It should be remembered that Egypt and Rome of first century BCE were multi-racial societies. Being the centers trade and politics, the cities hosted tens of thousands of slaves. Cleopatra’s father was a Ptolemy, his stock being derived from descendants of one of Alexander’s generals. His roots could be traced to Macedonia, where natives tend to be fair of skin color. “Theoretically he, and all his forebears for over two centuries, had been the offspring of incestuous brother-sister marriages, and were therefore purebred (as well as inbred) Greeks. In fact, it occurred more than once that the heir to the throne of Ptolemaic Egypt was the child of a royal concubine of unrecorded origin. Cleopatra was one such case. We do not know who her mother was.” (Hughes-Hallett, 2006, p.70)
It is highly likely that Cleopatra was thus inter-racial, thus adding to her exoticism. The fact that her mother was a Royal concubine has added much to the eroticism associated with her. It is part of centuries old folklore that Cleopatra had an insatiable appetite for sexual pleasures. She is also projected to be a sexual dominatrix, who ruled over her slaves carnally too. This image of Cleopatra still finds circulation in contemporary popular culture, with many erotic and pornographic films being made on the theme. (Gadeken, 1999, p.523)
Among other lasting impressions of the great Egyptian empress are her identity as “the most illustrious and wise of women…we come to see Cleopatra as the embodiment of unfettered passion and intrigue, even in death clasping the asp in ardent embrace?” (Walker, 2001, p.6) And what capture this sentiment most clearly is not historical accounts of Cleopatra but references to her in literature. And since literature has a greater influence on culture than does academic scholarship, it is impressions left by numerous playwrights which have endured to this day. And as each literary artist adorned his muse in his own ways, the richness and variety of her representations have also grown. “From Plutarch’s description of her presence as “utterly spellbinding” (although he countered that “her beauty was not in and for itself incomparable”) down to the protean enchantress of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, the particularities of her appearance have always been left to the imagination. And there are as many different Cleopatras as there are readers of those texts.” (Denny, 2001, p.40)
Although later historical and literary representations of her showed her in kinder light, the early portrayals of her (much of it was commissioned by her political rivals) were unsympathetic. For example, in the literature to have emerged during her life-time, Cleopatra “was the whore of the Canopus, the foreign queen who had unmanned Antony, and made him un-Roman. In the first century AD, when Antony’s descendants Caligula, Claudius and Nero had made the Roman imperial court the setting of licentious and unseemly behavior, negative images recalling Cleopatra’s alleged wantonness appeared in various art forms. The focus throughout was on Cleopatra’s sexual appetite as expressed in her relationship with Antony.” (Walker, 2001, p.6)