Separate Myth From Legend With This Cleopatra Quiz

Cleopatra loved a good spectacle, and when she first met Mark Antony, she was dressed as Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty. It was 41 BCE, and Cleopatra arrived at their meeting on a golden barge outfitted with purple sails and silver oars. Her servants were dressed as Cupid, and they all sat around her burning incense and fanning the queen under her gilded canopy.

Cleopatra was known for her love of pickled cucumbers, which she credited as playing a key role in maintaining both her health and her beauty. Julius Caesar also believed in the medical properties of pickles, and would ply his troops with the briny food in order to make them strong.

Cleopatra’s brother tried to thwart every effort for his sister to meet then Roman general Julius Caesar. The queen finally had to be smuggled into Caesar’s chambers, wrapped up in a carpet as a disguise. The two powerful leaders eventually had an affair and Cleopatra bore Caesar's child, Caesarion.

Though many of her Ptolemaic predecessors assumed the roles of Greek deities, Cleopatra associated herself with Isis, the Egyptian mother goddess. In doing so, Cleopatra declared herself the protectress of Egypt and was later formally dubbed "Nea Isis" or "New Isis." Cleopatra's consort Mark Antony was depicted as the Egyptian deity Osiris, as the two jointly portrayed a divine pair of Egyptian rulers.

The five-act Shakespearean tragedy "Antony and Cleopatra" — written from 1606 to 1607 — concerns the ancient love story between the two titular individuals. The play is considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works. It draws from English translator Thomas North's "Parallel Lives" as its source, which itself was a version of the ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch's series of Greek and Roman biographies titled "Bioi Parallēlio."

Around the year 40 BCE in Alexandria, Cleopatra and Mark Antony formed a society known as the "Inimitable Livers," whose interests revolved around partying and drinking. Historians are split on the society's intended purpose: Some believe it to be a group dedicated to the god Dionysus, while others think it was simply an excuse to live a debaucherous lifestyle.

Cleopatra and Antony's twin children were known as Alexander and Cleopatra at the time of their birth in 40 BCE. But three years later — after Antony finally recognized the pair as his own children, after initially refusing to do so — the siblings were renamed Alexander Helios (after the sun) and Cleopatra Selene (after the moon).

Cleopatra's native language was an ancient Grecian dialect known as Koine. However, she was a gifted linguist fluent in no less than nine languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. Though Egyptian wasn’t her native tongue, Cleopatra was also the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty to successfully learn the language of the land she ruled.

According to legend, Cleopatra was killed by the poison from an asp, or an Egyptian cobra. The queen took her own life after the death of her husband, Mark Antony. She allegedly let the snake bite her in the chest after smuggling it in a fig basket into a mausoleum on the palace grounds. She was 39 years old when she died, but the story of her reign has endured for more than 2,000 years.

The Battle of Actium (31 BCE) pitted the forces of Cleopatra and Mark Antony against those of Julius Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son Octavian (later known as Emperor Augustus). The opposing fleets clashed in Greece on September 2 of that year, and Octavian emerged victorious. The Egyptian queen surrendered, and both she and Antony took their own lives the following year.

The co-ruling dynamic between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIV was contentious. Shortly after the two ascended to the throne, Ptolemy XIV forced his sister to flee to Syria in 49 BCE. There, she formed an army of mercenaries. The following year, she returned with her army to battle her brother in Pelusium, the easternmost city in Egypt. She won the war, becoming sole ruler of Egypt; Ptolemy XIV was murdered shortly thereafter.

Though Cleopatra herself is generally considered the last ruling Egyptian pharaoh, her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion, held the title for several days at the age of 16, between his mother's death and Octavian's annexation of Egypt. Caesarion had been Cleopatra's co-regent as far back as 44 BCE, and would later experience his brief solo reign in the year 30 BCE.

Cleopatra was the last queen of Egypt to have descended from the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty. The Ptolemys ruled Egypt starting in 323 BCE, when the Macedonian ruler and conqueror Alexander the Great died. His general Ptolemy took over, becoming Ptolemy I Soter of Egypt.

Cleopatra believed she and her entire family were divine. It was common among rulers at the time to see themselves as gods and goddesses. Cleopatra had been indoctrinated into that custom from the time she was born. Her full name, Cleopatra Thea Philopator, means "the goddess beloved of her father" in Greek.

Cleopatra was depicted by Roman propaganda — and centuries later, Hollywood films — as a beautiful seductress. However, the queen's appeal actually came from her impressive intellect. She was highly intelligent and well-educated (she spoke as many as a dozen languages), and was a popular leader who strengthened Egypt during her reign.

Cleopatra's iconic eyeliner was not only used to enhance her appearance, but also to ward off eye infections. She was known for applying bright blue eyeshadow atop her eyelids and green paste below, and using black kohl (powder) to line her eyes and elongate her eyelashes. The kohl had antiseptic properties that helped to deter flies and bacteria.

Ruling Egypt was a family affair in Cleopatra’s time. After her father died in 51 BCE, Cleopatra and her younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, jointly ruled the empire for a relatively short, contentious period. They were eventually married, which was the custom at the time.

Cleopatra was married several times, and one of those husbands was the Roman politician Mark Antony. The two began an alliance — both political and romantic — in 41 BCE. The couple had three children, and later battled Octavian, Julius Caesar’s adopted son. They were defeated, and fled to Egypt.

Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, is known today as the “Queen of the Nile” after the great river that flows through Egypt. Though she was actually of Greek heritage, she embraced Egyptian culture and became a popular ruler, and Egypt’s economy flourished during her reign.

Starring Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and Richard Burton as Mark Antony, the 1963 film "Cleopatra" was plagued by off-screen drama. Though it became among the highest-grossing movies of 1963, the film nearly bankrupted Twentieth Century Fox due its gargantuan production costs — the budget ballooned to around $44 million (some $320 million today). The film went on to win four Academy Awards, and the titular Egyptian queen remains one of Taylor's most memorable onscreen performances.