Cleopatra (Radio Edit)

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Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner.

I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster.

And today we are taking a pleasure cruise down the Nile and plunging into the life and afterlife of one of history's most famous women.

That's right, it's Cleopatra coming at you.

And to help us, we have two very special guests.

In History Corner, she's Assistant Professor of Classics and the Anassis Classics Fellow at Newnham College University of Cambridge.

She specialises in the politics of Imperial Rome Rome and classical reception studies and you may remember her from our episode on the rise of Julius Caesar.

Sorry, Julius Kaiser.

It's Dr.

Shushma Malik.

Welcome back Shushma.

Hi Greg, it's lovely to be here.

Thanks for having me back again.

And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning comedian, actor, writer and presenter.

You might have seen her act in The Duchess on Netflix or Alma's Not Normal on the BBC or Watch The Being Funny or Mock the Week, Mo Gilligan's Black British and Funny.

She's got loads going on.

It's the terrific.

Tanya Moore, welcome, Tanya.

You made me sound so great.

Thanks, Greg.

You are great.

Thank you.

I was like, wait, is it me?

Is it my turn?

Yeah, yeah, it's your turn.

Welcome to the show, Tanya.

I'm excited.

What about Cleopatra?

Do you know, I mean, she's really famous as a name, but do you know any of her story?

I know that she's got a great name.

I know that she's a she.

You say Cleopatra, and I think of the girl group.

So that's where we are.

Oh, do you know who?

Yeah, nice reference.

We're coming at you.

That's how I feel.

So, what do you know?

Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast.

This is called the So What Do You Know?

This is where I have a go at guessing what our lovely listener might know about today's subject.

And I'm certain that everyone out there knows Cleopatra as a name.

She's a global icon.

You may be picturing a powerful, glamorous queen famed for her beauty, her affairs with powerful Roman men.

And when it comes to pop culture, there's hardly anything Cleopatra hasn't touched.

She's in paintings, literature, operas, ballet, theatre productions, poetry through the centuries, Shakespeare with his play Antony and Cleopatra.

And as Tanya mentioned, if you're of a certain age, Cleopatra coming at you is a fantastic pop song from the band Cleopatra.

But why is she one of the most famous people in history?

And what else do we need to know about her?

Let's find out.

Where and when is Cleopatra born, and what's the kind of family situation?

So Cleopatra was probably born around 69 or 70 BCE,

probably in one of the palaces in Alexandria, which is in Egypt.

Her father was Ptolemy XII and she was the eldest of five siblings.

She had two sisters, Berenike IV and Arsinoe IV, and two brothers as well, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV.

And even though we know her by the single name, Cleopatra, she's actually the seventh in the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty.

I feel like we should reach out to these ladies and let them know there are other names, you know?

I'm sure somebody wanted to be Sharon.

Somebody wanted to be Sharon.

So, Cleopatra herself is an Egyptian pharaoh, and she may have an Egyptian mother, we don't know, but she's of a Greek dynasty.

What's that about?

So, she comes from the Ptolemaic dynasty, who were Macedonian Greek, and Ptolemy was a commander of Alexander the Great, and so he was running Egypt before the death of Alexander.

And by the time Cleopatra was born, we sort of see the Ptolemaic dynasty being in a period where the rulership of Egypt is becoming a little bit more difficult in relationship to Rome and Rome on the other hand is quite powerful during this period particularly in its Mediterranean setting so it's expanded its empire.

Antonia what do you think Cleopatra's childhood was like?

Are you thinking Disney Princess or are you thinking Game of Thrones serious political violence?

I feel like it's Game of Thrones and maybe it starts as Disney Princess because she's the first girl, firstborn.

You said Shushma?

Eldest girl, yes, yeah.

So the firstborn always starts out in a Disney phase.

So she came and she was doing Disney and then she got a sister and her sister's name isn't Cleopatra.

Then she got angry.

Game of Thrones, done.

That's how it goes.

Good family psychoanalysis there.

Shushma, I think Tanya's right in the Game of Thrones vibes quite quickly supplanting the Disney vibes because it's quite a difficult childhood really isn't it?

She was probably raised in Alexandria until she was about 11 years old we think and she was well educated in what we might call Greek high culture.

We think she spoke probably somewhere around nine languages.

Wow.

She was though part of a court that had plenty of intrigue in it.

In 58 BCE, for example, her father Ptolemy XII left Alexandria for Rome, claiming that he had been exiled.

Her sister, or probably half-sister, if depending on, of course, who her mother is, Berenike IV, was named queen, and she co-ruled with another Cleopatra.

A different Cleopatra?

Good, yeah, okay.

Yes.

Ptolemy returned in about 55 BCE and had his daughter, Berenike IV, executed.

Wow.

So Cleopatra's half-sister has already been murdered by her dad.

So that's a tricky childhood.

How does Cleopatra end up as the queen of Egypt?

Ptolemy XII, when he died, he leaves joint rulership to Cleopatra on the one hand as the eldest, but also his son Ptolemy XIII.

So they co-rule.

And we actually have an inscription from around 52 BCE where Cleopatra VII and her brother Ptolemy XIII are referred to as the new sibling-loving gods.

Wow.

It gets a little bit odder because they're married, Tanya.

Huh?

Yeah.

Wait, hold on.

They're siblings siblings and they're married.

Yeah.

And they're king and queen.

Yeah.

Do they have babies?

No.

Thankfully.

And Ptolemy's probably like 11.

Huh?

What?

So.

Sorry, hold on.

Yeah, a lot of claxons are going off right now.

Yeah, my head's holding a minute.

So, how old is she at this point, marrying the 11-year-old?

17 or 18.

Yep, somewhere around there.

This is how disrespectful men have continued to be to women.

Because at 18, she could never rule it alone.

She had to have a man next to her even if the man didn't know how to go toilet alone yet.

Cleopatra sort of agrees.

For the first couple of years or so she just sort of removes him from all the records.

Good girl.

He's not keen on being pushed into the background, Tanya, and he sort of asserts his power, I guess, when he's about 12 or 13, maybe Shushma, and suddenly he's back in the public record, and this time his name's going first.

Yes, that's right.

So this happens in in somewhere around 50 BCE but in around 49 or 48 BCE Cleopatra and her sister Arsinoe leave Alexandria to raise an army and get the throne back essentially or assert their dominance.

They're not particularly successful though and they have to flee to Syria.

That doesn't last for long either.

So in September, we think around there 58 BCE, the Roman statesman Pompey arrived in Egypt because he'd been beaten by his rival in Rome, Julius Caesar, at the Battle of Pharsalus.

And

that's part of Julius Caesar, yeah, exactly.

Part of the Roman Civil War context.

Pompeius Magnus, if we will

his full name as well, is hoping to find some allies in Egypt.

And instead, actually, the opposite happens and he gets his head chopped off by allies of Ptolemy XIII because they think this will work very well with Julius Caesar.

Wow.

So they just chop his head off and then they send it to Caesar in a basket.

What a lovely hamper.

Wow.

How do you think Julius Caesar takes this?

Do you think he's happy?

Of course he is.

He doesn't have to, he's won the war.

You think he's happy to get the head in the hamper?

He's furious, Tanya.

He is outraged.

He's appalled.

I mean, Shushma, why is he angry?

The point is a Roman citizen has been killed by the Egyptians rather than doing what they should have done, which is sending him back to Caesar for punishment.

Oh.

So Julius Caesar, he wades in.

He shows up in Egypt to come and adjudicate.

I mean, Cleopatra, Ptolemy XIII, I'm going to sort this out.

And this is where we get a really fun story.

Cleopatra needs to figure out a way of getting face to face with Caesar.

She knows she needs to convince him, Tanya.

But she can't get into her old palace because she's in Syria.

And if she goes to the palace, she'll be arrested and killed.

So how is she going to sneak in to meet Caesar?

She must know a back door for her own palace.

You know when there's that one window that isn't locked, but nobody knows unless you know the house that that one window isn't locked.

Find the window, babes.

Stop being weird.

Shushma, I mean, Hollywood will tell us that she rolls out of a carpet, that she's rolled up in a carpet and then unfurled in a carpet.

Now, the Latin or the Greek, perhaps, doesn't say carpet.

Bed sheets, bedding, laundry bag, what are we going with?

Yeah, something like a laundry bag or a bed sheet.

So something where you would have to take it out and it would have to be cleaned and then comes back in.

So it's in a way that people wouldn't be immediately suspectful of.

This is giving Shawshank redemption.

And I love that for all of us.

I love this for all of us.

Thank you.

And she sort of bursts out and goes, ta-da!

Hello, I'm Cleopatra.

Nice to meet you.

He's 52 years old.

She's 19 years old.

Oh.

He's sort of top dog.

She wants to be top dog.

Oh.

There's going to be some chemistry, possibly, Shushma.

Oh.

Yeah, so the idea is that she seduces him.

So before Antonio...

What is happening in history?

That's part of the way that political alliances are made in antiquity and beyond as well.

Caesar, though, then declares that he's going to enforce Ptolemy XII's will, saying they should rule together.

And he reinstates Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra as joint rulers.

What?

So Julius Caesar's plan to solve this civil war between two siblings who hate each other is to just get on with it.

Just co-rule.

After being seduced.

Yeah, so Ptolemy's furious.

Cleopatra and Ptolemy have to sort of share.

And you're not going to be shocked to learn here, Tanya, that Ptolemy orders his forces to attack Caesar.

So his army now goes to war against Caesar's army.

Caesar is trapped in the palace.

There's a naval battle.

It's Caesar versus Ptolemy.

Ptolemy loses.

He tries to escape by jumping into the Nile to to swim away.

And he drowns in his armor.

So Ptolemy XIII, he's dead.

So he's dead at 15.

Ptolemy's out.

He's gone.

That's a pretty intense life, 15 years.

Yes.

That is intense.

Cleopatra has one remaining brother left, Ptolemy XIV.

He's a child.

What do you think she does to him, Tanya?

I'm going to say off with his head.

It's the other way.

She marries him.

What?

Intense!

But exactly at the same time, she's now hooking up with Julius Caesar, who of course is married.

Of course he is.

He's 53 years old.

He's got a wife back in Rome, but he's now having a lovely time on holiday with Cleopatra.

And they get pregnant.

They have a baby.

I mean, the baby's called Ptolemy, obviously.

But the baby has a nickname and the nickname is Caesarean, which means mini Caesar.

Is this a scandal for Caesar?

It's not a huge scandal because he never really officially accepted paternity.

So, although everyone in Rome seems to know that he's had a child with Cleopatra, so we have a letter, for example, from Cicero to his friend Atticus that suggests that Caesarian was widely accepted to be Caesar's child.

Caesar had actually left Egypt by the time Caesarian was born and probably only first met him in about 46 BCE when Cleopatra travelled to Rome along with her husband of the time, Ptolemy XIV.

Aye, aye, aye.

So she needed two child seats.

The Senate, thankfully, did recognise Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV as legitimate rulers of Rome, of Egypt, and also friends to Rome as well.

Is Cleopatra popular in Rome?

Cleopatra has come with her husband, which would be, it would be much more awkward if she hadn't, let's put it that way.

To be honest, it's difficult to know what the long-term repercussions would have been because actually we're heading now into 44 BCE, the Ides of March, and the death of Julius Caesar.

That Roman political assassination in 44 puts a fairly swift end to this slightly awkward dynamic in any case.

Yes, I mean, Caesar is stabbed 23 times, something like that.

Wow.

So, Cleopatra, she has to do a runner from Rome because her boyfriend's just been murdered.

So, she runs back to Egypt.

And within a couple of months, Ptolemy XIV, Brusbund, he's dead too, Shushma, in suspicious circumstances.

Question mark?

Yes, that's right.

Our Roman historians do love a suspicious circumstance when it comes to women and their husbands.

So, one of our historians, Josephus, who is a historian of the mid-first century CE, so about a hundred years or so later than these events are happening, he says that Cleopatra poisoned her husband.

But this really is a very familiar accusation, so we need to read it with that in mind as well.

But Cleopatra did make her son, Caesarean, a co-ruler at this point.

This is also about her own protection, because despite everything she's done, the reason why she, you know, probably married Ptolemy XIV is it is very difficult for a woman to rule alone, quite simply, in antiquity.

So making her infant son a co-ruler sets her up as a kind of regent figure.

She's like 25 at this point.

She's not old.

Wow.

She's really a young woman.

She's only 25.

That's a lot for like mid to late 20s.

Mid to late 20s now.

They're just trying to figure out how to wear their eyebrows.

Do you know what I mean?

It's a very different energy.

She's done a lot of work.

Do you know?

We started off a bit rocky.

We were chopping off people's heads and marrying children.

But now

we're locked in.

The path is clear.

She's mature.

I love this.

Yeah.

There's the legacy of the glamour.

I mean, Cleopatra is renowned through history for her glamour.

Cleopatra later wins a bet with her future Roman boyfriend, Mark Antony.

The bet is who can host the most expensive meal?

Do you want to guess what Cleopatra eats that is so pricey?

Another sibling.

I mean, at this point.

The story goes, she has a pearl earring that is priceless, and she dissolves it in a glass of wine.

She glugs it down, wins the bet.

And we've mentioned Mark Antony, so I guess we should do this romance now.

Come on.

How are they hooking up?

Who's is contacting who?

What's the opening line?

Mark Antony is a Roman politician in this period, and he's also very famous for being a particularly effective military commander.

And in the aftermath of Caesar's death, he's one of the three men who share power in Rome.

This is a relationship known as the triumvirate.

And those three men are Octavian, who is the adopted son of Julius Caesar, and another man named Marcus Lepidus, who is the least famous, I suppose, of the three.

No one cares about him.

And Octavian, of course, is the one who's going to go on and become Augustus, the first emperor.

So, spoiler alert, sorry.

Antony needed to know basically where the support of Egypt lay and whether he could count on it.

And she also wanted to impress him because of ongoing Roman protection.

So, according to Plutarch, she travelled by pleasure boat, dressed up to evoke Aphrodite, the goddess.

And when Antony invited her to dinner, she refused, instead requesting that he should join her.

Oh, power move.

Oh,

Cleo.

I love this.

It's giving, he went down on one knee and she was like, no, get up.

And she went down on one knee.

I love that.

But we get a sense here that there's passion.

This is not a kind of boring relationship of necessity.

And what do they do in their free time?

How are they hanging out?

So again, this is something that Hollywood depictions of Anthony and Cleopatra, of course, really like to take hold of and run with.

The idea that they were genuinely in love.

So they spend a lot of time together in Alexandria, enjoying things like plays and music, dance as well, philosophy, hunting.

They also have twins, Cleopatra Seleni and Alexandra Helios in 40 BCE.

So Seleni means moon and Helios means sun, right?

Yes.

That's so nice.

No more Cleopatra's.

We like that as well.

Well, Cleopatra Seleni.

Ah, damn it.

Don't break with the brand, Tanya.

Come on.

Ah, sorry, sorry.

Okay, so they've got twin kids.

So they've got twins, a girl and a boy.

Which is good for dynastic aspect to have not only Cesarean, but also the twins as well.

And also, Mark Antony, he's got himself in some hot water because he's married to Octavian's sister.

He's married to the sister of his sort of the guy who he needs to keep on side.

But he's also having a two-timing relationship with Cleopatra.

Cleo doesn't mind stealing people's men.

She's out of the world.

And then Antony's off off to have some wars with the parthians in uh i guess what we'd call iran now persia that kind of world it's a disaster right shushma it is a disaster but it's okay because he runs home to alexandria and they have another child with cleopatra and they call this one tanya cleopatra the 57th

they call it ptolemy oh why do i keep getting this wrong

What am I not checking into?

They call it Ptolemy Philadelphus.

So

like his granddad, his great-granddad.

So another Ptolemy.

So that's five Ptolemies in one episode.

A new record for us.

Hooray for us.

So Mark Antony is leading a cushy double life.

He's got two women either side of the Mediterranean.

Cleopatra in Egypt, Octavia back in Rome.

He's married to his buddy's sister.

It's very awkward and tense.

He's cheating on her.

He's got two sets of kids either side of the Mediterranean.

He's making enemies back in Rome.

And I'm surprised, Shushma, because Cleopatra, up to this point, is super savvy, super smart in playing the game and knowing how to, you know, keep everyone on side.

But here she's tied herself to Mark Antony, who is losing all his support back in Rome.

This is going to go wrong, right?

Yes.

I guess the important thing, though, is that Antony and Cleopatra try and make it seem like things are going well.

Mark Antony has a triumphal parade and orchestrate an elaborate ceremony that is tied to this new sort of dynastic element with the children.

This is called the Donations of Alexandria.

So basically, what it means is that Cleopatra was declared the queen of kings.

Her status is put in relation to her son Caesarian in particular.

Caesarian, who's now about 13 years old, is declared as joint ruler and her other children receive titles and territories.

But there are still these growing tensions between Antony and Octavian.

And actually our sources tend to blame these on Cleopatra in part.

She has seduced Antony and she has caused him to forget his Roman values.

He's a Roman citizen, he should know better, and so forth.

So, this is the root of a lot of the sort of negative stories we hear about Cleopatra.

By about 33, end of 33 BCE, the triumvirate was pretty much over, and Antony was politically exiled now away from Rome.

And that's quite important because Octavian is in Rome.

He's able to influence from the centre, whereas Antony is in Alexandria.

And that's a very big part of the political rhetoric that Octavian can use to turn essentially the Roman people off of Antony and make them loyal to him.

Yeah, and now it's going to go really rather wrong because Octavian is like, you're going to be married to my sister?

And Mark Antony's like, oh, sorry.

Don't worry, I'll sort it.

I'll divorce her.

And he's like, no, that's not what I was looking for.

Yeah, that wasn't the angle.

No, so he dumps the sister, shacks up with Cleopatra.

They go on a lovely tour of Greece and go and see the sights.

And Octavian is like, fine.

Let's go to war then.

So now Rome is at war with Egypt and we get the very famous battle in history called the Battle Battle of Actium, which sounds like a yogurt that's good for digestion,

but it's not.

Actium is a big naval battle, and it just goes really wrong, Shushma.

It goes wrong for Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

The Romans are coming for them.

It's end game now, and obviously Shakespeare does this very famously, but how does this famous love story end, tragically?

Yeah, so I'm a bit concerned because Tanya looks like she's a little bit traumatized.

I'm emotional.

We've been on a journey, guys.

We've been on a journey.

She started out as a princess.

She ended up being a warrior.

Now she's going to die a princess.

That's emotional.

Oh, well, I'm sorry.

But

in about 30 BCE, so just after the Battle of Actium, Octavian decided that he was going to attack Egypt directly.

So even though Antony was sort of ready to counter this and was planning something quite ambitious, most of Cleopatra's ships really surrendered.

Cleopatra went to her mausoleum and sealed herself inside.

And again, our sources for these things are quite a lot later, but Plutarch and Cassius Dio, who are both writing quite a long time after these events happened, they report that she told her attendants to tell Antony that she was dead.

And this report prompted Antony to stab himself.

It obviously goes very sadly because Antony doesn't die instantly.

He regains consciousness.

Cleopatra has him brought into the mausoleum to die by by her side.

She stays in the tomb grieving for a week.

Octavian shows up and they drag her out through a window and take her prisoner.

What happens now for Cleopatra?

Cleopatra is allowed to sort of oversee Antony's funeral arrangements, but she also falls ill.

Octavian did say that Cleopatra would let her live, but that would mean, of course, going to Rome as a prisoner of war, which would mean going as part of a triumph, which is a very, very humiliating process, parading her as a prisoner of war, and particularly, you know, a royal prisoner of war as well.

So she goes back to the palace, sends a letter to Octavian.

We're told she has a bath, she gets dressed, she eats her last meal, and then she locks herself away with two attendants and she dies by her own hand.

And her attendants then make sure that she's properly laid out for when she's found.

And Octavian then orders her to be interred in her mausoleum with Antony.

Yeah, I mean, her attendants also and their own life as well.

So it's very sad.

So Mark Antony has died by suicide, Cleopatra has died by suicide, and so have her attendants.

It's a tragic end to the story.

It's a lot to take in, Tanya.

And she's only 30.

Yeah, about 40, just coming up to 40.

Okay.

Well, I couldn't even bring maths to the podcast.

Sorry.

For many historians, we would classify this as the end of dynastic Egyptian history.

3,000 years of pharaohs, and Cleopatra's the last.

A nuance window!

It's time now for the nuance window.

This is where Tanya and I let Professor Shushmer talk for two uninterrupted minutes about something we need to know.

So when you're ready, could we have the nuance window, please?

So one of the most fascinating things I think about Cleopatra is her legacy, the idea of Cleopatra in the myth that she has become, the idea of this femme fatale seductress.

Her name becomes synonymous with figures from history like Matahari or famous women who are seen as double crosses and temptresses and seducers.

And we really need to be quite aware that these stories are based on foundations that have to do with trying to understand how a woman like Cleopatra was able to wield the kind of power that she did.

She does have, of course, the roots through marriage with different members of the Ptolemies and then also ruling as a regent for her son.

But she really was quite extraordinary in the kind of power and the kind of role in Mediterranean history that she was able to wield.

And when our sources are trying to make sense of this, they often want to figure this woman as being something extraordinary and superhuman.

And that really has made its way into the kinds of myth that we tell about her and the kinds of ways that we conceptualize female power in

male-dominated scenarios.

We're used to understanding Rome as only inhabited by very powerful men, and here we have this very powerful woman.

So, part of the way that I think when we look at a film like Liz Taylor's Cleopatra or any of the representations that we have, we just need to think about how this woman would have had a very difficult life, was in a position of considerable power, but was trying, probably it seems, to do what was best for Egypt.

And again, possibly as someone who was part of the Egyptian culture and heritage, not only through being a queen of that region, but possibly a descendant from people in those regions as well.

So, this is really an important story about how we understand women in power in patriarchal societies.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Shushma.

That's fascinating.

Tanya, you started coming in not knowing anything about Cleopatra.

Where do you stand on her now?

I feel like she's my sister.

Actually, no, because I'm like there.

She's my neighbour.

Very careful being Cleopatra's sister.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, thank you so much, Tanya.

And thank you, Shushma, as well.

And listener, if after today's episode, you want more from Shushma, you can check out our episode on the rise of Julius Kaiser, Julius Caesar to you and me.

And for more Egyptian pharaohs, we've got episodes on Hatshepsut, another fantastic queen, and of course, Ramesses the Great.

What a guy he was.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with friends, make sure to subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode.

All that's left for me to say is a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner.

We have the amazing Shushma Malik from the University of Cambridge.

Thank you, Shushma.

Thanks so much, Greg.

And in Comedy Corner, we have the truly terrific Tanya Moore.

Thank you, Tanya.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we unroll another historical carpet to see what falls out.

But for now, I'm off to go and marry my brother and then maybe poison him.

Sorry, Seb.

Bye.

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