Doomed to Fail - Ep 13 - Part 1: Romancing The Queen - Cleopatra & Mark Antony

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Let's talk about one of the most epic love stories of all time - Cleopatra and Mark Antony (who she was with AFTER she had kids with Julias Ceaser) - There is incest, war, spies, intrigue, double-crosses, and more!Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt clash in this classic love story! Pretty great that 2000 years later we are still talking about it!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi, friends, Taylor from Doom to Fail. We have 13 more episodes to put through re-releasing for you. As a reminder, our beginning episodes, our first 26, we did two stories per episode, but they ended up getting really long. So we decided to do them Monday and Wednesday, releasing twice a week. And then on our Fridays, I'm re-releasing our older episodes as shorter clips. So this one is on the famous love of Mark Antony and Cleopatra that caused wars and There's intrigue and there's incest and there's fighting and there's murder and there's a snake and it's a very, very fun, fun story. So we hope you enjoy any questions or concerns or ideas or at Doomedafelpod at gmail.com. Thanks.

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Horthall James Simpson, case number B-A-019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay, Taylor, we're recording. Accepts. You accept. Okay. So we'll go ahead and get started.

Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where one of us is going to be sick for a while. And this time it's Taylor's turn. I'm joined here by Taylor, my co-host. Hi, Taylor. Hello, how are you? I'm probably better than you. Yeah. I was sick. Like this morning I couldn't really talk when I woke up and now I feel like a little bit better, but still like kind of dizzy.

Yeah. So we were discussing changing up the production schedule and recording more than one of these a week so that we can have moments where we're sick and not have to hop on and record while feeling shitty. So we've got a reality and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. We'll do it. We'll get there. So Taylor, we're going to go through our drink schedule at this point. So why don't I tell you mine and you can tell me yours. Mine is going to. to be Coors, which is a taste of the Rockies because we're going to go to Colorado for the true crime side of our story today. So for my drink, we're going to be having some Coors because we are going to be in Colorado for the true prime side of our story today. And Coors is a taste of the Rockies. Apparently they say that they brew it using water from the Rockies,

I believe, but mostly they're famous because their cans turn blue or the mountain turns blue when it's cold enough to drink. So I don't know why giving people a lecture on what Coors is, is people don't know it's like most ubiquitous fear in the world but there you go i'm like is there is there a cores that's not a course light is it like a not light cores i feel like i've seen like a yellow tan or champagne colored cores before that feels like that might be the regular cores that's right it's like a champagne color i did right yeah but good for them good for their marketing and branding people because that's more i mean when i think of course i think cores light actually kind of with yeah like too totally i feel like i wouldn't i don't know anyone who's like oh i just have a good

budwiser or not light but i don't know what that tastes like so maybe i should try that too should we you're like i want to buy i'm going to take a lot of these so i'm going to pretend this is like a diet food yeah exactly exactly yeah we another podcast idea we'll reminisce about different alcohol things that we like um katie of the schmidt clan i'm calling them uh texted me this week saying there's definitely farting they listened to the last episode and said there's farting from seven minutes to 11 minutes i went back and listened people it is my dog who would record themselves farting and then publish it publicly and advertise it publicly like why would i do that i mean i'm sure people do that and they get a lot of money for it but that's a whole different

ballgame that's another genre we are not that is not the demographic i'm shooting for here i it's obviously coming from my end but why would i do that because so luna's going to shake when she shakes her collar makes sounds and then she'll tap on glass which she wants to be let out or she'll like wine in the background like i need to figure out what i'm doing it's a dog it's so funny it is i would never deliberately record myself farting and then posting it publicly to the world so i don't know kinkade katie y'all have a very similar perspective on this um yeah maybe It's a you problem. It's a them problem.

Anyways, that's my rant. That's my quick rant for the day. But I'll, okay, so let's get to your drink, Taylor. Awesome. So I also have a little bit of notes from last week and some things I wanted to share. I'm drinking a hot toddy because my throat hurts, but that has nothing to do with my story. Are you actually drinking a hot toddy? Uh-huh.

That is awesome. I love hot toddies. It's delicious. I made it out of honey and a little bit of lemon and some tea and some whiskey. Did you use regular lemons? Yes. Okay, so here's a secret to like a phenomenal hot toddy. Use Meyer lemons, which are sometimes hard to come by.

Are they a little sweeter? They're a little sweeter. They add this little kick to it. They just completely, because it's acidic. So it balances out the, you know, harshness of the bourbon, which is amazing. So, yeah, we really need to start an alcohol pot. podcast, I think. I'm in. That sounds fine. It's a thing that's going to kill me, so that's cool. Cool. Okay. So I have some notes from last week, R.E. Joe Rogan from California says

Vars is on the wrong side of the pitchfork on this one. Sorry, Juan from California. How convenient. Is this Juan Carlos, your husband? It is my husband, yes. Yeah, there we go. It's also a Rick and Morty reference, which I thought was funny. And then George from New York, who is my friend George, who lives in New York, says, here's what I'm willing to agree with about Joe Rogan. He has a podcast. He has guests. He has an audience. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I mean, he nailed it. Nobody can deny that. Yep, all true. All true. I also have been having like a rough week in general because I'm just like, wasn't feeling well. And so I've been thinking, like, I should be nicer to people who believe in God and not be such a jerk about it and have some

balance, but I'm also just so mad. And I also saw something this week from a dad on LinkedIn who's like, how can dads do work life balance? And I've just like never been so mad after reading that. And so I was like, I just, I was wondering if there's some sort of like strangle thing you can buy to like strangle it to like get the rage out. That's what I'm coming from. I don't have children so I don't understand the sentiment. Oh, it's just like, it's like a mom thing. Dads have no problem. Dads get paid more money. Dads are fine, you know. So. whatever. I've been kind of mad this week. And another thing I've been annoyed about, which I've slacked you about, is I've been like, hey, everybody, like our podcast and read

it. And then like, no one does it. And I'm like, just do it. Because I'm a terrible salesperson. So I'm just like, like, I said so, so do it. So I'm going to work on our pitch. I just added us to LinkedIn. I'm just trying to get in front of more people. So I mean, you got to, you got to offer people something. Like I offered in that Facebook channel to send people autographed pictures of our face nobody took us up on it 35 people saw it and like two people liked it so no one wants that i don't know we have to think of something else we have to think of someone else okay yep alcohol recipe book by far as a taylor i love that i love that so i also before i get started wanted to say thank you to some people who are actively listening um to especially

christine and kelly who've been giving me a lot of feedback and i know they listen to it every weekend. It's really fun. So thank you both. Okay. So now I'm after that's those are my notes and kind of where I'm coming from. But so of course we're doing like relationships and events and things that are that are failures throughout history. This relationship is one of the ones that kind of comes up first whenever you Google historical relationships that were like tumultuous and ended in tragedy. So I also was making a timeline that I showed you and I'll post it on our socials. But I'm like, what timeline am I in when I'm talking about my historical things? And so much of it is like after 1600, which makes sense because there's records and it tracks. But there's so much stuff that

haven't before that. So I'm like, how can I find stuff that actually is ancient? And then it gets me into my two types of existential dread. Have like the future existential dread. Like, when will the robots kill us? When will we kill each other with nuclear weapons? When will the aliens kill us when will nature kill us how will nature kill us you know all those things that are normal you got to stop watching the news i know i also have historical existential dread which is like what don't we know how can we possibly know anything how are we gathering these stories from like remnants of clay pots and coins and there's just so much that i don't know about and i wish that we knew more so anyway this is the best that i can do in 20 minutes of a topic that people spend their whole

entire life studying from like bits and pieces of pottery and the stories of the victors so i don't know i don't know this is true it's kind of true and it might as well be true and does that matter it's very stressful is your point that whoever wins is the one who defines the story yeah yeah that's fair especially with these like super ancient stories i just don't know but i'm going to tell you as much as i can about cleopatra and mark anthony that's a great one yeah you know what when you said the oldest story i thought cleopatra and i was like who was the guy and i kept thinking it was that guy who colin farrell played in that movie the biopic where oh my god this is i'm like i have to edit this out this is terrible what's her name

angeline joly was the mom remember and then the asp killed her the ass killed her the ass kills cleopatra potentially so who's columb farrell's mark anthony then i am right right i guess i didn't watch that but probably there's also caesar she also was with caesar for a little bit so we'll get to that uh hold on i'm gonna look this up right now what is the movie i i didn't watch that movie alexander that's what it is okay has something to do with your story yeah i definitely have to edit this out well it's like similar you know there's this there's so much There's so many stories of these dramas, and there's so many civil wars in this story that I'll talk about. It's constant battle.

So if you're thinking of what it was like to live at this time, and we are pre-zero, so we're in the BC times, which is, as I've already said, it's really hard for me to go backwards in time. But I'll give you some dates. So we start in BC in this story. And I didn't watch as many, like, dramas, but I did listen to Arrested's History Pop. podcast. Definitely, I've learned the story from Dan Carlin. I watched ancient Rome on Netflix, which is like half documentary, half show, which is kind of fun. And I also just was looking at an article on history.com. And then I also, I don't know if I told you this, but when I was a little girl, I wanted to be an Egyptologist. That was like my dream. I like love to. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. Hey, do you think we should go to Dan Carlin and ask him for sponsorship money at this point, given that we plugged him like every other episode uh yes all right i don't know how to go to his house in in some way okay i don't know how to get a hold of him i guess we need an agent okay this this might be a longer process i thought does anyone know dan carlin tell him we said hello just write to us and let us know yeah um oh he's the best yeah so i just loved ancient egypt history i think it was like i don't know if it's still a big thing for like kids to know a ton of about, but I had like hieroglyphic stamps and I remember in like the 90s when my family moved to Las Vegas and the Luxor was brand new. I was just like, oh my God, you know, just so excited about

it. So I loved hearing the history of Egypt because it's super interesting. It's also interesting as I like learn more like the civilization of Egypt didn't change for thousands of years. And now this story is going to be the very end of Egypt as like being ruled by Egyptian pharaohs. So we're at the tail end of it. So speaking of tail end and timelines, here are our main characters. Julius Caesar. He was born in 100 BC. There's Mark Antony. It's not Anthony. It's Antony. A.T.O.N. Y. Born Marcus Antonius in 83 BC. And then in 69 BC, Cleopatra, the seventh Philopator was born in Egypt. So just thinking about, I wrote, oh Christ. So here's just like a little bit of their ages. Caesar is 17 years older than Mark Anthony. He's 31 years older than Cleopatra and

Mark Antony is 14 years older than Cleopatra. If that matters, I'm to tell you how old they are. Does it matter or no? I mean, kind of. I mean, we have talked about like huge age differences. I think 31 years is a big age difference for people feeding. But, but, you know, they also were very similarly like the similarly politically inclined and everything. So I don't think it was just that, but it is a big, a pretty big difference. So this is something that, like I said, someone will spend their whole entire life studying and talking about, and I'm going to try to do it in 20 minutes. But I'll try to benchmark some dates around Cleopatra and her life. And then also remember, we're going backwards because we're in BC time. So Julius Caesar in a nutshell, and I think I mentioned him in the Nero episode as well. He is a general and a dictator of Rome. He was a big part of the end of the Roman Republic. So at this time, when we're in like the 50s, the 50 BCE, Rome is having a ton of civil wars. So specifically, Caesar is in a civil war with Pompey, so P-O-M-P-E-Y, who was once part of the Triumvirate, which is a group of three who ruled Rome together around 60 BC. So that was Pompey, Caesar, and Crasis were trying to kind of stop the Roman Republic and turn it into an empire.

And they had the triumvirate, which was like the first group of people being like, we're going to over our rule is higher than that of like the Senate. of like the democratic rule. Yeah, it's just expansion, right? It's like a land grab. Yeah. So Pompey, who's once time for it, him and Caesar are potentially, like they're friends. Like they're talking about, you know, doing this ruling together. And Pompey marries Caesar's daughter, Julia.

And by all accounts, they did really love each other. But Julia died in childbirth and it devastated Pompey. And his relationship with Caesar was never the same, which is like a lot of this probably wouldn't have happened if Julia had lived because then they would have continued. you to kind of rules together, but they started to drift apart now that they weren't family anymore. So that's happening in Rome. There's a big civil war in 51 BC over in Egypt. Cleopatra becomes co-ruler when her dad Tolomi the seventh dies.

She co-rules always with a man who's both her sibling and her husband, which is a thing. So she marries her brother, Tell me the eighth. So it's a whole thing. It's a lot of the Egyptian rulers. It's a whole bunch of marrying your brother or your cousin or whatever. Like it's very much, like we've talked about a million times. Like, you shouldn't do that. It makes bad rulers because of genetics.

At this point, it just feels like there's so many of these out there that we've already covered. Like, the shock value of its one-off. Yeah, it's banana. So she's married to her brother. He's younger than her. And they're co-ruling Egypt together. So just to talk about Cleopatra for a little bit, like as a person, obviously we don't know a ton about her. That's true. We know the records that people have of her. She is one of the last

pharaohs of Egypt. Civilizations have been around for thousands of years, but we're here at the tail end. She was very smart and very charming. She spoke a ton of languages. One of the actual like kind of firsthand accounts comes from Plutarch. I think it's about a hundred years after she died, but he wrote about that people said that she was known for her beauty and charm. She could speak several languages. She was very intelligent and quick-witted. captivating personality she was very popular so this is all stuff that we don't know for sure but i think like the one thing that is maybe unfair to her and her like intellectual prowess is that conventionally she's not very pretty so there's like busts and coins with her on them and she's not like a perfect

like beauty so some people say that she was and i feel like they might be using that as an excuse to be like, this is how she got so powerful because she was so beautiful and seductive. But she also, like, other people are like, she wasn't that beautiful. So it's like a couple of things that we like know about her that are facts. She was Greek. So she was from Macedonia, like Dan Carlin says. And it's in Greece. And she comes from like a long line of, of Greek emperors of pharaohs of Egypt who were not ethnically Egyptian.

She was one of the only pharaohs who bothered to learn how to speak Egyptian, just like Catherine the Great bothered to learn Russian when like other people. hadn't. And people have had issues with, like, the movies that she's portrayed in, like Elizabeth Taylor and Galgado is about to play her because they're white. But Cleopatra wasn't ethnically African or Egyptian. She was Greek. The issue that I have with those actors playing her is that they're gorgeous. I was going to say, like, you have Elizabeth Taylor, who's like, I guess, considered back in the day and even today, like one of the most iconically beautiful women that's ever existed. But you're saying that she looks.

more like buzz from home alone like I don't know if like well... She was just like a normal person like she wasn't like this astounding beauty and I don't know if that matters like that's just I don't know I don't know where that fits into her story and I'd have to think about it for like years to try to make sense of it but she wasn't like striking beautiful

like Gal Gadda was distractingly beautiful you know yeah like it's also hard to tell because you're looking at like renditions that it's a painting it's hard to really visualize I mean I'm looking at one of them which was it looks like a modern painting based off of a bust of her face. I mean, the ones that you would look for the, look at the coin.

Like the coin of her is probably like the closest. Yeah, she's got a Roman nose. Like you can tell. She's definitely got a Roman nose. Like, that's normal. That's whatever. Yeah. So like some of my opinions on this are like beauty is subjective, A.

So whatever. Our historians writing away her power is something she got from being so beautiful and sexy. Are they harping too much on her not being beautiful? Does it matter? Like, I don't know. But just so we know, like, the answer, I think, and I think that we've maybe talked about this before in like the realm of like dating and relationships. It's just like, be cool and people will like you. Yeah. So like, she was cool. And so regardless of what she looked like, people liked her. And she got some dudes to like her too. So that's a little bit about her. Maybe what she looked like, maybe where she came from. In 48 BCE, she is forced to flee Egypt. She goes to Syria. Her and her

brother-husband, Ptolemy the 8th, start a civil war. So the civil war in Rome and now a civil war in Egypt. So her and her brother are fighting for the, for the pharaoh throne. In 48 BC, Julius Caesar arrives in Alexandria, which is a port city in Egypt. So this is where a lot of this action takes place. It's at like the tip-top of the Nile. And Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. So it's been around for a while by this time. And it's a center of learning culture, diverse populations, like Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, other cultures, a lot of people live there,

as well as obviously a ton of enslaved people live there as well. But it's the port city, lots of trade, grain, papyrus. Like, it sounds very fun. Like, it sounds like very bustling. The library of Alexandria is still there. It has between 40,000 and 400,000 scrolls, all this, like, information. that lighthouse that we talked about is one of the wonders of the ancient world that was still standing education was really highly valued so it's like a pretty cosmopolitan city for being in bc times yeah sounds like king's landing kind of yeah it probably is you know like all these are very similar to like things that we've heard infinity things so we're in 48 bc Pompey and caesar have just had a huge battle it cannot pronounce this it's the battle of farceles and a lot of our Romans died. And so I've been saying there's been a bunch of civil wars. These are legions

that are going back and forth between civil wars. There's been so many. So imagine if in like the U.S. Civil War, the North and South fought and then it ended and they were like, great, now it's east and west. And now it's tall people versus short people. And now it's like this versus this. It just goes on forever. And so like you're fighting someone that you fought with last year. You know? You're like, this year were enemies because of something new. And then. Sounds tiring. Yeah. So Pompey and Caesar, you know, they used to be almost related because of Caesar's daughter. Now they're in this, there's fight. So many people have died. Pompi gets to Alexandria a little before Caesar and he asks Ptolemy to help him. So he says, help me defeat Caesar. And Ptolemy wants to have Caesar on his side. So in his own civil war against Cleopatra. And so he cuts Ptolemy, Cleopatra's husband, brother, cuts off Pompey's head and gives it to Caesar when, Caesar arrives because he knows that Caesar's coming to Alexandria as well.

And he does this to be like, hey, I want you to be on my side. Look what I did for you. I killed Pompey. And- Such a morbid gift. It is. And Julius Caesar, surprisingly, is not happy. He's like, ew.

Like, he doesn't, he's upset. And there's, like, some things that are like, a lot of cleanjecture. Like, why is he upset? Like, they've been fighting for years. They used to be friends. They're fighting for years. Tons of, like, normal people have died during this. these like battles and this huge war but I imagine this is what I think I've been reading about

this as little as I have that seeing the head of someone who used to be friends with who was married to your daughter who almost brought you a grandchild it's a little bit of like a fuck how did I get here you know just like yeah but like I don't know I think just as a general rule kind of like we always say like don't kill your family also just never give somebody a human head like it's just never going to be well no that's definitely fair it's a good life I think we I think I can stick by that one yeah totally makes sense so like definitely not like a silver platter with like a thing over the top you know like um that's not great um so caesar's not impressed but he's in Alexandria and now tell me this is it's hard to say tell me because it starts with a P-T-O-L-M-E-Y so totally I'm getting it right but it's P-T-O-L-O-M-E-Y so to tell me is like okay well now Caesar since you're not happy about this like great gift I bought you um he puts him sort of in jail in Alexandria and is trying to wait to figure out what his next step is. So while Caesar is stuck in Alexandria, Mark Antony is in charge of Rome.

So he's been like a high up general in Caesar's army for a whole time. And he does a pretty bad job. He's just like living a nice life in Rome while people of Rome are starving, which we've seen again and again, and we're only on episode 13. But another thing that I think we could maybe stand by is it seems like if you just feed people everyone will be happy you know yeah there's got to be something biologically in humans that once they attain a certain level of success they just literally cannot think like normal yeah they just like can't can't remember that like oh maybe i should you know spend money on the people that i've

that i rule rather than a gold hacked you know or like anything else it's just so so crazy did you ever watch that interview that ellen did with bill gates back in the day people would like ask him how much he thinks things cost and he was like so comically off on it I think he said like a banana's probably $20 because he just doesn't know they're so out of touch you're right no that's definitely fair there's like so far away but they can't even imagine like what do you mean you can't you know like Marie Antoinette saying let them eat cake she didn't really say that but like the idea is like well we have all this cake here why don't they just have this you know we're like no they have nothing like you don't understand like what it's like to live on like that side of the the spectrum. Did she really say that? I could have sworn that I heard somewhere that she said something different. She didn't say that. Yeah. No. Yeah, that's definitely revisionism. But she did not say that. But it's the same idea that like if you're living in a place where like you've never been hungry, you don't really understand what it could possibly be like for people who are hungry. So that's what happening in Rome. There's also riots in Rome, you know, tons of riots during this

time. A lot of people are starving. Rome has a population about a million people at this point. So there's there's a lot like a lot of people there which is you know a huge city even in now times famously Cleopatra comes back to Alexandria she sneaks in to come to Caesar's aid and asks him to take her side so some of the rumors are that she came rolled up in a carpet so like they brought him a carpet and it unrolled and she was like ta-da I'm here or in like a linen bag or like in a box or like whatever like she came in like a fun way and surprised him because she had to sneak back in and so she She, he really, he likes her. He likes her, likes the kind of her jib.

You know, he likes this, like, trick that she did. He likes it. She speaks to these languages. She's really smart. He's in his 50s. She's in her 20s, but they see something in each other and they start a relationship. So in 47 BCE, Cleopatra gives birth to their son, who she named Cesarian. So they have one child together.

And another thing about, like, Cleopatra being like this, like, crazy tempteress, it's probably that she only had, like, two lovers and her. her whole life, and they were Caesar and Mark Anthony. That might have been it for her, you know? Sweet. So the next year. I'm, by the way, Taylor, just so you know, I'm actually looking up if we named them cesarean sections because of this guy. Yeah. Can you tell me more about that? Let me know what you find because I don't know what that means. It's weird. It's not spelled like the way we spell Cisarian section, but let's see. I'm going to be a little, I'm going to put a finer point on this. Why do we call them cesarean sections? Roman law under Caesar decreed that all

women who were so faded by childbirth must be cut open, hence cesarean. Other crossful Latin origins include the verb say dare, meaning to cut in the term, say sonis that was applied to infants born by post-mortem operations. That makes sense. If the mom dies, they just take it out. Gross. Yeah, but I don't, like that doesn't actually like, whatever. So it is definitely Roman in nature, but we don't know where the word actually originates from. But it sounds, I mean, it had to be like something related to this guy. Yeah, definitely. And I don't know.

Again, like talking about like fake things. Like in the New Game of Thrones show, the House of the Dragon, they are the ton of childbirth and death and childbirth. But when they do perform a cesarean, they're like, the mom is not going to live. You know, they just cut her open. they're like we have this is like that's last chance to get the baby out and then i did also do something on instagram a while ago about maybe when that was happening that like midwives or whatever they're called in africa have been performing them for like hundreds of years because they knew how to do things like wash their hands with alcohol and like make a small cut and get the

baby and take care of the mom and like all the things that like we didn't figure out in the west until like a hundred years ago wow which is super interesting yeah so anyway also this dude's same Cesarian, which is just that, if it is related to that, it means Hutt and somehow, whatever. So they have a son, same Cesarian. And then Caesar defeats Tell me the eighth and restores Cleopatra to the throne of Egypt. Tell me, Cleopatra's brother or husband dies in the Nile. He drowns while escaping. She may have had a, that may have been on purpose, like making sure that he didn't survive while he was escaping Alexandria. So the next thing that she has to do is marry her other brother, telling me the ninth, who I think is like an infant at this time.

She just like has to be married to someone else in order to rule. She can't like technically do it by herself, which is dumb. But she's married to her infant brother now, but she's definitely like dating Caesar. And she also has her annoying sister, Arsini, killed. And in one of the podcasts I listened to, they described Arsoni as the Prince Harry of Egypt. So you can make your own assumptions about how annoying she was. Wait, is Harry annoying? Yes.

Okay. You feel, see, we decide, I think, at some point, Taylor, that one of us feels strongly about one thing and the other one doesn't. Like, I don't have any opinion of him. So I'm just going to, I'm going to go with your version of who Harry is. We just watched the South Park from this past season about him and Megan Markle where they're like, they do go on a worldwide privacy tour. And during the tour, Harry's like playing his drums and has a sign that says, like, leave us alone and stop staring at me. It's really funny because they're like, they're like holding these signs that are like, stop looking at me. leave me alone. We want her privacy, but they're like yelling it in the middle of all the town

squares. So that's the idea what's doing right now. Yeah. So all of her siblings are dead. She's co-ruling with her baby sibling. They stay in Alexandria for a while and they both go to Rome. And so we've talked about this before 44 BCE. I had to March 15th. Julius Caesar's assassinated. He stabbed to death in the Senate. After his death, Claypatrick returns to Egypt. So she was there while he was murdered and she had to like get out fast so she got out of of rome super fast took cesarean with her they went back to alexandria and they did some ruling of egypt there together in 41 bc e mark antony is now part of the second triumvirate so a second group of three dudes who are trying to rule rome together and he summons cleopatra to saris

which is a place where he like wanted to get her to be an ally for to him so they had this meeting they might have met before, but the myth around this meeting is that she arrived on like a golden barn, you know, like carried by enslaved people with like purple sails and rose of silver and

she made herself to look like the goddess Aphrodite and there was like a gold canopy and people dressed like Cupid and just like a really big like show going into to meet him and Mark Antony loved it because he thought he was he thought he was the embodiment of the Greek god

Dionysus. So, like, he was a lot. And she, but he loved the show. She loves these grand entrances. Yeah. She loves it. And I think that's probably because she knows that, like, these dudes love that shit. You know, they're like, oh, I love, you make me feel special. So that was totally working for them. And so they had a lot of fun together. They had a group called The Emittable Lovers, which was like a group of people that would hang out every night and have like a game night and drink a lot and eat a lot and like just have a lot of fun. By 37 BCE, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra, Celina have had three children together. Alexander Helios, Cleopatra, Celina, and Teletemi, Philadelphia. They rule Egypt for a little while during this time as well.

The rule is loose because they're children, but the children are like definitely heirs to the Egyptian throne. And so they have those kids in 37 BCE. They're living together. They're super happy. But Mark Anthony has actually been married this whole time from 40 to 32 BC. So in the middle of this. He was married to Octavia the younger. And she seems nice. They had some kids, but he wants to marry Cleopatra and they get divorced. And in 32 BC, he does marry Cleopatra. So she's his like fifth wife. He's already been like married a bunch of times. But there, they finally do get married. And then we're almost to the end. And there's so much more that happens during this. But so the second tram for it is Mark Antony, a man named Lepidius and Octavian. Octavian,

sounds like Octavia you may have noticed is the brother of Octavia whom Mark Anthony was married to and he's pissed because he's like you were very clearly having another family with Cleopatra

in like Oh so this wasn't normal this isn't like how they just do things Yeah like it was like kind of normal everybody knew

but like also Octavian was like fuck you for doing this to my sister you know and God was like there are other things but he was like really mad and so this turns

into another civil war between people And Cleopatra and Mark Antony are on one side, and Octavian is on the other side. And there's a big battle called the Battle of Axiom. So many people die because these people's personal problems. But Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, they lose. They lose the battle. They flee to Egypt.

Anthony knows that they're defeated. As a rumor, this feels maybe a little too romantic to be true, but he hears that Cleopatra is already dead, so he stabs himself. And then he finds out that she's not dead, and they bring him to her. and he dies in her arms, which is like Romeo and Juliet, and also there is a work Anthony and Cleopatra Shakespeare play that I have not seen or read, but it sounds a little too good to be true, but he dies first. He dies by suicide, he steps himself from the stomach. Oh, so that is, so that is what happened. Yeah. Why do you say you don't believe it?

Well, I don't believe necessarily that he killed himself because he thought that she was already dead, you know? I see. I see. So he might have just had suicidal ideations on his own abolition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they knew that they were like going to be in trouble because they just lost this big battle and they've lost control of Rome and Egypt. So she does get to organize his funeral. She knows that he has has died. And the sort of next step for for Cleopatra is there is a thing that they do in Rome when you return from battle is you get to have a triumph. And a triumph is like a big parade. So one thing that Caesar did a long time ago was he had his own triumph, which

technically not allowed to do has to be like approved by the senate and people are really mad but it's like a huge parade where you're like i am victorious i came back and you you prayed through rome with you know your spoils of war and one of the spoils of octavius winning this battle was going to be cleopatra he was going to come back and kind of like parade her through rome and be like look what i did i like you know won the war and now this this pharaoh is mine so she doesn't want that to happen she doesn't want to be a part of of that at all so she dies by suicide as well possibly by And that's the thing that maybe she had a snake bite her or like a cobra or like some kind of cool snake that killed her. It also could have been that she kept poison in like a hairpin to kill her, to kill herself with. But either way. So apparently, yeah, like that's an asp is just like the old, timely way to say any venomous snake. But it sounds like it is probably a reference to a very specific Egyptian cobra. how scary is that if that was like horrible horrible choice yeah like what do you do you like put your hand near it or do you like near you until it strikes or do you like try to scare it like it's just so scary to be like I purposely want this thing to bite me even without knowing that without the dying part you know just like trying to get that close to a snake so scary because like I think the way that the venom of a cobra works is that it causes clans agulation in the blood that's in your body.

So it's not like a chill death. It's like you're turning kind of to stone from the inside out. Like it's a horrible. I mean, just throw yourself off a roof or something. Like, this sounds so much better. It does sound so much better. So that sounds terrible. Hopefully it was quick.

But now they are, they are both dead. And the kids, their three children, do go back to Rome with Octavian. Octavian is actually his, he gets renamed as Augustus. So he is the first emperor of Rome. Rome. And we talked about this in one of our first episodes because the fifth emperor of Rome is Nero. So we're a little bit before Nero, who we talked about before. But Augustus, formerly Octavian, is the first emperor of Rome, and now Rome is an empire is going to do a whole bunch of stuff all in this ancient time. And then I guess the last thing that I wanted to say is,

which I thought was interesting, is that their kids, the three kids that Mark Anthony and Cleopatra had. So Cesarian dies in one of these battles. So she has those three kids left. And they go back to Rome. And they're raised by Octavia, who is the sister of the emperor and the ex-wife of their dad. And she raises all of the kids together. And they live for a while longer. Wasn't Nero's mom named Octavius? She was a, I guess an A. Agrippina. And wasn't he married to someone named Octavius? I'm sure there was. maybe it's a common name it is no it's it's it's it's common as in like yep we're definitely in this is the beginning of that family line okay you know yeah yeah yeah that makes sense yeah because

he is going to be you know yeah one of his spouses was claudia octavia um so she was one of the empresses and she is yeah it's like like they all know each other and all they're all related and all of that stuff that we know so she's part of the julio cloudy cloudy house which is what Nero is and yeah so sort of do you remember during that episode how you said he went somewhere and was in like a thousand seeing competitions and you were like yeah you think he won and i literally sat there and was like oh let's see you the percentage number and like no he won them all because he was obviously rigged like it's like sitting there kind of like actually do the math like what do you think the percentage number will be about like yeah fun times and that's all

that's the same thing like you're doing this when people are starving? Like, what are you doing? You know? Disconnect. Total disconnect. Did you guys have no idea how much bananas cost? Yeah. Oh, no idea. Absolutely not. Yeah. So I am, you know, I will definitely watch the Galgadoo movie, the Cleopatra movie, whenever it comes out in a few years, because it's, I'm sure it's going to be beautiful.

But I don't know how much, I don't know what is true and what isn't true. But what I know is true is that Cleopatra was, you know, the most powerful woman in ancient Egypt and it was because she was able to you know partner up with two of the most powerful men in Rome okay I'm gonna I'm gonna put you on the spot okay who is the right casting for Cleopatra oh that's a good question and kind of want to say maybe lady Gaga that is so good because I thought of Lady Gaga is you were while you were talking about how she like unfurled herself from a carpet my first thought was Lady Gaga should totally do that at one of her concerts.

And then when you brought up that she met Mark Antony and had this whole, you know, festivity around her coming up, but I was like, I'm positive. I've seen Lady Gaga do that. So you, yeah, way to go. Yeah, that's a, because she's like, she's pretty, but in a weird way. She's got a Roman nose. She's definitely got a Roman nose. Yeah.

Yeah. And now that you said that and I'm looking back at that picture of her, yeah, she looks like Lady Gaga. Like she doesn't look as good as Lady Gaga. is lady gaga i would argue but yeah no that's fair maybe yeah closer to lady gaga than little elizabeth taylor and galgado for sure yeah exactly and it would be mark antony um you know who the person who and so i was listening to a um and that and the rest is history podcast and it's by author tom holland who dan carlin like reads and talks about so it's an author named tom holland he's like a british historian

Um, but in that thing, in that episode, they were laughing saying that Tom Holland, that actor should play Mark Anthony, that he'd be- That would not be good casting. Yeah, I'm gonna push back on that one. I think I'd be good at Mark Anthony, you know? I think I could probably, I could make it work. Yeah. I got the nose, right? You totally do. Yeah, there you go. I'm ambiguous. You don't know what I am. I could be Greek, I could be Egyptian. You have to cut your hair though, have that like Roman Senate haircut was just like short hair. Definitely not doing that. I'm sticking with my

sticking with my finger on a light socket hair. No one but know who you were. Yeah. I know. I know that's my identity at this point. Um, awesome. That was very, that's very cool. So we that's our second. Well, so this was Egypt and Rome kind of together. Um, so yeah, we get we got two Roman stories now, I think under our belt. And there's probably so many more stories. Well, so a yes okay one thing i was going to say first is like so also our second egyptian story and how like egypt was so like it with the the dad who killed his daughters and how like that was like honor killing that was a huge thing about it which i think is interesting remember that and then secondly yeah that's part of my historical existential dread is that like there's so many

stories that like i that will never hear and that i want to know about and when i hear things about like, there was a Native American city in the middle of the United States that had, you know, 50,000 people live there and they just found, like, the ruins of it. You're like, what happened there? You know, like, there are so many things that happened there. And then, like, I also feel like then with, like, that, you know, that city in Turkey, that underground city in Turkey, do you know what I'm talking about? No. It is, is it called? It's called Darren Kuyu. So it's literally a farmer in Turkey was like clearing some land and found a hole and went into the hole. And it's a city that could have housed like 100,000 people underground.

Is this recent? It was like in the past 20 years. But now they've been like excavating it. And there's like rooms and markets and stairs. And it was dark because all underground. And like, what happened in there? Isn't that crazy? It's wild.

One Joe Rogan plug, I guess, that I have to say is. another awesome show on Netflix is ancient apocalypse, which is like talking about, you know, but mostly it's like this idea, like, what are these cities like? And like, when their civilization ended, you know, what did we lose? You know, but Joe Rogan

is in it as like the expert. Why is he an expert in this? We were like five episodes in and then all, you're like, okay, the guy who is like the main guy is definitely kind of crazy and you definitely can get the feeling that historians like are not his friend, they're not stoked on him. but he and then like episode five he's like here's my friend Joe Rogan and we were like oh no like what is this show we're watching but it's fun to it's fun to think about essentially

to be like these cities and these places we have like stones left like what did we lose we lost all paper we lost all the fabric we lost all the stories like where what happened in the world before we remember it yeah yeah and I mean with Alexandria you mentioned Alexandria too like the burning of the library of Alexandria isn't that like the source of like all knowledge the world had. It was like the Wikipedia of the world and then it was just gone. Yes, but I've also heard recently that maybe that's not true. I'm like, god damn it. You never know what's so many different variables there. Like so many different ways to like interpret all that stuff and apparently now it's not true. So there you go. I know.

So it's like I don't know there's no objective truth. Yeah, there's no truth. But like it's it's fun to think about like did that happen like how cool is that for, you know, to think about, like, you know, sneaking in and, like, getting your enemy's head on a platter and being like, I don't know what's going on. And then, like, some girl comes into your room and, like, a sack and or a carpet. And she's like, let's, let's rule together. And then you're like, okay. And then you go home and all your friends stab you to death. That's a wild story. It definitely sounds Shakespearean, which it was. Yeah. And it also kind of sounds like a Burning Man story. But maybe that's just me. Cool. Well, Taylor, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that. And

we'll transition over to, I'm going to call it a layoff of the week because this story has gotten a ton of play. So I usually try and find things are a little bit more obscure, but I'm going to be honest, I've also had a hell of a week, and I went with a layup story.