If Cleopatra knew the irritating nuisance of self-doubt, all evidence has been lost to history. What Plutarch described as her supreme confidence instead survives her, along with her superlative powers of persuasion. On a later occasion she would pass off a mission entirely botched as one expertly accomplished; it is difficult to believe that, having made her fragrant offerings on deck, she descended the gangplank in Alexandria—again a sovereign, safely returned to her admiring subjects—anything less than triumphantly.
