Cleopatra, twenty-one, had been driven from Alexandria by her younger brother's advisers, whose soldiers guarded every road into the palace. Julius Caesar had just arrived in the city. To reach him she sailed in at dusk in a small boat with one friend, Apollodorus the Sicilian, who carried her into the palace wrapped up in a bedroll, or, as the story has grown, a carpet. Then he unrolled it at Caesar's feet. The words are imagined.