And was it really necessary for her to act regally? He sniffed that she comported herself like a queen, an offense to his republican sensibilities, no doubt all the more so for his undistinguished birth. Here he had a point. He was not the last to note Cleopatra’s high-handedness. Strategy came more naturally to her than did diplomacy. She may have been tactless; megalomania ran in the family. She had no trouble reminding those around her that—as she would assert later—she had for many years governed a vast kingdom by herself. Disdain is a natural condition of the mind in exile; Cleopatra had
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