INTRODUCTION

The final days of Rome's once glorious general Marcus Antonius and Egypt's last queen, Cleopatra VII, are legendary: after his defeat at Actium, Antonius rushed back to Alexandria. Since he thought Cleopatra dead, he plunged his sword into his bowels. Sometime afterwards Cleopatra followed him, preferring death by the bite of an asp to being paraded through Roman streets as a vanquished oriental sensation by the triumphant victor. Antonius and Cleopatra thus escaped Octavian's grasp and eventually transcended the bounds of history to become literary and cinematic icons as one of the world's most famous pairs of “star-cross'd lovers.” Their children, however, met quite a different fate: without the protection of their Roman father and their royal mother, the twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, as well as their younger brother, Ptolemy Philadelphus, soon fell into the hands of the Roman invaders. Their elder stepbrothers, Ptolemy XV Kaisar, called “Caesarion,” and M. Antonius, called “Antyllus,” both in Egypt, were also subjected to Octavian's power, while for their younger brother in Rome, Iullus Antonius, it was only a question of time until he had to face Octavian.

Octavian acted coolly and swiftly: Caesarion, Caesar's alleged son by Cleopatra, and Antyllus, Antonius' eldest by Fulvia, both had to die; they were betrayed by their own tutors and murdered. The lives of Iullus and his younger siblings, however, were spared, and they were transferred to the household of the victor's sister Octavia who happened to be Antonius' ex-wife.