Cleopatra: Ms. Understood

Toronto in the next night and Fourth Music Hall. Then in August we're gonna do a couple of dates at the Wilburn Boston October twenty nine, in Portland Mainz Lovely State Theater on August, and then we're going to be heading down to Florida. We're gonna be at Plausa Live on October nine, and then the next night we're going to be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater. That's right, and then we're gonna round it out in Brooklyn October

at the Bellhouse. Yep. So come see us. You can get tickets and info at s Y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Ive Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Jerome rolland over there sitting on Frank the chair was not very happy about that. But still, this is stuff you should know. I thought Jerry's entrance today

was unique. Oh yeah, yeah, man. When they when Matt and Tyler brought her end rolled up in a carpet to out on the studio floor and she said fire me. We said, Jerry, we don't have that kind of power. But she just it was amazing. It was almost like playing the whole thing reverse. She rolled herself back up in the carpet in one swift motion. That's right. And if you are a Cleo pat write, then uh you got a little chuckle out of that joke. If not,

you're probably thinking that we're on drugs or something. Yeah, I guess you could probably think both, but um, neither is true. What is true is that you're about to be confused for the minutes. That's a great set up, man, We're gonna confuse everybody. Yeah boy, this is good dentse uh. And there are a lot, a lot, a lot of names with the numbers that follow in uh, not triumbrates and not even regular numbers, numbers that are actually letters

Roman style. So here we go. This is gonna be good, Chuck. Oh. By the way, if you uh live in Chicago or Toronto, or Boston or Portland, Maine, or Orlando, Florida, or New Orleans or Brooklyn, New York, you should go to s Y s K live dot com yea and check out our tour dates. We're going to those cities, and you can buy tickets at s Y s K live dot com and get information about things like is it a twenty one and up show? I don't think any of them are. What time or doors? Probably seven, but you

better check that kind of stuff. You can go find that info by visiting ss K live and then following the hyperlinks out to other websites on the internet. That's right. If you've never seen us live, come on out. It's a lot of fun. And if you have, just come on back and get a second helping of us, yep uh second heapen helping of our hospitality. Now onto Cleopatra. Good call, by the way, good call for for saying all that. Great So Cleopatra, She's one of those historical

figures that everybody knows about. But if you stop and ask yourself what do you know about her? And realize you know next to nothing about her. You know, she was amazingly beautiful. She um looked like Liz Taylor. Um she uh, she loved Julius Caesar and maybe Mark Anthony too. And wait a minute, how did she love both? Were? What's going on here? You just realize you get confused pretty quickly. Was she a feminist icon? Was she actually just kind of a uh, a wily woman who used

sexuality to get what she wants? Who knows? The problem is this, She's one of those historical figures that we know very little about because historians know very little about her. Like, she was not extensively document as famous as she is, she was not extensively documented by her own people, the Egyptians. Yeah, which is a little strange, because she was beloved by the Egyptians from what we can tell, yea, from what

we can tell. But most of the information we have is very Greco Roman, especially this Plutarch chump, well Plutarch actually he was the first to to show any sympathy whatsoever. The guys who came a little before him, they were they were just all out meanings. Because the Romans did not like um Cleopatra in general. They found her um at the very least problematic, and that she kept luring

away some of their favorite sons. And then usually of the detriment of Rome or symbolically, the idea if she was a great ruler, as as she seems to have been at least above average, if not like one of the better, better rules around. If there was this woman who was you know, kind of in the public eye and basically in ancient, old timing Roman news all the time, and she was a female who was really good at ruling that was a threat to Rome's established patriarchy, that

wasn't supposed to be able to happen. And so Rome came up with all of these popular ideas for why she was able to do that, and usually it came down to sex and or magic um, and that that was how Cleopatra got through. And so over the last couple of thousand years, UM, it's kind of our idea or image of Cleopatra's kind of come up from this this brew Uh seen through Roman eyes, and it's only very recent that people have really kind of started to dig in and try to examine her academically and with

what you know, small, meager firsthand sources and accounts exist. Yeah, I mean she ruled ancient Egypt. She was the last pharaoh. Um. She was the first woman sovereign who rule all by herself for more than a decade, which was quite an accomplishment. And um, how she got there is a very long and sort of convoluted story. Yeah. When you think of Egypt, Chuck, we think of like pharaohs and Isis and Osiris and all of that. Um, and when you think of Cleopatra too.

But Cleopatra was different. She was different from all the pharaohs that came before. She was um different from most of the pharaos that came before, and that she came from a family line that had been established only about three and fifty years before when Alexander the Great, General Ptolemy UM said Alexander died, we're dividing up as king. I'm taking Egypt. And he said, hey, Egyptians, you know how you had this line of pharaohs that ruled the country. Well you got a new one. And it's me and

my descendants. And I'm not Egyptian, I'm actually Macedonian. But I'm in charge here and I'm naming myself um Ptolemy the first uh, suitor. I believe it's s u t o r, which means savior of Egypt. And he established the Ptolemaic line, and from that point on um all of the people who ruled as pharaohs over Egypt came from Ptolemy UM and his his um children. Yeah, I mean that was a few hundred years worth a pretty

good run there. It was a pretty good run. But you don't think of that like, you know, you think of Cleopatra as a pharaoh like any other pharaoh. She wasn't. She was different. She was probably of Macedonian descent because she was descended from Ptolemy. But they also are not sure was she Egyptian to like ethnic Egyptian Um. Some people believe that she was subsa Air and African descent. Um. It's just totally up in the air of exactly what

her ethnicity was. But she was definitely not descended from the pharaohs before. But in establishing this line, Ptolemy said, well, I get that you guys are really big into the idea that that kings or pharaohs and queens are divine. So we're gonna say that that applies to my line too. And what's this incest you guys are into. We'll give that a try to. And the Ptolemaic line carried on

those customs as well. Yeah, so the Ptolemy's, Ptolemy's, Ptolemy's whatever you want to say, man Um, they were Greek speakers and observed Greek customs, um, which if you're living in Egypt, seems like a bit of a contradiction because people in Egypt weren't Greek, and that kind of caused a separation. Um, Cleopatrick was was Cleopatrick. What I said Cleopatra was sounds like Cleopatrick sounds like a new comedy

come this fall, and it totally does. Oh boy, Um who rules like her local you know, uh Brooklyn apartment building or something, and she comes in. How they introduced her as a character as she comes and rolled up in the carpet in the pilot that she made herself. Man, this thing writes itself. So Cleopatra distinguished herself by coming in And we'll get to all this in more detail. But she was popular in Egypt because she came in and she was like, Hey, what do you need Egypt.

I'm gonna speak your languages. I'm gonna I'm gonna be patriotic for Egypt, and I'm gonna speak a lot of languages because I'm super smart, and I don't. In fact, I speak so many languages when I go to meet with other leaders of other countries and kingdoms, I'm not even gonna need my translators and I'm not even gonna need my advisors around. I can make my own decisions because I'm speaking directly to them in their native tongue. Egyptians love that. But her officials in her tram while

against her translators didn't really have a say. But her officials were like, uh, this is upsetting. Well, yeah, because it diminished their power. They said, well, you don't you know, you're not consulting with us before you start speaking to these other foreign powers, these other leaders. And She's like, well, I don't need to. I speak their language. I can ask them and decide for myself whether they're telling the truth or what they actually need or what they what

they should get. Um. So yeah, just the ascension of Cleopatra was different two ways. It diminished the power of the officials that had been established by the time her father died and left the place to her, and she was known as basically a very patriotic pharaoh, and that she spoke Egyptian and followed Egyptian customs way more than any of the Ptolemy's before her had. So that was she was different in that respect a big time right

out of the gate. Yeah. So she assumed the throne as a I guess even for the time a young woman of eighteen years old, along with her her braddy, little ten year old brother. They're told that guy, uh, there was a tradition there that basically said, if you're a woman, you need a male consort to rule UM. So by the way, marry him, say what? And by the way to marry him? Yeah, like technically you have

to get ceremonially ceremonially married. But you know, that's kind of where it ends, unless you don't want it to end there, because we're pretty liberal on that front. Sure. But the kingdom of Egypt that she inherited was um not a healthy one. Um. It had floods and famine, it had a bad economy, and it was really up to her to forge alliances, um with other places and other men in power to to make Egypt what she

thought it could be. Starting with Julius Caesar. Yeah. So at the time, so her father had kind of mortgaged Egypt over to Rome to help bail the economy out because things are it was hard times even before Cleopatra rose of power, and that's what she inherited. Um. So Rome already had a pretty big interest in Egypt. Egypt was a client state of Rome. Rather than Rome officially ruling Egypt and saying like we install the governor all that stuff, they said, you can exist and we're gonna

trade with you. But basically, if we tell you to do something, you do it. And that was kind of the relationship between Rome and Egypt. So it makes sense that she would say, let me, let me get even more um cozy with Rome. But who's in power? That was a really big question at the time because when she rose to power as co ruler with her little brother, who by the way, she basically just wrote out of

power immediately. Um. She That was not an easy question to answer because at the time Rome was racked by civil wars and specifically there was a triumvirate uh kind of a shaky power sharing agreement between Julius Caesar, um Pompey and crass as I believe right, that's right. Uh, And that is Pompey. He pronounced that. We can't say Pompey because I will get confusing. Yeah, it's pomp I always said Pompey. It sounds so cute, but he was a murderous general. Give me a little Pompey. Alright, let

stick that knife in somebody. Um. And also, by the way, later on Octavian, when did he become Augustus. Oh, that's the big finish man. We'll get to that eventually, spoiler, because that got a little confusing to all these different names. Yes, but that you are correct. Octavian is Augustus or one and the same, right, so they both Joaquin Phoenix. The

Roman Senate was on the side of Pompey. So Julius Caesar, um like you said that there was this this this sort of deal that they had going on was a really kind of um steady detante between civil wars, and the Roman Senate supported Pompey and said, Caesar, you gotta give up your army. Man. He said, I'm not doing it. In fact, not only that, but I'm coming to Italy, guys. He leads his his people into Italy across the Rubicon and declares war against Pompey and his forces, and he wins.

He eventually won, quite quite surprisingly because Pompey again had the Senate UM backing, and so he had the senatorial forces, which vastly outnumbered Caesar's forces, but they were just superior forces, and Caesar eventually defeated Pompey well. Pompey UM, being closely aligned with Egypt, fled to Egypt, which is pretty understandable. Um, you can also understand why he would have fled to Egypt.

He was the state designated guardian of Ptolemy the twelve Kids, which was Cleopatra and told me the thirteen among others, here we go. So he went, thought, Okay, this will be great. I'll just sit around and eat grapes for the rest of my days in Egypt. It's not a bad forced retirement. But when he got there he found that Cleopatra and her sister ar Sinewy had been had been forced into exile, and that Pompey was was in or not. I'm sorry tooleom me the thirteen like it's

not confusing enough. Already Um was in power. This little boy king boy Pharaoh was in power, and and Ptolemy thought Caesar just won his his vanquished enemy just showed up in my doorstep. I'm gonna get killed for harboring this guy. So I'm gonna have Pompey killed. And he did. He had Pompey killed and decapitated in an effort to

curry favor with Caesar. Didn't work, No, it did not work, because Caesar said, hey, hey, hey, I was gonna pardon that guy, you moron, and and like become beloved to the Roman citizen, and he just cut his head off. I'm coming for you. And so Caesar um crossed into Egypt to invade and basically depose Ptolemy. That's right. So he gets to Egypt. Now Caesar does, he declares martial law and basically moves into the royal palace ands like

this is my place. Now, it's my place. And so Cleopatra at this point is like, all right, here's the deal. I need Caesar support here if I'm gonna get back on that throne um, So I need to curry favor with him. And this is the big carpet scene that we're talking about, and every sort of pop culture um retelling of Cleopatra's story, so which means this is probably true.

Cleopatra gets back in there by sneaking in, uh skirting the enemy lines and the Roman barricades coming in and under the under the dead of night, rolled up in a carpet and is then presented to Caesar unrolled, and he's like, that was fantastic. He just stands up and colass roller back up there and do it again. I've never seen anything like it. She begs Caesar for aid, and it really did apparently win him over, and he

was like, I like, I like the cut of her jib. Right, so they became uh friends with benefits pretty quickly out of the gate um. But but from from every account of this it was and again it was either carpet she was rolled up in a carpet or in like a um, some sort of bag like that you carry

bed in like beg clothes in or whatever. Um. She got Caesar on her side like almost immediately, and so all of a sudden Cleopatra, who had been forced out of rule by Ptolomy, was now aligned with the guy who had just invaded Egypt and taken over and declared martial law, which was bad news for Tolom, and it was also bad news for ar Sinewy, who had who had left. She had come back with Cleopatra and then left to go have Ptolemy proclaimed her queen of Egypt Um.

So she traded sides, and so Cleopatra said, hey, Julius, just a couple of quick favors. I want to get rid of Tlem also, who actually they found out later that he drowned fleeing. He drowned in the Nile. So told me the thirteenth is taken care of. The only person left out of all I think five or six kids in Cleopatra's family, there's one left, Ar Sineway, her younger sister. She's like, I can't have a running around. She's already shown that she's duplicitus get rid of her.

So caesar Um to kind of show off that he has taken over Egypt. Parades are Sinewy through the town through exposed Alexandria in chains, showing that he's vanquished her Um, and he, to his surprise, found that this aroused the sympathy of the people living in the town, and so he ends up sparing our sinewise life, which will come back into play later and he he vanquishes her in exile to the Temple of Artemis at a Fesus, which we talked about in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient

World episode. But So just put a pin in that, Chuck that our Sinewy is alive. She just lives in Turkey and exile now, and she is the only person who can challenge Cleopatra's claim to the Egyptian throne. All Right, let's take a break. Okay, let's get her ducks in a row. All right, we'll come back talk more about that carpet trick. Okay, So told me he's dead, little brothers, dead sisters, vanquished, Uh Caesar. At this point, Um needs to he needs money. He needs to fund his return

to Rome. Uh and returned to power and Cleopatra's dad Uh incurred a lot of debts via Egypt, and he's like, hey, listen, I gotta like get this money back. And he said, you're pretty cool. That carpet trick was awesome, just Gangbusters, Gangbusters. So I need Uh. It's fine, you can rule Egypt. The two of us here, we're great. We have the same you know. I feel like we're on the same level, which was a very big deal to uh, for someone like Julius Caesar to say that about a female ruler.

And he stayed there for a while, and they had a kid. His name was told me Caesar. Um he was, you know, later fully acknowledged from Caesar that he was his child. But it was kind of like the love child thing, right. He he said, yeah, that's my kid, and he's great, good, good looking kid. But he is not my official heir. No. But his name, like I said, I was told me Caesar. They called him Caesarion or little Caesar or Pizza Pizza. Right. I'm sure he saw

that coming from a mile way. If you hadn't said it, I would have said him myself. So all of a sudden, Cleopatra is there. Um, she's really sort of solidified her position on every front, right, right, So she's got the backing of Julius Caesar, who has named himself dictator for life. By this time, she got a little brother out of the way and sister out of the way for now. And and this is this is it's really tough to

overstate this. She has born an heir. She's the only the only she's the pharaoh, she's the ruler of Egypt, and she's now born an heir, a male heir who is not only a male hera going to be the next pharaoh, but he is the blood descendant of Julius Caesar himself. So Egypt is real happy with Cleopatra at this moment. Rome is not so happy. But it doesn't matter because Caesar's like the top dog in charge of everything,

and things are going well for a little while. Um, so much so that Caesar or that um uh, Cleopatra and little Caesar go visit Big Caesar in Rome for a little while and set up household right across the river from Caesar's house. And at Caesar's house, if you had happened to to to go across the way and um peek in one of the windows, you'd find, Oh,

Caesar has another family. He's got a wife and kids, and um, they're not super happy with him for having run around on them and had another kid with Cleopatra. But what are you gonna do. She's the ruler of Egypt, and by the way, she's spending the summer across the river from us. That's right, So as a ruler, things are going pretty great for Cleopatra. Um. Like I mentioned earlier, they really liked her. She was she related to the people, They related to her her. Um, like you said, she

lived the Egyptian lifestyle. She whenever she had portraits drawn of herself, she was like, do the Egyptian thing, because it's great and the people will love it. Um. She was identified on a papyrus and thirty five b c. As she who loves her country. Yeah, Philip patter in Greek, she who loves her country. That's right. But she was a fully Egyptian pharaoh and a very patriotic and that just further like cemented her position as someone beloved by

the Egyptians. And it's at this point that it's like it's pretty obvious that it's a real shame that you didn't get any writings from the Egyptians, you know. Yeah, yeah, that there was there were some busts I believe of her possibly um that may have been lost. There was a coin that turned up, but for the most part, like they didn't really document her rule, which again it's really really weird. Um. But there are some like like

it was a massive bureaucracy that she operated. It was not just Egypt, but it was a huge chunk of northeast Africa and southwest Mediterranean UM that she ruled over. UM. And you know, being in league with Caesar definitely didn't hurt things, so empire kept expanding. She but on her own. This is the thing, Like, it's not lost on us, everybody who's listening that we're telling this story through the fact that Caesar is a huge part of her life or that room, whatever Rome's doing. UM. This is the

documentary evidence we have. But there's also other evidence too, very sparse evidence, but there is evidence that like with or without Caesar, like she she was afforded like a bigger opportunity by being in league with Caesar, but she took that and ran with it on her own, without the direct aid of Caesar. So she expanded her empire. She started trading to further and further areas like Arabia. There's potential evidence that they were trading as far away

as India at the time. UM. And she was really good, from what we could tell, at figuring out what somebody needed and making them dependent on her for it. UM. One of the ways she would do that was um like she identified people who could help her to like later on, after Caesar died, there would be a general Um who was really important. He was stationed in Egypt, so it was it was really good for her to

be on good terms with them. So she basically gave him a tax break that said, hey, you can bring in UM five thousand and four of wine from Rome every year tax free. You can export ten thousand UM bags of wheat tax free. That must have been an enormous amount of money that that this guy saved. And the way that she would do this in her own style was found later on. So on this royal decrease, saying that this is the case. In her handwriting, she wrote um guinness stoy, which is Greek for make it so,

And they found this. There's like a document out there that has Cleopatra's handwriting on it. Um. But it was basically to to to make sure that this guy felt taken care of so he would remain her ally. And that's how she operated. She knew very clearly how to um make people like her or how to make them dependent on her. And then under that she signed her name and then put TCB with a lightning bolt through it. Right, you know what's cool is that document. They found it accidentally.

It was used as lining for a sarcophagus that a mummy was found in, and somehow they found this thing and figured out this is Cleopatra's handwriting. Amazing. It is pretty amazing to have that that that relic, you know, exists in the world still. So later on forty six BC, Caesar Um returned to Rome and then Cleopatra, like you said,

we went there at some point to visit. And this is where this is where the big acknowledgement that little Caesar was was his son, but not the airs where that finally happened Um, and Caesar was murdered very famously. I don't know a few people have heard about that, but he was stabbing in the back quite literally. On my birthday. Cleopatra goes back to Egypt. UM told me fourteen dies soon after this, and that means little Caesar as all of a sudden co regent with mommy as

told me, I'm sorry, right, told me fifteen. Right. So now little Caesar is officially the air. I think by this time he was like thirteen or sixteen or something like that. He was he was getting up there in years no, I'm sorry. That was later on. So yeah, he was a little kids still use three. Oh he was three? Okay. So, um, after Caesar dies, like, everything's kind of up in the air. This is a pretty

big surprise to everybody. But Caesar had boys, right, He had people that loved him, one of which was Octavian, who was his grand nephew I think, who Caesar allegedly adopted. Um. There was also another one named Mark Antony, who was Caesar's kind of right hand man. Um. And they said, hey, you know what, this is not cool. We're gonna get Brutus and Cassius who orchestrated this assassination, and another civil war erupted in Rome. Yeah, and we can't leave out

Lapidis because this was the official second triumvirate. Okay, you're right, Uh, And you can't be a triumvirate without Lapidis. No, I gotta have that third guy in there. It's just a do um for it. No one likes those, that's right. So forty two b C. There was the Battle of Philippe uh, and the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian

defeated Brutus and Cassius. And then that means Mark Antony can emerge as ruler of the East, which included Egypt very importantly, and Octavian held the West on the west side, al right, but both of them said we need the support of Egypt, which is a very big deal. Um. Cleopatra basically, you know, was summoned by Mark Antony and she was like, you know what, uh summoned to Sicily and she was like, I'm gonna c Cleopatra. I'm gonna come when I want to come, right, which was sort

of a bold move at the time. Yeah, yeah, because he was basically accusing her of potentially having given aid to brutus Um and Cassius during the Civil War. And she and she's saying, not only am I not even responding to the allegation, I'm not even gonna show up

to talk to you until I want to. But when she does show up, apparently she made another very grand entrance, and this one was memorialized by William Shakespeare in the play um Uh, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra appropriately Um, and she shows up in this this town um called Tarsus in modern day Turkey, um on a barge, a royal barge, and these barges by the way, dude, these are like, this is not what you think of as like a barge, you know, I guess it is kind of what you

think of as barge, but larger and more opulent. How about that? Yeah, I mean it was she came in to make a statement. Uh. They were. She was dressed as aphrodite. There were purple purple sales, there were loots playing, she basically had a band. Um. She was laying on a couch on clouds of incense. And Mark Anthony, just like Julius Caesar, was like, whoa, we really know how to make an entrance. Yeah, and he said, you know what I'd like to dine with you? Um, can you

come here and dine with me? And she said, no, why don't you come upon this ship and you dine with me? He very famously said, can you come here and dine with me? And he did get aboard that ship and he did dine with her, and he was very much taken with her. Um, and she you know, uh, ultimately, I think she very much loved him in the end, but she early on at the very least knew what

she needed from him. Yeah. Because again, this guy's the Roman ruler of Egypt basically, and her job is to make it so Rome doesn't ever officially rule Egypt, so at the very least it stays at arm's length enough so Egypt can can be a client state. But she also needs to make sure that she doesn't go to war with them because they would probably crush Egypt. So she's dancing this real fine line. And again, just like with Caesar, she basically said, hey guy, I like the

I like the cut of your jib. Let's figure out an alliance and let's also do it a lot too, and with what it's like you said though, it's like you said that, like whether whether it was because she needed something from him, and he also was very much dazzled by her wealth as well or her display of wealth. But there there does seem to have been unless it's just totally fabricated a real love story between the two

of them. Yeah, I mean they had three kids together. Uh. She goes back to Egypt and he's not too far behind at this point. Um He's like, all right, I gotta I gotta get over there to Egypt and seem a lady. Um and his wife Fulvia said, wait a minute, I'm your lady and we have kids together. And he says, yeah, but you know what, I'm gonna go over there anyway, because you know, that's just kind of how things worked back then before texts. That's right. Uh. He spent the

winter of one there in Alexandria. Um. They were getting along famously. They formed a drinking group called the Inimitable Livers, where they had these big, huge parties and feasts. And this is one of the very famous legends of Cleopatra came about when she took a pearl and dissolved it. It was a very expensive pearl, value at ten million smolean's which was enough to maintain ten thousand Roman soldiers for a full year. That's a lot of dough. That's

a lot of dough. And just to prove her wealth, she dissolves this thing in a cup of vinegar and drinks it. And Mark Antony was like, oh my gosh, this lady amazing. Did you see what she just did. She just drank a pearl. She just wasted so much money. I'm so turned on right now. So, uh, they have twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Seline, and this is kind of the boom time for Cleopatra and Egypt. She's really solidified her stronghold and um, everything is sort of going her

way at this point. Yeah, in part because Mark Anthony said, I got to get back to Rome. I'd like to show up really victorious. You know, one of those barges you've got, I'd love to have one of those. I need some money from you. And with Caesar before again, um uh, Cleopatra, his father taught me the twelfth had kind of level mortgaged Egypt to Rome. This had not happened.

Egypt had grown, had kind of gotten out of that economic funk when Cleopatra had um had taken over, and she had started to steer it even better in better directions. So now this was just straight up Mark Anthony um borrowing from Egypt, which helped put him in her pocket. And she said, I would like to expand my empire.

He said, done, so he gave to Cleopatra a lot of Roman holdings that Egypt had formerly held, and the empire just expanded by a pretty decent proportion overnight, just with the sweep of Mark Antony's hand in exchange for her setting him up to go back to Roman style, which he did all right, So let's take a break, okay, and we're gonna come back and talk about, uh the cracks that start to form right after this. Chuck, so chuck,

No good time can go on forever. It turns out in Cleopatra's story definitely brings that one home to That's right. So you didn't like that set up, No, I thought it was great. It was like I put the ball on the the orange cone and it just kind of fell over. So Mark Anthony does a very controversial thing. Um he declares little Caesar rightful air rather than Octavian right to Julius Caesar. That's correct, And he awarded land

to each of his children with Cleopatra. We mentioned the twins, we did not mention totally me, uh Philadelphos, who's the third kid? And this really upset Octavian um as it probably should. So he knew that that the Roman people were kind of sick of hearing about Cleopatra. Uh, they were sick of hearing about uh all of these wars going on that these generals are carrying out. And he knew that the He knew that it was sort of the perfect time to mount a propaganda campaign to turn

everyone against them. Yeah, because the Romans were like had another civil war between two powerful generals that are co ruling. Come on, and Octavian had a really good idea of saying, okay, okay, I can't turn everybody against Mark Anthony directly, but I can turn him against Cleopatra really easily. So I'll just start this propaganda campaign that says, um, Cleopatra is a

threat to Rome. She has using her her wiles or her her magic or whatever, Um convinced Mark Anthony to give up chunks of Rome and to declare her son Caesar's rightful heir. We gotta get rid of Cleopatra. Poor Mark Anthony is just her her mesmerized puppet basically. So we achieved the same end turning people on Mark Antony, but rather than doing it directly, he uses uh Cleopatra, and they're kind of suspicion of her being a foreign temptress as um as as the crux through which he

does it. Yeah, and you know, some of this was some of this stuff was true, some of it was made up. Um Octavian said, hey, listen, I've got his will, and you know what he's done. He's turned over Roman possessions to Cleopatra and you know what, he's gonna make Alexandria in Egypt the capital of Rome. You can just hear the gasp. Oh yeah, And it was a big, big deal. So in thirty two BC, the Roman Senate

got involved. Uh, they strip Mark Anthony of his titles. UM, and Octavian says, al right, Cleopatra, it's time for us to go at it. We're going to war. Your charms will not work on me, um and they had not worked, UM. And I think Cleopatra knew this all along. So this all fed into the narrative that Cleopatra was uh, from

Egypt and from a different culture that they don't align with. Um, she lives there, and she's super wealthy, and she's doing these dealings with the Far East in India and at the time those places where I guess in Rome scene is just very sort of controversial and weird, and they thought they practiced in the occult and alchemy and all these strange things, and she's doing business with them, and she's she's a bad, bad lady, right right, So yeah, it was just foreign and weird is basically how Rome

viewed Egypt. Right. So the idea that that was going to be their new set of power did not sit very well with them. Whether that was true or not, I don't know, but it worked. It got it got the um Roman Senate, and the people turned against mark Antony so much so that Octavian was able to launch an assault on Egypt and Cleopatra and mark Antony, which was successful. Right, and that this article makes it kind

of sound like it happened almost overnight. I think it took place over the course of a year or so between when the when Rome turned on mark Antony and when Octavian was at Egypt store Um. But at some point Uh mark Antony during the siege, during this this war between Egypt and Rome, which is something Cleopatra had

avoided the whole time. Basically, her whole reign was about preventing this from happening, Um mark Antony decided that he had he had um lost his place of honor in the world, and that he should take his own life. He also, according to legend, heard that Cleopatra had taken her life, and so in response and because he had lost his place of honor, he Um killed himself basically through Harri Curry, which is like stabbing yourself with your sword,

disemboweling yourself. That's what he did with his own, so word and um and and I was at death's door. I guess when he heard. Oh wait, wait, that was just a rumor. Cleopatra didn't actually kill herself. Yeah, And supposedly, if you believe the legend, Octavian did allow him to be brought to Cleopatra. And he died in her arms, and she tore it her clothes and and smeared his blood all over her face and shrieked out, he is my master and husband and commander. Um. And that's if

you believe the legend. Of course, it sounds a little trumped up to me, but you never know. Um. So Octaviana at this point is in a pretty good position. Um. He says he's got it right where he wants her, and he knows it, and she knows it. And he said, listen, I want you, um to come back to Rome, and you're gonna be a captive and I'm gonna kind of parade you through the streets as a symbol of our victory. And she knew that this would be like just that,

the great humiliation of her life, and career. So she said, all right, I need a little time to prepare myself. Um, which you know the writings on the wall here that she is going to die a noble death by taking her own life. But she didn't do it right away. Uh. It took about a week, um, because she was still trying to still trying to save things up until the very end, which is pretty remarkable. So on August twelve, thirty b c. Uh, Anthony is buried. Um, Cleopatra meets

with Octavian. She closes herself into chamber with two of her servants and UM, we're not exactly sure how she got It depends on the legend that you that you choose to believe, but she got poison and committed suicide along with her servants. Uh. And apparently, and this is from Plutarch's records, Um, one of the Roman officers burst in as this was happening and yelled to fine deed this And one of the one of the servants was bay sically like, yeah, it is a fine thing because

she went out on her own terms. Jerk. Yeah, basically that's a I guess paraphrasing. Sure, she said nothing could be finder for this lady the descendant of so many kings, right, that was Charmian and the other servant was Iris I R A S. And like you said, like, they're not quite sure how she got that poison, And so a legend grew up that she had used an ass but cobra, and it allowed it to bite her so that she

could die. But if if you kind of put two and two together, supposedly, um, she sent a note to Octavian to stall for time, but was he figured out what she was doing fast enough that there was maybe a course of minutes that transpired between uh that she would have had to have taken this poison and died. And it takes like an hour or something like that to die from a cobra bite. So people say, probably not cobra. But where would she have gotten that poison

since she was under such close guard. And one theory that's emerged is do you remember when Caesar paraded our sinewy through the streets and ended up generating sympathy for her unintentionally? Supposedly Octavian remembered that, and, according to this theory, and didn't want to do the same thing by parading Cleopatra through the streets, so he never had any intention of doing that and instead went to her and said, look, I can kill you, you can take your own life.

You seem like the kind of lady who'd want to take her own life. If you do this, will celebrate it, that kind of thing. And um, and that's that's why she or how she got the poison, because she was kind of allowed to be given that option. That's just a theory, um, But no one knows. All we know is that Cleopatra almost certainly did take her own life, most likely through poison as some sort that's right. So she was buried next to Mark Anthony um, which was

according to her wishes of course. And um, you know, because we don't have writings from Egyptians, it's mainly, like we said, from the Roman perspective, she's viewed through different lenses. Um. Some people have portrayed her, like we said earlier, as super capable and dynamic and super smart, and other people have portrayed her as just like leaning on her whiles as a woman and being more cunning than strategic. Um. I think you know, somewhere in the middle is probably

the truth. She probably did what she had to do in certain occasions, but that certainly doesn't mean she also wasn't like a brilliant leader on her own terms, right, And this article actually points out it's pretty ironic that were it not for the propagandists who were working for Octavian, who were trying to basically disassemble any good memory of her and paint her as a terrible person who almost brought down Rome, were it not for Octavian to save

Rome itself, Um, she would have. Were it not for those biographers, she may have been lost to history. Like there's a lot of pharaoh's in Egypt's history that we just don't know anything about, and she could have ended up being one of them. Even though she was a successful pharaoh for Egypt. We we may never have known about her were it not for these guys like Luken and um Plutarch who wrote about her and commemorated or

memorialized her. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I don't think there's any disputing the fact that she was um at the very least one of the more charming uh and intelligent uh rulers of the time. She just had sort of a way about her from all the readings where like you couldn't help but be captivated by her when you're in her presence. Her speaking voice has always been written about, UM, and I think she just she

had that that just certain indefinable quality. Um. There's been a lot of debate on her looks over the years, but to me, that's I don't even know why people still talk about that stuff. It's funny because people do in both an end, women do like whenever somebody like shows a picture of what she probably looked like in real life based on like like a coin came out in or came to light in two thousand and seven,

and people are like, well, she's not pretty. How how could she possibly have have you know, achieved all this if she wasn't pretty. Uh, there's just a bunch wrong with that. But this, this one historian um put it really really well. The impact she made on the ancient world has overlooked because the world has this obsession when it comes to women. People can only judge them on whether they were beautiful. Nobody ever said Mark Antony, how

handsome was he? And that's really just just really drives the point home really well. I think that that people are obsessed with this idea of that she was beautiful, and it really does undermine like whatever she was capable of. And when people think like that, you're just carrying on a two thousand year old tradition that began in Rome around the time of Octavian. I'm not going to talk about it. So, um, you you asked about Octavian becoming Augustus, right, Uh, No,

I didn't ask. I was just yes, you were setting me up for it. That story. I want to tell this story. You don't mind, I don't so. Uh. Cleopatra killed herself on August twelve of thirty BC, and Octavian decided to commemorate this extraordinary triumph over Cleopatra in Egypt and over mark Antony and his ascension to full ruler of Rome by taking the name Augustus. So when we're marking the month of August, the eighth month of the year,

we're actually commemorating the defeat and the death of Cleopatra. Amazing, it is amazing. You knew that all along. Huh. All I know is that we have four live shows in August to commemorate this event. Where would you get tickets if you were gonna go Chuck s y sk Live if you lived in one particular city that you had to pick to go get tickets as many people as possible, what would that city be? Poor Chicago and Portland, Maine. Okay, great, well you heard Chuck. Everybody do it for Cleopatra. She

wills it. That's right. If you want to know more about Cleopatra, just go start reading up. There's apparently a whole slate of really good biographies that have come out recently, so you've got plenty of stuff to work with. Uh. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Hey, guys, want to reach out and let you know that my stepson loves listening to your show. UM. We share custody

with my husband's ex wife. And not to go into those complicated details, but to be able to spend time, UM, spend as much time as I possibly can with him, drive him to school and pick him up from school. You can take anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes. UH. Zack is a d h D and on an I E P. And the typical school environment can be challenging for him. He's worked really hard this year building skills

and has come quite a long way. In the fourth grade yeah, man, But when we find an alternative way to foster at this love of learning that he enjoys, we really embrace it. Uh. He really loves listening to stuff you should know during the long car rides. Way to go Zack again. He is a super smart kiddo and is especially engaged in the topics you guys cover. His latest favorite was uh, Tinnish cases of really bad luck.

So his dad and I strive to model our value is one of the great One of great importance is that time together and experience his trump material goods. With his tenure milestone birthday approaching, I've been thinking about this quite a bit and I thought maybe, just maybe Josh and Chuck could give him a shout out. It would be the highlight of his decade and a killer birthday present from a killer step mom to her beloved kiddo. That is from Mandy, so Zach buddy, the happiest, happiest

of birthdays to you as you turned ten. That is a very big deal because you are a double digit human being now and it sounds like you are doing great and sailing towards your teenage years with with confidence and intelligence. Congratulations on your big one. Oh Zach's Yes it is happy birthday. Um. Wow, that was a nice one, Chuck, well done. Thanks. If you want to get in touch with us like Mandy did, that's pretty rare that we do that kind of thing, But you never know. I

guess you could take a shot, right yes, okay? Um, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our social links. Uh, that's probably not going to help much, so if you really want to get something like this done, you should write us an email. You're can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

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