Cleopatra 3: Life After Death
5/14/202649 min
For many years, Cleopatra and Mark Antony lived a life of extravagance and passion - or so we’re told. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at what happened next. Mark Antony, with Cleopatra, met their enemy Octavian in a sea battle off the coast of Greece - and lost. The Battle of Actium was a turning point for Rome. After this moment, Octavian rebranded himself as Emperor Augustus, bringing an official end to many centuries of republican rule. Rather than face capture and humiliation, both Antony and Cleopatra took their lives. The story of their final days survives through Plutarch, but how much of this official Roman version can we trust? Was Cleopatra really an exotic temptress who seduced Mark Antony into treason? And did she really kill herself with a poisonous snake? Accounts of her death are so tied up in the wider propaganda legitimising Augustus’ rise to Emperor that it’s impossible to know what really happened. Soon after her death, she began to haunt the imagination of writers and artists. Mary and Charlotte believe she probably inspired the figure of Dido of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid, written only a decade or so later. The North African queen who takes her life for love of a Roman. But Virgil was by no means the last to take inspiration from her story, as we will be discovering in the next episode…. Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: The poem by Horace is his Odes 1.37 (Nunc est bibendum, “Now is the time for drinking”) with a decent translation online. (Charlotte's school song, oddly based on this poem, began “Nunc canendum, nunc laetandum” – “Now is the time for singing, now is the time for rejoicing,” all prime examples of gerundives of obligation, for the Latin nerds) Maria Wyke (who we will meet later in this Cleopatra series, talking about Cleopatra movies) explores the propaganda of the emperor Augustus and the figure of Cleopatra in this article available online: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10143408/1/Augustan%20Cleopatras.pdf And more on Augustan propaganda: https://cleopatradigitized.wordpress.com/cleopatra-and-augustan-propaganda-after-the-battle-of-actium/ The links between Dido and Cleopatra are discussed here: https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2020/11/16/cleopatra-and-dido/ @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsCharlotte Higgins· Host0:00
Now's the time for drinking deep, and now's the time to beat the earth with unfettered feet, the time to set out the gods' sacred couches, my friends, and prepare a holy feast. It would've been wrong before today to broach the vintage wines from out the ancient bins while a maddened queen was still plotting the capital's and the empire's ruin.
Mary Beard· Host0:26
That is how, soon after the event, the Roman poet Horace began his celebration of the defeat of the crazy Queen Cleopatra and her death in 30 BC, celebrating at the same time the start of the reign of Octavian, who'd soon renamed himself as the Emperor Augustus.
Charlotte Higgins· Host0:47
Her end was a mythic event in Roman history. The hyped, probably over-hyped, Battle of Actium where Octavian claimed victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra entered the Roman national consciousness. Her suicide, after Mark Antony had taken his own life, was remembered ever after not only as Rome's glorious victory, but as tragic, brave, and an act of considerable ingenuity.
Mary Beard· Host1:16
It does take some doing to engineer death by snake bite, if the story is true, that is.
Charlotte Higgins· Host1:24
In this third part of our Cleopatra miniseries, we're going to be casting, I hope, a cool