Cleopatra: No Submissive Woman

Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE), the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, was a key powerbroker during a period of political change with enduring repercussions for the western world. Ever since, Cleopatra has been deliberately memorialized as a dangerous woman, as a manipulative deployer of “feminine wiles” whose perverse understanding of power doomed her regime to failure and death. This course will probe the evidence to create a portrait of a more authentic, more complicated queen, one of many ruthless and powerful women who followed in the wake of Alexander the Great, establishing patterns of female leadership in the bloody, competitive Hellenistic World.