This is an important documentation of history using ancient coinage, which reveals that Cleopatra's motives established that she was a Greek and not black African, simply because Egypt was in North Africa, as was Carthage, Israel, and Syria. The true motives of Cleopatra and her manipulation of Mark Antony were to create a proxy war using the legions of Mark Antony to create a civil war in hopes of taking Rome in retribution for their conquest of the Greeks.
In matters of war, truth is always the first causality, and everything from both sides is just propaganda. Cleopatra was not in some mad love affair with Antony. She also had an affair with Julius Caesar and before him with Pompey the Great's son.
The battle of Actium was the birth of Imperial Rome, and the omens that move Cleopatra to believe she would rise to the new dynasty with her children was her view of the prophecy, but the new dynasty was that of Octavian, Antony's opponent who became Augustus - the first Emperor of Rome.
Cleopatra was cunning, highly intelligent, and very manipulative. She was neither a black African nor some love-sick fool just following her heart. She funded Antony's entire army, and the coinage she produced to pay the troops with the wealth of Egypt became 20% of the money supply of Rome even 100 years later. The coinage produced, known as Antony's legionary denarii, were in themselves issued for propaganda purposes in times of war to impress Romans that Antony was well-funded and well-supported.
This is a fascinating story that can ONLY be told from the coinage, and it opens a whole new chapter into the history of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
