Cleopatra was intimately involved in the critical years that saw the Roman Republic transformed into the Roman Empire. How this transition appeared to the Queen of Egypt--and the part she played in it--is the subject of Pat Southern's engrossing biography. Descended from the first Ptolemy, one of the companions of Alexander the Great, Cleopatra was the last in a long line of Macedonian rulers of Egypt. It was Julius Caesar's involvement in an Alexandrian civil war that led to her being set up as the Queen of Egypt. She had an affair with Caesar and for two years, was his guest in Rome. On his assassination, she returned to Alexandria, where Mark Antony was to become her guest and lover.