By portraying Cleopatra in this way, Pascal gives the audience of Caesar and Cleopatra access to guileless, plausible deniability. She is alluring, but not really! She may seem sexual, but she doesn’t mean it! One cannot deny the power that this gives both Caesar and the viewers over Cleopatra. When she is presented as an ignorant child, Caesar can control the way that she rules her kingdom and herself. In Caesar and Cleopatra, Pascal takes inspiration from George Bernard Shaw’s play (also titled Caesar and Cleopatra) to reimagine Cleopatra no longer as a busty, seductive sex symbol but instead as a shy nymphet figure. Author Vladimir Nabokov first coined the term “ nymphet” Vladimir Nabokov in his modern erotic classic Lolita. Lolita tells the story of a man entranced and vexed by a young girl who is innocently unaware of her own sexual power over him. From this novel, the archetype was popularized and provided a wider vocabulary with which to discuss predecessors to the genre such as Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra and Pascal’s adaptation. They stood together as partners against Egypt’s enemies, and were married in an Egyptian ceremony—despite the fact that Antony already had a wife in Rome. Hulton Archive, Getty Images 34. The Couple That Drinks Together… Octavian returned to Italy where he became the first Emperor of Rome, while Cleopatra and Anthony were buried in Egypt.

She famously used her charms to first seduce Julius Caesar to cement Egypt's alliance with Rome, and then to seduce one of his successors, Mark Anthony. Cleopatra entered her tomb and put her plan in motion. W. and D. Downey, Getty Images 43. Pre-Romeo & JulietI was calling Kristen [Wiig] and I was like, ‘Listen, I want to do this thing,’ ” Gadot told the outlet. “The pandemic was in Europe and Israel before it came here [to the US] in the same way. I was seeing where everything was headed. But [the video] was premature.” Cleopatra, Mark Antony, and Octavian all spent nearly a year negotiating a plan amenable to all three, but Octavian grew frustrated by it all —after all, Cleopatra and Mark Antony had lost at the Battle of Actium. He finally decided to stop playing nice and invade Egypt. Following a handful of battles, Mark Antony's naval fleet surrendered to Octavian in August, 30 BC. It's a good thing that Cleopatra had this experience under her belt because when her father Pharaoh Ptolemy XII died, she was more than prepared. In his will, he made 18-year-old Cleopatra and her 10-year-old brother joint rulers. More than a little annoying, since she'd already been working alongside her father for years, but that wasn't the worst part.

Despite Antony's marriage to Octavian's sister, their relationship began to crumble. Not only was Antony was declared a traitor, he was also ridiculed in Rome for “going native”—adopting Egyptian customs which Rome deemed uncivilized. Cleopatra was smeared by Octavian as a scheming seductress who had used her feminine wiles to entrap one-third of the Triumvirate.Cleopatra not only spoke Greek and Egyptian. According to the historian Plutarch, she spoke at least nine languages —for a very practical reason. Her multilingual tongue meant that she could speak to generals and rulers of other countries without an interpreter, which would have given her an upper hand. Why would an Egyptian queen bear a Greek name, you ask? Why, it’s because she was actually Greek. Cleopatra’s family, the Ptolemies, migrated to Egypt from Greece. So while Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she was, in fact, Macedonian Greek by origin. Octavian was furious that the symbol of his victory was gone, but nevertheless, he consented to let Cleopatra be buried side by side with her love Mark Antony —but mysteries still abound about her death and final resting place. Even today, no one knows exactly where the tomb that houses the bodies of Cleopatra and Mark Antony is. Archaeologists continue to search for it. She previously told National Geographic: 'Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to allow her to bury Mark Antony in Egypt. There's speculation to this day about the way that Cleopatra took her own life. She'd been known for her penchant for poison, so it's generally agreed upon that it played a role, with one rumor claiming she'd poisoned herself. One of the most generally accepted stories is that she induced an asp (an Egyptian cobra) to bite her.