The Rest Is History - 195. Young Cleopatra

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Welcome to The Rest Is History Cleopatra series! The release schedule of the four episodes is as follows: Young Cleopatra (Monday 13th June) Julius Caesar & Cleopatra (Tuesday 14th June) Antony & Cleopatra (Thursday 16th June) Cleopatra's Downfall (Monday 20th June) However, members of The Rest Is History Club get all four episodes RIGHT NOW, so head to restishistorypod.com to sign up. In episode 1 of this four part mini-series on Cleopatra, Tom and Dominic discuss the incredible story of 'Young Cleopatra' and her early life in Ptolemaic Egypt.  Editor: James Hodgson Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. How should we remember Cleopatra? A pretty young temptress rolling out of a carpet? A mighty queen sailing majestically down the Nile? An imperious pharaoh with the power of life and death? Or simply a girl born into a dangerous world who managed to survive for almost four decades until her luck finally ran out. There's an element of truth in all of them. More than 2,000 years after she was born, she remains the most famous woman in history, a fighter, a survivor, a leader, a legend.

For centuries to come, people will remember her story. And that, you might say, was her greatest victory. That is the ending of a top new book on Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, by a very distinguished historian, Dominic Sandbrook. Dominic, this is the latest in your series of books written for younger readers. It is indeed, yes, The Latest Adventure in Time. So Cleopatra was an obvious one to pick for kind of 8- to 12-year-olds because they, like the rest of us, are suckers for – I mean, suckers is the wrong word. They, like the rest of us, are enthusiasts for glamour, intrigue, battles.

Gold. Sieges, gold. Yeah. Glitter. Sphinxes, all thathinxes all that you know yeah doom love affairs all the things that we associate with ancient egypt with ancient rome and particularly with the character of cleopatra so people who've listened to this um podcast on a regular basis may remember that we also did an episode on alexander the great uh and the reason that we did an episode on alexander the great is because um your previous book in this series was on alexander yeah um and in in the end of that book you offered up alexander the great as a model for for young children everywhere and we've got a question here from um judith downey who says i bought dominic's book on

cleopatra for my granddaughters before i give it it to them, can you tell me, is Cleopatra a role model for girls? I think she absolutely is a role model for girls, Tom. I don't think role models for girls need to be drippy. And I think Cleopatra is the most famous example in history of a powerful woman. So there aren't that many historical examples of very, very powerful, internationally famous women. I suppose Catherine the Great is an obvious one. Elizabeth I in England. But Cleopatra dwarfs both of those.

I completely agree. She is the last ruling pharaoh of Egypt. She is a prime actor in one of the greatest political dramas in all history. The last days of the Roman Republic, the rise of Rome to greatness, the death of Egypt as a sort of independent civilization. But also she's a remarkable woman because she's in a world dominated by men and she holds her own. She actually increases her dominions, doesn't she? Yes. And that's the thing. She doesn't just hold her own. I mean, there is a point at which it looks as though not only is she going to restore the empire that her forefathers ruled, but she's going to create something even greater. I mean, she is, I think, an absolutely extraordinary

figure. And part of the fascination, of course, is that she's not only an extraordinary political figure, but she also has this aura of romance and glamour and myth about her, which is a huge part of her kind of public image today, but was generated by herself and by her enemies. And it's the kind of fusion of those two traditions that makes the whole story so fascinating. Well, that's what most of our listeners, if you don't know the story of Cleopatra terribly well, you will probably least vaguely know that she's involved with Julius Caesar. She's involved with Mark Antony. And she has this sort of tragic death.

And you'll know all that from innumerable plays, operas, musicals, video games. You know, she crops up everywhere from the Elizabeth Taylor film to kind of Assassin's Creed, the video game. Asterix, Carry On Films. Carry On Films, exactly. I mean, there's no other historical, I don't think there's any other female historical character who has been represented in so many different media and who also carries that sort of whiff of danger,

of sexual danger as Cleopatra. And as we'll discover, Tom, whether that is merited or not is kind of very interesting, because this is a kind of classic example of the way in which the myth, the legend itself is dazzling and remarkable and has generated great, great poetry. So there's the famous lines in Ant and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, where he portrays this story. And he has Cleopatra kind of stressing about what will happen after she and Antony have died. And she says, Antony shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra buoy my greatness in the posture of a whore. she's imagining that you know a boy will appear on

the stage and pretend to be her um but in a way that's you know that's part of the kind of the extraordinary power of this is that cleopatra as a historical figure was playing a role as we will as we will discuss and it's precisely that kind of self-dramatization that has made her such a potent figure for Shakespeare, for Elizabeth Taylor, for everyone who's such an extraordinary kind of interplay and interaction. But Tom, I know you're incredibly keen to talk about the sort of, to do a lot of debunking and to talk about the sort of sources and stuff. So before we really kick off the narrative, which we intend to go through, you know, in real detail, as we have done in the past with Alexander and with the Falklands and things like that, it's worth saying, isn't it? I mean, you alluded to the fact that she self-mythologizes, but also there's a mythology created by her enemies. And the extraordinary thing about Cleopatra, of all these characters in history, she's one of the top four or five most famous

characters in all history. But almost every single thing we know about her comes from her enemies. That's right, isn't it? I mean, there's a handful of inscriptions. There are temple carvings. Coins. There are coins. But the written descriptions come from Roman sources that are actually describing her effect on the Romans. That's right, isn't it? There's nothing written down by Egyptians. There's no narrative by

Egyptians. No, I think there is Josephus, who is a Jewish writer writing about 100 years after she lived, but then the Jews very much still do her as well. But having said that, I mean, it is absolutely possible to see the kind of the mythology that her as well. But having said that, I mean, it is absolutely possible to see the kind of mythology that she was spinning. So I think you do. And I think that part of the fascination of her character is precisely that actually those two traditions kind of meld and merge in a very kind of effective way, kind of gin and tonic effect.

Right. That they're more fascinating for complementing each other if you see what i mean yeah no i do i absolutely see that i think we should um we should start by putting her in the context of the age that she's born and we we mentioned alexander the great so you begin your book with cleopatra as a young girl in the tomb of alexander right because the you've you've said that she's an Egyptian pharaoh, but the complicating factor is that she's not herself kind of an Egyptian. She's not bred of the mud of the Nile. She's not like the native pharaohs. She is the descendant of one of

Alexander the Great's generals. Yeah, that's right. So there's always an element of any biography of Cleopatra, there's always an element of a fiction or speculation because we know so little about her early life. And when I was kicking off my own kids book, I thought, you know, there's the challenge of doing this massive kind of info dumps. And one way of doing of dramatizing it is imagining something that she would undoubtedly have done. We know that the Ptolemies did this. They had festivals around Alexander's tomb because Alexander's tomb was in Alexandria. So it's not a flight of fantasy to imagine her there. So why does that matter? Because in the fourth century, as we discussed it, the fourth century BC, as we discussed in our Alexander podcasts, Alexander had led these armies out of Macedonia and conquered so much of what

used to be called the Near East, including Egypt. And at his death, the empire had been divided up among his kind of captains. And the shrewdest and basically the cleverest of them, Ptolemy, his old friend who'd been educated by the feet of Aristotle alongside Alexander, he goes off to Egypt. He says he wants Egypt because it's the richest, but it's the easiest to defend because it's kind of at the end of the line, if you know what I mean. So it's easy to, you know, it's wealthy. You've got the wealth of the Nile, but you can,

as long as you can hold the line at the Delta, you can stop anybody breaking in. And Ptolemy goes, he rules as Pharaoh. So as Alexander had done, he sort of assimilates to egyptian traditions doesn't he takes a key yes a key legitimizing item which is the coffin of alexander the great doesn't he i mean he literally transports it from babylon where alexander has died and takes it all the way to egypt that's which is you know the imprimatur of his own it's it's it's the greek imprimatur of

what will become his egypt Egyptian pharaonic status. So what happens, what's so interesting, right at the beginning is you have this melding of Egyptian and Macedonian Greek traditions. So they wear the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. They are depicted, these sort of Macedonian adventurers are depicted as Egyptian pharaohs, but they have a brand new capital built on the shores of the Mediterranean and the site supposedly chosen by Alexander himself, Alexandria. And at the very heart of Alexandria, as you say, is the tomb of Alexander. And the interesting thing is they depict themselves as Egyptians. They are very respectful to the priests, but it's really important to them that they are still Macedonian Greeks. And his son, also Ptolemy, takes over.

And he's called Ptolemy Philadelphus, which means the sibling lover. And he's called that because he marries his own sister, Arsinoe. And that then starts the trend, the thing that Ptolemy is most famous for. So it's like this sort of clan of warriors have established themselves, but they're sticking to their own, even though they're very careful at turning up at Egyptian temple ceremonies and all that sort of stuff. But they're still very, very Greek.

But they could point out that Hera and Zeus, so the queen and the king of the Greek gods, married one another. And they're very good at finding Greek parallels for Egyptian elements. And so they even construct a god, Serapis, who is a combination of Heracles and Osiris and all these various Greek and Egyptian gods. And they invent him and he becomes essentially the presiding deity of Alexandria. But I think it is important to emphasize that the predominant tone of the Greek inhabitants of Alexandria, and I think of the Ptolemies themselves, by and large, right the way up into Cleopatra. And this is why Cleopatra is such a key figure. Most of the Ptolemies are pretty contemptuous

of Egypt and Egyptian culture, and they regard the wealth of Egypt as something to be leeched. So the Egyptians themselves, I think, view Alexandria as a foreign city, like an enormous kind of great tick that has attached itself to the body of Egypt and is just leeching all the blood out of it. Well, Tom, I mentioned Assassin's Creed as one of the depictions of Cleopatra. Now, I know you're not a video games person, but anybody who has played video games or has played that particular video game, Assassin's Creed Origins, will know that it creates this colossal

and incredibly detailed portrait of Ptolemaic Egypt. And it's all very Egyptian pyramids and kind of huts and the Nile and all that sort of stuff. And in the game, which has been done with sort of intense cooperation with kind of historians and archaeologists, you get to Alexandria and it's marble colonnades and it's people and the other characters are talking in Greek rather than in Egyptian. And it's sort of scholars strolling in gardens.

And it feels very, very Greek, as indeed Alexandria must. I mean, it was cosmopolitan, but it saw itself, didn't it, as part of the Greek world? Well, I mean, it's literally cosmopolis. It's the city of the universe. And the ambition of Alexandria is to contain within its streets everything. So it's great harbors to contain ships that have come from across the world, not just from the Mediterranean, but from India and Africa. And of course, its famous library, again, the ambition is to contain all the learning that there is. But this ambition is a Greek ambition. And the city is a Greek city. And the rulers are Greek. And the relationship with Egypt

is always therefore incredibly paradoxical. I mean, it's a proper kind of, it is a colonial relationship right the way up to the time of Cleopatra. And one of the things that make Cleopatra so distinctive is that she moves beyond that. Tom into a world in which that empire the Ptolemaic empire is a shadow of it so so what what's happened would you say to what's gone wrong so we talked about Alexander and as one bookend of a distinctive period that historians call the Hellenistic era and Cleopatra is the other and the Hellenistic period basically describes the successor empires, the successor states of Alexander. And to begin with, they're incredibly potent. And Ptolemaic Egypt is one of basically three successor states. However, what happens over the course of the second and first centuries BC is that a new superpower is rising in the West. And there has never been a superpower like it in

the Mediterranean. And by the time that Cleopatra is born, essentially, the whole of the Mediterranean has come under the influence, the authority of this emergent superpower. And that superpower, of course, is Rome, which is a republic. And the republic is founded on a contempt for kings, which means that the very structure of government in Alexandria, haven't they? So they had expanded beyond their borders. They'd held kind of Cyprus and Cyrene, which is now Libya and parts of Syria. But that's all being whittled away by the Romans, isn't it? And the Alexandrian crowd who are always... So Alexandria is both a city of philosophy and great learning, but it's also got this terrible tradition of rioting.

Well, it's officially a democracy. I mean, that's another kind of fascinating aspect of it, is that it's a monarchy, but it's also a democracy i mean that's that's another kind of fascinating aspect of it is that it's a monarchy but it's also a democracy and so the people of alexandria they're always throwing out yeah ptolemies and replacing them with their brothers and uh there's a tradition that the women of alexandria in riots will go and grab people's testicles men's oh that's nice yeah that's that's a distinctive feature of Alexander and Ryan. I didn't put that in the George's book. No, I hope not. So, yeah, Cleopatra. So let's talk a tiny bit about Cleopatra's parents. So we know who her father was.

He is Ptolemy XII, who's nicknamed Auletes, the flute player. The clarinet player. And some people always say that's very – well, there are two different schools of thought on this, as far as I can tell. One is that this is because he's dissipated and he spends all his time at parties which seems like a very roman way of orientalizing way of describing autonomy and the other is that he's called this because he enjoyed the religion of dionysus um and that you know playing the flute or the clarinet and sort of dancing and all that sort of stuff was part of the religious sort of tradition. What's your take on Cleopatra's father? Well, he has a very bad hand. And he has a bad hand because over the course of his reign,

the other great rival, traditional rival of Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt, Syria, the Seleucid Empire, it gets extinguished by Pompey the Great, who is Rome's greatest general in the 60s and 50s BC. And he extinguishes Seleucid independence, he captures Jerusalem, he goes back to Rome, kind of trailing kings and wealth and glory. But he doesn't take over Egypt. Egypt is left, but it's absolutely under-sufferance. And one of the reasons why Egypt is not taken over is that it's too rich. So Pompey's rivals will not permit him to annex Egypt, but nor will anyone else be allowed to do it because it's simply too rich. And so that's a very humiliating position for Ptolemy Auletes to be in, because

basically he's on the throne precisely because he is seen as so weak. And the nickname, I think, I mean, I think it has a kind of double resonance. It symbolizes for the Romans, the fact that Ptolemaic Egypt is contemptible, decadent. It's all about, you know, they're not interested in manly things like conquering Gaul or stuff like that. They're just interested in parties. But also it's sinister because there are religious traditions. These are, you know, Egypt is a land where the gods have animal heads and all kinds of ancient, dark, sinister practices. None of it that is really conducive with the stern ancestral republican traditions of Rome. I mean, there's a slight, you know, it's anachronistic, but the way in which, say,

you know, republican Americans would look at the monarchies of Europe in the 19th century, something of that quality, I think, is there. That makes complete sense. But then there's the issue of her mother. So his wife, Ptolemy's wife, was called Cleopatra Trifina, and she was often thought to have been, we're not exactly sure, but she's probably some kind of relative, some part of the clan, but not his sister. But there is some doubt, or doubt is is sometimes expressed about cleopatra's own ethnicity because for example when gal gado the israeli actress said that she wanted to remake

elizabeth taylor's cleopatra and she wanted to play cleopatra there was torrent outpouring of out of outrage um people saying cleopatra was black how can you how can you do this she was egyptian but i mean i think most scholars would say that's absolute tosh, would they, Tom? She's Macedonian. She's undoubtedly Macedonian. Yeah. I mean, if she wasn't, it would have been mentioned.

Well, the key thing, I think, and lots of scholars say this, is although it's not explicitly stated in the sources that her mother was Ptolemy's wife, so it's possible that she could have some other mother, Egyptian mother. The Romans would almost certainly have made use of it, wouldn't they? They'd have said she was-

Well, so also would her siblings. Because the salient thing about the Ptolemies is that they're a horrific family. I mean, they are terrifying. And the female of the species tends to be deadlier than the male so the girls are just as likely to stab in the back and kill if not more so than the the than the boys can i tell you my favorite um ptolemy ptolemy family family relationship it's um ptolemy

the eighth whose name was physcon which i think Fatty yeah Fatty Abyss Abyss so so he married his sister Cleopatra II who had previously been married to their brother and had had a child by him but then he tired of his own sister so he married her daughter who was also his niece so now was at once his niece his daughter-in-law and his second wife all at once and his and his wife wait for it tom his wife got was cross and said how dare you marry my daughter you know you're married to me my brother and so he was infuriated by his wife nagging him said you know what he did he um he killed their 14 year old son chopped him up and gave him to his wife as a birthday present yeah well so so they people periodically have tried to make films about or tv series about

the Ptolemies and it's so confusing that it never quite works but that kind of mafia ambience is absolutely key to one that these are murderous terrifying, but they're also seen by the light of the Romans contemptible. So the other famous story that's told about that Ptolemy is that Scipio Aemilianus, who is the great war hero who has captured Carthage and is the absolute epitome of Roman militarism, turns up in Alexandria and he walks at a brisk pace through the streets. And poor old Ptolemy is enormously fat and dressed in silk. And he kind of every wobble and undulation as he totters and pants after Scipio is on display to the people of Alexandria. And it's a kind of deliberate attempt by the Romans to kind of humiliate them. I think that we should take a

break at this point. And that when we come back, we should look more closely at the geopolitics of the world that Cleopatra is born into, and the kind of the context that explains why her career is such a kind of triumph against the odds. Very good. We'll see you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Tom, it has been a little while, sadly, since we talked about our much-loved and learned sponsors at UnHerd, the online magazine. Would that be U-N-H-E-R-D? That's precisely the spelling. Now, as you all know, Tom, or I hope you haven't forgotten, it's an online magazine that kicks back against herd mentality. Now, we're in the middle of talking about Cleopatra.

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by theranos i'm sure they're lovely uh but they do sound evil well should i tell you what cat writes yes would you enjoy that yeah cat writes the myth of theranos might have shattered but the legend of its founder lingers on and as long as society remains enthralled to the narrative of the disruptor the glass ceiling breaker the patriarchy smasher. She won't be the only one. If Elizabeth Holmes hadn't existed, we would have had to invent her. And in some ways, we did. Do you have thoughts on that, Tom? Well, in light of what we're saying about Cleopatra, that's not without a certain relevance, is it?

It's incredibly relevant. Yeah. yeah that's that's not without a certain relevance is it it's incredibly relevant yeah and the sense in which Cleopatra was a a genuine you know she genuinely broke through all kinds of glass ceilings she did but is also the invention of uh those who were terrified of her the important thing is to say that if you want to kick back against herd mentality which I do I very much do you can join unheard today and get three months free, Dominic. Three months. That's not even a bargain. It's a freebie. It absolutely is. They're giving it away. So just go to unheard.com, that's U-N-H-E-R-D, forward slash rest, R-E-S-T, to claim this offer now. Right back to Cleopatra.

Welcome back to The Rest is History. Tom, you were very excitedly going to talk about geopolitical context for the world in which, so Cleopatra, we've been talking for more than 20 minutes and she's only just been born. Well, because I think the context is really fascinating, which is that essentially so we've talked about say british imperial power and we've talked about countries like argentina being as you know or egypt say actually yeah being part uh of an unofficial empire in which britain's military financial naval power was such that they didn't have to come you know they didn't have to be administered by a British plenipotentiary, but they essentially couldn't do anything that the British didn't want them to do. And that's a very analogous situation to Egypt's relationship to Rome in the first century.

The problem that the Hellenistic, the Greek world around the Near East had faced throughout the first century is that the Romans were unwilling to tolerate anyone who might kind of conceivably rival them. So every time some king stood up and tried to impose a degree of order or to display a degree of autonomy, the legions would come, topple him, hamstrung his elephants, drag his treasure off to be spent in rome all that kind of stuff um but the romans didn't want the hassle of actually administering this stuff they didn't want to send in you know it would cost too much in terms of of money and men to bother with all that so essentially the near east becomes a breeding ground for anarchy which is part of why

these hellenistic kingdoms end up just collapsing. And Egypt really is, as the last kingdom left standing, it's in a really, really difficult position because it is massively under Rome's military and financial thumb, but it doesn't even have the benefit of knowing where it stands with Rome because it's constantly subject to the ambitions of all these kind of various rival warlords and bankers. Well, this is the thing. So Auletes, who we talked about, Cleopatra's father, I mean, he's best known in Rome because basically his way of dealing with all this is to try and play off all the different Roman power brokers by bribing them, isn't it? So you've got Pompey the Great, who's who models himself and alexander the great so he's all these people it's so interesting isn't it um we we were talking about this as a kind of

sequel to our alexander podcast and and it makes sense to see it that way because all the characters think they're in a sequel to the alexander podcast yeah don't they are i mean he does his hair like alexander he claims he's got alex Alexander's cloak. He's always standing in profile. Yes, exactly. He can kind of show off his quiff. And as we'll see, you know, one of Mark Antony's, one of the parts of his great downfall is he launches this invasion, which is an attempt to kind of reproduce the glory of Alexander

in attacking the Persians. So Auletes, he sends Pompey a golden crown. He sends Julius Caesar 6,000 silver talents. So he's basically throwing money around. And the problem is that that money, I mean, most of it is raised from the long-suffering Egyptian peasantry. Egypt is the breadbasket of the Mediterranean,

so therefore there's enormous amounts of money there, but they just keep screwing more and more money out of the long-suffering peasantry. But also he borrows a substantial chunk. So this banker called Rabirius, and this is a problem for Ptolemy in exactly the way that, say, a third world country that gets into debt

to the IMF or something. It's a huge problem. But of course, it then also becomes a problem for the Romans because they need their money back. Well, they need their money, but also it infuriates the Alexandrian crowd because they're very proud, aren't they? They hate the Romans. They're inflamed by the fact that their own country has got,

as they say, crippling taxes to bribe Roman power brokers. And Auletus has got this impossible balancing act. He can't alienate the Romans because otherwise they'll invade, kick him out and replace him with somebody else. But equally, he can't suck up to them too much because his own people will rise up against him. And that's what happens in, I think, 58 BC when Cleopatra is probably about 10. And Ptolemy has literally gone to Italy. Yeah. There are huge riots, aren't there?

And he basically ends up toppled. He ends up, doesn't he go to, has this terrible meeting with Marcus Cato, Tom, when Cato is on the toilet. Yeah. So Cato has been set. Cato is the model of integrity and upright behavior. And as a traditional representative of the Roman Republic, is utterly contemptuous of kind of fat and feed Egyptian kings. And yes, insists on conducting all his business with him on the toilet.

So Auletus has been kicked out by his own own people and they replace him with cleopatra and by his own daughter yeah both cleopatra's older sister berenike um so they're all they all have the same what's slightly annoying is that all the people in the ptolemaic dynasty they only have one of about five names don't they ptolemy osinui berenikeopatra. It must be some other male name, but I don't know. They're just all called Ptolemy. So she takes over, and she rules for, what, three years? While her father is in Italy trying to raise the money and the men. So he's got all this cash that he's kind of extorted from the peasantry, borrowed from Robirius, the banker,

and he's raising the money to come back and take Egypt back. Berenike, meanwhile, has married a guy called Seleucus. He's a brilliant man. Do you know what? If you've got his nickname, Tan. Saltfish hawker. Yeah, the saltfish monger, the translation I have, because he's stank of fish.

Well, the Alexandrians are not only very sort of decadent and stuff, but they're very snobbish, aren't they? So they're basically spherical. Yeah. They have a distinctly unprogressive attitude towards foreigners. Yeah. And physical deformity. But he's murdered.

Berenike takes great effect. Berenike gets fed up with him. Gets rid of him. Takes another husband. Yeah. So Rabirius, meanwhile, the banker whom Ptolemy's borrowed the money from, takes great effect gets fed up with him yeah sort of him takes another husband yeah yeah um so uh rabirius meanwhile the banker whom ptolemy's borrowed the money from he he essentially you know he he knows that he's not going to get his money back unless ptolemy's exhibition expedition

works so he funds an expedition that is led by a guy called um aulus gabinius and they go you know they go to they go to egypt they um they kick bernie k out um she's executed isn't she executed uh ptolemy takes over again and of course the guy who leads the cavalry on that expedition is a young up-and-coming roman officer called mark anthony yes do we have a uh do we have a section from a from a brilliant new book john's a nice reading yeah gazing out from her window beside her servant girls cleopatra could not take her eyes off them one roman in particular caught her attention a square george shaggy haired rugged looking man who carried himself with the arrogance of a born leader one of her servants whispered that this was the young cavalry commander

all the girls were talking about. Some called him the new Heracles, but his real name was Mark Antony. Now, as the handsome young commander swung down from his horse and removed his helmet, he glanced casually up at the window. For a moment, his dark eyes met Cleopatra's, and he grinned. And suddenly, Tom Holland, it was as though time had slowed to a halt and Cleopatra felt a kind of tremor run through her body, a thrill of fear and danger and overwhelming excitement

all mixed up together. Isn't that exciting? Is that not exciting? That really is. That is a book for all nine-year-olds to read. Yes. Well, very exciting. That really is. That is a book for all nine-year-olds to read. Yes. Well, very exciting.

Yes. So the likelihood is that Cleopatra may have seen Antony. Well, she must have seen him. I mean, he's so senior because he's the cavalry commander who has led the charge. Yeah. And as her father is installed back in the palace. So the palace, by the way, we should talk about just one quick word about that. So when we think about the palace, you're probably thinking Buckingham Palace or some sort of stereotypical palace, but it's not.

It's a huge quarter of the city, isn't it? So there are temples that will become important later on when Julius Caesar enters the story because the battle for the palace becomes very important. So Mark Antony has come in with Aulus Gabinius' men, who are called the Gabinians, and they become players in their own right in this incredibly complicated story. And Cleopatra's father is back in charge. And clearly, she is very much in favor with him because she is not punished as her sister was. So the assumption must be,

not least because she's now going to be his heir that she in some way is still being loyal to him and in fact she when she takes her pharaonic title she always describes herself as the father loving goddess or the father loving queen yeah so so she's kind of on his side so so Ptolemy Aelites is back, but he now faces the problem of paying off Robirius, the banker who's lent him all this money. So he comes up with a cunning wheeze, which is to appoint Robirius the finance minister. And Robirius obviously settles in and starts screwing ever more money out so to use your analogy you know tom it's like um you know the british sums that the head of you know the bank of england or something had gone to run the argentine economy yeah in 1890 the the episode we did on maximilian emperor maximilian yes being sent by napoleon the third to get the money that the french had lent

yeah i think kind of very analogous and as in those the money that the French had lent. Yeah, I think kind of very analogous. And as in those situations, obviously the locals don't like this. And so after a year, Robirius gets kicked out, runs back to Rome. And Gabinius, he's played this key role in Egypt. And so obviously everyone back in Rome is now furious with him, incredibly jealous. And what happens in Rome when people are jealous of one another is that they bring law cases and Gabinius gets convicted of taking bribes from Auletes. He's obviously massively guilty of that. And so the whole thing slightly gets parked. Ptolemy is back in Egypt. He dies in 51. And meanwhile, in Rome, everything is starting to go tits up because this is 51 is two years before Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon.

And the whole Roman Republic is going to implode into civil war. And on rival sides in the civil war, we have Julius Caesar and his erstwhile friend. In fact, his erstwhile son-in-law pompey the great and while that matters for cleopatra is that she she's auletes his heir isn't she yes and with a civil war together with her younger brother a civil war in the roman world egypt is so rich and strategically important that it can't really it's it's very very difficult to stay out you have to pick a side but by picking a side it's a bit like being the liberal democrats by picking a side you kind of you you know you pin yourself to a position and if things go badly

you know you've got no defense yeah you know that's the end of you basically yeah so so so it's it's it's tricky and treacherous and Ptolemy has left Egypt to to Cleopatra who's about 17 I think at this point and Cleopatra's younger brother who comes to the throne and is hailed as Ptolemy the 13th and he's about what 12 13 yeah and they're probably not even that time I think it's about 11 or so i mean these dates are all very vague it's impossible to be sure something to say at this point is that cleopatra never rules without a male colleague so right the way through she always has a a male counterpart egypt had had female pharaohs before hadn't it hat set shut i know you're much more um up on egypt yeah so she's 18th dynasty.

So there are role models. I don't think they would have looked back that far. What about the popularity, Tom, of Isis? Because obviously Isis is a colossal figure in the Egyptian pantheon, and one that Cleopatra embraces. She dresses as Isis. Is that not an image of kind of female monarchy? So Cleopatra comes to power.

She's 17. She has this young boy who is under the thumb of all kinds of significant players in her father's court. And they are clearly assuming that both of these young pharaohs will be ciphers. And insofar as one of them will succeed to power, it'll be Ptolemy. But Cleopatra has other ideas, and this is why she's such a remarkable figure, because even though even she can't get away with just ruling on her own as a woman, she is someone who is absolutely determined to rule as a pharaoh. So she puts her name first. Her name is ahead of Ptolemy's. She puts her name on coins. She puts her portrait on coins without Ptolemy. And she realizes that there is scope for

her in playing not just the role of a Ptolemaic ruler, but a properly Egyptian pharaoh, because there is all this enormous kind of, you know, thousands and thousands of years of tradition and myth and heritage that she can draw on. And that as a woman, as you say, the great goddess Isis, you know, an object of veneration across Egypt and far beyond Egypt, that if she can invoke that, that sense, that sense of herself as the mother goddess of Egypt, then that will get her popular support across the country as well as Alexandria. And essentially, even though she, you know, she's a very, very young girl, the leader of a country that is absolutely on its uppers in debt to Rome in the shadow of this great military

superpower, she dares to think that she can essentially revive the fortunes of her kingdom and rule as Alexander had. And it's the most astonishing story. And that's what makes her such a remarkable figure. And she profits from the much broader story that is going on of the Roman Civil War and what will become the implosion of the Republic. And I think that we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, we should look at what happens when Julius Caesar meets with Pompey and then how Cleopatra comes to meet with Julius Caesar. So for most of you, we will see you for the next installment of this thrilling historical saga, which will undoubtedly feature more readings from moving and powerful new histories of Cleopatra. So we will see you tomorrow for most of you. But some of you, of course, will have early access to all the episodes because you're members of the Rest is History Club. And in true

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