Cleopatra picked by Kate Williams

Cleopatra is not the seductive temptress of legend, but a shrewd, politically astute ruler who outmaneuvered Rome for decades. In this episode of Great Lives, historian Kate Williams argues that Cleopatra was misrepresented for centuries by Roman propagandists and later dramatized by Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor—turning a brilliant diplomat into a sexualized failure. The real Cleopatra, as revealed by Egyptologist Joyce Tildesley, was a multilingual scholar, a skilled economist, and the first Ptolemaic ruler to learn Egyptian. She strategically used her son Caesarian—fathered by Julius Caesar—as a political bridge to Rome, and later leveraged her divine persona as Isis to captivate Mark Antony. Yet her legacy was weaponized by Octavian, who feared her symbolic power and likely prevented her from appearing in his triumph. The famous asp suicide may be myth, possibly replaced by poison or even a staged death to deny Octavian a victory. What remains is a woman whose life became a blank slate for society’s fears and fantasies about powerful women—making her not just a historical figure, but a mirror of our own cultural anxieties. The episode dismantles the myths surrounding Cleopatra with forensic care, revealing her as a survivor in a world of assassinations, a master of diplomacy, and a woman who ruled Egypt with intelligence and ruthlessness. Despite the lack of definitive evidence—much of Alexandria lost to sea or modern development—her influence persists.