Caesar and Cleopatra: What the Ancient Sources Say About Their Story

Start herePlutarch says Cleopatra was carried in to Caesar inside a bed-sack. Cassius Dio tells the same night with no sack at all. How do we decide which details to trust?

Julius Caesar met Cleopatra in Egypt in 48 BC, during a war between her and her younger brother. He backed her claim, fought a hard war in Alexandria and later brought her to Rome. Nearly everything else we know comes from a handful of ancient writers, and most of them lived long after.

This page goes through what each source says. It covers how they met, the war, the Nile, the son called Caesarion, her stay in Rome and what came after. It ends with a simple way to read a source that has a side.

011. Who tells the story

Writer	When	What it is
Julius Caesar	His own account of the civil war	Mentions Cleopatra only as one side in a royal quarrel
The Alexandrian War	Author unknown; some think Oppius, others Hirtius, Suetonius says	Carries on Caesar’s account
Cicero	Letters written in 44 BC	Private letters to Atticus
Nicolaus of Damascus	Lived in the time of Augustus	A life of Augustus that praises him
Lucan	A poem from about AD 61–65	Verse, not history
Plutarch	Lived about AD 45 to 120	Greek lives of Caesar and of Antony
Suetonius	Wrote mainly in AD 98–138, it seems	Lives of the Caesars; for a time Hadrian’s secretary
Appian	Active under Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius	A history of Rome written in Greek
Cassius Dio	Born between AD 155 and 164; his history ends in AD 229	A history of Rome written in Greek

Our reading: only Caesar’s own account and Cicero’s letters are certainly from Caesar’s own time or the months after his death.

Hirtius says in his own preface that he finished Caesar’s last, unfinished account, from the events at Alexandria to the end of Caesar’s life (our translation). That preface opens book 8 of the Gallic War. If The Alexandrian War is that work, it was written soon after Caesar died. But its author is not certain.

Nicolaus wrote in praise of the man who beat Cleopatra, and Lucan and the later historians wrote long after Rome’s war with her. Few of them had reason to be kind to her.

A vote was passed in Rome to wage war against Cleopatra. The winner, Octavian, is counted as the first of the Roman emperors, under the name Augustus.

022. Egypt in 48 BC

When Pompey fled to Egypt after his defeat at Pharsalus, the boy king Ptolemy was at war with his sister. Caesar himself says Ptolemy had driven her from the kingdom a few months before (our translation). Men sent by the king’s advisers killed Pompey in a small boat.

Caesar learnt of the murder on landing at Alexandria. Plutarch says he turned away in horror from Theodotus as he presented the head of Pompey.

Caesar then made himself the judge. In his own words, the disputes of the princes belonged to the jurisdiction of the Roman people, and of him as consul. He wanted both to disband their armies and argue their case before him. Under their father’s will, Dio says, the two were to rule in common.

Money mattered too. Plutarch says the young king’s father had owed Caesar a large debt, and that Caesar now demanded payment of ten millions for the support of his army.

033. How they met: a bed-sack, not a carpet

Plutarch gives the famous version. Caesar secretly sent for Cleopatra from the country. She brought one friend, Apollodorus the Sicilian, and landed at the palace when it was already getting dark.

To get in unseen, she stretched herself at full length inside a bed-sack. Apollodorus tied it up with a cord and carried it indoors to Caesar. Plutarch adds, with an “it is said”, that this was how Caesar was first captivated.

Cassius Dio tells it without the sack. She asked that she be allowed to plead her case in person, then went into the palace by night without Ptolemy’s knowledge. In Lucan’s poem she bribed her guard to break the harbour chains and came in little boat.

Our reading: the sources agree on secrecy, the palace and the dark. Only Plutarch has the sack.

The carpet came much later. In Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra, Apollodorus deals in carpets, and Cleopatra reaches Caesar inside a “bale of carpet”.

044. The war in Alexandria, and the library

Why did Caesar fight at all? Plutarch reports two views. Some say that it was not necessary, but due to Caesar’s passion for Cleopatra. Others blame the king’s party, especially the eunuch Potheinus.

Dio leans to the first view. He says the Egyptians were discontented at the levies of money, but also that Caesar gave Egypt to Cleopatra, for whose sake he had waged the conflict.

Our reading: Caesar’s own account tells it as law and duty, and never mentions any love affair. An author describing his own war has reasons to leave things out, so his silence is a hint, not proof.

The fighting was long. Appian says he consumed nine months in this strife. When the enemy tried to cut off his fleet, Plutarch says, he was forced to repel the danger by using fire.

Caesar’s fire in 48 BC burned books, but the ancient writers disagree on how many and where: Plutarch says the great library burned, while Caesar mentions only ships and dockyards. Our page on the Library of Alexandria sets out what each ancient writer says.

The war ended in a battle in which, Plutarch says, the king himself disappeared. Suetonius says he turned over the rule of Egypt to Cleopatra and her younger brother. The Alexandrian War says he set up the rulers their father’s will had named. It describes Cleopatra as one who had stayed loyal to him and under his protection (our translations).

Dio adds a harder view. He says Caesar had her “marry” her other brother, and gave the kingdom to both of them, at least nominally. He did it, Dio says, because he feared the Egyptians would rebel at being ruled by a woman. He also feared the Romans would be angry, partly because he was living with the woman.

055. The trip up the Nile

Two writers tell of a journey on the river. Suetonius says Caesar often feasted with her until daybreak. He would have gone through Egypt with her in her state-barge almost to Aethiopia, had not his soldiers refused to follow him.

Appian says he ascended the Nile with 400 ships, exploring the country in company with Cleopatra. Neither gives a date or a length for the trip.

In June 47 BC Caesar left for the East, where he beat Pharnaces near Zela. Our page on what veni, vidi, vici means covers that.

066. Caesarion: whose son?

In June 47 BC Cleopatra gave birth to a son, Ptolemy Caesar. Plutarch says the people of Alexandria called him Caesarion. Whether Caesar was the father was argued even in antiquity.

Source	What it says
Plutarch, Caesar 49	She “had a son by him”
Suetonius, Julius 52	Caesar let her give the child his name
Suetonius, Julius 52	Some Greek writers said the boy looked like Caesar
Suetonius, Julius 52	Mark Antony told the senate Caesar had acknowledged him
Suetonius, Julius 52	Caesar’s friend Gaius Oppius wrote a book to prove the child was not Caesar’s
Nicolaus of Damascus, 68	Reports rumours that Caesar meant to make Egypt his capital and had a son by Cleopatra; “This he himself refuted in his will as false”
Plutarch, Antony 54	Caesarion “was believed to be” Caesar’s son

Nicolaus’s translated text gives the boy’s name as Cyrus, with a query that this means Caesarion.

Our reading: each voice had something at stake. Antony later became Cleopatra’s ally. Britannica notes that when he proclaimed Caesarion Caesar’s son, it relegated Octavian, Caesar’s adopted heir, to legal illegitimacy. Suetonius says Oppius wrote as if admitting that the situation required apology and defence. Nicolaus wrote in praise of Augustus.

Britannica’s article on Cleopatra sums it up: whether Caesar was the father “cannot now be known.”

077. Cleopatra in Rome

Suetonius says Caesar called her to Rome and did not let her leave until he had ladened her with high honours and rich gifts.

Dio mentions her stay in his account of the year 46 BC. She had come to the city with her husband and settled in Caesar’s own house, he writes, and Caesar incurred the greatest censure from all for it. Her husband was her younger brother.

Where exactly did she stay? Cicero speaks of her across the Tiber, in the gardens (our translation). Britannica says she was accommodated in Caesar’s private villa beyond the Tiber. Our reading: Dio’s “house” may be the same place; the ancient sources do not say.

Appian adds a public honour. In Caesar’s new temple of Venus, he placed an image of Cleopatra by the side of the goddess, which stands there to this day, meaning in Appian’s own time.

Cicero did not like her. In a letter of June 44 BC he wrote reginam odi, “I hate the queen” (our translation). He says Ammonius, who vouched for her promises, knows he has reason, and complains of the queen’s own arrogance (our translations). Our reading: this is a personal grudge, written in a private letter.

088. After the Ides of March

Caesar was murdered on 15 March 44 BC. Cleopatra was in Rome when it happened. In his will Caesar adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavius, not the boy.

She soon left. In a letter of April 44 BC Cicero wrote Reginae fuga mihi non molesta est, “The queen’s flight does not trouble me” (our translation).

Back in Egypt, her brother-husband died soon after her return, and she ruled with her son. She later became the ally of Mark Antony. Octavian beat their combined forces at Actium on 2 September 31 BC.

Cleopatra died in 30 BC, at forty years of age save one, Plutarch says. Egypt was then annexed by Rome.

Caesarion did not survive her. Plutarch says he was afterwards put to death by Caesar, meaning Octavian, after the death of Cleopatra. While Octavian was deciding, Plutarch says, “we are told” that Areius the philosopher said: “Not a good thing were a Caesar too many.”

Dio says he was overtaken on the road while fleeing to Ethiopia.

Our Julius Caesar summary covers the rest of Caesar’s life, and our page on the Ides of March covers his death. For the lines credited to him, see Julius Caesar quotes, checked.

099. Common mix-ups, gently

Partly She was smuggled to Caesar in a rolled-up carpet. She did arrive in secret. Plutarch’s account has a bed-sack, and the carpet belongs to later retellings such as Shaw’s play.

Partly Caesar burned the Library of Alexandria. Caesar set fire to ships in the harbour. Books did burn, but the writers who describe it disagree about how many, where, and even who started it.

Can't confirm Caesarion was Caesar’s son. The ancient writers disagree, and Britannica’s article says it cannot now be known.

Partly Cleopatra was Egyptian. She was Egypt’s queen. Her family belonged to the Macedonian dynasty that ruled Egypt between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and its annexation by Rome in 30 BC. Its founder, Ptolemy, was one of Alexander the Great’s most trusted generals.

Britannica says she probably had little, if any, Egyptian blood. The same article adds that her ancestry is not fully known: her father’s mother and her own mother are uncertain.

Plutarch says she very seldom needed an interpreter with foreign peoples. It is said, he adds, that she knew many other languages, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language.

Partly The ancient writers say she was dazzlingly beautiful. Dio does: he calls her a woman of surpassing beauty. Plutarch says that, as he was told, her beauty was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.

For him the charm lay elsewhere: converse with her had an irresistible charm, and there was sweetness also in the tones of her voice. Our reading: neither writer ever saw her.

Doesn't hold up Caesar married Cleopatra. No source we read says they married. His wife was Calpurnia, and he was sleeping by her side on the night before the Ides.

Suetonius reports a tribune’s claim that Caesar ordered him to propose a bill. It would have made it lawful for Caesar to marry what wives he wished, and as many as he wished, “for the purpose of begetting children”. Suetonius names no woman in it, and does not say it was ever voted on.

1010. How to read a source that has a side

In Lucan’s poem Cleopatra is “Egypt’s shame; Fury of Latium”. Lucan wrote his epic about the civil war under the emperor Nero, about a century after the events.

The preparer’s notes to the Project Gutenberg edition warn that it should not be read as a reliable account of the Roman Civil War. Here is the method we used on every source above.

1. Ask who wrote it, and when. Use the table at the top. Here the gap is often a century or more.
2. Ask what the writer had at stake. Cicero had a grudge. Antony and Oppius each had a side. Rome had fought a war against her.
3. Keep what the sources agree on. She came to Caesar in secret. He ended up giving her the throne. She had a son called Caesarion.
4. Hold the colourful extras loosely. The bed-sack, her looks and the motives are each told one way by one writer and differently by another.

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• We read Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and Cassius Dio in the Loeb translations on LacusCurtius, Nicolaus of Damascus in C. M. Hall's translation, and Caesar's Civil War and The Alexandrian War in Latin.
• Cicero's letters were read in Latin, and the translations on this page are ours.
• We read Britannica's article on Cleopatra in a browser, because it blocks scripts.
• The page gives the year and age at Cleopatra's death and leaves out the ancient stories of how she died.
• Our wording on the library fire matches our page on the Library of Alexandria.

How we check every article →

14Sources