Weird thing you didn’t know about Cleopatra

If someone asked you to name an Egyptian from ancient history, it would probably be a toss-up between King Tut and Cleopatra. For many people, these are the two historical figures that embody ancient Egypt — gilded, eye-linered, and walking around their luxurious palaces with their hands at 90-degree angles like in that Bangles song from the ’80s. But here’s a funny thing: One of those two people was not actually Egyptian.

According to History of Macedonia, Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which was descended from Alexander the Great’s general, a man named Ptolemy I. That means they not only had Greek ancestry, they spoke Greek and followed Greek customs, too. The Ptolemys ruled Egypt for 300 years after the nation was handed over to Ptolemy I following Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.

So how did Egypt wind up in the hands of a bunch of helmet-wearing dudes from another continent? They conquered it, which was what the ancient Greeks often did when they were bored. The good news is the Egyptians were mostly cool with their non-Egyptian pharaoh because they were fed up with the Persians, who were the conquerors that came before the Alexandrian conquerors. (You know your country is kind of messed up when you’re happy because the new conquerors are better than the old ones.)

Pretty much every modern and semi-modern depiction of Cleopatra tells us she was stunningly beautiful, which frankly does seem sort of incompatible with the whole generations of incest thing, but maybe it was a fluke. Then in February 2007 a coin was unearthed bearing a portrait of Cleopatra, which appears to confirm that the queen was actually rather ordinary-looking. The fact that ancient historians didn’t say much about her looks also suggests she was no Elizabeth Taylor, but the more important point is that it really doesn’t matter. Life of Antony, written by Plutarch in 75 A.D., made the following observation about Cleopatra: “Her actual beauty … was not so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence … was irresistible. … The character that attended all she said or did was something bewitching.”

According to Ancient Origins, Cleopatra wasn’t just a shrewd diplomat, she was also a student of mathematics, medicine, alchemy, economics, history, geography, and pretty much every general education subject you probably detested in college (except maybe alchemy, which they mostly don’t teach anymore). She also spoke nine languages, beating anyone who’s ever run the White House. (The last multilingual president was Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932 and spoke French and German.)

Now let’s get back to the whole incest thing, since you can never have too much of that. In Egypt it was customary for pharaohs to rule in pairs — every regent needed a co-regent of the opposite gender. According to LiveScience, Cleopatra ruled with her father Ptolemy XII for a short time until his death in 51 B.C. In his will, Ptolemy XII decreed that Cleopatra should marry her 11-year-old brother, which was probably only a ceremonial thing, but either way the two were clearly not fond of each other and the relationship ended with Ptolemy XIII trying to wrest control of the throne, and his sister appealing to Julius Caesar for help reining him in.

Caesar and Cleopatra famously became lovers, and Ptolemy XIII was never happy with Caesar’s decision that he should rule with his sister. Eventually, Caesar defeated Ptolemy at the Battle of the Nile, and Ptolemy drowned in the river while trying to escape. So Cleopatra was really only partially responsible for that brother’s death, but there’s more.

Because of the whole “must have a co-regent thing,” Cleopatra had to marry her other brother, who later died under “mysterious circumstances.” (Cleopatra had him poisoned.) Then she ordered the execution of her sister Arsinoe, who took Ptolemy’s side during the family feud and at one point declared herself queen. We can add fratricide to Cleopatra’s list of virtues, but who’s counting?

Cleopatra was smart, shrewd, capable, and also kind of a party animal. But you probably would be too, if you had absolute power and Roman general Mark Antony was your boyfriend.

As it turns out, Cleopatra and Antony (who was Cleopatra’s lover after the death of Caesar and after the “totally accidental” deaths of her two brother-husbands) weren’t so preoccupied by matters of state that they made no time for fun, just as college fraternities are never so preoccupied by midterms that they make no time for keg parties and passing out in puddles of their own vomit. Cleopatra and Antony even formed their own drinking club, which they named “Inimitable Livers.” The English translation of the name could mean a couple of things, with “livers” either referring to actual life or your internal organs. (Probably the first one, but the second one is more fun.)

Anyway, according to Food and Wine (and they would know), Inimitable Livers was officially dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine. Unofficially, it was an excuse to have keg parties and pass out in puddles vomit. The club threw nightly “feasts and wine-binges,” and then afterward Antony and Cleopatra would wander around the city in a state of drunken giddiness and play pranks on common Alexandrians. For shame. Modern politicians would never, ever behave like that.

It’s kind of obnoxious when the uber-rich sail past impoverished fishing villages in their $100 million yachts, but at least no one has ever sunk one on purpose just because they can. (Let’s hope.) Cleopatra, on the other hand, was not at all fussed about throwing her money away (or more accurately, dissolving it) to prove a point.

According to legend, Cleopatra once bet Mark Antony that she could blow 10 million sesterces on a single meal — that’s somewhere around $10 million to $20 million in today’s money. She then requested a modest meal, and afterward had her servants bring her a cup of vinegar. Then, according to NBC, she took off one of her earrings, removed the pearl, dropped it in the vinegar, and watched it dissolve. Then she drank the cup of vinegar, thus proving that she would do just about anything to win a bet.

Pliny the Elder said the pearl was “the largest in the whole of history,” and a “remarkable and truly unique work of nature,” but who knows how much they paid him to write that. Modern historians were more skeptical of the science until someone finally tested the theory with actual vinegar and an actual pearl. The test confirmed that vinegar does, in fact, dissolve the calcium carbonate in a pearl, but it would have likely taken longer than a day for the entire pearl to disappear. But still plausible, in a sinking-your-own-yacht kind of a way.

One of Cleopatra’s most enduring legends has to do not with her life but with her death. According to the story, when Cleopatra learned her forces had been defeated by Octavian, who would become the first emperor of Rome, she calmly wrote a suicide note, handed it over to a guard, and then killed herself by holding a venomous snake to her breast.

Because historians like to debate things, no one really definitively accepts this account of Cleopatra’s death. Sure, it’s kind of a cool way to go, but there are some problems with it. For a start, the story indicates that it only took a few minutes for her to die, but the venom of that particular kind of Egyptian snake actually takes a few hours to work, and is even occasionally survivable.

According to the Smithsonian, most historians do agree Cleopatra’s death was a suicide, but the method isn’t clear. It’s possible she simply drank a vial of poison, but that story just isn’t as dramatic, which is probably why today most people still think it was a snake.

Like pretty much every human being, Cleopatra had an innate desire to avoid getting older. Unfortunately, plastic surgeons were in short supply in first-century B.C. Egypt, and Botox wouldn’t be invented for another couple millennia. But it’s good to be the queen because the queen can pursue ridiculously elaborate beauty regimes that aren’t available to the average person. In fact, Cleopatra’s favorite spa treatment was something most modern American billionaires would have a hard time pulling off even one time, never mind every morning.

According to legend, Cleopatra’s daily bath required a tub and 700 lactating donkeys. At first this might sound kind of like something the queen made up to keep her servants busy, but bathing in donkey milk was actually not just some crazy Cleopatraism. According to The Vintage News, all over the ancient world, women used donkey milk to keep their skin pale and to keep wrinkles at bay. Emperor Nero’s wife was said to travel with “whole troops of she-asses” so she’d never have to miss her daily donkey-milk bath. And today, scientists know donkey milk has a lot of important health benefits — it can be used as a cow milk substitute for people with allergies, and yes, it’s also used in modern beauty products, just in case you don’t think you’ll be able to procure yourself 700 donkeys and enough servants to milk them every day.

It’s no great revelation that love makes you do irrational things, but most people won’t blow off an important meeting or deadline so they can hang out with someone they only just met. Mark Antony was not most people. He skipped an entire invasion so he could spend the winter with Cleopatra in her Alexandrian palace.

According to HistoryNet, in 41 B.C. Antony assembled an army and went east, summoning client-kings in hopes of gathering resources for a Parthian invasion. One of those client-kings was 28-year-old Cleopatra, who said something to the effect of, “Let’s make love, not war.” Then Antony said something to the effect of, “The invasion can wait” and followed her back to Alexandria, leaving his army in the hands of his governor.

While Antony was enjoying the excesses of the Egyptian palace, the Parthians crossed the Euphrates River, attacked Syria, and annexed many of Antony’s troops. Meanwhile, Antony’s wife Fulvia had to flee Rome after getting her butt kicked by Julius Caesar’s heir Octavian. It’s hard to say which is worse, being attacked by your husband’s political rival while he’s off cheating on you with his Egyptian queen mistress, or keeping your mouth shut while your husband erects a gilded statue of his Egyptian queen mistress. If Fulvia and Calpurnia had formed a scorned wives club, Roman history could have been a great CW series.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, DIE TOGETHER AND HAVE YOURSELVES BURIED IN A SECRET TOMB

23 and Me might be able to tell you about your Greek heritage, but without a body it will never be able to find the descendants of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. According to Ancient Origins, at least one of their children survived to adulthood and went on to have children of her own — Cleopatra Selene, who married King Juba of Mauretania. The couple had a boy and a girl, but only the boy’s name was remembered. Called “Ptolemy” after all the kajillions of Ptolemys who came before him, the unfortunate young man was murdered by the emperor Caligula, evidently because he looked too awesome in a purple robe.

Whether Ptolemy had any children is not certain, and without more evidence it’s also impossible to know if his unnamed sister had children. The list of possible descendants is a convoluted line of so-and-so might have begat so-and-so, finally filtering down to one person who loudly proclaimed descent from Cleopatra: the Syrian queen Zenobia, who conquered Egypt 200 years after Cleopatra’s death. But it’s just as likely that Zenobia’s claim was pure propaganda — she was a conqueror and was probably looking for a way to strengthen her claim. Either way, it’s kind of fun to imagine that out there somewhere there might be a bona fide but oblivious Cleopatra descendant living in a college dorm and working at The Old Spaghetti Factory. But we’ll probably never know for sure.