Cleopatra: A Life

* Like so much else in her life—the Nile cruise, the Roman stay, her good faith at Actium—the paternity of this child and the timing of his birth have been contested. His appearance seemed too good and too opportune to be true. Otherwise the skeptics’ case rests on Caesar’s presumed infertility. Despite a vigorous sex life, he had sired no progeny in thirty-six years. As early as Suetonius the paternity issue was raised; there is a curious silence in the record where one might expect outrage, and, too, an absence of material evidence. That silence can be read equally as affirmation: the birth was so distasteful, the evidence that Cleopatra had hoodwinked Caesar so great, that it was wise to keep the matter quiet. Caesar certainly thought the child his, as did both Antony and Augustus.