Cleopatra: Great Sluts in History
Rolled up in a carpet.
Or, by other accounts, in a sack of bed linens.
Put aside, for a moment, the legend of Cleopatra as a great seductress and think about how incredibly clever and daring that was.
Her enemies stood between her and the one person who could help her regain her throne. Enemies who would be delighted to kill her (and vice-versa, granted). The chances of battling through with an army were slim to none.
A messenger was also likely to be waylaid or killed, but her enemies had already ticked off Julius Caesar, and perhaps part of 21-year-old Cleopatra’s calculation was that they would be too afraid to tamper with a gift for him.
She could have smothered, or passed out from heat prostration. Apollodorus, the servant carrying the carpet/bedroll, could have betrayed her. Caesar’s guard might not have allowed the carpet to be carried into his room.
It was not only a once-in-a-lifetime stunt, but Cleopatra having herself delivered to Caesar rolled up in whatever-it-was, was a once-in-recorded-history stunt. Nothing like that had ever been done before, and we can be sure that from that time forward, any gifts to a ruler or conquering hero were carefully inspected, outside said ruler/hero’s presence, to make sure they did not contain an assassin…
