Antony and Cleopatra

Speaker 1 Hi, folks, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

Speaker 7 You know, whether you are doing traditional Thanksgiving, a friend's giving, or something in between, Whole Foods Market has great everyday prices on all the things you need for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 12 No way antibiotics ever birds bring quality to your table at a great price.

Speaker 13 You can enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

Speaker 15 And remember, Prime gives you shop online and delivery or pickup as you like.

Speaker 16 Stop!

Speaker 17 Before you drag yourself to that coffee pot tomorrow morning, try this instead. Tonight, fill a shaker with water.
Add one scoop of Early Bird and put it on your nightstand.

Speaker 17 When your alarm screams at 5 a.m., drink it first. What happens next will shock you.
Your brain doesn't gradually wake up, it switches on. The fog vanishes.
You're not surviving your morning.

Speaker 17 You're conquering it. This blood-orange mimosa ritual turned more than a thousand night owls into morning warriors this week alone.
Get yours at clubearlybird.com and use code NEVERSNOOSE for 20% off.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

Speaker 3 Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Speaker 3 Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.

Speaker 3 Hello, I hope you're doing well. I'm in a very good mood here.
One, because because I'm just off to the pub to see my friends this fine Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 3 And secondly, because we've just released, we've just published the Ancients YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 I'm really excited to see the channel finally up so you can watch these episodes as well as listen to them if you so wish. A new exciting age in the story of the ancients.

Speaker 3 Now, today we have a classic for you. We're exploring the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
What's the fact? What's the fiction with the likes of Shakespeare and so on?

Speaker 3 It's a great episode and I'm delighted to welcome back for it my good friend, Dr. Daisy Dunn.
Daisy, she's fantastic. Such a wonderful speaker.
So much fun and I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 3 Just over 2,000 years ago, The world witnessed the fall of ancient Egypt and the rise of Imperial Rome. Two civilizations closely intertwined in more ways than one.

Speaker 3 At the heart of this tale is one of history's most famous love stories, a Roman general and a Ptolemaic queen, Antony and Cleopatra.

Speaker 3 It's a story immortalized thanks to Shakespeare and so many others down through the centuries. But what's the truth behind these legendary lovers? How did their paths cross?

Speaker 3 Why did Antony's affair with Cleopatra become so despised in Rome? What were were Cleopatra's motives behind the match? And how did it all end up so tragically?

Speaker 3 With the Mediterranean-wide civil war that ended both the Roman Republic and Pharaonic Egypt. This is the story of Antony and Cleopatra, with our guest, Dr.
Daisy Dunn.

Speaker 3 Daisy Dunn, it is great to have you back on the show. It has been too long.

Speaker 16 It has been too long.

Speaker 3 And we are talking about Antony and Cleopatra. They must be one of the most famous lovers from ancient history and also a great symbol for two of these superpowers colliding, Rome and Egypt.

Speaker 16 They are. I mean, it's just, it's such a kind of iconic story, isn't it? If you say ancient world to anybody, they think Antony and Cleopatra.

Speaker 3 And why do you think, I mean, their story, the allure of it has endured down to the present day, so much so that everyone will know the names Antony and Cleopatra.

Speaker 16 I mean, I think it's the intensity of it, don't you? I mean, I think it's just such a tragic story.

Speaker 16 You have these two kind of impossibly glamorous, impossibly sexy individuals who are kind of living and loving and then ultimately dying together and it's not going to be a sort of spoiler alert to anyone to say that they come to a really sticky end that's the end of the show right there

Speaker 16 but i mean it's a gift to i mean you can see why people in cinema love it writers love it you can kind of just you see them falling and you kind of want to see in slow motion how they got to such a point how do these people who seem to be flying so high ultimately end up where they did i mean is it that's an idea you know this this sexy couple, their loving life, in almost in contrast as well to their main opponent, Octavian, later the Emperor Augustus, who's often seen as more of an upright character, I guess.

Speaker 16 I think there's a bit of that as well. I mean, he looks kind of grey by comparison.
I mean, doesn't it?

Speaker 16 I mean, he's like, he's a young guy, but then he becomes emperor and he's all about sort of morality, even though he's kind of breaking his own rules. He's actually a bit of a ladies' man himself.

Speaker 16 But Mark Antony much more lives up to that reputation.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And that's kind of endured all the way to the present day, hasn't it?

Speaker 3 In representations on TV, in movies.

Speaker 3 I mean, ever since Shakespeare, over the last 500 years or so, there's always that depiction of Mark Antony as the playboy and Octavian as the other, and Cleopatra basically being a symbol of Mark Antony as a playboy.

Speaker 16 I think that's true. I think that's true.
And I think it's fair.

Speaker 16 I mean, all the sources you read describe Mark Antony as being with this woman, that woman, you know, he's with an actress one minute, and then he's getting married, and then he's cheating.

Speaker 16 You know, he does seem to be exactly what you call him, a playboy.

Speaker 3 Let's set the scene first of all with the background. Let's introduce these protagonists in our story today.
When in time are we talking with the beginning of their story?

Speaker 3 Is this, this must be the mid-first century BC thereabouts?

Speaker 16 Exactly. We're talking sort of 40s BC.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Let's introduce Mark Antony first of all. What is his story? What's the situation with him as we get to the 40s BC?

Speaker 16 So Mark Antony is one of the great figures of late Republican Rome. He has, he's sort of distantly related to Julius Caesar on his mother's side, and he's served under Caesar.

Speaker 16 He's kind of been with him in Gaul. He has been master of horse to Caesar, which is kind of quite a fancy title.

Speaker 16 When Caesar was dictator and he was out of the city, Mark Antony was essentially in control. So he's almost like a deputy to Julius Caesar.
He helps him to defeat Pompey the Great.

Speaker 16 So he's very much sort of up there, but it's really after the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC that Mark Antony comes into his own

Speaker 16 because he

Speaker 16 is sort of determined to sort of avenge the death of Caesar, but so is the heir of Caesar, who is the great-nephew Octavian, who becomes the future Emperor Augustus. I think we'll call him Octavian to

Speaker 16 exactly. And I mean, you can kind of see from the beginning, you've got these two people who are very sort of wedded.
They're very loyal to the idea of Caesar.

Speaker 16 There's going to be rivalry between them, and there is.

Speaker 16 But they do manage to pull together and to sort of form this alliance with a third character who's Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and we call this the second triumvirate and it was sort of by the senate and it essentially allowed them to put on a united front to defeat the key assassins of Julius Caesar and Antony really makes a name for himself at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC.

Speaker 16 He's there, he is with Octavian, and I'd say really this is the kind of high watermark of his career. He really performs excellently at Philippi.

Speaker 16 And as a result of that victory over Brutus and Cassius and sort of the key assassins, he emerges on top.

Speaker 16 And then as part of this alliance, they're able to essentially carve up the empire into three parts to look after.

Speaker 3 Because it's very much, I mean, at the Battle of Philippi or the battles of Philippi, isn't it? Mark Antony is the general. He's the man, the charismatic leader.
He's got the military experience.

Speaker 3 And Octavian, although he's his ally, although he's got troops, troops, he looks a bit of a wet rag in particular. It very much is Mark Antony's show.
This is what he's good at.

Speaker 3 So winning a military victories this time, as you say, it really just rises his reputation even further.

Speaker 16 It does. And I think he actually teases Octavian afterwards for kind of like sitting it out and being a bit of a kind of, you know, wet, kind of weak end of a man.

Speaker 3 So uneasy, uneasy allies right there. So it's looking good for Mark Antony at that time.
I mean, which portion of the empire does he receive in that cutting up after Philippine?

Speaker 16 So essentially, I mean, Octavian takes Italy, which is a difficult, I mean, that sounds easy, it's not.

Speaker 16 That's almost the short straw in this, because he's got to rehouse all the veterans after the Battle of Philippi. There are lots of kind of land confiscations, people are being dispossessed.

Speaker 16 It creates chaos in Rome. Lepidus gets sort of North Africa.
And Mark Antony's focus is very much on the eastern provinces.

Speaker 3 Which will then, of course, include Egypt. So can you introduce us Egypt at this time? What kind of kingdom is ruling Egypt? And who is this pretty remarkable ruler?

Speaker 16 Cleopatra. Oh, there we go.
Oh, there you go. So, I love how we call her Cleopatra for a start.
I find this kind of interesting because she's Cleopatra VII, officially.

Speaker 16 She's not the only Cleopatra, she's not the first Cleopatra. She is essentially she's part of this long line of Ptolemaic rulers.

Speaker 16 So, Egypt's been ruled by this kind of dynasty that's been passed down. We've got to go back to your favorite era, Alexander the Great.

Speaker 16 Just temporarily.

Speaker 3 Fine, we can.

Speaker 16 I know, I know, I've got to indulge you.

Speaker 16 And so, Ptolemy, general of Alexander the Great, trusted friend, he is the one who inherits the kind of Egyptian portion of the kingdom after Alexander's death.

Speaker 16 And the sort of the Ptolemies are descended essentially from him. You get Ptolemy, Ptolemy, Ptolemy, Tommy.
And then you get some girls in there as well.

Speaker 3 Yeah, more Cleopatra's, Cleopatra, Cleopatra's. They're not very diverse with their names, are they? They like a name and they stick to it.

Speaker 16 They do. And Cleopatra's father was Ptolemy XII.
Yes. Aulites, the flute player.
So indication of his musical interests there.

Speaker 16 And really,

Speaker 16 he is sort of responsible for her coming to power initially. She's kind of co-ruling with him.
He dies in 51 BC.

Speaker 16 And she is the eldest surviving child. So therefore, she gets to rule.
She is named as his heir, along with the eldest of her two younger brothers, who becomes Ptolemy XIII.

Speaker 3 It's pretty, you know, difficult to stomach today, but there was a lot of that brother-sister ruling and marriages in Ptolemaic Egypt, wasn't there? And Cleopatra VII was the next in line for that.

Speaker 16 Exactly. And

Speaker 16 it's really difficult to understand, I think, today. People say, oh, you know, isn't that weird? Isn't that strange?

Speaker 16 And I think we're not really looking at a kind of sexual relationship between the two of them at the beginning, at least. I mean, she is 18 and he's about 10.

Speaker 16 So we can't really go there. We can't go there.

Speaker 16 But, I mean, the really difficult thing is they don't get on.

Speaker 16 And almost immediately, civil war breaks out between these two siblings wanting sort of sole rule or kind of at least kind of dominance over the rule of egypt and it really gets very very messy long story short julius caesar comes in and cleans it all up for them um how much detail should i go into here it's just six forward a bit i mean i also want to mention that in my opinion the ptolemies must be one of the most if not the most dysfunctional family from the whole of history and that's saying something in itself but i feel they just go an extra step including the julio-claudians i must admit um but yes, come on then.

Speaker 3 Let's introduce Julius Caesar. How does he shake things up? And this ends up well for Cleopatra.

Speaker 16 It does. So he arrives in Alexandria.

Speaker 16 And he, I mean, his first goal really is to try and reconcile the two siblings and to honour the agreement that these two will be co-rulers of Egypt, which is what the father had wanted.

Speaker 16 But it's incredibly difficult. I mean, Cleopatra's been driven out during this.

Speaker 16 They're really at loggerheads. And so you have something called the Alexandrian War developing.

Speaker 16 And I mean, the difficulty for Caesar is he's having to deal with a lot of men on the side of Cleopatra's brother because he's only 10 years old.

Speaker 16 He's very much under the thumb of his advisors, his tutors, one of them's a eunuch, you know, got these kind of crazy long lists of people. They are very much kind of calling the shots on his side.

Speaker 16 When the war breaks out, Ptolemy actually ends up drowning. during it.
So he is out of the picture. And the relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra develops in that period and a child is conceived.

Speaker 3 They go on a romantic trip down the Nile as well, don't they? Caesar has a little Sejourn in Egypt with Cleopatra. It all seems rather lovely.

Speaker 16 I love the descriptions of it as well. It's so sort of romantic of the two of them just kind of gliding along having a wonderful

Speaker 16 enjoy it. And they have a son and this is actually great news for Cleopatra because she's having to then rule with her other brother, who's Ptolemy XIV.

Speaker 16 And she doesn't really want to be with him either.

Speaker 16 And a little later on, there's pretty good evidence that she actually poisons him to get him out of the way so that she can make Caesarean, her child by Caesar, her co-ruler instead.

Speaker 16 Caesarean, there we go.

Speaker 3 Well, how do we then get to this time when Cleopatra does become the sole ruler? Because we've still got to get through what you mentioned earlier, the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Speaker 16 We do. And really interestingly, she's actually in Rome at the time of the assassination, which I don't remember even sort of learning at school.

Speaker 16 You always picture her as being over in Egypt, don't you? You don't kind of think.

Speaker 3 And to actually make that voyage is quite something in itself with all the pageantry that there must have been showing that she was a pharaoh of Egypt, arriving in Rome, being so different to what a Roman woman was expected to be.

Speaker 3 And, you know, it is a big episode when she goes to Rome.

Speaker 16 It is. It is.
It's very, very much so. All the pomp and ceremony is laid on for her.
She is staying not right in the middle of Rome, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 16 She is now in the area of kind of trustever in Rome, which is quite the cool side, you know,

Speaker 16 so she's across the Tiber, but she's not right in the kind of thick of it. But she's there, you know, with her, with Caesarean.
She's there meeting a lot of very important, wealthy Romans.

Speaker 16 And in 46, Caesar actually officially recognises her as the ruler of Egypt and as a friend of the Roman people.

Speaker 16 And the Romans have done the same for her father, but it's really very much kind of cementing the fact that she is there in power.

Speaker 3 Do you think it's likely that Mark Antony would have met Cleopatra that far back when she was, well, the consort of Julius Caesar?

Speaker 16 I think almost certainly. I can't imagine him not meeting her when she was in Rome.
It seems that most people were, who were sort of, you know, in power in those kind of circles, were meeting her.

Speaker 16 And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't actually met a little bit earlier as well, because there was a point in her father's rule when he was actually deposed.

Speaker 16 He ended up sort of being shifted from his throne and he had to come to Rome. And Rome actually helped him to regain his power.

Speaker 16 And I think in that process, I mean, there's a strong possibility, I think, that Antony would have met her. She'd have been young at that stage.

Speaker 16 But quite possibly, I think they've certainly known each other, I reckon, before they actually get together.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Well, Julius Caesar is assassinated.
So what happens to Cleopatra after that? I'm guessing she goes back to Egypt.

Speaker 16 She does go back to Egypt. We know that from Cicero.
He describes her as sort of standing back. And that's that letter.
I think it's about a month later. So she doesn't stick around.

Speaker 16 And I think, I mean, her position is slightly uncertain at that point, you know. Caesar's dead.
What does that actually mean for her?

Speaker 3 I mean, she could potentially have been targeted in Rome, possibly, right? If there were the enemies of Julius Caesar hanging about?

Speaker 16 Exactly. I mean, I think she just actually doesn't know.
I think that's my impression. She doesn't really know what this means for her.

Speaker 16 She is determined to get back to safety, get there with Caesarean, you know, get out of the way and probably lay low for a little bit.

Speaker 16 Stop!

Speaker 17 Before you drag yourself to that coffee pot tomorrow morning, try this instead. Tonight, fill a shaker with water.
Add one scoop of Early Bird and put it on your nightstand.

Speaker 17 When your alarm screams at 5 a.m., drink it first. What happens next will shock you.
Your brain doesn't gradually wake up, it switches on.

Speaker 17 The fog vanishes, you're not surviving your morning, you're conquering it. This blood-orange mimosa ritual turned more than a thousand night owls into morning warriors this week alone.

Speaker 17 Get yours at clubearlybird.com and use code NEVERSNOOSE for 20% off.

Speaker 1 Hi folks, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

Speaker 7 You know, whether you are doing traditional Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, a friend's giving, or something in between, Whole Foods Market has great everyday prices on all the things you need for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 12 No way antibiotics ever birds bring quality to your table at a great price.

Speaker 13 You can enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

Speaker 15 And remember, Prime gives you shop online and delivery or pickup as you like.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

Speaker 3 Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Speaker 3 Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.

Speaker 3 How powerful does she then become in those years? Whilst Mark Antony and Octavian, they're rising to the fore and they ultimately fight the likes of Cassius and Brutus at Philippi.

Speaker 3 What has Cleopatra been doing up in Egypt?

Speaker 16 She, I mean, she's trying to deal with a quite difficult situation in Egypt for a start. There's a lot of kind of social problems, there's famine, there's

Speaker 16 trying to sort of organise the grain supply, all this kind of stuff. So she's trying to be a sort of good ruler to her people.

Speaker 16 And I think from a Roman perspective, she's still seen to be incredibly sort of useful to them. I mean, so much so that, I mean, Cassius had actually asked her for supplies and ships.

Speaker 16 They all asked her for help. They all see her as the money.
That's the thing. She is the money and she knows that.
So she knows she could actually potentially be useful.

Speaker 16 So I think that's what her position is, I think, at that point.

Speaker 3 The money bags, I'm guessing, is how important that is when they're fighting the wars against each other as well.

Speaker 3 And the manpower, I mean, does Egypt, I'm presuming, has a lot of sway over places like Judea and Syria as well, being such a big Hellenistic power.

Speaker 3 Yes, it's not at the the great reaches that it had been under earlier Ptolemies, but still that legacy of influence must be there as well.

Speaker 16 Absolutely. Yeah, we're not talking sort of about Alexandria in isolation.

Speaker 16 I think it's really easy to lose track of the fact that actually there's got quite a wide dominion here and there are sort of feeders going out in all directions.

Speaker 3 So Cassius tries.

Speaker 3 Does he succeed? Does he fail? Do we have Cleopatra's troops on their side at Philippi?

Speaker 16 No, it's actually a really complicated sort of situation. I mean, this is the thing.

Speaker 16 I think when Antony and Cleopatra initially get together, Anthony's actually summoning her quite with a lot of reproach. He's actually upset.

Speaker 16 He's like, I've heard that you've been helping out Cassius. You know, whose side are you on? I mean, that's how their relationship begins, which isn't a very good beginning, is it, for a relationship?

Speaker 16 She says, oh, no, I can explain. And essentially, I think Cassius had been going on and on and on at Cleopatra for help.
And she had been prevaricating. She kind of didn't really want to supply him.

Speaker 16 with troops.

Speaker 16 There's some indication that she was sending some supplies to Dolabella, who was another kind of key Roman, who was at that point governor of Syria, which Cassius could potentially intercept.

Speaker 16 And she ended up trying to send ships instead to

Speaker 16 Mark Antony and to Octavian, but they didn't actually get there. They were actually wrecked in a storm.

Speaker 16 So it's kind of like a non-story, but it creates a little bit of tension between her and Antony at the beginning.

Speaker 3 It's also kind of damaging that Hellenistic reputation of their great warships being like the most impregnable military vessels of the time. And then you lose them.
You lose them in the storm.

Speaker 3 Trying to to go for this fight.

Speaker 16 So it just shows you nothing is certain, is it?

Speaker 3 No, absolutely not. Well, it's also really interesting, a bit of a side note.

Speaker 3 You've got big, bad King Herod trying to carve out his, kind of take back his kingdom in Judea right next door as this is all happening. But Cleopatra does go up to one day Turkey to meet Mark Antony.

Speaker 3 So what is this?

Speaker 16 There are two separate meetings. You're right.
The first one is Tarsus. Okay.
So this is when they first go. This is in 41 BC.
And they, I mean, they have this kind of splendid meeting.

Speaker 16 I have to say, this is all full glamour, this situation. Antony arrives.
And as I said, it's been a little bit difficult between them. She kind of keeps him waiting.

Speaker 16 She comes in on the most luxurious barge you can imagine. And this barge has purple sails.
It has silver oars. It's covered in gold.
And it's sort of reeking of incense.

Speaker 16 It's the most luxurious, splendid kind of barge you could possibly imagine. And Antony sees her, and he's like, oh my goodness.

Speaker 16 Like, you can imagine this kind of gawping face because she has done herself up as if she is a goddess Isis, which is a goddess that she identified with.

Speaker 16 Some sources say Aphrodite, the attributes are quite similar. Whatever, she looks like a goddess and she's surrounded by these attendant women who are done up as nymphs.

Speaker 16 And we've said, you know, Antony's a playboy. He's in heaven right now.
I mean, the source, I think it's Plutarch, one of our great sources on their story.

Speaker 16 He's the greatest of biographer, Greek biographer, writing in the first century. So not too far, far removed in time.

Speaker 16 He says that Mark Antony was, you know, a man, I think it's about 42 at this stage. And he says he's almost like a youth.

Speaker 16 He was completely captivated by her beauty, by her intellect, and he just sort of reduced to being almost like a boy.

Speaker 3 It seems so easy for her to do at the same time with all the luxuries that she throws at him.

Speaker 3 I mean, but quite the fact that she'd done her homework, knowing that Antony was coming there with the thought of telling her off.

Speaker 3 And then she just completely flips the script by just showing how powerful, beautiful, you know, she is a pharaoh of Egypt. And she keeps him waiting.

Speaker 16 She keeps him waiting, which I love. I like, I love the whole idea that she actually is then sort of taking control and she's saying, This is what we're going to do.
She then has him to dinner.

Speaker 16 And that's even more extravagant because, I mean, bear in mind, she's on her home turf, so she has access to all these lovely things. What's he supposed to bring?

Speaker 16 It's like, you know, you're going to like a really nice house and you don't know what to bring. You can't bring some after eight.
So, you know, you've got to bring something really nice.

Speaker 16 He's got nothing really to deliver.

Speaker 3 Bring a helmet, bring a sword. I don't know.

Speaker 16 A cloak. But I think she really feels this because what we read is that he enters this amazing room, which is beautifully lit.

Speaker 16 And everything is sort of gold, all the cutlery, all the kind of goblets, everything is gold and beautiful. And there are wall hangings and there are beautiful chairs.

Speaker 16 And then she says, oh, at the end of the evening, you can take home whatever you like.

Speaker 16 She knows he can't compete. I mean, he's like, he's the traveller here.
You know, he doesn't have the sort of wherewithal to be able to provide in this way.

Speaker 3 How does he react to all of this? Is it very much hook, line, and sinker from start to end? I mean, what does he do next?

Speaker 16 Well, I mean, I think it's really easy to kind of get wrapped up in the romance of all of this. Like, it is kind of transactional at the same time as being this great sort of love story.

Speaker 16 I think at this point, he is very aware that he needs to get something out of Cleopatra. You know, he is there.
He needs to pay off his legions from Philippi for a start. He has ambitions in the East.

Speaker 16 She has the money. He doesn't have the fleet.
You know, she has the possibility of actually helping him.

Speaker 16 So, there's something there, and she at the same time, she needs some kind of support, and I think, and sort of assurance, and she's certainly worried about her situation in Egypt, particularly, I think, there's a problem with her sister, which is another sister called Arsinoui, who at one point she actually declares herself to be the ruler of Egypt.

Speaker 16 And she really, she wants her out of the way, and Anthony's going to help her to do that. So, I mean, there's something on each side for both of them.

Speaker 16 And I think because of that, they end up kind of of extending their time together.

Speaker 16 So you see them actually wintering together all the way through sort of 41 into 40 in Alexandria, having this kind of lovely time.

Speaker 3 So Anthony does go from meeting Cleopatra at Tarsus to going back with her to Alexandria. And do we think this is when their relationship does become sexual?

Speaker 16 Yes. Yeah.
I have no doubt because, I mean, for a start, we know that she actually conceived two children. So you've got the evidence there.

Speaker 16 So we don't need to speculate. She falls pregnant with twins.
She calls them, I love love their names, they're amazing. Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene.
And Helios means the sun.

Speaker 16 Selena means the moon. So she has the sun and moon twins.
I mean, come on, like, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 Very celestial and the world above kind of thing like that. Do you think she really had this idea?

Speaker 3 She bought completely into the belief that, you know, she was divine or her position, you know, in the Ptolemaic dynasty as a pharaoh meant that her and her offspring, you know, whether it was with Julius Caesar or Mark Antony, that they would be divine too.

Speaker 16 I think there's this idea that's definitely, it's intrinsic to rulers, though, in history, isn't it?

Speaker 16 That you've got some kind of divine support to the fact that you've actually been selected to be ruler. You feel like there's something special running through your blood.

Speaker 16 And I think Cleopatra is no exception for that.

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, back in Rome, poor old Octavian trying to sort out the veterans and the like, being upright, or maybe not as upright as, you know, we sometimes portray him as.

Speaker 3 What's the reaction in Rome as they're hearing all of these reports from the East about Antony now wintering in Alexandria, having a whale of a time with Cleopatra and so on?

Speaker 16 Well, I imagine they're hearing quite a lot of the gossip. I mean, we have quite outlandish stories which are in our sources, which I imagine is the sort of thing which is being spoken about in Rome.

Speaker 16 So, these very sort of luxurious dinner parties, Cleopatra drinking a pearl, you know, that lovely story.

Speaker 16 She drinks a pearl. It's fantastic.

Speaker 16 So, in one of their sort of many very extravagant dinners together, she bets Mark Antony that she could consume the equivalent of 10 million sesterces, sesterces being the Roman currency, in a single banquet.

Speaker 16 And then he says, oh, you can't. And she says, I can.
And then she takes a huge pearl from her ear and she supposedly dissolves it in vinegar in a cup and drinks it.

Speaker 16 And people have been debating for centuries whether this is actually possible.

Speaker 16 But it just gives you an idea of the kind of life that they're living and the kind of stories which might have been sort of circulating in Rome. You have the opposite extreme of that as well.

Speaker 16 You have the two of them dressing up in disguise as paupers and looking into the windows of the poor people in Alexandria just to kind of see how can you imagine if our royal family did that?

Speaker 16 I mean the PR is potentially absolutely catastrophic.

Speaker 3 We have emperors like Nero and the like who do that kind of dressing up and concealing themselves to kind of mingle with everyday people.

Speaker 16 Yeah exactly and if you go to court I mean the repercussions are quite bad.

Speaker 16 So I think the Romans are definitely hearing gossip and hearing scandalous gossip and they are not not pleased about it because Mark Antony's married. He has a Roman wife called Fulvia.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, so Fulvia also feels important to introduce to the story at the moment because she is still Mark Antony's wife at the end of the day, and she's in Italy.

Speaker 16 She's in Italy, poor Fulvia. To my mind, she's one of the most amazing women of this period.
She has two little sons with Mark Antony.

Speaker 16 So, while Cleopatra's giving birth, she's there, so raising these two boys.

Speaker 16 And she is trying to keep his end up essentially in Rome.

Speaker 16 She is coming to loggerheads with Octavian and they seem to have had a very difficult relationship and this seems to stem back from the fact that she gave her daughter by a previous marriage Claudia to Octavian in marriage and she and Octavian fall out and Octavian returns Claudia the daughter to her and he says it's okay she's still the virgin I haven't touched her But for Fulvia, this is like the last straw and she decides to actually whip up war against him.

Speaker 16 This is extraordinary. She actually goes to Mark Antony's brother Lucius and we have something called the Perusine War breaking out this time.
So it's sort of 41 to 40 BC.

Speaker 16 So exactly that period where Antony and Cleopatra are together. It ends up being this kind of extraordinary showdown in the city of Perusia and it turns into a siege.

Speaker 16 We actually have these kind of slingshot bullets which I love. Have you seen them? I have.

Speaker 3 I love these slingshot bullets because they also have some quite crude messages on as well, don't they?

Speaker 16 They're foul. Like translating them makes you blush.
I I mean, like you have some of these.

Speaker 3 We're going to do Tiberius later.

Speaker 3 So if that makes you blush, warm up, warm up.

Speaker 16 So some of them are saying things like, I'm aiming for Octavian's arsehole.

Speaker 16 And then, but I prefer the ones for Fulvia. They're saying things like, I'm aiming for Fulvia's clitoris, which is quite, you know, quite anatomical for that time.

Speaker 16 I mean, I can't think of another word.

Speaker 16 So these have been found, but. I mean, the really sad thing is Fulvia is instrumental and she's seen to be the sort of key player.
She is getting troops.

Speaker 16 She's supposedly holding onto a sword, addressing the men. But it all goes disastrously wrong.
And the side of Octavian ends up getting the upper hand.

Speaker 16 They starve the citizens of Perugia into submission. And Fulvia and Lucius are spared, but about 300 senators who'd been on their side are supposedly sacrificed on the altar of Julius Caesar.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I didn't realise how many senators went to support them because initially, if you just say the Perusine war and Perusia, it feels like one city against the entirety of Rome and Italy.

Speaker 3 But it actually seems like it wasn't actually as clean-cut as that, as simple as that, that Octavian always had the upper hand. But he does ultimately win out.

Speaker 16 He does win out.

Speaker 16 And then this is disastrous, really, because, I mean, the historians of the time, I'm talking about sort of Plutarch and then also sort of Cassius Dio and others, sort of, so he's writing a bit later, second to third century, they are really, really hard on Fulvia.

Speaker 16 They say that her whole kind of ideal of creating this war, her kind of objective was to get Antony home. She'd heard the rumours

Speaker 16 about the affair with Cleopatra. And they think they say, well, the only way she could possibly try and grab him was to cause chaos basically in Italy and get him home.
I don't think that's fair.

Speaker 3 Is that a classic trope, isn't it? It makes it two black and white saying one woman was jealous of the other, so they tries to get their husband back by doing something like that.

Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 16 I really think she was feeling the fact that Octavian was getting the upper hand and she was trying to sort of do something for her husband to kind of help his hand while he's away all this time.

Speaker 16 But it's just not recognised in that way.

Speaker 3 And he said her family's pinned her colours, you know, to that faction.

Speaker 3 And when Mark Antony hears all about this and how it ultimately goes Octavian's way, does that actually force him to act, though?

Speaker 16 Well, he's furious. I mean, he's not happy about it.

Speaker 3 He's furious with his wife and his brother or with Octavian?

Speaker 16 Well, kind of both, but he's mainly Fulvia because, I mean, Fulvia really wants to meet him after this. And he agrees to do so.
So they meet up in Greece.

Speaker 16 She sails all the way there with the two boys. And there's this very sort of brief, perfunctory reunion.

Speaker 16 And then he just leaves her, and he goes off because he's been summoned to a conference with Octavian back in Italy, in Brundisium,

Speaker 16 right in the south of Italy. And it's really difficult because Fulvia then dies.
She's fallen unwell when she's in Greece. He's gone back to...
to Italy just to try and patch things up with Octavian.

Speaker 16 And I mean, that does work. I mean, there's the sort of renewal of this triumvirate, this alliance for power.

Speaker 16 Their kind of special areas are slightly altered insofar as Octavian now has a big problem confronting him in Sicily. Sextus Pompeius.

Speaker 3 Sextus Pompey, isn't he?

Speaker 16 Yes, he's a son of Pompey the Great, and he's at large. He seems to be sort of causing a lot of chaos with the grain supply, which is coming via the waters of Sicily into Italy.

Speaker 16 And there's no fleet at that point to really deal with him. So you have Marcus Agrippa, who I love, by the way.
I mean, he is...

Speaker 16 forget mark anthony mark agrepper is the guy he's the man he's the one who arranges a sort of a new harbor he builds up a fleet he trains sort of about 20 000 former slaves to form a kind of navy and to see off the threat of sexist pompey so all of that is going on and this is going to be sort of octavian's focus going forward the relationship as i said is renewed so

Speaker 16 the situation for mark anthony he's having to look much more into kind of parthia sort of iranian kingdom we're talking about

Speaker 16 So it's renewed. And then the whole deal is sealed.
They often have a marriage to seal the deal when these alliances are made. This is a very, very sort of Roman thing.

Speaker 16 And Mark Antony agrees to marry the sister of Octavian. She's Octavia.
And he, I mean, he should have been really happy about this because she is so popular.

Speaker 16 She's one of the most popular women in Rome. She, all the sources are, they just describe her as extraordinary.
She's beautiful. She's kind.
She's everything you'd possibly want.

Speaker 16 And because she's so popular, that ought to sort of rub off well on Mark Antony, because his popularity has taken a downturn since his relationship with Cleopatra and all the gossip about that.

Speaker 16 So by marrying Octavia, he should be kind of on the rise at this point. And they seem to have like a very happy beginning to their wedding, by all accounts.

Speaker 16 Cleopatra is kind of out of the picture, suddenly,

Speaker 16 which is astonishing. We've got her so sort of prominent in our sources.
And then suddenly, Mark Antony's there. He's beginning a new family life.

Speaker 16 He's married to Octavia, they have two daughters by 37 BC. So they're very much, you know, seem to be having a happy life and they're based largely in Athens, actually.

Speaker 3 But I think that once again shows, as you mentioned earlier, how the story of Antony and Cleopatra is not a love story or not just a love story, you know, it's a political kind of unity.

Speaker 3 And earlier on in the 30s, near, you know, 40, 41, you know, Mark Antony saw benefits of, you know, being with Cleopatra at the time.

Speaker 16 But now he's had this offer of Octavia and this, you know, peace with Octavian, renewed peace and he sees that actually that is the better opportunity for him at the time so it seems like as you were saying maybe at least early on he does realize that actually octavia is a better bet for him than cleopatra at this time i think almost certainly he he knows what he's got to do he's had this sort of situation in in rome and and in perugia and he's just thinking all right this is my business now in the interest of the alliance i'm going to do this go through with the wedding and you know you kind of you're just at this point i think i'm praying for octavia thinking i just hope that this works out well for her, you know.

Speaker 3 Completely. And also, you did mention there in passing, it feels a good time to introduce him to the story because he will come back later, won't he?

Speaker 3 The figure, the one and only Agrippa and his building of a fleet, which also feels important because he's not a navy man at that time, but he has to learn the ropes from the beginning.

Speaker 16 He does. And he's one of those extraordinary figures where he seems to have come from quite a modest, humble beginning.
We don't know very much about his childhood.

Speaker 16 And he ends up being educated alongside the future Octavians. They meet when they're very young, just before Octavian becomes the heir of Caesar.

Speaker 16 And so he becomes a very trusted sort of deputy to him very, very early on. And he has a great military beginning, but he doesn't have naval experience at all.

Speaker 16 And he's called in to deal with Sextus Pompeius. He has to learn it all himself.
And he does. He just seems to be one of those characters.
Whatever situation he's thrown into, he seems to just excel.

Speaker 16 in. I mean, he's extraordinary.

Speaker 3 Whether it's the sewers of Rome or, you know, the Straits of Messina, isn't it? He's an amazing story.

Speaker 3 And he's important for when when we go on later and such an vital asset for octavian well let's keep moving the story forwards it all looks quite nice for mark antony you know peace with octavian once again marriage to octavia

Speaker 16 when does he start looking back east when does cleopatra come back into the fold he seems to get the itch after just a few years and no forget the seven-year itch seven years go that would be something for mark anthony he he is um getting itchy isn't he can't control himself he can't control himself but again it's not just for Cleopatra.

Speaker 16 He'd like to think, okay, he's just really missing Cleopatra. He has an ulterior motive.
He always has an ulterior motive. 37 BC, he starts to think, I really want to invade Parthia.

Speaker 16 And I think at this point, he's really aware of the fact that he hasn't really had any great military victory since Philippi. A long time has passed.
He's got nothing really to his name.

Speaker 16 He lacks the legitimacy of Octavian. Octavian is the chosen successor of Julius Caesar.
What does Mark Antony have? Like, he doesn't seem to have anything. He kind of thinks

Speaker 16 in Rome, the only real way you can win glory is by conquering a foreign enemy. So he did well at Philippi, great, but that's a civil war.
You know, that's not the same.

Speaker 3 It's Roman on Roman, isn't it?

Speaker 16 It's Ron on Roman, it's not the same as conquering a foreign people.

Speaker 3 You can't really do a triumph if you're fighting Romans, can you, as well? Because ultimately, you'll be celebrating, killing fellow citizens. That's exactly.

Speaker 16 You can't get the triumph. The triumph is the great sort sort of celebration that all military leaders aspire to.
He wants one of those.

Speaker 16 And the biggest one you can possibly get at this time is over Parthia, because there's, I mean, Rome has beef with Parthia.

Speaker 16 Not that far

Speaker 16 long ago in time, so sort of 53 BC, there's a real difficulty. There's a humiliating loss of the Romans to the Parthia.

Speaker 16 So this is Crassus, this is Carai, this is the loss of the Roman standards, the eagles, legions, and and just pride. So Romans feel that they need to avenge that.

Speaker 16 And Mark Antony thinks that he's the guy to do that.

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Speaker 3 So, he has that ulterior motive of going to Parthia. So, Cleopatra must be, given her power at the time in Egypt, you know, the clear ally to get close to for this motive.

Speaker 16 Yes, absolutely. And he sees that she's the one who can fund this.

Speaker 16 She can potentially get, you know, fleets to him and help him out with this. And he actually goes back, he meets her in Antioch.
He grants her territories, which is quite extraordinary.

Speaker 16 He gives her, oh, it's a list of them, like Phoenicia, Cyprus. And these are places essentially which had been within the domain of the Ptolemies back in history.

Speaker 16 So he kind of feels like he's giving them back to her.

Speaker 16 And in return, he wants her help. And he manages to get it so that he can actually launch his invasion in early 36.

Speaker 3 But that's so interesting. I feel maybe not the secret motive, but that is a clear motive of Cleopatra, isn't it?

Speaker 3 She is living at a time when she's hearing all the stories of how powerful the Ptolemaic dynasty once was, the great Hellenistic superpower, you know, beating the Seleucids and so on.

Speaker 3 And she wants to kind of revive that golden age of Ptolemaic power. And she sees Mark Antony as the person through which she can do it.
And she achieves it with those territories that he gives her.

Speaker 16 Exactly. Exactly.
So she's getting something out of it. She's not just there, you know, helping out her darling lover.
I mean, she's very much wanting her side and she's getting it.

Speaker 3 So how does the war go?

Speaker 16 The war is a disaster.

Speaker 16 But you can almost see it written on the wall, can't you? I think you can almost anticipate that this is going going to be a disaster for Antony because he wants it so much. You know, he,

Speaker 16 it's terrible. I mean, she supplies him with ships and with money, and he sets out and he has this kind of quite complicated plan.
He decides he's going to invade via Armenia.

Speaker 16 And Rome is allied with Armenia at this point.

Speaker 16 And they decide that they're going to go via the...

Speaker 16 from the south of the Euphrates. Cleopatra kind of accompanies him part of the way.
And this is a really long journey for an army. This is such a long journey.

Speaker 16 anthony's right at the front he goes and lays siege to a particular town which is um media and you can ask where that is i just look at media is northern iran

Speaker 16 iran so it's kind of iranian azerbaijan yes right um so he is laying siege there that is he thinks it's going to be easy it's not he just doesn't seem to be able to break through And meanwhile, he's got coming up the rear, he's got his baggage train.

Speaker 16 And this is a vast baggage train. It's got all all his siege engines.
It's slower to move. It's got all the pack animals, you know, it's slow.

Speaker 16 And he makes the sort of fatal mistake of putting two of his less experienced legions in charge of this baggage train. And the Parthians think, oh, I know what we're going to do.

Speaker 16 They attack his baggage train. They kill those legions.
And there's absolutely no sort of supplies then for Antony. And he's there besieging, besieging, besieging, but not getting anywhere.

Speaker 16 He blames the Armenian cavalry for letting him down and not actually getting him out of this difficult situation. Probably slightly unfair.
This is kind of bad planning on his part.

Speaker 16 And ultimately, he just has to recede. He has to withdraw.
And as he's withdrawing, his men are absolutely exhausted. They are hungry.
There are no supplies for him.

Speaker 16 And he ends up having to go back to Cleopatra with his tail between his legs. They reconvene near modern Beirut.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 he's thought this is going to be the making of him, but actually the Parthian expedition was the breaking of him.

Speaker 3 Breaking? Well, great line. Great line.
So does Cleopatra welcome him back?

Speaker 3 Because I feel we're now getting to a time where it's almost, even though he suffered this loss, it's still quite a high point in their relationship with this thing called the donations of Alexandria.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 16 So this is a kind of, again, you could see this as a disaster PR-wise,

Speaker 16 or as a very good vision of what

Speaker 16 Antony was envisaging for the future. Possibly both.
I think likely both. So they come together again.
The donations of Alexandria is this really bizarre event.

Speaker 16 He is on a high because he manages in the meantime to score a victory of the Armenians, who he thinks had let him down.

Speaker 3 Three blames, okay, right, yeah.

Speaker 16 So he dresses up as Dionysus.

Speaker 16 As you do, yeah.

Speaker 16 He has a celebration for that. And then you have the donations in the gymnasium.
And it says great open space. He appears, I'd say, probably, almost certainly, in the disguise of Dionysus again.

Speaker 16 Cleopatra's definitely in Isis gear. Again, they love dressing up, these two.
They really love their dressing up. They sit down on two gold thrones and they have their children with them.

Speaker 16 And they've got three children by now because they've

Speaker 16 recommenced their relationships. They've got the twins

Speaker 16 and they've got another son

Speaker 16 who is Ptolemy Philadelphus.

Speaker 3 Okay. Oh, so we're Ptolemy.

Speaker 16 Okay, there you go. Another Ptolemy.
You've got to have another one. And then Caesarean as well.
Caesarean, I think, is about 13 years old at this point.

Speaker 16 And they're on kind of mini thrones, which I think is quite cute.

Speaker 16 And Mark Antony declares that Cleopatra is queen of kings. Caesarean is king of kings.
They are official rulers of Egypt.

Speaker 16 He says that one of the twin sons, the twin son, rather, he has control over Parthia.

Speaker 16 He says that the girl has Cyranica. He gives all these kind of territories to them.
And this is kind of a symbolic thing because, I mean,

Speaker 16 they're not really his to give, if you know what I mean. Like, they're declared to be sort of rulers and have ownership of these places.
And he doesn't, and this is just totally mad.

Speaker 16 I mean, it's pie in the sky. I mean, it really is.
I mean, Octavian is not going to stand for it for one minute.

Speaker 3 Overstepping the mark. And, you know, so and Cyrenaicus, that's kind of Libya today, the Benghazi area, is that real kind of spur in the land.

Speaker 3 So they're kind of showing off their power and seemingly giving territories, calling themselves kings and queens, which must be, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Also, a Roman calling himself, you know, a king or being associated with royalty should have learned something from Julius Caesar there, you feel. But he evidently hasn't.

Speaker 3 How does this result in the complete breakdown of relations with Octavian?

Speaker 16 Octavian loses it. I mean, it's a gift to Octavian, really.
He now kind of goes up Schianti on the kind of propaganda campaign against Antony.

Speaker 16 He goes and retrieves his will, which is kept in the guard of the Vestal Virgins, and he claims to reveal to the people what it says.

Speaker 16 And he says that Antony intends to leave his property to his heirs. His true heirs are going to be Cleopatra and the Egyptian family, essentially, not his Roman-born children.

Speaker 3 And Octavia is out of the picture now, as well, is she?

Speaker 16 Well, he is horrible. I mean, she goes over and tries to sort of reconvene with him.
She does her best, but ultimately he serves her with divorce papers. Wow.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 It feels like Mark Antony has crossed his own Rubicon, or should we call it, crossed his Nile by this point. There's no going back, you know, to then serve divorce papers to Octavia.

Speaker 3 Octavian's already raging and he's just decided, right, well, let's do this then.

Speaker 16 I think there's nothing he can really do. He's outlawed by the Senate.
He seemed to be a threat. They seem to be very very worried in Rome that he might end up sort of ruling Rome from Alexandria.

Speaker 16 And Octavian declares war on Cleopatra, Cleopatra alone. Interesting.

Speaker 3 Okay, okay. And is that how he frames it in the Senate as well? You know, this barbarian queen, this non-Roman queen who's now a threat to the state of Rome?

Speaker 16 Precisely.

Speaker 3 And so, how does it go from there? How do they prepare? for this big climactic war, which is the climax to the Antony and Cleopatra story.

Speaker 16 It is. So we're coming up to the Battle of Actium, Tristan.
I know it's a favourite of yours.

Speaker 3 Well, almost as good as Alexander.

Speaker 16 Yeah, you're quite right.

Speaker 16 So this is going to be like the final showdown between Octavian and Antony. And I say Octavian, I say Marcus Agrippa is really playing the major role here on the kind of Octavian side.

Speaker 16 Antony tries to send Cleopatra away. He says, you know, go to safety.
She refuses. She wants to stay with him for this.
And I think it's not just, you know, love that's binding them at this stage.

Speaker 16 I feel like emotionally they are invested in this together. They're in it together.

Speaker 3 How many years have they now been together? It must be a good five, six, or seven years by this time.

Speaker 16 Oh, yeah, more than that. I think we're coming up for so Tarsus, I think, was 41.
Battle of Actium is happening at the beginning of September 31.

Speaker 3 And take out a couple of years when he's gone back to Italy and reconciled with Octavia for a bit.

Speaker 16 But it's 10 years with breaks.

Speaker 3 Okay, right. And so, Mark Antony, by this time, he's gathered a large army from the eastern portion of the empire.

Speaker 3 Actium, so that's kind of northwest Greece, that kind of the bay almost in Epirus, Arta today, Ambruccia. So, a big land army, but also big navies.

Speaker 3 You'd think with the Ptolemaic support, you know, as mentioned earlier, the Hellenistic superpowers are known for their massive warships, like their sevens, eights, nines, tens.

Speaker 3 So like the dreadnoughts of the ancient world against the Roman ships, you would think that they had the advantage.

Speaker 16 They should have had the advantage. They absolutely should have had the advantage, but they just didn't have the kind of figure that...

Speaker 16 that Octavian does in Marcus Agrippa, because he masterminds this. I mean, he manages to sail over with their fleet.

Speaker 16 He's actually going to be using sort of smaller ships in this, which ends up being panny.

Speaker 16 It ends up being a good idea. He manages to seize some of Antony's supply ships en route, which kind of spooks him.

Speaker 16 They take over Corfu so they can kind of use that as a naval base, which is a good move. And then Marcus Agrippa essentially organises a blockade.

Speaker 16 So you can imagine Actium as being kind of like a crescent-shaped bay.

Speaker 16 And you've got Antony's boats, and then Cleopatra had her own Armada of 60, a kind of reserve armada, which is lined up behind.

Speaker 16 And then you've got these boats and there's basically like a massive standoff between these two sides and you kind of gradually you get sort of firing of missiles between ships.

Speaker 16 They're just kind of waiting for something to happen. And it's ultimately it's one of Antony's side, one of the ships, starts to move forward.

Speaker 16 And that provides the opportunity for Marcus Agrippa to really get things going.

Speaker 16 And what we're really seeing there is kind of like ramming of individual ships. And there's a lot of kind of fire.
But it's slightly murky in the sources.

Speaker 16 sources because when you read the sources, you think this is a total damp squib of a battle.

Speaker 3 Speak for yourself.

Speaker 16 But at the same time, you read that there are 5,000 losses and it's unclear whether that's on Antony and Cleopatra's side or whether that's overall. I mean, but that's quite a lot.

Speaker 16 I mean, that's considerable, right? For a relatively small bay.

Speaker 16 But what happens in the event is that as these two sides are engaging, water opens up between the two and Cleopatra just decides to sort of sail through it and sail off.

Speaker 16 And I mean, in my own head, I kind of think this was always going to be the plan. I just don't think Mark Antony would have let her be part of this had it not been for

Speaker 16 her having like an escape route. So she takes it.
Antony sails after her. He leaves then his ships to be kind of finished off by Octavian.
And at that point, it's game over for them.

Speaker 3 Which is complete opposite to the Mark Antony of earlier years, you know, who's fighting with his men in the mountains of northern Italy or whatever, and he's always there with them.

Speaker 3 And then he just runs off.

Speaker 3 It also screams in a weird kind of way like the Bastle of Salamis or something like that with Queen Artemisia and the like and almost a trope of the powerful queen then making a break for it out of it.

Speaker 3 So I don't know how much we can believe of it or not or I know it's tricky.

Speaker 16 It is tricky. Our accounts of Actium are really problematic and I absolutely think there are shades of Artemisia as she's sort of the sole naval female commander in the Greco-Persian wars.

Speaker 16 And I kind of think that was very much in the historian's mind as they were describing that. But Cleopatra isn't a hero in the same way.
Artemisia was kind of hailed as being a heroine.

Speaker 3 There you go. Well, you know more than I do on that.
And we could nerd out, well, I could nerd out on the military details of Actium, but we certainly, I'll spare you the pain of that for the moment.

Speaker 3 We'll move on to the end. So they don't die at the Battle of Actium, but it's a clear, crushing victory for Octavian and Agrippa.
Mark Antony abandons his army and his navy. They retreat to Egypt.

Speaker 3 And this is almost, you know, famous from Shakespeare. This is the last act of the two together.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and I kind of say Shakespeare isn't a terrible source for this because actually he was taking most of the plot of this part of the play from Plutarch, who was our main source on this.

Speaker 16 And it's very much wrapped in romance and it's very difficult to know exactly what you believe. But I mean, there's a sense of dejection, particularly on Antony's side.

Speaker 16 Earlier in the kind of heyday of their romance, they'd been this kind of great couple in love and they'd had this sort of society of inimitable as they called it.

Speaker 16 They kill that off and become partners in death. This is what we're talking.

Speaker 16 So she, I mean, she, for her part, Cleopatra, tries to raise a navy.

Speaker 16 She tries to raise some ships in the kind of Red Sea region, but every which way is blocked by Octavian and the alliances that he has formed. So it's incredibly difficult.

Speaker 3 In the Red Sea as well, that feels like just out of the way, anyway.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I know, but she kind of has this plan. I kind of think she might have been wanting to go away.
There's some speculation she was wanting to get to India to send Caesarean off there.

Speaker 16 But she just can't get away. So she knows that she's trapped.
So what she does, she traps herself even more.

Speaker 16 She goes to the mausoleum that she was building and she seals herself inside with two of her serving serving women, who are Iras and Carmion.

Speaker 16 And she sends notice to tell Anthony that she's dead. And he hears this, and then he resolves to commit suicide.

Speaker 16 And he can't do it himself, it seems. He asks one of his slaves called Eros to do it for him.
Eros kills himself. Antony then tries to stab himself, but he's not very good at doing it.

Speaker 16 So he fails on that front.

Speaker 16 And ultimately, what we're told is that he is bleeding. Cleopatra hears that he is, you know, in a bad way and asks for him to be brought to her mausoleum, to her tomb.
And it's a two-story mausoleum.

Speaker 16 They've sealed themselves in, so he can't come in through the door. He is wrenched up, lifted in through the window by these three women, and he dies in her arms.

Speaker 3 So they die together in Cleopatra's mausoleum. Where that is, we don't know.

Speaker 16 Bit of mystery.

Speaker 3 Under the sea, I would say. Under the sea, Lochias Peninsula way, probably.
And then, so Cleopatra is the last one standing.

Speaker 16 She's the last one standing. So we know that she outlives Mark Antony, and she is trying very much to bargain with Octavian.
She is determined to save Caesarean.

Speaker 16 She really was trying to get Egypt really to be inherited by her children. At one point, Octavian says, you know, we'll look after you.
It'll be fine for you if you give up Antony.

Speaker 16 This is sort of earlier in the situation. At this point, it just becomes a lot of negotiations between the wolves.

Speaker 16 It becomes so bad on her side.

Speaker 16 She's basically, she knows what Octavian wants, which is to drag her alive as a prisoner, show her off in his great parade that he's going to celebrate afterwards for his victory in Rome.

Speaker 16 That's the last thing she wants. So she tries to commit suicide by cutting herself.
She's stopped by the Romans. She's dragged off to the palace.
And she has to make other plans.

Speaker 16 And I mean, Plutarch tells us that she's been actually investigating poisons and other means of trying to kill herself for some time.

Speaker 16 And the great famous story is that she gets what she wants, she gets the poisonous snakes, an asp is what we're told in the source, under a pile pile of figs in a basket, brought to her door, and then it's a bite that kills her.

Speaker 16 It seems unlikely, doesn't it? Yes. I mean, some historians have tried to say, oh, it must have been a cobra, it might have been another kind of snake.

Speaker 16 I think the most convincing thing we get from this is that after she does actually succumb, there are said to be puncture marks on her arm.

Speaker 16 And I think maybe people thought, looked at those and thought snake. I mean, most kind of rational people probably would have looked at that and thought needle or like fatal injection of some kind.

Speaker 16 I think she probably did poison herself. I think she probably had a supply of poison.

Speaker 3 Fatal injections back then. Can they do that?

Speaker 16 Well, they could inject with such sharp objects.

Speaker 3 Right, okay, yes. And also, if you're handing figs to someone, surely you can smuggle also a knife or something that isn't a poisonous snake beneath the figs, can't you?

Speaker 3 But it's a nice kind of romantic. I was going to say romantic, maybe not romantic.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, no, maybe not that. But do you know what I mean? It's a very memorable end to the story, isn't it? These kind of Romeo and Juliet-esque, you know, kind of dying so close together.

Speaker 3 And yet, they are ultimately the losers. I mean, their legacy has endured down to the present day, thanks largely to Shakespeare, should we say?

Speaker 16 Yes, absolutely. Shakespeare, we have to thank for that.
And as I said, I mean, he's using Plutarch. I mean, I think this is a really nice way to sort of look at the story.

Speaker 16 It's an accessible way of understanding it.

Speaker 3 How do you think Antony and Cleopatra's legacy, whether it endured at all in Roman imagination after 30 BC when Octavian becomes the top dog? He will ultimately become Emperor Augustus.

Speaker 3 Do you think actually their story is popular in Roman times, or it is only later with Shakespeare and now down to the present day that we have it like front and centre when we think ancient history?

Speaker 16 I think people are definitely talking about it, partly because there are efforts then to kind of kill off her dynasty entirely. Caesarean is killed as a threat to Octavian, who's 16 at that point.

Speaker 16 The elder son of Antony, Ditto, the younger ones are actually raised by darling Octavia, you know, Wonder Woman.

Speaker 16 When the daughter grows up, she manages to, she gets married to King Juba, the future king from Mauritania.

Speaker 16 So, you know, there is some future for them, but she, and Cleopatra is the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt. She's the last pharaoh.
And I think this is a huge endpoint for the Romans.

Speaker 16 I think they're talking about her a lot. We're told that actually statues of her are kept up in some areas.
So I think people want to remember her and want to talk about her.

Speaker 16 But from the kind of Roman perspective, it's very much a key victory.

Speaker 3 Daisy, I could ask so many more questions about this, but we have to finish finish here. What a story to do, Antony and Cleopatra.

Speaker 3 It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

Speaker 16 It's my pleasure.

Speaker 3 Well, there you go. There was the one and only Dr.
Daisy Dunn returning to the show to talk through the story, the legendary story, of Antony and Cleopatra.

Speaker 3 I hope you enjoyed the episode, an episode which you can now also watch. on our new Ancients YouTube channel.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients.

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Speaker 3 I'll see you in the next episode.

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