Cleopatra lived from 69 B.C. to 30 B.C.
Ruler: Queen of Egypt and pharaoh.
51 B.C. Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII become Egypts rulers/siblings/spouses. In 48 B.C. Cleopatra and Julius Caesar became lovers. She became sole ruler when her brother was drowned during the Alexandrian War (47 B.C.). Cleopatra then had to marry another brother for the sake of formality -- Ptolemy XIV.
In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar died. Cleopatra had her brother killed and appointed her 4-year-old son Caesarion as co-regent. Mark Antony became her lover in 41 B.C.
In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt and met a 22-year old Cleopatra -- rolled in a carpet, supposedly. An affair followed, leading to the birth of a son, Caesarion. Caesar and Cleopatra left Alexandria for Rome in 45 B.C. A year later Caesar was assassinated.
When Mark Antony and Octavian (to become the Emperor Augustus) came to power in the aftermath of the assassination of Caesar, Cleopatra took up with Antony and had two children by him. Rome was upset with this dalliance since Antony was giving parts of the Roman Empire back to their client Egypt.
Octavian declared war on Cleopatra and Antony. He defeated them at the Battle of Actium.
Cleopatra is thought to have killed herself.
The legend is that she killed herself by putting an asp to her breast while sailing on a barge. After Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Egypt, Egypt became just another province of Rome.
Cleopatra is known to have been the first in the family of the Ptolemies of Egypt to have learned to speak the local tongue.
She is said to have also spoken: Greek (native language), the languages of the Medes, Parthians, Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Trogodytae, and Ethiopians (Plutarch, according to Goldsworthy in Antony and Cleopatra (2010)).
Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of the Macedonian dynasty that had ruled Egypt since Alexander the Great left his general Ptolemy in charge there in 323 B.C.
Cleopatra (actually Cleopatra VII) was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes (Ptolemy XII) and the wife of her brother
