Cleopatra's Kidnappers

How the ancient world’s greatest general fell in love with its greatest queen and sired its greatest empir In his new book, military historian Stephen Dando-Collins turns to one of the most celebrated chapters of ancient Roman history–Julius Caesar’s sojourn in Egypt and his love affair with 21-year-old Queen Cleopatra. He shows how Caesar’s force of less than 4,000 Romans, led by the 900 battle-tested veterans of the Sixth Legion, was able to kidnap the Egyptian royal family, keep a 70,000-man Egyptian army at bay, and ultimately help crush the Egyptian rebels and consolidate Caesar’s rule over the Roman world. Filled with vivid battle scenes as well as intriguing details about Caesar and Cleopatra’s liaison, this latest installment in Dando-Collins’s chronicles of the Roman legions is a rare treat for ancient history buffs Stephen Dando-Collins is the author of two previous military histories of Rome, Caesar’s Legion (paper: 0-471-68613-1; cloth: 0-471-09570-2) and Nero’s Killing Machine (0-471-67501-6)