"Cleopatra’s army" Topic

I used to be a 100% Ancients tournament gamer, but no more.
I played against many different armies, but never hers.
I've long since gotten rid of my rules and lists.

I just read that one of the new tv shows to "replace Game of Thrones" will be Cleopatra. If they spend the big bucks like GoT did, we might see a few soldiers.

What would the army of Cleopatra look like? I'm of course talking about the one who made whoopie with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, not one of the previous Roman Numeral Cleopatras. The famous one.

There would be a lot of imitation legionaries, along with quite a few actual retired legionaries.

I don't think we know with any certainty what the rest of her troops would have looked like or how they would have been equipped. I imagine the usual eastern rabble, but that's probably not fair.

We know from Plutarch that she raised an army of mercenaries when she fled to Syria and returned to fight her brother in 48 BC. I suspect that her mercenaries were largely 'Romanized' troops from various neighboring states.

Triumph has a data base with over 648 armies either developed or under development including one for Cleopatra.

Cleopatran Ptolemaic 53BC to 30BC
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Perhaps thurophoroi/thorakitai types, as well as imitation legionaries.

After whooppee with Caesar, it was actual Legionaires, Thureophorai, mercenaries, and Nubian skirmishers. At one point they were documented as using forest elephants, but there is no indication that they were still used by Cleopatra's time. No indication that the use had stopped, either.

My group is doing Roman Civil War first quarter next year, I have called Antonius and Cleopatra, so I just did a batch of research on this. I'm fielding an elephant!

So, no actual Egyptian troops?

I'm guessing they'll look like this:

and Cleo herself will look something like this:

It's "Hollywood" (probably more like Vancouver or New Zealand) after all.

I do have plans to build a Cleopatran Army at some future date. My plan was to have several Ptolomeic units (based on illustrations and organisation in Nick Sekunda's book on that army), plus some a couple of Roman style Legions (but with Egyptian badges on their shields), some Nubians and a militia levy.

Rod

If it's done for the TV I've no doubt that her troops will be in some sort of white nappy/loin cloth, wicker shield and a curvy sword. Not forgetting the sphinxesque headdress.

I would imagine possibly some phalangites

Here you go.

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#83 through #87.