The Ancients - The Rise of Cleopatra

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Famed across the ages and around the world - everyone knows the name Cleopatra. But how did she become one of the most infamous women in history?Born in 69BCE, a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Hellenistic Egypt, Cleopatra VII lived a tumultuous life. Within two turbulent decades of taking the throne of Egypt, Cleopatra had emerged the victor of a brutal civil war. She won the hearts of two of Rome’s most powerful men, and successfully restored a golden age for her kingdom - she was a force few dared to reckon with.In this episode, Tristan is joined by Professor Joyce Tyldesley, Dr Chris Naunton, and Dr Glenn Godenho, to discuss the rise of Cleopatra.Produced by Annie Coloe. Edited and sound designed by Thomas Ntinas.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, we've got a special multi-contributor episode on a cracking topic. You're going to love it because we're focusing in on the rise of Cleopatra VII, the famous Cleopatra, arguably the most renowned, the most famous woman from the

ancient world. And as mentioned, we're not going to be really focusing in on her downfall, on the Battle of Actium, on her end alongside Mark Antony, Shakespeare and the like. We're going to be focusing in on what we know about her rise to such an extraordinary position and how she came to be the ruler of this incredibly powerful empire, Ptolemaic Kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. We're going to be looking at all of this from her birth to the donations of Alexandria with three experts today. We have got Professor Joyce Tildesley, we have got Dr Chris Norton and we've got Dr Glenn Godenho all together along with some voiceover narration by myself linking it all together. Now these three

brilliant experts Glenn, Joyce and Chris they also feature in the documentary version of this episode The Rise of Cleopatra which we have recently released on History Hit TV so if you're interested to learn more you can go and check out that documentary and the other rise of episodes that we have in that collection such as the rise of Hannibal and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte but that is enough from me we've put a lot of hours into this particular episode kudos goes to our editor of this episode Tom Dinas and also of course our producers Elena Guthrie and Annie Colo they all deserve a lot of credit. I'm just the tip of the iceberg in the ancients team. And that's enough from me, because here you go, here is our special Rise of Cleopatra episode today. Enjoy.

Cleopatra was born in around 69 BC. She was born into a dynasty that had ruled over Egypt for more than 200 years, the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Ptolemaic dynasty is the name that we give to the kings who basically are all descended from each other and call themselves Ptolemy. It's right at the end of Egypt's dynastic age. So it's right at the end of the period where Egypt is ruled by pharaohs or kings.

And it's after Alexander the Great has conquered Egypt. So Alexander the Great conquers Egypt in 332 BCE. He dies shortly after and one of his generals, Ptolemy, takes the throne. Ptolemy took Egypt, founded a new line and from there you get two or three centuries worth of rulers descended from Ptolemy, a great number of whom have the same name, Ptolemy. So Ptolemy I, II, III, through to XIV, hence the Ptolemaic dynasty and the Ptolemaic period. Now during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC in particular, the Ptolemaic kingdom had been quite a power in the eastern Mediterranean, battling against other factions such as,

for instance, the Seleucid Empire in modern-day Syria. But by the 1st century BC, things were changing. This once-dominant kingdom found itself dwarfed by the new hegemonic power in the Mediterranean, Rome. Rome is getting stronger. It's working towards being sort of imperial Rome that we recognise from the Emperor Augustus. So we have Julius Caesar coming to prominence. So Rome is increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with and the Egyptians are unfortunately indebted to Rome. Rome had been called upon from time to time by Egypt to help out with various

issues and something that's kind of well known with the Ptolemaic period is that there were a lot of internal issues as well as external pressures as well. So Rome was often called upon to help out. The reason Rome would be happy to help out in Egypt's affairs is because Egypt was a very, very wealthy place and Rome relied on resource from Egypt flowing back to Rome. So if there was an issue that might have prohibited materials from reaching Rome, Rome would take an interest. So for quite some time, Rome had been called on by Egypt, which meant that Rome weren't going to do this for free.

It meant that Egypt was increasingly in Rome's debt. And in fact, by the time of Cleopatra's birth, Egypt was really a client state, highly dependent on Rome and subject to its will. So this was the situation in the Mediterranean at the time of Cleopatra's birth in around 69 BC. Now at the heart of Cleopatra's Ptolemaic world was a city, a wealthy metropolis that at the time was a shining light of the Mediterranean, Alexandria. We're very fortunate when it comes to Alexandria that we have some quite detailed descriptions of what it was like. Obviously, it's an Egyptian city. It's in Egypt.

But it's not like any other Egyptian city. First of all, it's really new. It's founded by Alexander the Great, but basically built by the Ptolemies. So everything's new in it. Unlike, say, Thebes and Memphis, which are the traditional cities of Egypt, the traditional capitals, they're very well-established, very old cities. This is a new city with bright new buildings. It's got a library. It's got kind of a university and museum. It's got a lighthouse. It's a Mediterranean city. It's very Greek, overridingly Greek in terms of architecture and other things. In fact, the architecture at this

particular time wouldn't have looked that ancient Egyptian. So you travel further down in the Nile Valley, you've got very ancient Egyptian looking temples and buildings and things. In Alexandria, much more Greek influence at this particular time. It's so strange that the Egyptians themselves call it Alexandria next to Egypt. They don't just call it Alexandria because to the native Egyptians who don't live in Alexandria they regard it as very very strange. It's quite a diverse place. There are three main population groups there. We've got Egyptians obviously, we've got Greeks obviously as well and also quite a sizable Jewish cohort too and that's putting things quite neatly into separate cohorts the diversity would have been

greater than that of course Nubians people from Sudan would have been part of Egyptian society for some time and clearly would be in Alexandria as well and they appear to have been allowed to live harmoniously alongside one another. And that undoubtedly, I think, probably contributed to Alexandria's success culturally and intellectually. It was a very international, one is tempted to say almost kind of modern, international city. Cleopatra belonged to no ordinary Alexandrian family. She was royalty. Cleopatra has, I think it's fair to say, the great misfortune to be born into a bit of a nightmare of a family. Well, Cleopatra's a Ptolemy, and the Ptolemies have been on the throne for about 300 years. They're a family that has the tradition of brother-sister marriages so they're quite a

close family if you like but this has not necessarily been a good thing it means that they're a family that's got a lot of infighting as people jostle for the throne as people are quite happy to bump off their relations to get to the throne so there's a really a whole history of quite a bloodthirsty family history behind them. Her immediate family, though, is quite complicated and interesting. Her father is Ptolemy XII, but he wasn't born to be king of Egypt. He was an illegitimate son, and he was called in as king

because the infighting that had gone ahead of him had basically wiped out most of the royal family. So he was the only one left to take the throne, even though he was illegitimate and living in Syria. He was brought to Egypt and made king of Egypt, so he'd never expected this. He is married to a woman called Cleopatra. You find that they use the same names over and over again. Cleopatra V, we call her. We number the Cleopatras just so we know who's who. It doesn't mean that they ruled by themselves. It's just a convention. But we don't know who she was. Now we could guess that maybe she was his sister because they did go in quite a lot for brother-sister marriages

but not necessarily. And we can't just say because she was called Cleopatra that she was a member of that family because she might have changed the name when she married. So we don't know who her mother was. Regardless, she was the eldest child of Ptolemy the 12th his wife or wives. And she had a couple of younger brothers as well, who go on to be Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV. So that's essentially Cleopatra's kind of core immediate family unit as far as we know it. Cleopatra spent her early years in Alexandria, right at the heart of the Ptolemaic kingdom. It's tough with Cleopatra's early years.

There's nothing really recorded. I mean, in terms of evidence, there's nothing really from Egypt that tells us about Cleopatra. I think most of the evidence comes later from her enemies and the literature and the propaganda and things. That said, we can look at the context in which she grew up. So we can acknowledge that she's growing up in Alexandria, this fantastic place of learning. And we can look at some fantastic scholarship done by medieval Arab scholars. And the sources that they've interrogated, when we look at their work, suggest strongly that Cleopatra was highly literate.

She spoke different languages, which would make sense for a statesperson, especially living and working in that part of the world with huge diversity. So it would appear that growing up, she learnt how to speak different languages so she could converse with different subjects as it were and of course this would have taken place in the museum, this kind of place of learning which we know was there at this particular time as well. So I think we can start piecing together the picture of a young Cleopatra as a scholar and I don't think there's much of a problem with that, I think that the activities she goes on to do shows that she's clearly a learned person. So that's what we know of Cleopatra's early life in a nutshell, that she seems to have really taken advantage of the Greek tuition

that were available to her as a royal member of the family. But things would take a turn for the worse, not long after Cleopatra's 10th birthday. Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's dad, is forced into exile, and it comes back to Rome's influence in Egypt at this particular time. Ptolemy XII wasn't particularly popular and he borrowed money from the Romans. So he was struggling a bit anyway. He wasn't popular with the people of Alexandria. What mattered in those days is what the people of Alexandria thought. The people outside Egypt, less so. But in Alexandria, he's not popular.

And then the Romans decided to take over Cyprus, which was actually being ruled by his brother. And it all ended very tragically for the brother. Rome taking over Cyprus leads Ptolemy XII's brother to commit suicide. The real problem is Ptolemy XII doesn't do anything. You get the impression he kind of shrugs his shoulders and, oh well. And the Alexandrians find that abhorrent. They're like, this is no ruler. That's his own blood. No chance. And so they send him packing and he flees off to Rhodes.

Such an act evidently had repercussions for the young Cleopatra. Cleopatra this time, it looks like she's already proved herself good ally of her father, a potential ruler, someone who's smart, someone who's well-trained. And so some people believe that she went off with her, with her father, Ptolemy XII. There's no direct evidence for that per se, so it's a possibility.

She seems to have a genius for keeping a low profile at times of crisis, which I think is a very, very sensible thing to do. So the really key moments in her history where you wonder what she's doing, you hear nothing. And she seems to have this ability to wait and see which way things turn out and then to work out accordingly how to align herself. And I suspect she wouldn't have been very old at this time, so maybe she was just too young to have any say in it. But I suspect also that deliberate low-keys is what she's playing. Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII, was ultimately reinstated,

thanks to Rome. It was an important moment, a significant one, that also affected the young Cleopatra. It's at this time when Ptolemy XII gets his throne back that we start to see Cleopatra more clearly. She starts to associate herself with him. start to see Cleopatra more clearly. She starts to associate herself with him. Her mother, Cleopatra V, or her potential mother, we're not quite sure, has vanished. Her elder sister has been executed and her other sister is a younger sister. And one thing we know that kings of Egypt need is a queen to support them. They don't actually have to be necessarily married to that queen. I'm not suggesting that she marries her father. But she seems to have supported him by performing a feminine role alongside his kingship.

Having restored his control over Egypt, Ptolemy XII continued to rule the country until his death in 51 BC. This was a seismic moment, the death of her father for the teenage Cleopatra. Now, through this kind of period, Cleopatra's clearly proved herself to her father as a capable individual. And so in his will, he signals that Cleopatra the seventh his daughter should rule alongside her younger brother so the eldest of her two younger brothers and that's Ptolemy the 13th so now we've got the situation where Ptolemy the 12th is dead and his daughter Cleopatra the seventh she's around 20 years old, 18, 19 years old. And her younger, eldest younger brother, Ptolemy XIII, is around 10 or 11.

They're co-ruling together. Effectively, she is in charge because he's just too young. So although they are king and queen together, as soon as they come to the throne together, we see her. Her name goes forward and he's sort of pushed out of the limelight, if you like, and it's as if she's ruling alone. And he's there, young, and being supported by a group of tutors, but not really able to fight against it because he's just too young really to do anything at this time. But obviously we can guess that he's not particularly happy about this situation. It's not the normal way. Normally the king's name would always go first, and in this instance, the king isn't even mentioned. Now, fortunately for Cleopatra,

she had several precedents of powerful Ptolemaic queens, as Glenn explains. Cleopatra II, Cleopatra III, along with a lot of these earlier Ptolemaic rulers, Arsinoe II as well is another really big one. They serve as a really nice model for Cleopatra because these people ruled Egypt as queens of Egypt. They were very powerful, they were well respected, their images were put on temple walls. They were legitimate pharaohs of Egypt or queens of Egypt alongside pharaohs at various times. And so Cleopatra finds herself in a very similar position to that, as a woman who is rather taking the lead in the rulership of Egypt. And so to a certain extent, she's looking

back to these ancestors and kind of moulding herself in the same way. They provide a nice model for someone like Cleopatra. From the limited evidence that survives, it seems that Cleopatra aimed to follow in the footsteps of her reginal predecessors, right from the start of her reign. Chris explains an interesting story that seems that may well relate to this. We know from a stele that was discovered at Armant, a site a few kilometres to the south of the ancient city of Thebes, a long way south of Alexandria, deep in the heart of Upper Egypt, the traditional heartland of Egypt, where the cult of the Egyptians' favourite god for most of ancient Egyptian history, Amun, was to be found. Cleopatra

was present, we know from this stele, at the installation of a Bukist bull. This was an important part of the religious landscape in Egypt, the installation of a Bukist bull. This was an important part of the religious landscape in Egypt, the installation of one of these sacred bulls. And she, according to the Stele, was not just present, but herself rowed the boat that the bull was taken to Armand on. So difficult to know whether this reflects a genuine historical event in the early life of Cleopatra as a newly installed pharaoh, or whether she herself is manipulating things already here. But she was probably aware that in doing this and having it recorded in this way, she would be seen to be playing a major part in something that the Egyptians themselves would

have held very dear. And it's difficult, I think, not to imagine that already she had one eye on trying to make sure that she had the approval of the Egyptian people. And that's a theme that runs right the way through her reign. For two to three years, Cleopatra was essentially Egypt's sole ruler. Her prominence, however, did not last. Well, it seems almost inevitable that having been installed as joint rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII would fall out. Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII fall out because they both want to rule Egypt. So she has been ruling Egypt effectively, and he's just been a silent partner. Now he's old enough, he wants to take over. And he doesn't

particularly want to be doing it with his big bossy elder sister there. So he starts to push himself forward. And he is supported by a group of tutors and advisors. She presumably has a group of tutors and advisors with her, but we learn more about his because he's younger. And they're pushing him, telling him what to do all the time. The impression you get through this is that Ptolemy XIII's court is becoming more and more unhappy. And at the same time, Cleopatra is potentially becoming a little more and more unpopular, certainly amongst her brother's kind of groupings. And so that all comes to a head at one particular point. And backed with his court, Ptolemy XIII kind of makes these issues known and starts to

try and do the opposite and push Cleopatra out. Ptolemy's coup against Cleopatra worked. Seeing that popular support was on her brother's side, Cleopatra and her supporters fled Alexandria. The queen, however, remained intent on regaining her throne. So as with the pattern in the Ptolemaic period of people being exiled, Cleopatra finds herself having to flee Egypt because of her younger brother's kind of intensive activity towards her. He's not happy of course. So she flees and she heads to Syria and Ptolemy the 13th rules alone in Egypt as the sole ruler. What's quite incredible is that somehow, and we're not quite sure how, Cleopatra manages to

raise quite a substantial army in Syria. She has designs on coming back to Egypt, of course. How exactly she does that, we don't know, but possibly calling in favours. So in the same way that Egypt is in Rome's debt, Egypt being a wealthy country, would also, there'd be other countries that owed, that were in debt to Egypt, as it were. So it's possible that's how she managed to raise this army.

But it's not as straightforward as her simply sailing back to Egypt and it were. So it's possible that's how she managed to raise this army. But it's not as straightforward as her simply sailing back to Egypt and taking the throne because something else is happening in the background with Rome. And we've got this kind of civil war between Pompey and Caesar, these two generals. And these Roman generals are hugely powerful. They command massive, massive armies. By August 48 BC, Rome was in a state of turmoil, of civil war. But by this time, Julius Caesar was winning the Roman civil war against Pompey, having recently defeated his great rival at the climactic Battle of Pharsalus. Pompey, however, survived the battle and vowed to fight on, intent on reviving his fortunes in Egypt.

It was a decision that would greatly affect both Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra. Pompey has fled and he's fleeing to Egypt because he expects that he'll get support from the Ptolemaic royal family because he in the past has supported Ptolemy XII, the father of Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII. So he comes to Egypt expecting to be welcomed and at least given

somewhere, you know, sanctuary. Pompey sets sail for Egypt and he goes to Pelusium and that happens to be where Ptolemy is camped waiting for his sister to arrive with her troops from Syria. And Ptolemy doesn't know what to do and he calls his advisors in and they give him this different advice. But basically, they think the best thing to do is to try and become friendly with Julius Caesar by killing his enemy. Because if they help Pompey, no good will come of it. They will be seen as helping an enemy of Rome. And it's clear that Caesar is the victor. So Caesar is the one whose opinion matters. So that's what they do. They kill him. And they then send, allegedly, the head of Pompey and his signet ring to Julius Caesar, who has landed not at Pelusium, but also on the

Mediterranean coast in Egypt, in Alexandria. So as Caesar, chasing Pompey, arrives in Alexandria, he's presented with this head and signet rings of his enemy. Now, obviously, for Caesar, this is probably a good thing, because his enemy is dead. But he can't be seen to agree that it's a good thing because you can't have random foreigners killing Romans. That's a really bad thing. So he instantly says, oh, this is terrible and marches into Alexandria with a very small number of troops he has with him and occupies the palace. And then he decides that he will himself sort out the problems between Ptolemy and Cleopatra.

So he summons them both to Alexandria to meet him and he's going to resolve this issue and Egypt will be under their rule again, he thinks. The exiled Cleopatra was keen to answer the summon. She was eager to meet Caesar. Reaching the Roman statesman, however, was easier said than done. She recognises, of course, that Ptolemy XIII will try to oppose this and so she needs some way of setting up a meeting without Ptolemy XIII being aware of it.

So it wouldn't be fitting to try to do this with great pomp and splendour, the kind of way you might normally set up a diplomatic meeting, lots of show of wealth and power and lots of boats and entourage, that kind of thing. Instead, she travels to Alexandria covertly in a small boat. The accounts differ, but it seems that she snuck into the royal palace in some sort of disguise. Depends what you read, but wrapped in some sort of disguise. Depends what you read but wrapped in some sort of bedding we think although that's been a bit translated the popular myth now is that she was wrapped in a carpet whatever it is the idea is that she's wrapped in some sort of fabric and she's slung

over someone's shoulder and that Caesar's in the palace and they open the doors and say we've got the delivery for you and then they sort of flick it and the carpet unrolls and right in the middle there is Cleopatra unrolls at his feet. And that's the introduction. How true that is is hard to know. Doubtless these stories get kind of exasperated over time until they finally get committed to writing and then get picked up again and again and again. But I think the take-home point is that we can probably believe that there was a need for Cleopatra to meet Caesar for the benefit of Egypt and for her entrance back into Egypt. I think Caesar probably wanted to meet Cleopatra. He wasn't a big fan of her brother because her brother, Ptolemy XIII, had just killed Pompey and we know that he's unhappy with that. So it looks like this could be a mutually beneficial meeting and I guess we'd have no problem in believing that Cleopatra had to be smuggled in in some way as well.

So the more you kind of look into it, even if we don't believe the kind of theatricality of the carpet story, clearly there's some kernels of truth here. Persuading Caesar to support her cause was Cleopatra's plan, and it worked. Well, we don't have an eyewitness account as to how Caesar reacted to all of this. All we know is what happened, that one moment Ptolemy XIII is like the person who is obviously going to rule Egypt, he's the popular choice. And the next minute, Julius Caesar is saying that Cleopatra and Ptolemy have to be together again and will rule it as king and queen. Julius Caesar is saying that Cleopatra and Ptolemy have to be together again and will rule it as king and queen. So it seems very clear that in a very short period of time, Cleopatra has been able to swayed him to her way of thinking.

How she did this, we don't know. It's assumed that she seduced him. Maybe that's the case. If it is the case, is that really a big deal? I don't know. There's the throne at stake here. But maybe they just sat down and talked. We really don't know what happened. But certainly we tend to interpret it as a really great love story,

don't we? Now, this seems like as good a time as any to take a slight tangent and ask the very popular question of what did Cleopatra look like? Well, contemporary depictions of her are limited. But one source that we do have is coinage minted by Cleopatra throughout her reign. Cleopatra's coinage is quite interesting and a lot of people like to look at these coins and say this is a portrait of Cleopatra and then people get very excited because then they try and make 3D representations and start commenting on various things like noses and chins and various other things. We always assume that Cleopatra's coinage is the most accurate representation that we have of her because it's contemporary to her. A lot of the other images we

have of her aren't contemporary to her. And because we tend to assume that people do put their own image on a coin, I'm not entirely sure how accurate it would be because you might, for example, want to depict yourself as stronger than you are or somehow different. It's propaganda, isn't it, an image on a coin? So you might not necessarily depict yourself actually as you are, but we tend to think that this is the most lifelike interpretation of Cleopatra. And to modern eyes, she's not particularly beautiful. She's got quite a prominent nose, she's got quite a prominent chin, she's not particularly beautiful she's got quite a prominent nose she's got quite a prominent chin she's got sunken eyes you have to remember that these coins are tiny they're not huge coins they're not you know very very difficult to make having said that also she might have chosen to

look like this to look fierce and to look strong to give this image to people who might look at her coins but if we take this evidence together she's not what we would today, I think, call conventionally beautiful. I don't think that really matters though. We're very obsessed with how beautiful Cleopatra must have been. It's almost seen as a defining characteristic. And yet we have people who haven't known her,

but have known people who've known her, tell us that her real attraction is in her voice and the way she talks and the way she presents herself, she's obviously very clever. She doesn't necessarily I think need to be beautiful as well, she could still persuade people that she's the right person to be on the throne, she can still Lister, sex historian and author, and I am the host of Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society, a new podcast from History Hit. Join me as I root around the topics which have been skipped over in your school history lessons. Everything from the history of swearing

to pubic hair, satanic panic, cults, there is nothing off limits. We'll be bed hopping around different time periods from ancient civilizations to the middle ages to renaissance and early modern right up to now. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Charmed Caesar Cleopatra did. In late 48 BC, she was once again co-ruling Egypt alongside the young Ptolemy XIII as they had done before and try and kind of maintain that status quo and get it back but we know that that's problematic.

He reads Ptolemy XII's will, that's Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII's father's will, in which it clearly states that he wishes for the two of them to rule together. So Caesar is more or less saying, you've got to get on with this, you know, you've got to make this work somehow. When Ptolemy XIII hears this, he has a bit of a hissy fit and he takes off his crown and throws it down and said, I'm not going along with this. And this he has a bit of a hissy fit and he takes off his crown and throws it down and said I'm not going along with this and this is when the people of Alexandria start to arm their slaves and everyone gets really worried because it becomes apparent that this isn't going to happen. And actually when Cleopatra re-enters civil war erupts. So the first kind of major conflict between Caesar and Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII and his gang is in Alexandria itself and it's

during this period that Alexandria sustains quite a lot of damage as well. Caesar is in quite a lot of danger because he's arrived in Alexandria not being prepared to fight a war so he has to send for more troops. At one point he nearly drowns because he falls into the water. He also manages or his troops manage to set fire to the Library of Alexandria when they're dealing with fire and the battle situation. But it comes to an end after three or four months of really heavy fighting with Ptolemy drowning. Apparently his armour is too heavy for him to escape from the water. It's quite convenient for Cleopatra and for Caesar now because the door's now open for Cleopatra to regain the throne in Egypt. However

we've got that same problem where she can't really be the sole ruler. That's not the preferred mode of doing things at the moment. She needs to co-rule and she does have her younger brother still. So Ptolemy XIV comes to the throne to rule alongside Cleopatra VII. So Cleopatra now once again is back on the Egyptian throne, this time co-ruling with her younger brother Ptolemy XIV. But of course, there is also another figure close by her side, Julius Caesar. Once Ptolemy XIII is out of the way, and Cleopatra and Caesar are in Egypt, Caesar does have ahau eraill, busnes Rhomann, i'w ymwneud â'i gwbl yn yr Eglwys, a bydd hi'n dod o hyd i'r ond cyn hynny mae'n ymddangos eu bod yn parhau i ddod yn Egipta am bryd, ac maen nhw'n rhoi

ddisblawn iawn i Egipta i, dwi'n credu, dangos i Egipta'r newydd ymgysylltiad rhwng Cleopatra a rhwng Caesar, rhwng Egipta a rhwng Rhom, a ddangos y poblogaeth, dwi'n credu, sy'n bosn nawr. between Caesar, between Egypt and between Rome, and kind of really show the population, I suppose, who's boss now. And the way they do this is with a really magnificent Nile cruise. We don't know if this is true or not. It's possible because we know that the Ptolemaic royal family all had barges. And sailing down the Nile was a very Egyptian thing to do. Traditional Egyptian kings didn't have just one palace. They would sail up and down the Nile, reminding their people that they existed, really, because it's a long-thin country, Egypt.

So it's a long way from, say, Thebes to Memphis in the north. And it may well be that Cleopatra just wanted to show him his new land, or her new land, which obviously he's allied with her. It's basically his land. He would have been aware of the great wonders that were to be seen in Egypt, but perhaps hadn't set eyes on them himself. It's easy to think that he would have been aware of the great wonders that were to be seen in Egypt, but perhaps hadn't set eyes on them himself. It's easy to think that he would have been very, very impressed by what he saw in great centres like Memphis, Thebes and then in Philae as well, with lots and lots of other sort of temples along the way. So this was a really, I think, if this was Cleopatra's initiative, really a very clever thing for her to have done. It helps

strengthen her position with the Egyptian people. It helps strengthen her position with Julius Caesar. He would also not have been unhappy about this arrangement, I think, as well, bringing Egypt perhaps more into Rome's control. Also, we know that he was always very interested in trying to find the source of the Nile with all this. So maybe he also thought he could do this, but he couldn't. He didn't get far enough to do that. In early 47 BC, following this Nile cruise and Caesar's supposed failure to reach the source of the Nile, well, Caesar left Egypt and Cleopatra. After his departure, Egypt and Cleopatra. After his departure, Cleopatra continued to strengthen her position. Sometime after Julius Caesar leaves, Cleopatra has a baby who she calls Caesarian, Little Caesar,

which is a bit of a giveaway, but she never herself tells us who the father of this baby is. Again, she's quite good at keeping silence when it's important, so there's a lot of speculation as to who he may be. Is he Julius Caesar's child? Is he not? I think most people think that he probably is. From her point of view, to have a child with Julius Caesar would be a very, very sensible decision because Julius Caesar is clearly going to be the person who's effectively ruling Rome. I mean, he's not going to be a king because it's Rome, but effectively he is. So if she has a child that can unite both Rome and Egypt, two great powerhouses at the time, that would be a really good thing and it would guarantee her family's security, but also her country's security.

So she would have been very much hoping that not only was Caesarian going to take over from her to ensure that her favoured candidate for the throne would rule into the future, but also that the balance of power with Cleopatra continuing to rule an independent Egypt, Caesarian following her in that, but with the backing of Rome, without Rome perhaps swallowing Egypt altogether, that's the arrangement that she would have been hoping for and that's the arrangement she's going to hope will continue into the future. would have been hoping for and that's the arrangement she's going to hope will continue into the future. Through the birth of Caesarian, Cleopatra's link to Julius Caesar was clear for all to see and she soon reunited with the Roman statesman, not in Egypt but in Rome.

Cleopatra goes to Rome to be with Caesar. So Caesar's been away doing various things, looking after his empire, and he lands in Rome and Cleopatra goes over to Rome to meet him. We don't know who she takes with her. We assume she takes a brother and we assume she takes the baby, but we cannot be 100% sure of that. And she seems to stay there right up to the point where Caesar is assassinated, so quite a lengthy stay. This, the face of it, seems a very odd thing to do because she's only just got her country under control. Things have taken a turn for the better. She's ruling in stable conditions, but is it the best time to go away on a prolonged trip? Maybe she was hoping to persuade Caesar to put their son into his will. I don't know if she would have ever been able to do that, though, because Romans weren't allowed, or he wouldn't have been allowed to put a foreign-born son into his will. I don't know she would have ever been able to do that though because Romans weren't allowed or he wouldn't have been allowed to put a

foreign-born son into his will so that was probably never going to happen. She's not particularly popular with the people of Rome, I don't know whether that would have bothered her or not but we have some classical authors writing and sort of muttering about how unpopular she was they didn't really take to her. All of a sudden we've got this very powerful, very wealthy, very independent, very clever woman coming in and not, I think, attempting to behave like a typical Roman woman, but like a pharaoh, like a goddess on earth. So presumably she's adorned, you know, with all of the iconography that she's used to wearing. And this, I think, is a source of concern to some

Romans. She is a queen and she expects to be treated as such. One very striking act of Caesar's was to have a statue of Cleopatra commissioned in the form of the Roman's goddess Venus within the temple of Venus Genetrix, which is in the Forum in Rome. So a very prominent position and an image which is at once Cleopatra, his ally, his consort, but also at the same time, a Roman goddess. So he's putting Cleopatra quite literally on a pedestal and saying, look, you know, this is somebody that you've got to support. You've got to get behind. But on 15th March 44 BC, the Ides of March,

Julius Caesar was assassinated. It was an act that greatly affected Cleopatra's next moves. So the first thing she has to do is to return home, which is what she does. The next thing that she seems to do, when I say she seems to do it, I'll just say that her brother, husband, vanishes at this point. Ptolemy XIV happens to die, and we don't really know a lot about the circumstances around his death. It does

present a real opportunity for Cleopatra to see a clear way forward for the rulership of Egypt, with her son, Caesarian, as pharaoh, ruling alongside herself. Which means effectively she's going to be a solo ruler now for at least another 10, 15 years. So it makes her reshape her life, but it leaves her ruling Egypt as a solo ruler, but without the backing of a powerful person to support her, and whether Egypt at this point can survive like this is not entirely clear. She really needs to have the backing of a Roman, and she needs to try and decide which Roman is going to be the most suitable one to support her and keep her on the throne and support Egypt as well.

The crowning of Cleopatra's young son paved the way for Cleopatra to promote herself as a semi-divine monarch, to align herself with Egypt's most famous single mother, the goddess Isis. The goddess Isis is a traditional goddess of Egypt, well-established and well-respected throughout Egypt. Her story is one of a queen of Egypt. She is the queen of Egypt. She's married to the king of Egypt, Osiris, and he is killed by his brother.

She's able to bring him back to life. He's not fully back to life. She bandages him up. She makes him into the first mummy. And then he goes off to rule the land of the dead. And her son, Horus, becomes, eventually, becomes king of Egypt. So she's both married to an absent king of Egypt, the king of the dead, and she's the mother of the living king of Egypt. So she's both married to an absent king of Egypt, the king of the dead,

and she's the mother of the living king of Egypt. And from this point onwards, all dead kings of Egypt will become one with Osiris, and all living kings are the Horus king of Egypt. And Isis in this is the exemplar of the mother goddess. And by the Ptolemaic period, her star had risen, if anything, above that of Osiris. So Cleopatra was very canny in associating herself with a goddess

who already was a great favourite of the Egyptians. So we're told that she dresses like Isis. Not like the traditional ancient Egyptian Isis, but the classical version of Isis who would be wearing a coloured robe and a cloak over it and tied in a special knot and a little crown on her head, maybe carrying a cistrum, a sacred rattle. Queen, mother and goddess, Cleopatra would have her new divine image conveyed across the kingdom. For instance, through the construction of temples.

She finishes off building projects from early Ptolemies, including her father, and she also does selective buildings in some areas. A couple of good examples are Dendera. That's a really nice example. Cleopatra didn't build that from scratch. That predates her, that starts in the late period. In fact, her father, Ptolemy XII, does a lot of work on Dendera. And as is quite normal, you'd augment, you'd add to temples, you'd finish them. And Cleopatra pretty much finished Dendera Temple. Now, Dendera is an important one because that's the cult centre of Hathor, very Isis-like. And in fact, at this particular time time the distinction between Isis and Hathor is almost non-existent they iconographically look almost identical so this is a great target temple for Cleopatra to identify with and in fact on that temple you see a wonderful relief of Cleopatra

and her son Caesarian offering to gods and various other individuals. She looks like an Egyptian queen you wouldn't be able to distinguish her from any other Egyptian queen. I'm sure she didn't look like that. She probably didn't dress like that. But to the people who would see this at the temple, this is the image that she wanted to portray. And she also, at a temple at Armant,

she builds a little birth house, we call it, which tells the story of the birth of the God. And it's very clear that the birth of the God is being equated here to the birth of Caesarian. So she also ties in divine birth, the ideas of divine birth and mothers having children. So by associating herself with Isis, as she does more clearly than anywhere else at Armand in the temple reliefs there, more clearly than anywhere else at Armand in the temple reliefs there, she is showing herself to be the mother of the true rightful heir to the throne, Horus embodied in this case by Caesarian. So by associating herself with Isis, she's putting herself at the very centre of one of the Egyptians' most important fundamental beliefs. She's also making it very difficult, kind of theologically, for the Egyptians to see anybody else as being legitimate claimants to the throne.

So sort of doctrinally, she's making it difficult for her rivals. It was following in a long tradition of showing how the current ruler was legitimate, a child of the gods and the right person to be ruling Egypt. By 42 BC, Cleopatra's position as Queen of Egypt looked solid. But the overshadowing presence of Rome now once again reared its ugly head. Civil war once again loomed, fought between leading assassins of Julius Caesar, such as Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus, and former allies of Caesar, Octavian and Mark Antony. We've got Caesar's killers at large.

We've got Mark Antony, who was Caesar's lieutenant, he's kind of a right-hand man, so in one sense a logical person to take over from where Caesar left off, but we've also got Octavian, who is related to Caesar, so he's a likely candidate to take over as well, and obviously that means that there's an issue between Mark Antony and between Octavian. So at this particular period we've got another kind of quite disruptive era in Roman history and we've got Egypt and Cleopatra in the background too. Cleopatra has to pick a sign to be on when Rome erupts again into civil war because she needs a supporter and she doesn't want anyone to invade Egypt and Egypt's in quite a vulnerable position because theoretically Rome has an interest in

Egypt theoretically one of the earlier Ptolemies has actually left an interest in Egypt to Rome so it might be that someone might say okay we now own Egypt and we're coming to take it and she would struggle with that one so she has to pick a side but she does what she does quite often is she hesitates she doesn't pick a side. She says she's ill. She says she'll send fleets to help people, but then there's bad weather so they can't set off. She really, really hesitates.

Actions would have consequences. Brutus and Cassius were defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian at the Battles of Philippi in October 42 BC. And the following year, Mark Antony summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus in southeast Turkey, seeking an explanation for her past inaction. We know that Antony summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus. He was collecting money from vassals and he was also inquiring into people who might have helped people who weren't on the right side in the civil war. And it was suspected that by delaying and not sending help when it was asked for that Cleopatra had been one of those people who was waiting to see which way things went, which I'm sure she was. She might have already known Mark Antony or she would have certainly known of him. He'd been in Egypt. She'd been in Rome.

She probably knew about his nature, his character. And I think she felt that she could deal with him. And I think she felt that she could almost repeat what had happened with Caesar. So she decided, yes, she would go. She had no choice really. But she went to meet him on her own terms. And she went apparently dressed as Isis in beautiful splendid robes. She traveled to meet him on her grand boat the Thalamagos with a whole flotilla of other ships again Thalamagos is a sort of floating demonstration of Ptolemaic wealth and power and the luxury. And everybody in the area comes down to see this spectacle you know it must have been quite something to behold you know she's displaying the wealth of

her country and don't forget she's a pharaoh she's a goddess on earth so presumably it's all of that pomp and ceremony something to see so everybody's coming down to see apart from Mark Antony who's invited her and of course he's trying to you know have her come off of her barge up to meet him but she refuses so she refuses to do that and she insists that Mark Antony come down to her which eventually he does and it seems that very quickly he fell in love with her I say fell in love again I'm probably putting a modern interpretation it they certainly formed an alliance, I think is the best way to put it. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not,

just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. It shows Cleopatra to be quite the stateswoman. I think she's aware that she doesn't want to throw her lot in with Mark Antony. She wants to do things on her own terms. And she's kind of showing him how independent and strong she is. She's a pharaoh of Egypt, you know, so why should she expect to kind of jump off this boat and go and grovel before Mark Antony? So I think that probably some kind of mutual respect was really kind of seen through at that meeting.

Rather than arriving back in Egypt a headless corpse following her venture to Tarsus, Cleopatra returned to Alexandria a champion of the diplomatic stage. Her new ally and lover, Mark Antony, by her side. They seem to have had a great time in Alexandria. They seem to have had a great time in Alexandria. Very childish in many ways, drinking, societies, playing jokes, going through the streets in quite a rowdy manner. But all this seems to be absolutely what Mark Antony liked to do.

It's interesting to know how much of this is her working out what he liked to do and using it to entrap him further, and how much she's actually enjoying this herself. Sometimes we see her as two great love stories, but I think we have to allow a bit more political acumen than this. I think she's chosen Mark Antony and she's getting him on side here, and she knows exactly what he likes and she's providing it. Antony was soon on the move once more. As he hurried across the Roman Mediterranean,

dealing with the political fallout of the recent civil war, Cleopatra remained in Egypt, ruling over an increasingly prosperous kingdom. It's very difficult to tell how she is administering Egypt. All we can see is that things are slowly turning around and getting better. We do know there were low Niles. We do know there were financial issues because Egypt's very much tied into the broader Eastern Mediterranean and we know that Cleopatra apparently reacted to all of these in the interests of her country.

I mean we also, we do have a document. We have one document that has writing on it that says Guinness though. It's simply a word written that translates as something like let it be so, so it is, agreed, that kind of thing. And some scholars have suggested based on what we know of the date of this letter that this could be Cleopatra's own handwriting. It would be wonderful if it was but I don't think that we can really truthfully say it was. Would she even sign her own documents? I don't know. We know that she could read and write Ond dwi ddim yn credu y gallwn wir yn wirioneddol dweud bod hi'n ymwneud â hynny. A fyddai hi'n gysylltu ei hun o ddocwmant? Dwi ddim yn gwybod. Rydym yn gwybod y gallai hi ddarllen a chyfeirio, ac rydym yn eithaf yn siŵr y gallai.

P'un a yw hi'n eistedd yno a'i gysylltio o ddocwmant, a p'un a fyddai hi'n cael rhywun arall i'w wneud, oherwydd, oherwydd gallwch chi ddarllen a chyfeirio, os oes gennych chi sgrif, a ydych chi'n darllen a chyfeirio neu a ydych chi'n ei ddweud beth i'w wneud? Dwi ddim yn gwybod. Ond mae'n syniad gwych bod gennym un ddocwmant sydd â un gair arno, ac mae hi'n cael ei ysgrifennu. have one document that has one word on it that she has actually written. But in 37 BC, Cleopatra would once again be summoned to a far away city by Mark Antony, this time to the prestigious city of Antioch, for one of the most extraordinary events in Cleopatra's rise. Cleopatra starts to support Mark Antony and Mark Antony is increasingly keen on breaking away from Octavian and establishing an eastern empire but in Antioch he summons

Cleopatra because hewydd ei bod yn angen arian a chymrwyddoedd ac ymddiriedaeth. Ac mae hi'n mynd i'w gwrdd â'i. Mae hi'n gwneud llawer o fynyddio mewn gwirionedd, mae'n eithaf ddiddorol. Mae hi'n mynd i'w gwrdd â'i ac mae hi'n dweud ie, bydd hi'n rhoi ymddygiad i'w gwrdd, ond yn ôl mae hi eisiau rhywbeth. Mae hi eisiau holl ddau o'r llyfrau yr oedd gan ddynion Pyrfaol Tolomaidd yn ôl eu gynnal yn y Ddaear ac mae hi'n dweud ie, gall hi gael hynny. Felly, bron ystod y nos, mae hi wedi adael yr empire golliol kings once owned in the east and he says yes she can have it so almost overnight she's restored the lost empire of the Ptolemies in the in the east and they are they are now firmly put together as allies thanks to this very generous gift this clever diplomatic play by Cleopatra

Seleucid kings of old would be turning in their graves because Cleopatra now ruled the dominant kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean and the wealthiest. The once mighty Ptolemaic kingdom that had enjoyed its height some 200 years earlier, where its borders theoretically stretched from the southern reaches of Anatolia to Syria to into the Near East to Cyrenaica in the West, ancient Libya, and of course to Egypt, the heartlands themselves. Well, that mighty Ptolemaic kingdom had been restored. And for her, this is really a restoration of the family heritage, if you like. And I think it proves to her and proves to the people of Egypt that she is a suitable person to rule Egypt that she is a suitable person

to rule Egypt because she's done a wonderful thing she's got this land back to us I think it demonstrates what a good organizer what a good governor she's been that she's able to be in the position to demand this and that Mark Antony has to go along with it that she actually has enough wealth now to support him so So it's an interesting thing. It also sets up the foundation for moving forward. If they're going to be a couple and they're going to have a power base, they've got a power base here. It's gone from Rome to Egypt, which I think is very important. Over the next few years, Cleopatra would spend time both in Alexandria, overseeing Egypt, and further afield in the

eastern Mediterranean. Now, not only did she accompany Antony as he ventured east to launch new military endeavours, but she also visited her newly acquired territories along the eastern Mediterranean shoreline and maintained friendly relations with nearby powerful monarchs, including the infamous King Herod. King Herod's always interesting because, of course, he's a big player in one part of the biblical narrative, of course. So it's interesting to see him pop up outside of that. And he's ruling Judea, which essentially, in some ways, like Egypt, are under Rome's protection. mewn rhai ffyrdd, fel Egip, yn ogystal â chyd-dau-dau. Felly, mewn llawer o ffyrdd, mae Cleopatra a Herod yn eich cyfadreoli, mewn ffordd, yn y gweld y duw. Maen nhw'n ddau ffrindiau o'r duw, fel y gafodd.

Rydyn ni'n gwybod bod Cleopatra wedi cwrdd â Herod am lawer o amser, neu rydyn ni'n cael gwybod bod ei fod wedi cwrdd â Herod am lawer o amser, ond mae'n anodd iawn gweithio allan beth a ddigwydd. Mae Josephus, who tells us about the meeting, is quite biased against Cleopatra. What we're told is that they didn't get on, that Cleopatra meddled in Jewish affairs, and was seen as quite hostile to the Jews, which doesn't seem particularly likely, actually, because Alexandria has a high Jewish population living there, and it's one of the largest Jewish centres outside Jerusalem. So I'm not sure how true this is but certainly the rumour is that she and Herod absolutely did not get on and she didn't

get on with Herod's family either. Nobody seemed to have liked her at all because she was seen as grasping and inappropriate and trying to seduce him, one of the stories is. But there are so many stories about Cleopatra trying to seduce people and this happens when you get famous or prominent women. They're always accused of trying to seduce people. So I think that all we can say is that possibly it wasn't the best relationship, but I don't think that we could push it any further than that. But enough on King Herod. Back to Cleopatra, Mark Antony and Egypt. Intent on displaying the martial and economic power of their kingdom, in 34 BC, Cleopatra and Mark Antony staged an extraordinary spectacle back in Alexandria.

Mark Antony's just come back from a victory, a battle. So he's won a victory over the Armenians. It doesn't seem to have been a massive, hugely significant victory, but regardless he comes back in full triumph to Alexandria and kind of puts on the kind of typical sort of Roman display of triumph, where you know you parade through the streets and he's seated in a really over the top kind of gold throne on a silver DS and all of this kind of stuff, a real demonstration of wealth and power and ability and victory.

And you've got the captives there as well, kind of a very typical Roman thing to do, parading these captives around in triumph. This kind of develops into a celebration that's known as the Donations of Alexandria. The Donations of Alexandria is a celebration where the whole family, so it's Cleopatra, Caesarian, who is the alleged son of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and their three children, so it'll be Cleopatra, Cellini, Alexander Helios, their twins, and Ptolemy

Philadelphus, the baby, went to the gymnasium in Alexandria and dressed in appropriate costumes. Mark Antony is dressed as Dionysus. Cleopatra appears as Isis. She is declared Queen of Kings. She is declared Queen of Kings. Caesarian, her son, is declared King of Kings. Basically, Mark Antony gave a speech declaring that they were going to rule the Eastern world, that Cleopatra and her son would rule Egypt, that the children would have rights to various lands in the Eastern Empire, and that Caesarian himself had a right to rule Rome as well.

So this is a vision of a kind of idyllic future for Cleopatra and her line in which all of her children are in control of various parts of the Mediterranean world. But of course, it's a future that's never going to come about. Because in making these donations, Mark Antony was going to be making himself very unpopular in Rome, and that was to lead to his downfall. I would say that this is the high watermark in her story, Cleopatra's story, that at this point it looks like everything's going to plan. They're going to take over the Eastern Empire, they're going to have a foothold in Rome. Caesarian will eventually

inherit Rome, probably. Her children will inherit other lands. She's with Mark Antony, who's clearly superior to Octavian. And, you know, the world is their oyster and they're announcing it to everybody. Within 20 turbulent years of ascending the throne of Egypt, Cleopatra had emerged the victor of a bloody civil war. She had won the hearts of two of Rome's most powerful warlords. She had restored a golden age for her kingdom. And she had risen to rule the most powerful empire in the eastern Mediterranean.

I find Cleopatra's story so interesting because she seems to rise from nowhere. Now, obviously, having said that, she was born into the royal family. I'm, you know, she's not, she's not come from nowhere. But she wasn't the firstborn daughter. And she made her way through all sorts of obstacles. And I think she shows a lot of political good sense and she is able to control her own destiny. She's born into a family where people murder each other where you've got to almost murder or be murdered and she's able to navigate her way through that

and at the same time she brings Egypt along with her so as her life improves so Egypt gets stronger and stronger and she turns people's opinions so people who didn't like her. So as her life improves, so Egypt gets stronger and stronger. And she turns people's opinions, so people who didn't like her start to like her. And I think it's just such an impressive achievement for anyone to do that. And I think it's such a shame that we tend to focus on her beauty and love affairs rather than looking at her political ability and her brains, I guess, and really respect her for what she did. So to me, it's fascinating. It's a great story of a great individual, undoubtedly. It's also absolutely pivotal in the history of Egypt

and in the history of the ancient world. And for that reason, I think Cleopatra's story is one of the best and most important we have from ancient history. Well, there you go. I hope you enjoyed our special multi-contributor episode on the rise of Cleopatra, featuring the brilliant Professor Joyce Tildesley, Dr. Glenn Godenho and Dr. Chris Naunton. It was an absolute pleasure to get all three of those Egyptologists in this documentary and podcast episode, all about the rise of the most famous woman from the ancient world. Now, last but certainly not least from me, if you'd like more ancients content, well, you can, of course, subscribe to our weekly

ancients newsletter via a link in the description below and if you'd be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on either apple podcasts spotify wherever you get your podcast from the whole team the whole ancients team would greatly appreciate it as we continue to share these incredible stories from ancient history that is mission, and we want to increase our audience as much as we can. The only way is up. But that's enough from me. Once again, I really hope you enjoyed this special episode, and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.