Cleopatra, the famous ruler of ancient Egypt, lover of Julius Caesar, and supposed mother of their Roman-Egyptian lovechild, Caesarion, wasn't only fluent in Greek; she was Greek. Wait, what? I'll explain...
In 356 BC, a boy was born in the city of Pella, Central Macedonia, a northern province of Greece. A mere 20 years later, this boy became king, and over the course of the ensuing ten years he would make himself into one of the greatest conquerors that ever walked the face of the earth. After a conquest that saw Greek rule expand over much of the ancient world by ca. 326 BC, with an empire that stretched from the Aegean Sea in the west to the Indus Valley in Northern India in the east, the boy earned his well known distinction and thus became Alexander The Great.
After Alexander's death in 323 BC, the massive empire he had built was split up into several kingdoms. Of these one each was given to Alexander’s former generals, also known as the Diadochi, to rule over as kings in their own rights. One of them, Ptolemy I Soter, came to rule over the province of Egypt, and with him began a dynasty of Greek kings that ruled over Egypt for nearly 300 years. The second to last in this line of Ptolemaic kings was Ptolemy XII Auletes who ruled over Egypt from 80 to 51 BC. After his death, his daughter, Cleopatra, assumed power and would reign as the last queen of Egypt.
Known today as perhaps the most famous ruler of ancient Egypt, few people are aware that Cleopatra was, as a descendant of one of Alexander the Great's Diadochi, technically, Greek. In fact, her mother tongue was Koine Greek, an ancient form of modern Greek that was widely spoken in Greece at the time of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. Rumour even has it that Cleopatra was the only one of all the Ptolemaic Greek-Egyptian rulers that came in the ~300 years before her who went out of her way to learn Egyptian - the language of the people they ruled over. You go girl!
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