Cleopatra Lecture

okay well good afternoon everybody I gonna have to apologize I didn't make enough handouts this week because I was going by last week's attendance I made too many last week so I didn't make enough this week so if there are if there are couples here who can share that might be so this week is Cleopatra but as always I have to make up from what I miss last weekend hatshepsut both in omissions and I have to make some Corrections last week was kind of difficult for me as you know because it was Egyptian ancient history which can be fairly difficult because so much of it is contested and anyway so there are a few things I wanted to clear up or correct I didn't make clear who the parents of Thutmose the third was so if I didn't make that clear it was Tut most the second the one who died fairly early that hatshepsut s-- husband he was the father and one of his other wives named Isis was the mother also I didn't clear up who what whatever happened to that ship suits daughter Neff Fuhrer pronouncing that right and I even told you I was going to clear that up at the beginning of the lecture somebody asked me and I said well I'll talk about that later and I didn't so so to clear that up we don't know what happened to her so I'm hoping that clarifies it for you but so there are hints that she grew up and that she could have married Tut most the third some people believe that's possible and that she bore him a son but we don't know we know that she grew up at least into her late teens and that she died either somewhat just before or somewhat just after hatshepsut died and that's the extent and even that's it's all very sketchy so there was also a question as to why men are depicted as black and women are depicted as tan in the ancient Egyptian pictures and so I was I was looking into that and someone had said that it was because they believe men were out in the Sun more and should be darker and women were not and some Egyptologists believe that others will say that it's more a spiritual or symbolic darkening rather than an actual darkening of the skin so that's that clears that up - I also have to make a correction because I was calling all of the the gods just gods and not gods and goddesses and somebody afterwards corrected me on that night back to you you're absolutely right I was calling them all gods and I shouldn't have there were gods and there are goddesses so I apologize for that also I wanted to what I left out I wanted to say last week on utmost the third when he grew up after that chefs who died he was a great military leader for Egyptologists today they consider him the Napoleon of Egypt because of his campaigns in conquering that he did of the nations around him and finally it was also pointed out by the way I really do appreciate those of you who make comments and you know point out things that I've either left out or have been mistaken on and I take that to heart night I try to make corrections as necessary so um it was pointed out to me that Hatshepsut was only one among many Pharaohs whose descendants or the Pharaohs after her erased her name from the from the written records she's not the only Pharaoh who was who they tried to erase most famously the words Akhenaten some generations down who tried to change the entire religion of Egypt into a monotheistic religion and after he died they tried to erase him as well so she was not the only one she although she probably was the one that they erased because she was a woman so okay enough of hatshepsut now on to Cleopatra you will notice on your handout and I again I apologize I'll try to get the right number next week you know you guys show up in in numbers that change from week to week so I should have known Cleopatra was going to be more popular than that chef suit so anyway on your handout you have a picture of this is a recreation computer-generated recreation of what they believe at chef suits would look like [Laughter] thank you okay I gotta get this straight so the Cleopatra Cleopatra so this is a recreation of what they believe Cleopatra would look like from the coins that were left from her day these three coins that you see are the depictions of Cleopatra they are the only depictions that were made during her lifetime that still survived today there were many statues and busts of her none of them survived but the coins do now these are not the only coins that we still have they're just the ones that I have printed out here for you so anyway if you look at the picture it looks like it look like it could be a realistic depiction although one picture that I saw someone thought that she would look more like Britney Spears although I don't think so there there are there are other coins that show her later in life where's her face is a lot fuller she has gained a lot more weight and so some will say that she her face is a lot not so thin as it is in this depiction so anyway going on to the bibliography a lot of very good books on Cleopatra this first one dawn Nardo is an editor of a short book that is it compiles several different historians that depict different episodes of her life and put together in this one book so it's it's her complete life from different historians portraying different parts of her life and so it's a nice short read and if you want something really quick this is a pretty good one this next one Diana Preston Cleopatra in Antony you notice she switched the names around to give Cleopatra precedence and you know with good reason she was an amazing person amazing leader a very good read this is this is one that I probably recommend best as a nice summer read because it's it's it's a quick very entertaining book the next one Lucy Hughes Hallett Cleopatra Histories dreams and distortions as the title suggests it's not just about her life but about all the different lives that other people have depicted her living Cleopatra is in many many stories throughout the ages the past 2,000 years she's a very prominent name that lots of people wanted to give their input and create myths and legends about her and so this is not just her life but of what others have thought of her down through the ages Stacy Schiff Cleopatra this one is an excellent book as well Stacy Schiff has won the Pulitzer Prize several years ago for a biography that she had written about someone else but she's a very good author she expands on a lot of things that that help you understand the times in which Cleopatra lived and she's very good at that she has a long description of the city of Alexandria and what that was like in Cleopatra's day among other things so I would I recommend that as well this last one Michael grant if you are at all into ancient history you have seen or have a book by Michael Grant anytime you go into a used bookstore and you go into the section of ancient Greece and Rome you will see Michael Grant's works is the most prolific of the popular writers of of ancient Greece in Rome you will see his books all the time and he's of the books that I have here he's the most academic probably the most scholarly and the one that these other authors derive a lot of information from he's one of the standards of ancient Greece and Rome and now I'm gonna put in a couple of fiction works here I've talked about Colleen McCullough before and you know her from The Thorn Birds right a great author this is the last volume of the seven volume series the masters of Rome and very good she's just a very entertaining author very scholarly as well this last one I haven't read the whole book I've read parts of it got a long nine hundred sixty four pages well how many of you are familiar with this at all there they made a TV series I think out of this as well the memoirs of Cleopatra as if Cleopatra had written her memoirs of her life and it's a good entertaining read if you like historical fiction I would for me it's I disagree a number of things that she portrays Cleopatra as being a but much more compassionate person than I think she actually was but other than that it's not a bad read I'm I'm gonna start doing something new with these lectures and I'm gonna add in movies that I'm familiar with and for those of you who have been to my other lectures you'll know that this is one of my favorite all-time movies with Elizabeth Taylor Rex Harrison Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall who also I really appreciate as an actor 1963 if you haven't seen this one it's a good long movie and it is but one of the most lavish productions it lost a lot of money I understand because it was very very expensive but wow what a movie there's so much to this next one this was a play that was written by George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra that was made into a movie back in 1945 I happened to catch this I had no idea this was even a movie I caught it on Turner Classic Movies and it's a very entertaining movie I really liked it it has very little historical value though so you watch this only for entertainment purposes but it has get to my favorite actors Claude Rains who is in Casablanca as the police captain the French police captain and also Vivian Leigh who we know from gone with the wind very good very good oh but I wanted to say also one of the things about this that makes it so historically off-base is Vivian Lee portrays a very meek weak shy character that that Caesar helps develop into a a strong person but that was just nothing not even clearly not even nearly close enough to the real thing and of course we have Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra I happen to have this version of it with Richard Johnson and Jack Janet Suzman she portrays Cleopatra I think very well she has a very powerful voice to her how many of you have seen this one anybody this was on televisions back in 1974 again historically it's not the best it's it's very typical that the story of Antony and Cleopatra for romance purposes is portrayed in a way that just is not really not the way it really happened and we'll get to that but but of course you don't watch you don't read Shakespeare because of its historical accuracy it's it's the literature that's so great about Shakespeare okay so going back to ancient the ancient Roman Empire the Egyptians the Greeks and the Romans Egypt at this time had been run by Greeks for hundreds of years Alexander the Great conquered Egypt back in 332 BC he took it from the Persians who had been running it it was a very quick and easy campaign at the time and he created Greek cities now practice no practice told Maius praetorium and of course Alexandria the greatest of them all on each of these four cities where it was primarily Greek the Greeks came over and populated these cities and pretty much took control and and so the first of the Ptolemies became king in 304 BC and then we have all the way down to told me the 12th who was Cleopatra's father who ruled from 80 to 51 at that time Rome during this time became the power in ancient in the ancient Mediterranean and if you were another power in the Mediterranean you either were destroyed like Carthage or you took protection from Rome those were your choices at the time the the ptolemies could see the direction the winds were blowing and Ptolemy the 12th having difficulty at home decided that he needed Rome's protection from his own people and so he went to Rome and pleaded with them to be a client state he actually paid them to come and protect him and on his throne so that he could rule Egypt under the protection of the Roman Empire so he kept his throne he he was still in power he was still the king and Egypt was somewhat independent but it was under the protection of Rome and the amount of money that he paid it was six thousand talents which was more than the annual income of the entire Egyptian nation and it wasn't something that he could just give right away it was something that was he had to make payments over over several years and he did not finish by the time he was dead so the Roman perceptions of Egypt Egypt being in the East was considered very exotic I was a foreign strange it was both attractive and repulsive in many ways it was rich and it was richer than Rome because of the the Nile Valley and the trade from Egypt Egypt was a more wealthy nation than Rome itself and one of the sayings that I really like it's a shame to lose a risk to conquer and a headache to govern that's how the Roman leaders thought of that and because again of the Nile Valley they provided a 1/3 of the grain to Rome that Rome desperately needed as Rome grew and grew the most prominent city in Egypt was the Greek city I looked up Alexandria it was the greatest city in the Mediterranean in more ways than one the population depending on who you're reading it varied anywhere from 300 thousand up to a million I think most historians will guesstimate around five hundred thousand they were known as very industrious people and very contentious as well and we're talking about the Greeks ethnic Greeks not the the Egyptians themselves so some of the products that they made papyrus was one of the biggest paper being a very expensive commodity they produced it and made quite a fortune in Egypt for that linen incense and glass glass glass blowing by the way is something that was developed by the Greeks round about this time so the city of Alexandria could be a very luxurious city there are many baths literally hundreds of theaters gymnasiums temples shrines and synagogues there was a very significant population of Jews in Alexandria at this time and they had automatic doors hydraulic lifts treadmills and coin-operated machines the most advanced city possibly in the world not comparing the Chinese at this time which may have been more advanced but certainly in the Mediterranean world Alexandria was the most advanced and as I say glassblowing that was developed at this time to a great art form where they could weave into it gold and silver and other pictures that they could make and of course Alexandria was known for the great library with possibly up to word upwards of a hundred thousand Scrolls there and then the great lighthouse which was built a couple hundred years previous to our time one of the great wonders of the world so here is I wanted to get you a good picture of Alexandria and where it sits in Egypt so here's Egypt here is Alexandria you'll notice it's on a kind of a peninsula a spit of land in the Delta and then closer up this is what Alexandria would look like it's about four miles long and you have shows you where the library is the great Harbor the the lighthouse up here and I have that on your handout as well and finally we have the Roman Empire something we should all be familiar with the Mediterranean area and here's Egypt and Alexandria right on the coast there now I'm going to give kind of a brief overview of what we believe Cleopatra was like as a person she was not known ever in her day as being exceptionally beautiful that was not her allure at all it was the charm of her presence it was her speaking voice it was the force of her personality that enchanted so many people at the time so these are some of the quotes that Plutarch had made of her that he had read about a peculiar force of character which pervaded her every word in action it was a delight to hear her speak the charm of her presence was irresistible and that's something that it would be really nice if Hollywood could pick up on that not an easy thing to do for any writer or actor to to portray a character with a force of personality and a charm like that Elizabeth Taylor notwithstanding and again here's some images of Cleopatra there are other coins as well that depicted her but these some of the most popular and again the coins are our only indication of what she looked like nothing else remains one of the things I wanted to point out in this one she's wearing pearls pearls were the great extravagance of the day they were the diamonds or the rubies of their day and if you had pearls you were a rich person because they were very very expensive and she loved them there was there is a story that's apocryphal it couldn't have happened but she was known for being a very extravagant person giving out very lavish gifts and wasting money on a grand scale just because she could and one of these stories was that she was with Mark Antony and he would comment about what beautiful pearls she had and she said oh that's nothing watch this and she had a glass of vinegar put a pearl in it very expensive pearl pearl dissolves and then she drinks it down that could not have happened first of all drinking vinegar is a pretty awful thing to do secondly pearls don't dissolve like that in vinegar we know because people have tried yeah but anyway she was known for her extravagance the lavish parties that she would give to as a sign of how powerful she was and that's not there was a very common thing for a leader of a country a king or a queen of Pharaoh to do to demonstrate to the world how powerful and rich they are so going back to our time there was a civil war in Egypt because after Ptolemy the 12th died in 51 BC he left Cleopatra by the way someone else pointed out to me that this is Cleopatra the seventh I was not going to put Cleopatra the seventh as a title because that would just confuse everybody or many people because in our minds how many Cleopatra's are there there's only one Cleopatra right well she was Cleopatra the seventh officially but in our hearts she's the only one so once told me the 12th died he has Cleopatra who's 18 years old and her half-brother told me the 13th who is 10 years old to to rule as Co rulers now she was 18 in the eldest and she was expected to be a ruler but according to the traditions of Egypt she could not rule alone as a woman and so she had to have a husband and of course as we know you know even the Greeks took on many customs of the Egyptians over time because the Egyptians the Egyptian Way was for brothers and sisters to marry to keep all the the royal bloodline pure and so she married or she was to marry her ten-year-old brother and they were to rule together as Co rulers well since both of them were fairly young in Cleopatra after all she was a woman could not rule there was a Regency council to take charge and Cleopatra being a very intelligent and very forceful person even at 18 was not going to stand for it and so there was a split in the council and Cleopatra was was wanting to be the ruler and she wasn't going to let her ten-year-old son or the thank-you 13 year old half-brother fiance have any say along with the finest who was the leader of the Regency so there was a big split she knew that she her life was in danger she fled Egypt at the time there's also a civil war in Rome Julius Caesar had marched on Rome and was going after Pompey to be the dictator of Rome Caesar defeated Pompey and Parnassus Pompey flees to Egypt since Egypt is a friendly nation expecting asylum there and he was promptly killed Caesar arrived a few days after not very happy that they had killed Pompey they thought they were doing Caesar a favor but but he was not happy anyway so Cesar now arrives he's defeated his major rival and now he's planning on settling things in Egypt he has on the one hand you have the finest who is the Regency council leader and and Ptolemy at this time now he's 13 this is a couple years later and you have Cleopatra once he arrived he wanted to get everybody together to settle this he had no particular interest in who was going to be the leader but he wanted it settled so he sent a message to Cleopatra for her to come back Cleopatra I wanted to come back but knew that the armies were against her so she snuck in the the legend was that she had wrapped herself in a carpet and had a one of heard the servants a friend bring her in and unraveled her in front of Caesar it was probably more like some sort of burlap sack rather than a carpet but carpets close enough for Hollywood and so in any case she's 21 now she did sneak in past the guards and past the armies and she presented herself to Caesar and Caesar was immediately smitten with the charm of her presence he was and they say Caesar is not an easy man to surprise he is usually the one who does the surprising of others especially out on the battlefield he's the type of guy you just could not predict what he was going to do next and when a woman comes and surprises him it was a big deal for him and he he took to her almost immediately his range will tell you that once she presented herself to him they probably slept together that night and another thing Cleopatra one of the myths about her was that she was very sexually active very lascivious sort of woman and slept with lots of different men no historian will tell you that that's true she probably slept with a grand total of two men in her life and we know who those are so anyway she most likely if it wasn't that night it was very soon they slept together and she lost her virginity to Caesar we're on shortly after meeting you now one of the big questions that historians ask did she love Caesar or Antony or was she just playing the survival game was she just trying to get close to the greatest power in order to save her own skin of course we don't know by all appearances both Caesar and Antony were both very struck with her so it's not I don't think it's a far stretch to think that she loved them as well so in any case Caesar comes back and when Ptolemy who's 13 years old sees that Cleopatra has snuck in and gotten to Caesar first he threw a grand temper tantrum and stomped out into the streets screaming that it's not fair that Cleopatra's usurping him and and the people who generally speaking sided with Ptolemy rose up and were started came close to a riot until Caesar sent the legions out and settled it down a bit but in ink anyway so Caesar got them together and said look this is the way Ptolemy the 12th set it up you are to be Co rulers you are to be married and you are to rule together and that's the way we're going to do it and so it's interesting that Caesar generally took Cleopatra's side from the beginning even though he was putting them together as Co rulers he was really siding with Cleopatra and some historians will take this as another sign that he really favored her he loved her at least he cared more about her than Ptolemy because both the military and the bureaucracy and generally the people favoured Ptolemy over Cleopatra and Caesar was going against the grain in that way but that's what he was going to stick with and so Pathan is not liking this situation he calls for the Egyptian army to come and attack Caesar has about 4,000 troops there's about 20,000 troops there in Alexandria or on the outskirts ready to attack and so Caesar was in a blind use he was in a sense trapped in Alexandria he had the palace to to hold up in and to fight until reinforcements came but it was a very touch-and-go situation for some time one of the first things he did since he was bottled up in the harbor with many Egyptian ships he went out and he had them burned and as we know that caught many other things on fire in the harbor historians will tell you now that we do not believe that the Great Library was burned to the ground at that time there was a warehouse that probably was attached to the library or close to it that burned but not the library itself the library itself was destroyed a few hundred years later so how that came about I'm not really sure but in any case the library most likely did not burn at that time so here's Caesar sent for reinforcements but he's trapped and he needs to kind of play a delaying game one of the other things that kill us who was the general fighting against him did that was fairly clever was to dump salt water in the water system so that they had nothing to drink and Caesars men panicked thinking this is the end we've got nothing we need water Caesar said dig a hole we will get water so they dug a hole and sure enough they had fresh water so eventually the the reinforcements arrived under Mithridates and these were reinforcements that were not Roman soldiers they were a collection of soldiers that were allied to Rome from various countries one of which was Judea Judea at the time wanted to make good with Caesar Judea had been conquered by poppy who was Caesar's who was in power before Caesar and Caesar conquered Pompey and so the Jews were appreciative of that and so they wanted to they wanted to be on Caesars good side and they helped out in this instance so this the depiction of the Library of Alexandria which probably did not burn at this time so when the reinforcements arrived Caesar was sneaks out of and joins the troops he defeats the Egyptians in a great pincer movement and Ptolemy drowned in the Nile now for Caesar when he found out that Ptolemy who was trying to escape drowned in the Nile he immediately said go get his body now dredge him up find him I want his body there basically two reasons for that one to prove that he was actually dead so nobody could pretend as often happened somebody else become along he said I am Ptolemy who you thought was dead I am here to raise another army the other reason was that there was a belief amongst the Egyptians that if you drowned in the Nile you become a God he did not want that to happen he did not want any rallying point for the Egyptians yes as far as we know it was an accident it could have been assassination but it's most likely in the panic of him trying to escape it was an accident yes yes yeah yes they did find him and displayed him to the multitude saying here he is he is dead I want you all to know that so Cleopatra became pregnant at this time with Caesar's child there are some who have speculated that Cleopatra was pregnant with some other man's child the reason for that is that Caesar we know had only two children one was his daughter that was born something like 36 years before and then his son with Cleopatra so for a man who was well known to be a womanizer who has married three times people question well why is it that we don't have any other children of Julius Caesar and so it's a fair question the one the main argument against that is that if Cleopatra slept with another man at this same time it would have been well known there's not something that would it would have been easily concealed by anybody so since we have no record or no evidence of any other man close to Cleopatra we're pretty sure that it was Caesar's child so anyway there's still the issue of Cleopatra ruling Egypt she needed to be married to a royal personage and and in that and then be co-ruler fortunately she had another younger brother now half brother now Ptolemy's the 14th who's 12 years old and she marries him and now she could be the ruler of Egypt and and Caesar saw to it that she was in charge at that point so Ptolemy the 12th was Cleopatra's father he also had other children from other women and so that's the 13th and the 14th yes kinda like George Foreman yeah she she fled somewhere on the outskirts of Egypt probably around Syria or Judea or just on the outskirts in the Sinai somewhere yeah so then there's this famous pleasure cruise that Caesar took with Cleopatra up the Nile in one of the very famous the Egyptians were well known for their luxurious pleasure boats a pleasure barges that could be fairly large for the time and so they took this trip probably took a couple of weeks up the Nile and the Hollywood version is that it was just a luxury cruise it was not if you are the ruler of a country it was very important that you that the people see you and are impressed by your grandeur and this is what Cleopatra would have to do every so often the kings of of Europe would call it a progress and we'll talk about that in the weeks to come that if you are a king or a queen periodically usually once a year you take a progress through your lands so that the people can see you this is the same thing here both Caesar and Cleopatra along with the Roman legions took a trip up the Nile to impress the population of their power and grandeur so that people are duly impressed and follow the rules [Music] probably kept off to the side and just displayed for a moment here he is your guy yes so yeah very good question the 400 ships were probably both Roman and some Egyptian Egyptians at this time were well known to be great shipbuilders and as we'll see later on they built them at a prodigious rate they had a great industry of shipbuilding at the time but in any case that's what I'm going by is what I read so that's a that's a good question though if so many of them were burned I imagine that the 400 is has come down to us by some report it may be exaggerated it may include smaller type vessels as well but in any case that's the number that had been reported and here's an example of one of the pleasured barges that might have looked like so Cesar after another campaign in North Africa he goes back to Rome he sends for Cleopatra Cleopatra joins him in Rome and she stays with him until he's assassinated a year and a half later so she spent quite some time and it was very important for her in order for her to keep her power she knows and a lot of people in Rome knew that Egypt was always kind of an iffy proposition we love them and we hate them we need them and we don't like needing them and so anybody who is in power had to play up to Rome and so her being attached to Caesar was very important and her going to Rome to impress the Senate was also very important she stayed at one of Caesars many estates on the other side of the Tiber and many senators came to visit and get to know her during this time Caesar celebrates his great triumphs over various other territories Cleopatra's sister I have not mentioned who had met who had joined the rebellion against her was brought in James as well and she was she was marched in one of the triumphs she was not killed however she was allowed to live and sent to a kingdom in Asia Minor for the time being and the Senate duly impressed with Cleopatra reaffirmed the Treaty of alliance between Egypt and Rome at this time that Julius Caesar wants to add on to the the forum the forum Romanum famous in Roman history is approximately 130 feet by 50 or so it was very crowded and Julius Caesar thought we need to expand this largely for his own benefit but it was in need of expansion and so he expanded it and now he has the the forum Julian and in that forum there's always temples and shrines he built a temple of venus and had a statue of venus and next to it he put a statue of Cleopatra which to the Romans was a very remarkable thing to do that is not something a Roman generally would do to have a human being statue up there in the same temple as the god this was something that was common with Egyptians however and so he was following in the tradition of Egypt where a pharaoh would put a statue of himself with the gods of the Egyptians and here's a picture of the forum and then sadly Caesar was assassinated in his will he left nothing to Cleopatra he could not leave anything to Cleopatra for the same reason he could not have married her he was a Roman you cannot marry an Egyptian if you are a Roman nor can you leave anything in your will to an Egyptian if you are Roman so Cleopatra was left with nothing from Caesar and now yes Greek yeah yeah descended from the ptolemies who had conquered Egypt yes she is Greek ethnically speaking so yes gotta wait for me to get there so no Romans could only marry Romans now that's not to say that it didn't happen it did but it wasn't supposed to happen just like in Egypt if you were ethnically Greek you were not supposed to marry ethnically Egyptian okay yes yes they always had the choice they didn't have to name everybody Ptolemy but they liked the name and so they wanted to continue the tradition it wasn't like it was necessary so Cleopatra for many people Cleopatra was not a very popular person even when she was obviously with Caesar Caesar was adored mostly Cleopatra was not she was seen as the seductress the temptress who had seduced the great leader Julius Caesar by many people and so she was safe as long as Caesar was alive Caesar now is dead and she's no longer safe and she knew it so she leaves Rome goes back to Egypt and somewhat conveniently told me the 14th died and I say that for her it was convenient because like her other siblings all of whom eventually either died one way or another or she had assassinated she didn't trust him she believed that he would grow up like the others and there would be difficulties raising him her husband and there would be a split and she would no longer be in charge this is of course speculation because we don't know that she killed Ptolemy but historians generally believed that it's way too convenient that at this time he died so most likely she had him poisoned so he died and now she can marry her son so she would now still be the ruler she is the one in charge and she was married to someone of the royal line her son so her son called caesarian becomes the co ruler and not just for her convenience but for his protection as well because as ruler he's a lot less likely to be assassinated by others in the Egyptian hierarchy in the Egyptian government because he would have a certain amount of sacred identity to them he was about three years old two or three years old at this time so now that Caesar has died we have another Roman civil war and by the way the the century before Christ in Rome was an awful time for civil wars there was something like six of them in that 100 year period and here's another one and not the last they there was a triumvirate of Antony Octavius and Lepidus who now assumed command and now we're going to go after the conspirators who killed Caesar led by Brutus and Cassius so Cleopatra wanted to side with the triumvirate ride to send ships there was some difficulty there are some storms and she couldn't quite do it but we know that she did want to help them and of course the triumvir defeat the assassins ultimately at Philippi in 42 BC and so Rome has to be divided up again amongst the triumvir Mark Antony who gets the east we know as a character he comes from an impoverished family but it was distinguished he was a large man somewhat someone you'd probably think of as a maybe a linebacker on a football team today big husky man he was tall he was imposing voracious appetite for both food and women much like Caesar unlike many Romans done he absolutely loved Greek culture Romans loved Greek culture sometimes holding their noses because it was a little too luxurious for them unmanly they might say and yet they knew that it was a culture that in many ways was greater than their own in things like literature in the arts but Antony loved Greek culture II loved Greek people he loved to have a good time he could laugh at himself which was sometimes considered a very unromantic but yeah he enjoyed having a good time he could be at times very lazy easygoing overly trusting of people who shouldn't be trusted but in any case he was also a great tactical commander on the battlefield he was not a good strategic commander on the battlefield in other words he was great when he was under Julius Caesar fighting against the Gauls or any other campaign that Caesar was on he was one of the best he was not so great when he is in command himself and he had a very strong-minded wife named Fulvia Plutarch says that in his mind he believes that Cleopatra owed a debt to Fulvia because she taught Antony how to obey women because she was the strong-minded one in the relationship a very imposing woman and so here's some images of Mark Antony he's on several points to some of the coins - picked his nose as being very flat even more so than this one as if it was broken at some time I better hurry up behind so of course now that Antony is in charge of the East he falls for Cleopatra as well her charms worked on him at least as well as they did on Julius Caesar but the first thing though he needed money he needed supplies because he was going after the Parthian in the Far East because of they had been making trouble on the borders of the Roman Empire and so he calls her to Tarsus which is over near Syria on the coast and she comes and they make a deal now there's a very famous scene in which she comes on her pleasure barge and he invites her to dine with him and she says no you come and dine with me now in the movie Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton Richard Burton is humiliated and doesn't know what to do because it really should be the one who's the more powerful should invite the one who's less powerful in reality Antony probably couldn't care less he enjoyed a good time and he was going to get it and so he went on to the barge and she displayed her lavish barge and everything the luxuries that she had and duly impressed him with the in luxuries and of course so they fall for each other Anthony's very much in love with her and as their relationship develops they become to the people they are the gods Dionysus if you're Roman or Osiris Antony if Cleopatra becomes Aphrodite to the Romans or Isis to the Egyptians and even though they cannot be married they are in a sense too many Egyptians considered married in a spiritual sort of way and and they love to the Egyptians really liked Antony and so so Antony and Cleopatra spend time together they're very probably in love and again the pleasure boats of Cleopatra but Cleopatra doesn't come just for the sake of helping him out she has her own demands and so there's a series of negotiations that Cleopatra is going to demand something for the help that she's giving to Antony and so Antony gives some port cities in out of Syria and Judea to her and he has her sister our sin away our sin away the fourth executed as well because Cleopatra suspects and probably rightly so that some time her younger sister is going to plot against her one thing that Antony would not give is Judea Judea as I said before had been very grateful to Julius Caesar for defeating puffy and had given a lot of help to Caesar and promised to give more help to Antony and so he felt that he was somewhat indebted to them and wanted to keep their favor as well so even though Cleopatra did want to take and rule Judea as well Antony would not give it to her so he had she asked him to have someone arrest take her arrest her and executor so during this time when Antony's away his wife Fulvia decides that she doesn't like Octavius very much and leads a rebellion against him with her brother and it fails she escapes to Antony and pleads with him that she would she meant well she wanted to defeat Octavius so that Antony could be in charge but she failed she also died right after this of some illness historians don't generally suspect any foul play she apparently just had some illness and died so Antony at this time although he's preparing for this great Parthian campaign had to go back to Rome and patch things up with Octavius and so he did it was not easy because it was it was his wife who was leading this rebellion in him and Octavius suspected not without reason that Antony was behind it in any case they patched things up and and at this time while Antony's away Cleopatra has twins from Antony and they named them Alexander and Cleopatra and to add on to that is Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene the Sun and the moon and here's Fulvia one of the first women by the way to ever have her face on a Roman coin Cleopatra was after that yes and I don't remember either that would be but yeah she was she was well-connected in her family Alexander Helios as in the Sun and Cleopatra Selene Selene which is the moon so now that Antony is unmarried and all of Rome dreading another Civil War they want to patch things up and to solidify this new relationship between Antony and Octavius Antony marries Octavian's sister Octavia and Octavian decides he needs a new wife as well so he divorces wife that he has and marries screw Bonilla very quickly both of these wives are pregnant and because of that this at this time in Rome there was a great deal of celebration or at least a good feeling that things were coming together now that we're done with all of the civil wars that now we have peace that these two men are now related and so with these women pregnant Virgil the great poet decides that a new age has begun and that from one or both of these women will come a son who will set the world right and so this is part of Virgil's fourth eclogue now returns the maid returns the reign of Saturn now from high heaven a new generation comes down yet do thou at that boy's birth in whom the iron race shall begin to cease and the golden to arise over all the world and of course this sounds very much like Christianity and the early Christians took this to mean Virgil's really predicting the birth of Christ so here is Octavia suits called Octavia the younger a very beautiful woman very virtuous all of Rome sees her as a great catch for Antony that he will now truly appreciate Roman values because he has a solid good virtuous Roman wife but then he goes back to Cleopatra anyway so during this time also Cleopatra who had been with Antony is travelling back or no she's in Egypt Herod who has been put in charge in Judea talking about Herod the Great of Bible fame the Parthian are invading they took over Syria and Judea Herod escaped took asylum in Egypt and eventually went to Rome to plead his case Cleopatra and Herod generally we believe despised each other because each of them knew that the other wanted Judea but they were polite to each other they knew they had to be because Rome stood above all here's Herod the Great so despite the fact that he has a good virtuous beautiful Roman bride he goes back to Cleopatra most likely again he sees in Cleopatra a power that is just unknown in most people so he kicked the Parthian out of Syria in Judea but he still needs support for a major Parthian campaign to go to the Parthian themselves and destroy them and he needs more supply so he again asked Cleopatra I need money I need chips I need men and she says whelk what are you going to give me so he gives up more cities and he gives up date palm groves that make a lot of money balsam shrubs that produce the balm of Gilead that is famous from the Bible also known as a healing type in sense from the balsam shrubs but Antony officially installs Herod at this time as the king of Judea the Parthian campaign one of the greatest Roman armies of all time is collected and utterly is destroyed in this campaign Antony on his campaign splits up his forces between the the baggage and the the catapults and all about the heavy stuff and the lighter infantry so that he could reach the main city that he was after more quickly during this time one of his allies from a foreign country decides they're going to switch sides and go against him and his baggage-train along with all the siege engines are completely destroyed Antony arrives at this city that he's going to besiege and finds out that he doesn't have any of the catapults and siege weapons with which to take the city and so he's come there for nothing and must make the long trip back in hostile territory with all of the surrounding countries knowing that he's been defeated a very bad situation very much like Napoleon coming back from Moscow he was picked apart the entire way and the weather didn't help going over mountains in winter it was an utterly horrendous scene for Antony to go through at certain points in this journey back he was seriously contemplating killing himself because of the great disaster that this was anyway he makes it back with a much smaller army and he wants Cleopatra to help supply him again she meets him in Syria she has almost nothing to give him just a few supplies and no money Antony who had money himself decided to distribute that amongst his troops and say this is from Cleopatra also at this time Octavian sends his sister with supplies and troops to Antony Antony says thank you for the supplies thank you for the troops Octavia you can go home why did we don't want you here and so Octavia goes back to Rome where she cares for their two daughters she also cares for Antony's other children from Fulvia and her original three children that she had from a previous marriage and the Romans see this and are just outraged that Anthony could spurn such a virtuous woman so Antony very quickly is losing popularity in Rome and then we have the donations this is called donations because well they're Antony and Cleopatra are giving away the territories of the east to their children creating in their children their they'll be kings and queens as children not that they're going to go to these territories and some of the territories weren't even conquered yet but this is on your handout as well I have that there's a map that shows how it is divided up another thing here is that there was a minor victory over the Parthian x' in Asia Minor and so in order to bolster his pop there is popularity at least in Egypt they have a great celebration of this great triumph and again the Romans are incensed you do not have a triumph anywhere except in Rome but he held his triumph in Egypt now it's Andrea and the donations so here the eastern half of the Empire is divided up Alexander Helios was to have this territory right here despite the fact that it's not even conquered at this point and Ptolemy by the way this is another child that they had so they had three altogether told me philadelphus I was to have this territory that was not entirely conquered either and then we have Cleopatra and told me 15th and then Cleopatra Selene with this territory so cesarean is still there and I'm kind of questioning why they don't have that one too III don't know there should be something there for cesarean as well except unless it was just that he was going to take Antony's place overall upon his death so here are Cleopatra's children's cesarean born in 47 BC Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene and 40 and then Ptolemy Philadelphus in 36 BC and we do have images of three of them cesarean and then the twins this is all that we have that's any representation of them so at this point we have the final break with Octavian Octavian along with most of Rome is outraged at what Antony is doing and so he speaks out in the Senate against Antony and this of Egypt Cleopatra Antony's still trying to hold on to some of his popularity by bribing the sentence he had money as I say Egypt was a very rich country and so he would get money from Cleopatra and he would bribe with lavish gifts members of the Senate in order to have them you know stay on his side they tried he tried to get this whole donations ceremony legalized in the Senate it didn't work but he did try and then finally Octavian knew that the time had come he was going to declare war but he could not or he was not going to declare war on Antony he was going to declare war on Cleopatra and Egypt and leave Antony to do as he liked he knew that Antony came with it but he want to call this a civil war also he wanted to triumph afterwards you cannot have a triumph in a civil war fighting against Romans you could only have a triumph if you conquered foreign territory so Octavian was going to declare war and fight Cleopatra and so we have the famous Battle of Actium in 31 BC it is often depicted as as a great battle in which the ships are the decision was do we fight the against Octavian on land or do we fight him at sea and Cleopatra is depicted as who I'm saying though Antony let's fight him at sea and the general saying no we should fight him on land we're better on land but Antony being so in love with Cleopatra that he follows her advice and they fight at sea and are defeated it wasn't like that the way it turned out was that once they went to Greece to set up this battle Antony was there first he took several port cities to control the sea routes unfortunately for him Agrippa who was Octavian's first general was a much better general than anything that Antony had and he captured these port cities the major port cities and then controlled the sea routes himself and basically had Antony and Cleopatra trapped and so there was a decision were we going to escape by land or escape by sea it was no longer a decision of how are we going to fight and win they did not expect to win at this point it was what we going to do now to escape they actually tried by land and didn't quite make it ultimately historians will tell you that he had to go by sea because the Egyptians were had supplied many of the ships he could not abandon them if he did he would have lost all of his Egyptian support and had nothing but romance which was not enough at that point to save him so the plan was to break out it was not to go out and defeat and octavian the whole plan was to escape so here's Actium in greece right here so I'd say the decision was to escape by sea there were 400 ships of Octavian in 230 thereabouts for Antony they escaped most importantly they escaped themselves with the treasure ships who had all the money there were only about 60 ships once they finally escaped that were left to them another depiction battle of active and another battle map here's where they had their camps and they broke out and returned to Alexandria when they returned to Alexandria they celebrated a great triumph over Octavian they knew Cleopatra knew especially you better celebrate when you get home because otherwise all of the cutthroats waiting to overthrow you in Alexandria will take advantage and you will be overthrown so they arrive and celebrate their great victory it fooled them for a time but you could only play that up for so long also immediately when they got there Cleopatra decided that she was going to kill all of her opponents all of the major names that she knew opposed her she had executed and this was not a small number because there was probably a revolt coming and so after celebrating their victory they had another celebration cesarean I was turning 16 and so they threw a great party for him as well after that Cleopatra decided she needed to make plans to either escape herself with the Antony or without and to send caesarian away as well for their own protection she transported a number of ships over to the Red Sea to make her escape they were burned as soon as they got there from the Nabataean king who didn't like Cleopatra at all Malcolm and once Cleopatra found out that the earth ships her way of escaping had been destroyed she sent someone to murder him Herod seeing which way the wind is blowing decides he's going to side with Octavian now and Herod was a man who is well known to be a very devoted and loyal servant of Rome and he could be loyal to a fault he was loyal for a time to Antony but he knew that Antony had been defeated so now he sides with Octavian Antony is now negotiating he wants to live he's asking if he can retire to some province somewhere either with or without Cleopatra and he gets no answer he sends another message if I kill myself will you let Cleopatra live he gets no answer and all the while Octavian is closing one of the things that Octavian needs is the treasure he always has difficulty paying his troops and if you do not pay your troops and have them well supplied the troops turn on you he knew he had to get that treasure ship or the treasure that Cleopatra had so Cleopatra is now now goes to hide in that great Monument with her treasurer Antony sees the troops coming he sends out his troops and they defeat a small advanced guard but knowing that that was not going to amount to much Antony's fleet goes out to attack the Octavian's and promptly surrenders at this point they have no choice but to commit suicide to release so they see it Antony first out on the battlefield or outside here's the rumors that Cleopatra has already committed suicide so he stabs himself there's a scene in the play Antony and Cleopatra where he tells his his armor-bearer arrows to stab him arrows stabs himself instead because he could not bear to stab Antony and this is from Plutarch as well this wasn't just Shakespeare's making this out and so Antony's seeing that his servant has killed himself says in if in effect you're a better man than me and I better do it myself and so he stabs himself rather clumsily in the guts and does not die right away one of the most painful wounds I understand is a gut shot or a gut wound and and so he's suffering terribly but he's not dying right away anyway Cleopatra hears that Antony is dying and so she sends her serpents to grab him take him up to the temple where she's at and he dies in her arms purportedly at that time Octavian arrives a little bit later and kind of storms the temple and captures her before she could commit suicide now there's a lot of debate as to what happens next the the legend is that she she's in this temple being kept by Octavian and Octavian is wanting to take her back to Rome so she could march in his triumph other historians will say that's probably not the case he he had seen others like her younger sister March in his triumphs and got a lot of sympathy from the people and he didn't want her to gain much sympathy right now everybody hated her and he wanted to keep wanted it to stay that way so the other the other debate is how exactly did she do it the legend is that she had a snake with an ASP in a basket of figs brought to her and she took it and had it bite her and she died that way most likely that was not the case because it was not just her but it was also her ladies-in-waiting a couple of serpents there with her who also died using the same means the Egyptians in general and Cleopatra in particular were well known to be very knowledgeable in poisons poison was an industry in Egypt that is one of the best ways to knock off your rivals so the Egyptians in power knew the right poisons and the poisons that will kill you without pain and that's what she wanted as well so she had somebody sneak in something that she took and her ladies took as well to kill her and then one of the arguments against the the ASP is that if an ass bites one person it has just given up a lot of them venom it's not going to kill three people it doesn't have enough venom so anyway she commits suicide Octavian probably wanted it that way so you wouldn't have to worry about her gaining any more sympathy in Rome and so what happens to her children Caesarion was killed Octavian knew that Caesarion had to go he be a force to be reckoned with as he grew up he would gather as the son of Julius Caesar the great who is now a God he inevitably would attract a following but the rest of Cleopatra's children they were brought to Rome they marched in the triumph and they were allowed to live we don't know what happened to the boys oh and by the way they were given to Octavia also to raise just a just great hearted woman also the statues of Cleopatra Octavian wanted to do away with her memory or at least soil it enough so that she was no longer a sympathetic character however first he did destroy all of Antony's statues but there was a very wealthy man in Egypt who asked that he not destroy Cleopatra's because she was now in a sense a saint in Egypt and so for the small sum of two thousand talents Octavian allowed her statues to remain and there was there grew up and even the one in Rome was allowed to stay in in Venus's temple and there was a cult of Cleopatra despite the fact that Octavia did everything Octavian did everything in his power to erase any good writings about her and promote the idea that she was a lascivious who slept with many men and killed people just for the fun of it there was a cult of Cleopatra that lasted up until the Christian era in Rome and so since that time as we know Cleopatra there's been a lot of propaganda on the one side there's a propaganda that says that Cleopatra was the Egyptian the evil temptress who seduced noble Romans but the result also the other side that depicted her as the most complete woman to have ever lived anna model of devotion and self-sacrifice because of her devotion to both Caesar and Antony so any place I think today we have a much better view of who Cleopatra really was it it is a shame though that there's so much more that we would like to have known that was destroyed because of Octavian any questions all right thank you very much next week is eleanor of aquitaine

Channel: Holman's History

Views: 720

Rating: 4.3333335 out of 5

Keywords: Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Holman's History

Id: 4nUmcWnCUWM

Length: 93min 22sec (5602 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019