This is John Batchelor, speaking with the author and classicist Daisy Dunn of her new book The Missing

Thread of Women's History of the Ancient World. Cleopatra, when Caesar first meets Cleopatra,

she's brought in, rolled up in a rug to sneak past the

guards so her brother won't know. She's conferring with the enemy, Roman, there at the

Palace in Alexandria. Cleopatra has a mission. Cleopatra is much much

younger than Caesar. This is around 50 PCE and Daisy characterizes her as a forceful person with complete control of the circumstances,

she needs Caesar's help.

More interesting is why the Romans come to reject Cleopatra, distrust her.

And Daisy explains, there's much more of this book coming in the next weeks,

but it is striking that Cleopatra a genuine Queen, a person who brings a great deal

to Roman glory, the food of Egypt, the Nile, the ancient civilization, is disdain by the Roman citizens.

Here's Daisy Dunn.

They are suspicious of her as an outsider. They're suspicious of her as a

Queen. She is very different from most Roman women. She is very educated, she can speak nine languages, and she has been having

this relationship with Julius Caesar and people can't quite get their head around what this actually means for the future of Rome.

Does it mean that Egypt is going to be a lot more dominant?

It's a threatening sort of situation.

There's a sort of sense as well that as an individual she is manipulative, she is difficult.

Cicero actually writes in a latter to one of his friends,

I hate the Queen.

Another poet describes Cleopatra as being the whore queen of Egypt.

So there's a lot of distaste surrounding her

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