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The Weirdest Ways Children Were Treated in History

Khalid Elhassan March 28, 2021 36 min

Baby dangling over the street in a cage. The Sun

9. The Murderous Ptolemaic Dynasty Ended With the Murder of Two Unfortunate Children

The reign of Cleopatra VII, the Ptolemaic Dynasty’s most famous ruler and the last one who wielded actual power, was rife with the Ptolemies’ typical intrigues, betrayals, and perversions. Carrying on the family’s tradition of incest, she married her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII (61 BC – 47 BC). The sibling-spouses fell out, however, and plunged Egypt into a civil war. It ended with Cleopatra’s henchmen killing her unfortunate kid brother after Julius Caesar intervened and took her side. She then married another kid brother, Ptolemy XIV, while carrying on an affair with Caesar.

Cleopatra bore the Roman dictator a son, Caesarion, the future Ptolemy XV – the dynasty’s last nominal ruler. After Caesar’s assassination, Cleopatra took up with his chief lieutenant, Mark Antony, with whom she had one of history’s most famous love affairs. The couple were eventually defeated by Antony’s rival, Gaius Octavius, the future Emperor Augustus. Antony fell on his sword, and Cleopatra committed suicide via snakebite in 30 BC. She was nominally succeeded by Ptolemy XV Caesarion, but Augustus had the sixteen-year-old killed when he was captured a few weeks later. The deaths of Cleopatra and Caesarion brought the Ptolemaic Dynasty to an end, and Egypt was made into a Roman province.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.