She would never again set foot in Rome. Nor would she ever let that city out of her sights. She had played the game cannily and correctly, more effectively than any Ptolemy before her, only to find herself back at square one, blindsided by events, sabotaged by a wholesale revision of the rules. As a near contemporary marveled: “Who can adequately express his astonishment at the changes of fortune, and the mysterious vicissitudes in human affairs?” Cleopatra was twenty-six years old.
