Cleopatra VII
Smuggled herself past a hostile army in a bedding sack to win the one meeting that mattered.
The episode
In 48 BC the twenty-one-year-old Cleopatra had been driven out of Alexandria by her brother's courtiers, and Julius Caesar — the man who would decide Egypt's throne — sat in her own palace, surrounded by her enemies' troops. Any open approach meant capture. Plutarch records her solution: at dusk she crossed the harbor in a little skiff with a single companion, Apollodorus the Sicilian, stretched herself at full length inside a bed-sack, and had Apollodorus tie it with a cord and carry her through the gates directly to Caesar. It was by this device, Plutarch writes, that Caesar was first captivated — won by her boldness. Within months the exiled queen was back on the throne, co-ruler of Egypt with Rome's strongman as her ally.
The move — copy this today
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