Cleopatra, the first influencer in history, "but with a real empire"

He confesses that he was marked by those legendary technicolor eyes of Liz Taylor. He can't forget because on that day in his adolescence, his grandmother passed away while ... on a TV, the pharaonic superproduction 'Cleopatra' (1963) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz was being shown. Since then, the character has become one of his "obsessions," claims writer Alfredo Taján, a self-confessed mythomaniac, who has set aside that condition to decipher the queen and the woman hidden behind the legend and her femme fatale image. "She was the first influencer, but with a real empire," the author maintains, who has just published 'Cleopatra VII. Beyond the Myth'.

The Book

• Title: 'Cleopatra VII: Beyond the Myth'

• Author: Alfredo Taján

• Publisher: Eda Libros, Essay, Spain, 2025, 266 pages.

In an essay format that transcends conventional biographies, Alfredo Taján sheds new light on the woman who challenged the power of Rome and paid for it. Both in life and after her defeat, she was subjected to the worst official campaign that today would earn the label 'stop rumors'. "She was mistreated by history and treated as a venomous medusa, a vicious and a perverted woman," asserts the author of the novels 'Swordfish' and 'The Passenger', who also uses a term commonly used against the pharaoh, but with a novel perspective. "Original chronicles of the time, like those by Plutarch, speak of a seductress, but she seduced more with her words and tone of voice than with her beauty," clarifies Alfredo Taján, who recalls that Cleopatra was a polyglot and also won the cultural battle against the Romans: her first language was Greek, which was the cultured language as opposed to Latin. And from that position, she built her greatness supported by a political intelligence and a capacity for statecraft beyond her time.

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"A moment that interests me a lot is her meeting with Mark Antony, reaching a point where they deified themselves and believed they were going to overrun and conquer Rome, but they were wrong and tragically went from success to catastrophe," recalls the author of 'Cleopatra VII', who matched forces with Augustus at the Battle of Actium with negative results for the couple. "They pursued her even after her death to the extent that they erased her from the map, branding her a femme fatale and a monster, but what she really was a symbol of the independent woman," explains Alfredo Taján who does not consider her a victim of sexism, as it is understood today.

"Of course they call her a whore, cheap slut, witch, and immoral, but not because the queen was a woman, but because she preserved the throne and challenged Rome," argues Taján, who does speak of the "dignity" of Cleopatra VII who, like her predecessors of the Ptolemaic dynasty, maintained the power of Alexandria in the Mediterranean until the definitive rise of the empire of the eternal city. "She was the last of her line, a great stateswoman with boundless ambition, but luck did not accompany her," explains Taján, who maintains that her ability to seduce beyond her charisma, with her decisions and her influence, is what has fueled her prestige throughout history, further enhanced by her suicide, a death by her own hands before falling into those of her enemies."

On the Brink of Bankruptcy

Her immortal myth was also contributed by her literary rebirth with Shakespeare and, later, the cinema with several megalomaniac versions culminating in the version of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, whose passionate and self-destructive personal story fueled both the parallel narrative on the big screen of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, as well as the out-of-control production that brought Fox to the brink of bankruptcy. "There have been several Cleopatras in cinema, but Mankiewicz's is the one that imposed her image on the contemporary world," confesses the cinephile and viewer that persists in Taján, who considers this film a "stylistic delirium" that, paradoxically, almost ruined the Hollywood studio by shooting the film's budget up to $44 million in the 1960s and taking many years to recover the box office investment."

"She had the power of culture and her staging was that of a rock star. Next to her, the Romans looked like bumpkins"

Alfredo Taján

Writer

"At the time, they cut the director's version," emphasizes the writer about that monumental project that, more than six decades later, has been revisited with actress Gal Gadot ('Wonder Woman') in the role of the pharaoh. True to the curse of the character—and her versions on the big screen—the new 'Cleopatra' was announced for the summer of 2025, although nothing more has been heard about the anticipated premiere of this production that offers a more updated look at the character by highlighting her political intelligence, a profile also defended by Alfredo Taján's essay. Indeed, the last Ptolemaic pharaoh was more influential than the also fascinating Nefertiti, both in history and in the cultural imagination fueled by novels and cinema."

"She had the power of culture and her staging was that of a rock star. Next to her, the Romans looked like bumpkins," the writer jokes about this woman betrayed by her own myth. "She deified herself, believed she could defeat Rome and that was what sank her," reflects Taján who also delves into the archaeological aspect of the pharaoh to consider that, despite many attempts to find her tomb, "she has not been lucky." Indeed, her face is one of the great enigmas of history. And, probably, also responsible for her inexhaustible fame."