“I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.”
— Cleopatra Cleopatra
This line comes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Cleopatra speaks it before her death. Behind these words stands a woman who held Egyptian independence for twenty-one years, spoke nine languages, and outmaneuvered Roman commanders three times over. She was not the Hollywood beauty. She was a politician, an economist, and the only Ptolemaic pharaoh who bothered to learn Egyptian.
In 48 BC I was thrown out of my own palace. My younger brother, thirteen years old, took the throne with the help of eunuchs and generals. I was twenty-one. I sat in a tent in the Syrian desert recruiting mercenaries. When Caesar arrived in Alexandria, my brother's guards blocked every entrance. I had myself rolled into a carpet and carried inside as a gift. When they unrolled it, Caesar saw a queen who spoke his language better than half the Senate. Three months later, my brother's army lay at the bottom of the Nile. If you have been pushed out of the game, do not wait for an invitation back. Carry yourself in.