Christopher G.S. Overton

The Serpent Ring (a Story of Cleopatra) Christopher G.S. Overton

The story of the last Cleopatra to rule Egypt is one that everyone believes they know yet it is full of ambiguities. History is written by the victor not the vanquished so our perception is based on lost manuscripts of those living at the time written on the instructions of the Emperor Caesar Augustus ne Octavian. We have been facinated, wrongly, for two thousand years by how a great general made a fool of himself for the love of a woman. The amount of time Cleopatra spent with either Caesar or Antony was minimal, yet there is no record of her taking any other lovers, inconceivable for the most desirable and passionate woman of all time. Why did the Romans passonately fear and hate the Egyptian monarch? Why did Julius Caesar name Octavian his successor instead of his son by Cleopatra and what was his relationship with this sickly little man. Caesar would have probably known about the assassination plot yet he apears to have deliberately walked into the trap. What went so disastously wrong for Antony at Actium and why did the Egyptian fleet cut and run at such a critical moment? The Serpent Ring is a tender story of unfulfilled love through the eyes of Apollodorus who carried the young Cleopatra passed her enemies in a bedroll to her historic meeting with Caesar. Set against an historic background climaxing at the greatest ambiguity of all; her death by suicide by asp venom. Was this murder made to look like suicide? And at the heart of the story is a fabled ring that could only be given in true mutual love. These events shaped the world we live in and the origins of some of our modern theological beliefs and conflicts.