name only and left her free to rule at will.
             With all due credit to her predecessors, Egypt was in dire straits. Her father had ignored much of the states problems while he desperately clung to his crown. It was ever threatened by Rome’s belief that he was illegitimate and therefore had no claim to the throne.3 Cleopatra had no such problem and worked quickly to avoid a war with Rome.
             Cleopatra had been forced to flee Egypt when her sister, Arsinoe, led a revolt with Ptolemy XIII against her. However, as fate would have it, Caesar came to Alexandria and asked for Cleopatra’s return. Because she feared her brother’s spies, Plutarch states that she had herself wrapped in a carpet and carried secretly to Caesar’s apartments. There she met him and he was “captivated…by this wanton scheme and then was further enslaved by her charm of society.”4 Dio Cassius agrees that “she was a woman of surpassing beauty… possessed a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to everyone.” On her behalf, Caesar smoothed things over between Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra and made it clear that she was to rule with him. Already we see evidence of her schematic ways.
             Caesar and Cleopatra became lovers and he lived with her in Alexandria. In those few months, Caesar learned of a plot against him. Wit
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