Cleopatra (about 69–30 BC) was a queen of Egypt in the last years of her country’s old royal line. Stories remember her as striking to look at, but she was also a political leader who had to deal with Rome. She became the lover of Julius Caesar, and later of Mark Antony. When she and Antony lost a war to Octavian — the man who became Rome’s first emperor — the famous ending says she died by the bite of a small poisonous snake, an asp. Though actually, that snake story is the version plays love; we cannot stand next to her and check every detail. Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra is built on her life with Antony. In English the name is always capitalised. In Taiwan many people first meet her as 「埃及豔后」— a nickname about fame and allure, not her real title.