The Rest Is History - 198. Cleopatra's Downfall

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic for the fourth and final instalment in their Cleopatra mini-series, as they discuss Octavian's propaganda, the war he waged against Antony and Cleopatra, and their ultimate demise.  Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. 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. Octavian launched his campaign in the first weeks of 33 BC. He began in the Senate with the latest reports of Antony's behaviour. What, he asked, was going on in Alexandria? What had happened to his old comrade? What could explain all these un-Roman antics? Every day the stories became more shocking. Antony had adopted

all kinds of strange Egyptian cults. He'd lost his Roman virtues and become a slave to luxury. He lazed around all day on a gilded couch, wearing a jewel-encrusted robe and carrying an oriental scepter. He spent all his time drinking the local wine and went to the toilet in a chamber pot of solid gold. He feasted every night on weird un-Roman dishes, enthralled to the whims of his Egyptian queen, and at palace banquets he even massaged her feet like a slave. So that is from a top children's book about the life of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. You can guess the author. So Tom Holland, that's Octavian's propaganda,

talking about Antony and Cleopatra. It reminds me of how another writer described it. Antony, the triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet's fool. So that's Shakespeare. Very nice. Well, I mean, they're the two great literary figures of the western world so so so that tradition is absolutely the tradition i think that dominates the popular understanding of antony cleopatra that that antony is has been

kind of softened and corrupted and in literally enslaved by Cleopatra. And that's where we left the last episode. So we've done three. We are now around about, what are we, sort of 34, 33 BC. Antony and Cleopatra in Alexandria. Octavian is beginning the propaganda campaign against them, which has sort of been simmering for the last few years, but now really reaches. So Octavian needs, I think to Octavian had always set his heart on establishing his supremacy over Rome and the whole world. I think that had always been his object. And I think he pursues it with a

kind of chill ruthlessness. And he has a kind of penetrating and slightly cold political intelligence that enables him to recognise that Antony's strategy is a massive source of potential for him. Yeah. Well, I was about to say, doesn't he realise that Cleopatra is in some ways Antony's greatest asset, but she's also his great weakness. Cleopatra is a weapon for Octavian and I think that's the brilliance that he recognizes that he can turn Antony's great strength against him well so the big challenge that Octavian faces if he's to knock out Antony is that the Romans you know don't want civil war they've had two brutal bouts of it um Octavian's pitch is that he is bringing them peace. So if he launches an attack on Antony, that would be unacceptable. The Roman people would not get behind him.

The Western provinces would not get behind him. The Italians would not get behind him. However, if he can present the war as a campaign against Cleopatra, then that's completely different. And Cleopatra is in every way a kind of ideal bogey, because she is foreign, she is royal, and she is female. So on every level, every level of Roman political prejudice, that makes her a sinister opponent. Let's talk about that last element because we've we're into the fourth podcast now in this series and we've talked a little bit about Cleopatra as a woman and as that rarity a woman exercising political power but we should perhaps

dig a tiny bit more into that because do you think that's what makes her so unsettling because some biographers particularly female biographers have suggested that suggested that there's a sort of bucket loads of misogyny in this. I think there absolutely are. And that the Romans, there was something peculiarly horrific to Roman elite male opinion about a woman leader, a foreign woman. Do you think that's true? Do you think it's the femininity that makes Cleopatra so shocking? I think it's part of the package. So the historian W. W. Tarn, who was a kind of splendid representative of mid-century Classus tradition, said of Cleopatra that she was Hannibal's only rival as an enemy of Rome,

that she inspired almost as much terror in the Romans as Hannibal did. And I think that that's a judgment that kind of overdoes it. I don't think she was ever on a level with Hannibal. But I think that it does respond correctly to the scale of the propaganda effort that Octavian unleashes. But as is always the case with propaganda, it only works if you're going with the grain of prejudices that already exist. And the idea of Cleopatra as a woman feminizing men, there's a whole set kind of sexual dynamic there that I think is hard for us to get a handle on because it's very, very alien to us. But essentially for Romans, the idea of a man being feminized is absolutely the most shocking thing that you could contemplate. The idea that a man plays a woman, you know, to a man, let alone to a woman is absolutely the worst taboo. And so by presenting Antony in that light,

you know, it's kind of, you know, it's like saying he's a, you know, in our lights, a kind of paedophile or something. I mean, it's on that level of shock and horror. So that's what Antony's, that's what Octavian's doing. But he is also, of course, saying that Antony has ceased to be be Roman that he's become a kind of you know a soft decadent depraved Greekling from the east and that's why and also that he wants to become a king and I think the the the the kind of monarchical strain is true I think that that is what Anthony's playing with and I think that you know that's a cause of you know it enables him to draw support in the east but of course it I mean, it's anathema to people in Rome

for whom the word king is absolutely a dirty word. And around about this point, Tom, I think that we get a lot of the stories. So for example, there's a story about people dressing up as a friend of theirs called Plankus, who dresses up as a sea nymph at their parties, sort of wriggling around, covered in blue. There's the story about one of the famous Cleopatra stories

that historians have spent a lot of time arguing about. Was it chemically possible and all this thing about her swallowing a pearl? Which comes from very much my friend, Pliny the Elder. Yeah. So that's the story that she has a bet with Antony that she can basically serve the most expensive meal that's ever been served in human history. And she dissolves a pearl in vinegar and drinks it.

And people, scholars have actually written articles about, you know, the chemical composition of pearls and whether this would be possible had she softened the pearl beforehand. But isn't the obvious explanation for all these stories that they are produced by Octavian's propagandists and then they turn up in plinian and plutarch and cassius dio and so on yes do you think there's a grain of truth in them do you think some of these things probably happened it's very difficult to know isn't it um i i think a bit of both i i think anthony has the misfortune that um so octavian has two henchmen one of whom agrippa has set up this navy he's a brilliant naval commander um a brilliant military man which octavian absolutely isn't uh but his second right hand man is a guy called mycenas who is brilliant at spotting literary talent he basically is peter

mandelton isn't he no well he's but he's a literary yeah to a degree but i mean he he has an eye for literary talent so he identifies some of the world's greatest poets you know the great great writers of roman literature it's propitious horace and of course bubble virgil yeah and it's their genius that will ensure that what might otherwise have just been kind of crude propaganda becomes woven into poetry that has been read ever since. But there is a further paradox, which is that because they are great poets, they're not just dealing in abuse. They are also able to give, in the long run, a kind of dignity to their portrayal, certainly of Cleopatra and also to a degree of Antony as well, but particularly to Cleopatra, which plays a crucial role in the kind of the romance and the potency of her subsequent reputation. So the famous example,

the most famous example of this would be in the Aeneid, the great epic of Roman beginnings that Virgil writes. And Aeneas is a Trojan prince who has been told by the gods that he has to flee Troy, sail with a band of Trojans, and he will end up founding the city that in due course will result in the foundation of Rome. But he stops off in a city that has just been founded on the North African coast called Carthage, which has been founded by a queen called Dido. And Aeneas is tempted to stay and ignore his divine destiny to go off and kind of found the Roman line and hang out with Dido. And in the end, he gets reminded by the gods, get a move on, you've got to go and found Roman history. So Aeneas goes and Dido commits suicide. And this supposedly establishes

the lifelong hatred between Rome and Carthage that will culminate in Carthage's destruction. But the significance of that is that it's obviously making play with the story of Antony and Cleopatra. And actually, Dido is presented very, very sympathetically. She has a potency and a power that is also echoed in the poetry of Horace, where he's very rude about Cleopatra, but he can't help but make her seem glamorous and fascinating. certainly blackens her reputation and it means that you know all these kind of traditions of her as a sex mad virago absolutely pass into the kind of cultural mainstream and have been recycled and recycled and recycled but they have also ensured that she you know her character as a remarkable woman a remarkable leader um someone who could uh capture the heart of a two of the greatest men in the world that that is also a part of the myth. So it's a complicated legacy.

Just one question, Tom, before we get back to the geopolitics, as it were, and sort of the military narrative. How much do you think that portrait of Antony and Cleopatra or indeed Dido and Aeneas owes to things like Jason and Medea? Because, I mean, they would all have been familiar with that story, right? And that's the idea of the witch queen and the sort of gullible hero. I mean, that's really the Antony and Cleopatra story right there, isn't it? Well, again, you know, you asked how much of this is rooted in misogyny.

A lot of these myths, they fuse suspicion of foreign royalty with suspicion of the female because in both the greek and the roman traditions foreign kings are equated with with effeminacy yeah so um a woman is an ideal representative of these kind of traditions and of course i mean all these all this propaganda is going with the grain of that uh that's why that's why it's so effective and why it works all right so let's move on from the propaganda to the sort of the hard political and military realities so the breach really becomes obvious at the beginning of 32 bc i would say that's when the two consuls pro-antony cons, they flee Rome, don't they, with about a third of the Senate to the east. It's a bit of a, this is a slight action replay of. Yeah.

And one of them is Domitius Ahenobarbus, who in Shakespeare's play is Ahenobarbus. Who is the guy who has those wonderful lines. So Anthony and Cleopatra have moved to Ephesus and they receive the senators there. And it's pretty obvious at this point isn't it war hasn't been declared um but it's obvious that there's going to be a civil war won't be declared as a civil war will it I mean that's the key thing it will be declared as a war against Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra are in Ephesus and at this point some of Antony's friends say even at this stage I think you should send her back to Egypt. She's a problem because even though she's providing a lot of the money and the fleet, Italy will never accept her. And actually, one of his friends, a man called Gaminius, gets drunk and

says, we'd be better off without her. And Cleopatra, according to the sources, says oh that's great I'm glad you've said that because now we no longer need to torture you to find out what you really think and he then Giminez then flees to Octavian but that I mean whether or not that story is true we don't know but there's clearly there's a sort of um there's a there's a discipline and a focus on Octavian's side that there isn't on Anttony's side and that part of the reason for that would you say thomas that the cleopatra is a destabilizing element to the other roman

captains absolutely yes yes and so that's that's the problem that antony faces is that perforce i mean he hasn't really had a choice because he's based in alexandria not not in rome but he has to found his pitch for the world in alliance with cleopatra and of course that that that destabilizes his own side and it enables octavian to present himself as the defender of of rome against sinister foreign barbarian queens because the next thing octavian does is the will and yeah now what so what's the story there what's going on because that will seem slightly baffling to people who are not familiar with sort of the legal niceties of kind of roman anthony has deposited his will with the festal virgins who are the guardians of the hearth fire of rome itself in the Forum, the kind of great central space in Rome.

And, you know, it's absolutely sacrosanct. No question of anyone being allowed to look at it. So Octavian goes and grabs it and reads it out to the Senate. And it's full of shocking details. So Antony acknowledges that Caesarian is Julius Caesar's heir again in the will, which is incendiary. Striking at Octavian. Obviously, blow at Octavian.

He leaves property to Cleopatra, which is that not illegal under Roman law to leave property to a foreigner? And according to Octavian, because Octavian is the person who reads it out, right? So we don't know. We don't know what his... Octavian could be making it all up.

But Octavian says that Antony, perhaps most shockingly, wants to be buried after his death in Alexandria, not in Rome. Do you think all that's true? Do you think Antony did? Had he gone native, as it were? We don't know. My hunch would be no, but that it's untrue only to the degree that people would accept it was true.

I'm just trying to figure that out. Yes, okay. It's probably heightened, but it's not so heightened that people weren't able to believe it because people clearly did believe it yeah and so it's after that that octavian stages this ceremony which appears to be an old-fashioned ceremony but he may have invented is that right so yeah it kind of involves throwing a spear and all this kind of um very self-conscious kind of antiquarian is a bit like Victorians inventing traditions, you know, passing them off as time-honored. And so it identifies Octavian with the ancient, you know, the martial traditions of Rome, where you declare war on a barbarian enemy and you hurl a spear and priests do all kinds of stuff. And he does that.

And also very, an absolute novelty. He gets communities across Italy and the West to swear kind of oath of loyalty to him as the commander of the Roman effort against this barbarian queen. So now we're into the war. War has basically been declared. Antony and Cleopatra are in the East. They're basically in Patras in Greece. Octavian and Cleopatra are in the east. They're basically in Patras in Greece. Octavian is going to try and cross from Italy. And now the baffling thing to me here is what Antony's strategy is. Because Antony, it really matters to him that he has to keep the sea lanes to Alexandria open.

Because obviously that's the supplies of his fleet. He also wants to keep hold of Greece. But Octavian strikes east. Agrippa takes his fleet and kind of hoovers up of greece but octavian strikes east agrippa takes his fleet and kind of hoovers up some of the ports on the peloponnese octavian crosses his with his land army to corfu and then to epirus what i don't what i've never really understood is how it happens that anthony manages to end up being cornered without really having fought any battles he's they get bottled up so they get bottled up in the bay of actium exactly and which is so it's the gulf of ambracia it's a place called

actium it's a sort of fly bitten it's like is it a fishing port i mean it's yeah it's pretty much basically isn't it how is it that i mean what's what explains his passivity because he basically allows octavian and agrippa to blockade him in this crescent big crescent shaped bay and i mean why is why doesn't he take the fight to the enemy he wants to fight a land war octavian refuses to fight it and because his ships are blockaded the option is either to starve or to fight or to try and make a run for it with the ships or to fight fight a sea battle. Yeah. So those are the options. And this is the sort of uncertainty, isn't it? Because it's the summer of 31 BC.

Antony is there. Cleopatra is there. They're blockaded in Actium, which is in kind of northwestern Greece. Agrippa's ships blockading them. And they have this great debate. Do we break out by land or by sea? And most of the Roman officers seem to have wanted to break out by land. Because obviously,

because they, they used to fighting on land and Cleopatra, this great council of war, she carries the day because she says, what? Leave my, are you mad? If we leave,

because they can't win the war without a fleet, right? They can't win the war without a fleet. Exactly. And the, you know, the troops, the legions could retreat.

Yeah. So that in a way way the fleet is more important so they decide that they are going to have to launch this colossal breakout and i well it's not that this is the thing it's not clear what they've decided are they going to break out or are they going to fight a naval and i'm not sure maybe you have an opinion but i'm not sure they know themselves. I don't know what they're thinking. And I don't think anyone does. Because what happens is, well, the traditional story is that they sail out and then Cleopatra makes a dash for it with her fleet for Alexandria. Antony sees it.

And instead of fighting like a Roman, he then goes after her. Like a kind of a lovesick puppy lovesick puppy following his his mistress so we don't know whether that's you know is he playing the coward as octavian spin doctors have it or is this kind of part of a premeditated move to try and get the fleet out so that they can go and transport the army somewhere i mean we we just don't know but what suggests tom and i think and and i think there is a particular problem with making sense of actium because it's the foundational battle for what you know the entire augustan regime octavian becomes augustus and therefore for the entire uh dynasty that augustus founds so he and his doctors pick it up don't they it's it's

impossible to know really and i think part of what you're saying is i don't entirely understand what's going on is that we we don't you know it's the accounts of it are not an account fundamentally of an explicable campaign it's an account of an episode that is foundational for augustus's legitimacy yeah so the sort of just to explain in very simple terms for um listeners who are not familiar with it anthony comes out with according to the accounts he comes out with about 200 ships fights this sort of battle then cleopatra comes behind but instead of him, she keeps going out to the open sea. And Antony just, for no reason whatsoever, abandons the rest of his fleet and his army,

who are all waiting on the beach. And he heads off after her. But the thing that's quite interesting, Tom, is that the sources say that, so they shoot off. They're through the blockade. She has loaded her treasure onto her flagship. So she's got all the cash with her as well as her own ships. But the sources say that Antony, during the rest of the voyage,

is sulking, sitting on his own and staring into it. Or do you think that, too, is part of the propaganda? Of course it is. None of this is likely to be true. Oh, Tom, that's such a debunker. is part of the propaganda of course it is none of this is likely to be true you know it's it's so you know this is this is stuff that is being produced by someone who has won a crushing overwhelming victory and who is the master of the world and has absolute you know he he he is a master of this kind of stuff uh and it's really really difficult to strip away the paint of that and see what's actually going on with anthony and cleopatra um so what we do know is they get to alexand well they get to alexandria

and they go to alexandria because they they they seriously think that they can raise more money it's a bit like pompey going after pharsalus do you go to egypt because that's rich enough that there is scope for raising another fleet raising more men raising more troops and that's what they're aiming to do. But Antony first goes to, he goes to Libya, doesn't he? And he goes to try and rouse the garrison there. And with his classic lack of kind of political acuity, he doesn't realize that they'll already have thrown in their lot with Octavian.

I think he's been the ruler of the world for so long that it's difficult for him to face up to the full implications of his fall from grace. So then he goes back to? Goes back to Egypt back to egypt should we have should we take a break there we shall take a break when we come back i have a poem another poem from kavafi one of his most famous i think a lot of people are listening to these podcasts just on the off chance that you'll read a bit more poetry um and then we will we'll get to the the climax of the day okay see you in a minute i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we will get to the climax of the story. Okay, 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.

Hello, welcome back to what is the last part of our four-part epic history. I actually feel sad, Tom. Yeah. Well, so there is a sense of departure, of farewell. And this is a story that appears in Plutarch. It's said that one night Antony's there and people hear the sound of beautiful music. And this inspired one of the most famous poems that Cavafy, the great Alexandrian poet, wrote. It's called The God Forsakes Antony. Suddenly at midnight, when an invisible troop is heard passing with exquisite players with voices, do not lament your luck, now utterly exhausted, your acts that failed, your life's projects, all ended in delusion. Like a man who's all along been ready,

like a man made bold by it, say your last farewell to her, to Alexandria, who is leaving. First, foremost, do not fool yourself and say it was a dream, or that your ears were tricked. Do not stoop to such vacant hopes. Like a man who's all along been ready, like a man made bold by it, in a way fitting the dignity that made you worthy of such a city, approach the window steadily and listen, moved but not needy and disgruntled like a coward, listen, taking your final pleasure to the sounds, to that mystic troop's rare playing, and say your last farewell to her, to that Alexandria you are losing. So that's an allusion to Antony hearing the god Dionysus,

who had always been his great patron, abandoning him. Well, that's the story, isn't it? That's the story. The historians tell that people of Alexandria late at night heard this trumpet clattering in the street, and Dionysus and his revelers were leaving the city. Abandoning Antony. Abandoning Antony.

And there is a kind of, I think the last days of, I mean, actually they're not last days, they're last months. The last months of Antony and Cleopatra do have this kind of tragic weight. Elegiac. They do, don't they? I mean, they had made a play for the world. I mean, how many of us can say that? And it had all gone horribly wrong.

I mean, obviously, the interesting thing I would say is that they don't think at first that it's necessarily curtains, rather like Pompey, as you said before. So Cleopatra has – while Antony has been faffing around in Libya trying to raise more troops, she has two escape plans. One is she thinks about possibly going to Spain, where there are iron and silver mines, but she decides against that. The other, which is much more interesting, and we talked right at the beginning of this series about

the legacy of Alexander the Great, she clearly thinks about going to India. She knows that there is the history of Greeks out there. She has ships taken to the Red Sea. But once again, Octavian is a step ahead. So he has suborned the Nabataeans in that area, and they attack the ships and burn them. So that avenue is closed off. Antony comes back to Alexandria. So in late 31, and they, they sort of settled back into a little bit of their old routine. So they're still feasting. They now,

they used to call themselves the, what do they call themselves? The inimitable livers. And they now call themselves the partners in death. The Sinapo Thanomanoi. That's not a word you want to pronounce. After you're drunk. Afterlexandrian feast yeah after drinking a pearl um yeah so so there they are and they're negotiating with octavian um anthony and

cleopatra they sent him a crown they at some point it seems that cleopatra may have offered to abdicate if and if heesarian succeed as pharaoh. And Octavian takes the gifts, but he sends no reply back. I mean, why does he need? He doesn't need to. He has the whip hand. And then he invades in early 30. And basically, you know, we said right at the beginning that Ptolemy I had chosen Egypt because it was really easy to defend and and you know octavian just kind of

blows all that away because he just comes and defeats all resistance and by the end of july he's camped outside alexandria and it's absolutely clear the game is up and anthony so again i mean you said before that the how much of the the propaganda and stuff can you believe but the accounts like plutarch they show anthony in quite a noble light at the end don't they yeah he's desperate he's absolutely desperate to have this kind of last stand and there's this almost heartbreaking scene where he goes out with his army he has his fleet out as well and he thinks he's going to make this sort of Tolkien-esque heroic charge. And then he realizes the rest of them have all just come to defect and to give up.

Now, what's interesting is that while he's doing all this, Cleopatra has a plan of her own, clearly, to deal with Octavian. And she's got this, I mean, anyone who's seen the play the play tom will know about the mausoleum so she's built this mausoleum it's half built anyway in this sort of palace quarter and she has this plan that she's going to barricade herself inside the mausoleum with all her gold and all her silks and spices basically all the treasure that octavian will need to pay off his troops and that octavian will have to deal with her if he wants to get his hands on all the loot. And then you have this really weird series of events where, so Anton has seen everybody defect. He comes back into the city in a terrible state, kind of floods of tears, misery, all the rest of it. And then somebody

says to him, he says, well, where well where's Cleopatra oh she's in the mausoleum and he either assumes or has been lied to and is told that she's dead what do you think do you think she deliberately misled him or do you think he I don't know I I think it's impossible to know see I think I think there's no reason for her to mislead him I think he thinks he's just in a terrible state well i mean there is there is um there is a tradition and i can't remember which historian it may be dio says cleopatra is gearing up to have a picture octavian yeah having yeah having had a crack at caesar and anthony she's now just going for the hat trick. I mean, that's, again, impossible to know whether that's true.

But anyway, according to the accounts, Anthony, when he hears that she thinks she's dead, he says to his slave, who's called Eros, will you please kill me? Eros kills himself instead. That's not helpful, is it? It's very poor behaviour, I would say. So Anthony then stabs himself

in the chest and he's you know this is all this is all pretty much in shakespeare because shakespeare got it all from plutarch so anthony has stabbed himself in the chest but he's not dead he's done it in an incompetent way surprise surprise so servants carry him to the mausoleum and then there's this dreadful scene where cleopatra and her two mates, Iras and Charmian, kind of haul Antony up on some ropes. This absolutely, I mean, if this actually happened, it must have been an absolutely appalling scene. There's dying Antony, blood pouring everywhere. These women dragging him up on the ropes.

They pull him up into the mausoleum and then he dies. And that's the end of him. But that's not the end of Cleopatra, Tom. No, because Octavian is moving in. and then he dies and that's the end of him but that's not the end of Cleopatra Tom no because Octavian is moving in so what's that do you think Octavian at this stage thinks Egypt is finished Egypt is I'm just going to absorb into my empire do you think he he thinks he can get a deal with Cleopatra he doesn't need to deal with Cleopatra I I think you know he he the public the public take is that he wants to do to cleopatra what caesar did to

cleopatra's sister uh asinue uh yeah decade or so before which is to um lead her in chains through the streets of rome as he celebrates his egyptian triumph which would obviously be an unconscionable humiliation for cleopatra um just as it was good for Caesar that Pompey got dispatched so basically I I think for all concerned it would be you know Cleopatra commit suicide is probably the best way out uh lots of debate about this because of course what everyone knows about Cleopatra's death is that uh she has a an asp smuggled in in a basket full of figs and pears uh and that she supposedly clasps it to her breast um and and dies uh and she dies and she's found by octavian fully arrayed in her you know her royal regalia so the famous shakespeare lines you know, to her, to her, to Charmian and is to array her, you know, give me my robe, put on my crown.

I have immortal longings in me. And of course, these, you know, it does help her to become immortal. But the what is an asp? Traditionally, it's said to be a viper. But that would be wrong because of the poison of a viper would be would be hideous. I mean, you'd kind of you you die looking awful a cobra would be better and a cobra the you know the aureus the symbol that you have on the pharaonic headdress um you know you kind of like you you just pass away uh so that seems likelier and

the word would get out that she in a sense has claimed an immortality a literal immortality because for her you know for her egyptian subjects cleopatra is dying in dying is making play with these very very ancient traditions the role that the cobra plays and the mythology of it all so i think that that's what she's doing do you but i think i think it's more complicated than that oh even more complicated well i think well first of all they've had a meeting, Octavian and Cleopatra, haven't they? Well, supposedly. The day before she dies.

There are two different accounts. One is that she dresses up and tries to seduce him, and the other is that she dresses down and kind of cries and says, it was all Antony, he made me do it. And there's also this great story that she sort of strews the room with Julius Caesar's letters and pictures of Julius Caesar in an attempt to kind of persuade Octavian. I mean, we can't know which of these stories, if either of them are true,

but it must have been obvious to her at that point that exactly what you say, that Octavian was going to lead her in a triumph through Rome, and that she decided that would be a humiliation. And she has this dinner party, and there's the story about the old man smuggling in the snake in the basket of figs but the most of the roman chroniclers themselves don't believe in the the snake story because plutarch says people searched the room for the

snake and they couldn't find any trace of it and people have subsequently said you know the egyptian cobra which is the most likely snake first of all it's hard to hide in a basket it would have to be a big basket it'd have to be a bloody big basket secondly it's not always fatal and thirdly if the stories are true and that she and her handmaidens iras and shami and all die how are you how do you persuade a snake? What if the snake doesn't bite you? And also, can the snake kill three people? It probably can't. So I think the fact that the Roman sources tend to discount it suggests precisely that it's true.

Oh my God, Tom, that is radical. Well, it's a tradition that they want to fight, that they want to say isn't true. They poo-poo it. And the true they they poo-poo it and the reason that they poo-poo it is obviously that it has a kind of resonance it has a power it means that cleopatra lives on in the memories and the imaginings of of egyptians so whether it's whether it was whether the the snake was there and they take some other kind of poison but it's attributed to this i mean who knows but i think the tradition that Cleopatra commits suicide with a snake, that's almost certainly a

cobra. I think that I would put money that that is true, that that is part of the tradition that, you know, we've talked about how Cleopatra is mediated through mainly Roman sources. Yeah. But I think that there are obviously hints throughout the Roman sources, particularly where they deny something, that there you have a sense of how Cleopatra wanted to spin herself. And I think that she is spinning herself there as she has spun herself throughout her career

as someone who is more than mortal, as someone who is part of the pantheon of Egypt's ancient gods. And she has, you know, these are the immortal longings you don't think the romans give her the snake because the snake is a recognized symbol of egypt and it just seems a fitting end to the story rather than she had a vial of why would they have an interest in doing that well it just makes a i mean some of cleopatra's

biographers think that's the case um i think they're wrong. You think they're absolute balloons. I think that we are playing with traditions that have been massively spun, and none of them may be true. But I think in this case, if there's something there that is working in Cleopatra's favour that Roman sources are denying, it implies to me that there is a tradition there and the tradition itself may be spun by cleopatra's followers but that's enough to to say that the the propaganda war well i mean what we can probably agree on is that it's impossible to know because so much of this is through layers of kind of yeah spin and fairy tale what is also

possible to say is that the power of this resonates throughout the centuries and the millennia and means that. But it's not just a resonant story because it's a resonant story. It's a resonant story because what happens next is Octavian abolishes the kingdom of Egypt. He absorbs it within Rome. I mean, this is an absolutely colossal moment in well ish i mean actually he takes it he takes it over and and he rules it as as a pharaoh

well he's shown as a pharaoh isn't he an iconography he is he is so this it's not a roman province so there's no governor is that right well no senator is appointed to govern it so it's a question which is the kind of the lower order and senators are forbidden from entering it so they're not allowed to step foot in it in egypt it's exclusive it's it is octavian's private property which is basically what anthony had been planning to do. So Octavian, very coolly, very cynically, lays claim that both Caesar and Antony had been interested in, which is establishing Egypt

as a kind of private dynastic fiefdom. And that is what he does. And that then means that he controls basically the grain supply to Rome. And it's the underpinning of what will become his kind of hidden monarchical way of ruling uh and we will do an episode on we definitely will on on so just before we we clear patria herself just her family cesarean her son is murdered he's betrayed by his tutor

shortly after and murdered by the by the romans her other children are well treated aren't they they're taken back to rome octavia looks after them and yes we don't know what happens to the boys they get taken back to rome but we're not sure what happens to them but it's selene who's the really interesting one isn't it she's married to a fellow called prince juba juba the second of mauritania yeah and they found a little kind of a little court of their own still the time of uh caligula i think doesn't caligula kill her son ptolemy surprise surprise uh because he had the temerity to wear a purple cloak or something better than him got upstaged at the amphitheater very caligula like behavior yeah um i hope you're not going to do a revisionist caligula you've done a revisionist nero tom well we i think an episode on caligula would be good it would be very good so that's the

end of cleopatra's descendants and egypt itself i mean actually for ordinary egyptians the transition from the end of cleopatra the seventh to roman rule do you think it was even noticeable to most egyptians not really um but i think you know cleopatraatra and Augustus are both ripping them off. They're both exploiting them. You know, they're kind of milch cows. But Cleopatra loved Egypt and the Egyptians love her and they preserve traditions and memories of her that last into the Christian period, into the Muslim period. So in the 10th century, you have Arab writers who are clearly drawing on Coptic traditions that in turn are drawing on native Egyptian traditions,

where she is hailed as a great philosopher, a great, great figure. And there, I think you do have kind of echoes of the kind of starring role that Cleopatra gave herself in the drama of annual Egyptian life, where the pharaoh had always played that role the guarantor of fertility of the Nile flooding of crops the cycle of the year the cycles of life and death which is why a crucial part of why Cleopatra

endures as this kind of a blazing legend well let's return let's end with the question which we began which was Judith Downey's question. She says, I bought Dominic's book on Cleopatra for my granddaughters. And before I give it to them, can you tell me if Cleopatra was a role model for girls? So Cleopatra, a role model, Tom.

Or where does Cleopatra stand in your estimation? I think she's a role model for girls in the way that Alexander would be a role model for boys. So a splendid role model. Encourage all kinds of behavior that perhaps wouldn't necessarily be encouraged. But I think she is one of the most remarkable figures

in ancient history. In world history, surely. I mean, yeah. And I think that her story richly merits the kind of aura of legend and fascination that it's always had. It is an extraordinary story. And I think that she was an extraordinary figure. Splendid.

Well, I can't improve on that verdict. I think she absolutely was an extraordinary figure. Probably the greatest example in history of a woman in a male-dominated world sort of struggling to keep afloat. And actually, as you said right at the beginning, she does pretty well. She does. Egypt was literally a breadbasket. I mean, in both senses, it was very rich,

but it was also absolutely on its uppers. And what Cleopatra achieves is astonishing so and a brilliant story you know an amazing story not just for for adults but for children as well and i think it's wonderful dominic that you've you've written this well we should talk about and for further reading we always like to give a bit of further reading there is tom holland's two books tom holland's rubicon uh for those of you who are older than 12 or 13. And for those of you who you know people who are younger than 13, you know what to buy.

I don't need to sell it. So we will see you next time for more Restless History fun. And goodbye. Dominic, just one last thing is that forthcoming episode will be our version of Love Island featuring a range of historical hotties, babes and hunks. And it's possible, I suppose, that Cleopatra may feature in that. So she may be back. All right. We'll see you for Love Island.

Goodbye. All right. Bye bye. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. 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 episodes and early access to live tickets head to the