The poem “Whore-Queen” was written by Ever Whitlock of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. They are an undergraduate student working towards a double major in History and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, with a planned graduation date of May 2024.

Their look at Kleopatra VII is a response to Tara Sewell-Lasater’s lecture on the myth of the Ptolemaic queen, held on 27 February 2024, in which she emphasised the fictional aspect of Kleopatra’s personality, as transmitted by ancient sources as early as the Augustan era and into our modern popular view of the queen via video games. The lascivious, ambitious, sexualized, and lustful queen depicted in the Roman sources thus conceals the real Kleopatra VII, and it is in this way that she has been transmitted to contemporary popular culture, with examples in multiple films, novels, games, etc. Whitlock’s words explore this distorted view of the queen. This fictional Kleopatra is the “canopic prostitute”, as Propertius claimed, condemned for her lust to dwell in one of the circles of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, both in the literary sphere and in the video game reproduction of that work.

Whitlock translates this vision and tinges it with a deep feminine pessimism, condemning the image of the queen that has been created by an enemy’s conquest. As a student of Classical studies, Whitlock speaks on the contemporary view of the myth of Kleopatra, one that is deeply influenced by today’s popular culture.

Foreword by: Abraham I. Fernández Pichel and Tara Sewell-Lasater

Whore-Queen

By Ever Whitlock

goddess on earth

worshiped and loved

ruled the kingdom as was expected

with one exception

a woman

alone

far too intelligent for the tastes of men

dumb down, sexualize

wipe the truth from history

place on a pedestal

of man’s creation

present as advisory meant to be defeated

only good enough to be beat

down down down

fallen into public memory

as a no good seductress

fuck me over

call me a whore

I know who I was

Kleopatra VII

goddess on earth

Image: Cleopatra: Queen of Sex (Osamu Tezuka, 1970)