Ancient History Fangirl

Cleopatra: Queen of the Epic Backup Plan

The life and death of Cleopatra have been so dramatized that the events that led to her downfall seem almost eerily predetermined. Even her elaborate suicide by snakebite (if that’s really the true story) was meticulously planned. But Cleopatra was the queen of the epic backup plan. Her reaction to being backed into a corner was—as the amazing biographer Stacy Schiff has pointed out—to dream big; to plot complex, ambitious escape routes that drew on her almost limitless resources as last Pharaoh of Egypt. In our presentation, we’ll discuss some of Cleopatra’s most epic backup plans—and what could have been, if things had gone differently.