through the evidence for Cleopatra VII, both the contentious (and largely hostile) material on her Mediterranean activities as well as the Egyptian record, which incorporates the specific efforts of the queen herself to assert her legitimate imperial authority and structure her collaboration with major stakeholders in the Hellenistic East.
