Vulgar History - Women Leaders, part 1： Cleopatra Was That Bitch

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to season two of Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster, and this

00:00:17.440 is a feminist women's history comedy podcast, where I look at the scandalous stories of

00:00:24.560 women from from history basically and then we score them at the end to see where they score 0.99

00:00:30.300 on our scandalous scale so the first season the theme was well-behaved women don't make history 0.99

00:00:37.320 podcasts and we were looking at six women who are known about because they they bucked societal

00:00:45.320 conventions they were accused serial killers they were con artists they were murderesses

00:00:53.400 Basically, they gave birth to rabbits, various things that made them sort of stand out in a way in various different cultures and societies where the job of a woman, especially an upper class woman, was just to sort of be quiet and have babies.

00:01:08.540 And this season, we're looking at a theme of women and leadership. And I'm not sure what the catchy title will be for this season, although I guess since I'm recording this episode, I should decide pretty quickly.

00:01:22.460 But it's something like women leaders and the men who whined about it, because basically just in my in my free time, I like to women's history is a thing I read about all the time for various reasons.

00:01:36.840 And I was starting to notice some weird parallels between the way that contemporary women political leaders or just women who are prominent in various ways are discussed in almost word for word, like the same way that people complain about women leaders over 2000 years ago.

00:01:55.420 And so I thought it sort of traced the history of some of the more, I guess, successful, yeah, because these are women leaders who actually accomplished things. 0.89

00:02:04.860 They became leaders of things.

00:02:06.300 And just kind of looking at how the various patriarchal societies that they lived in made it even harder for them to be a woman leader and what maybe that tells us about the world we live in today. 1.00

00:02:18.520 The first woman who we're going to look at is Cleopatra. 0.99

00:02:24.320 the main Cleopatra there were several people called Cleopatra so just to be clear she the

00:02:29.880 one we're talking about is I think the seventh Cleopatra but basically she's the one everybody

00:02:35.140 knows about at this point we're gonna get into this in a second but there's a thing where in

00:02:39.980 this era of Egyptian history there weren't a lot of different names of people especially within the

00:02:45.040 royal family in fact the Cleopatra we're talking about had an older sister also called Cleopatra

00:02:50.020 So just like get prepared for some duplicate names.

00:02:54.280 So I was thinking about like this season, we're going to be looking sort of in chronological order.

00:02:59.020 Six different women who had leadership and how the men around them reacted to that and how they kept being leaders, even as men were whining about it.

00:03:07.720 The challenges they faced to become leaders when they were surrounded by men who were grossed out by the idea.

00:03:13.920 And so I'm starting with Cleopatra and it's sort of intimidating a little bit.

00:03:19.460 The first season I did women who to me are like medium well-known, but Cleopatra is like extremely well-known. She's the first sort of heavy hitter we've looked at on this podcast. And I thought, ooh, you know, I really wanted to wait until I was really settled in to this whole podcast game before I dove into something this kind of well-known, this juicy.

00:03:40.400 but then I was like well I don't want to not do Cleopatra just because she is famous that's sort

00:03:45.300 of like reverse judgmental or something and it's just a really good place to start because you'll

00:03:49.780 see moving ahead from here how the other the next few women sort of especially the next two we're 0.71

00:03:55.660 going to be looking at how Cleopatra's reign sort of affected the way that they led and the way that

00:04:00.780 they were reacted to by mostly by their patriarchal society but I'm going to say mostly men so that's

00:04:08.400 what we're looking at today is the story of cleopatra it is long and it is interesting and

00:04:14.720 she's someone who you know there's always like cleopatra halloween costumes she's a character on

00:04:19.480 clone high like there's the the old show cleopatra 25 25 where i think she was like reincarnated like

00:04:25.680 it's a name people have um pam greer i think played cleopatra jones in blaxploitation films

00:04:31.420 like it's a name that is imbued with a sort of power um when you think about the name cleopatra

00:04:37.420 Even just looking at the Halloween costumes, it's like glamour and power and gorgeousness.

00:04:44.320 But the story of the woman herself is not something I knew in super detail until I started researching.

00:04:51.320 And now that's what we're going to look at today.

00:04:54.100 So the thing, many, many things to know.

00:04:57.240 I'll just mention that the main source I used for researching Cleopatra was the biography of Cleopatra written by Stacey Schiff.

00:05:07.420 which is very, it's very readable. I mean, in terms of history books, there's like super

00:05:13.660 academic history books, and there's kind of like history for kids. And this is like a book for,

00:05:19.000 there's a lot of really great information in it. And it's also written in a very accessible

00:05:22.740 sort of mainstream way, which I think is great, because that means more people can,

00:05:27.560 will maybe enjoy reading it. And she has a really long bibliography. Basically,

00:05:33.700 she went through all the sources, and she explains what those sources are. And I'm just gonna,

00:05:37.420 use her as my source, but just bear in mind that Cleopatra was a very famous person in her day.

00:05:45.660 She was a queen of Egypt and she was of Macedonian slash Greek descent. And I'm bringing that up

00:05:51.720 right now because there's no known writing about her by the Egyptians or by the Macedonian slash

00:05:59.260 Greeks. So we don't know kind of how she portrayed herself, what she wanted people to think she was

00:06:05.820 like or how what her people from her own country thought of her the writing we have about her

00:06:11.660 is from several roman men who just hated her and many of whom well some of whom lived at the same

00:06:19.360 time as her and some of whom wrote about her after she had died so basically it's like not

00:06:25.620 objective sources but when you look at all of them in combination you get some facts and that's

00:06:32.320 we're going to try and look at today to see kind of what what was her deal actually as much as we

00:06:39.560 know and I need to do some place setting into the history of ancient Egypt just so you know where

00:06:45.380 she kind of fits into things so because the status of Egypt as a country was super it was kind of a

00:06:54.180 trap for her she was in this sort of situation where Egypt as a country was not doing amazing

00:07:00.900 and then she became basically its queen but it was not Egypt was not at the prime of its time as like

00:07:08.720 super amazing country that everybody wished they could live in so briefly a bunch of independent

00:07:16.240 villages uh combined into the kingdom of Egypt around the year 3150 BCE if you haven't come

00:07:24.700 across this before some people call years before zero BC for before Christ and some people call

00:07:30.480 them BCE, which is before common era. I tend to use BCE, but just to save us all from me saying

00:07:37.500 acronyms all the time, I'm just going to say numbers from now on, but just bear in mind,

00:07:40.860 this all takes place before the year zero. So all the numbers are going to be getting

00:07:46.040 smaller the later in time we get, basically. So Egypt founded 3150. And then there was the old

00:07:55.600 kingdom. There was the new kingdom. It was, it became a really successful kingdom because of

00:08:03.020 the Nile river, um, which flooded every year and that helped with their crops. So they had

00:08:07.140 amazing crops, which meant that people wanted to trade with them, which meant that they themselves

00:08:11.140 could feed their citizens. So compared to other nearby areas, each was able to progress in a way

00:08:18.040 other places weren't because they didn't have to worry about food and money to the extent that

00:08:22.660 other people did. So they just started developing this kind of sophisticated cultural identity.

00:08:28.420 There were some previous women leaders in Egypt. Cleopatra was not the first well-known. There was

00:08:36.720 a woman named Hatshepsut who ruled during what's known as the New Kingdom era, which was about 1550

00:08:45.220 to 1069. So this is still like a thousand years before Cleopatra. Anyway, so it was uncommon for

00:08:51.740 women to hold solo leadership roles in Egyptian society but Egypt wasn't like grossed out by the 1.00

00:08:58.020 idea of women being in control so Hatshepsut for instance ruled for about 20 years alongside her 0.98

00:09:03.840 husband so she's powerful in combination with him often in in Egyptian scenarios you had like

00:09:11.220 there was always a man-woman pair there's always a king and a queen and unlike in some other

00:09:16.060 countries where the queen was kind of like just the wife of the king here the queen like got to

00:09:22.240 have power and influence of her own basically years go by and egypt started fading in its

00:09:31.180 significance and its wealth and this is because the whole thing was dependent on the nile river

00:09:36.600 and that's nature and you can't always count on nature to do the same thing every year so

00:09:43.480 there were times of drought at which point the they weren't able to to get as many crops so

00:09:50.260 egypt started doing less great and then suddenly it's the year 332 and the famous greek teenager

00:09:56.640 alexander the great stormed in and conquered egypt at this point egypt had been under the

00:10:01.920 control of the persians so even the alexander the great and his greek forces weren't the first people

00:10:07.260 to take over Egypt. But anyways, he came in, Alexander the Great, a very successful person

00:10:12.680 who you can read about in other places. But basically, Egypt had been under the power of

00:10:17.820 a series of colonizers for a while. But Alexander came in and everyone kind of liked his approach.

00:10:22.900 Like they're like, if we're going to be oppressed and colonized, at least this guy sort of respects

00:10:27.960 and pays attention to our culture a little bit. Alexander created a new capital city named after

00:10:33.760 him, which is called Alexandria. And then he left the kingdom under the care of his best friend and

00:10:39.120 trusted general, Ptolemy. So over the next 300 years, Ptolemy's descendants would rule Egypt

00:10:44.740 as the Ptolemaic dynasty. And so I mentioned that Alexander kind of respected Egyptian culture a bit.

00:10:51.020 And by that, I mean, it's a complex thing when somebody comes in to take over someone else's

00:10:57.120 country. But basically, Alexander and Ptolemy, they didn't come in to be like, okay, guess what?

00:11:02.180 everything's like Greece now, let's just change everything to be Greek. They adopted several

00:11:06.820 cultural practices from the Egyptians, including their deities, their religion, the concept of

00:11:12.580 incestuous brother-sister royal marriages. They still celebrated all of the old architecture and

00:11:18.360 beautiful buildings and statues, hieroglyphs, etc. So they didn't try and erase the pre-existing

00:11:23.760 Egyptian culture. But at the same time, the Ptolemy rulers didn't learn how to speak the

00:11:30.080 egyptian language which was its own language i don't it wasn't arabic it was like its own

00:11:35.080 language at the time so the they're the kings and queens of egypt for 300 years but they

00:11:41.000 conducted all their business in greek so they adopted some egyptian stuff but they were still

00:11:47.500 very much even though they've been there for 300 years like the people of egypt knew like these

00:11:51.700 people are not egyptian they're not like us and this is where we get into the fact that the

00:11:57.640 Ptolemies only had a couple of names that they liked to use. So basically, in this royal family,

00:12:04.120 all of the boys and men, seemingly, were all named Ptolemy. They're just all named Ptolemy,

00:12:09.960 just with a number afterwards. And the girls had one of three names, which were Cleopatra,

00:12:15.400 or Sinoe, or Berenike. And today's heroine, who we're looking at, are Cleopatra. So she was one

00:12:22.780 of at least four sisters. So she was called Cleopatra. She had an older sister also called

00:12:27.200 Cleopatra. She had a sister called Berenike and a sister called Ursinawe, because those are the 0.90

00:12:32.200 only names that existed for royal women. And we're just going to take a little look at the two oldest

00:12:37.000 sisters to get a sense of kind of what life was like in this royal family. So brother-sister

00:12:44.180 incestuous marriage was a thing the Ptolemy's had been doing for like 300 years, inspired by what 0.99

00:12:50.040 Egyptians had been doing before. And it was basically just to ensure like, quote unquote, 1.00

00:12:53.480 the purity of the family line like so much stuff in history now makes me be like oh like the

00:13:00.080 Targaryens and Game of Thrones where it's like no the Targaryens and Game of Thrones were

00:13:03.380 inspired by the Ptolemies in Egypt but it's that same sort of thing where it's just like they were 0.95

00:13:08.560 marrying within their family to keep it all sort of because they saw themselves as kind of the

00:13:12.420 descendants of gods and so they wanted to keep it within the family but at the same time I think

00:13:17.900 just scientifically speaking if your brother sister inbreeding for 300 years eventually like 0.99

00:13:23.780 I don't I think you're gonna deal with quite a bit of infertility so there was the Ptolemies the

00:13:29.380 various men who are all named Ptolemies had mistresses and stuff and sometimes their children 0.53

00:13:34.080 would become the new king and queen so it's there's a large amount of inbreeding but also

00:13:39.260 there's like little bits of other genetics coming in to the point that by the time Cleopatra's around

00:13:43.900 was she entirely just of greek descent like almost definitely not anyway so another reason 0.61

00:13:52.660 why the ptolemies like to marry within their family and not just in like a 18th century you

00:13:59.260 know habsburg cousin marriage way but like literally marrying brothers to sisters so they're 0.99

00:14:03.720 doing that to maintain the family line but also because they were so busy murdering and scheming

00:14:08.260 against each other that introducing other people would make it be like even more chaotic somehow

00:14:13.060 So this was a family situation. We're going to be looking at in later episodes at some ancient Roman stuff. And it's similar. This is just like a time and a place in the world where you were either scheming to murder somebody or someone just murdered you because everyone was always scheming to murder each other.

00:14:33.420 so like it's not being paranoid to assume that your brother and sister are trying to murder you

00:14:37.980 because they probably are and oh there's a knife in your back like it's just that's the situation

00:14:42.820 we're looking at so within that context to do well you need to be also scheming and murdering

00:14:50.040 other people so so just bear that in mind i guess basically just like everyone is killing everyone

00:14:57.000 all the time and in order to thrive you basically had to kill your siblings before they killed you

00:15:01.960 so cleopatra she's one of four sisters and their father is pharaoh ptolemy the 12th who was the

00:15:09.260 illegitimate son of ptolemy the 11th and he himself had only wound up pharaoh because all of his other

00:15:16.640 brothers had been murdered by each other because like i can't stress this enough like in this

00:15:22.920 family everyone was constantly killing each other all the time so cleopatra's mother was also known

00:15:29.740 cleopatra so her mother's cleopatra the fifth and their oldest daughter was cleopatra the sixth

00:15:34.800 again that's not our cleopatra this is her older sister with the same name so the mother died which

00:15:41.920 is like thank god that's one less cleopatra in this paragraph um and so cleopatra the sixth

00:15:46.880 again not our heroine her older sister came in and to become the new queen because there had to 0.96

00:15:51.880 always be a man woman pair of king and queens so they weren't married to each other her and her 0.82

00:15:58.380 father like that's like the one step i think or i don't think they actually went to but basically 0.98

00:16:04.000 there had to be a king and a queen so with her mother dead cleopatra the older one came in to

00:16:09.760 become the new queen um but she was very quickly murdered probably by the next youngest sister 0.99

00:16:16.500 who's called berenice because berenice wanted to have this power for herself so berenice becomes

00:16:22.700 the new queen and then ptolemy the 12th himself left town for i don't know business trip or

00:16:28.600 something at which point berenice just sees the throne for herself she was just like guess what

00:16:33.820 i'm not going to share the throne with my father i'm going to be just the queen just me that's it 0.97

00:16:38.220 so in order to get the traditional sort of king and queen pairing she could have married off one 0.91

00:16:43.940 of her brothers to become like a pair to sort of fight against her father that way but her two

00:16:48.220 younger brothers were both basically preschoolers so that wasn't going to give her like a

00:16:52.680 especially a lot of power or influence. And so she was, and also she was like, guess what? I'm

00:16:56.880 doing this by myself. I'm Berenike. I'm amazing. So her, the men around her basically pressured

00:17:02.940 her to marry someone because having just a woman in charge made them uncomfortable. So it was sort

00:17:08.600 of like a woman could be in charge shared with a man or even shared with a little boy, but by

00:17:14.900 herself, everyone was just kind of like, oh no, that's just not, that's not what we do. So after

00:17:19.000 few months, Berenike agreed to marry her cousin, Prince Seleucid. But after one week, she basically

00:17:25.860 poisoned him to death because she didn't like him. And again, just everyone's killing everyone

00:17:30.420 all the time. She was not messing around basically in terms of killing. She killed potentially her

00:17:36.300 sister. Who knows? Maybe she killed their mother too. She killed, but we do know she killed her

00:17:40.000 husband after one week. So she chose a new husband whose name was Archelaus, but she didn't actually

00:17:45.760 give him any power and continue to be in charge of Egypt basically by herself until her father

00:17:50.380 told me the 12th came back with the full support of the Romans so he took over again had Berenice 0.52

00:17:58.260 executed so at this point there's just two sisters left Cleopatra aged 14 and this is from now until

00:18:06.520 quite a while into the story the only Cleopatra there is anymore so just just when Cleopatra

00:18:11.380 anymore. So she's 14 years old and she becomes the new queen because Berenice was killed.

00:18:16.580 So she, age 14, becomes the new queen of Egypt. But I just want to mention, so Ptolemy came back

00:18:23.580 with the support of Roman forces. So this is at a time when Rome was having their own drama.

00:18:31.360 Rome was doing well for itself. They were kind of running around, taking over other kingdoms,

00:18:35.240 and they had sort of a decent alliance at this point with Egypt. So the fact that they were

00:18:40.480 allied with the king meant sort of protection for them, meant that things were kind of okay

00:18:46.600 in Egypt. They weren't at war against the Romans at this point. So Cleopatra, age 14,

00:18:53.740 what do we know about her at this point? And the answer is not much. But if you look at what we

00:18:59.360 just went through, she would have seen a lot of murder happening. She would have seen two of her

00:19:04.800 sisters and her mother all die in pretty quick succession um she would have seen her father

00:19:10.840 storm back into town with the romans she would have seen like she was 14 years old but she was

00:19:16.380 not in any way naive to the world that she was living in basically so we don't know a lot about

00:19:21.780 her early years because we don't have any writing about her from the egyptians at the time we only

00:19:26.400 know the romans just started writing about her when she started having dealings with people in

00:19:30.340 Rome, which was when she was a few years older than this. But basically, what we know about her

00:19:35.280 education, for instance, is that it would have been extremely wide ranging. So unlike other

00:19:40.780 societies that we've looked at, and we will look at in other episodes of this podcast,

00:19:45.500 it sort of flips back and forth, various societies, and even within the societies,

00:19:50.700 if it's seen worthwhile to educate girls or not. But luckily for Cleopatra, she was living at a 0.98

00:19:57.260 time when it was seen, especially for royal girls, that she should be educated in every subject that

00:20:03.980 was known at the time. So math, politics, history, philosophy, reading, writing. She was fluent in

00:20:11.060 potentially up to nine languages, including the language Egyptian, making her the first person in

00:20:16.920 300 years in her family to ever bother to learn the literal language of their literal subjects.

00:20:22.520 so she's maybe savvy in a way um there's a conspiracy um not a conspiracy but there's like

00:20:29.760 a theory that i that appeals to me which could be one of the reasons maybe she learned the

00:20:34.560 egyptian language could have been that she was at least part egyptian her father's wife was

00:20:39.720 named cleopatra and she died she had two older sisters cleopatra the fifth also the mother of

00:20:45.500 our cleopatra like it's possibly not it possibly could have been another one of ptolemy's mistresses

00:20:49.860 but basically so if she was half egyptian then it would make sense that she would have picked up

00:20:55.040 that language and she would have wanted to pick up that language and that would be sort of important

00:20:58.140 to her in a way but we don't know that for sure um spoiler nobody knows what she looked like at all

00:21:04.120 really what we do know is that she was probably not conventionally beautiful so this is i just

00:21:10.880 want to let that sink in because she's famous as this like elizabeth taylor slash angelina jolie

00:21:17.600 looking like goddess on earth basically but what we know about what she looks like is that there 0.97

00:21:24.080 were some coins and she made every time she made a political move she like had new coins made with 0.94

00:21:28.920 her face on them so we don't know how much the coins look like her actual face and maybe she 0.90

00:21:33.980 wanted to make herself look more manly or something to try and look more I don't know

00:21:39.460 anyway the face that's on the coins is not like has not been done up to make her look 0.95

00:21:43.980 traditionally femininely beautiful um and also just a lot of the men these roman men who were

00:21:52.040 writing about her did not shy away from talking about how gorgeous people were like wait till we

00:21:57.420 get to mark anthony like if she had been beautiful they would have written about it probably and

00:22:03.420 nobody really talks about what she looks like so i think it's easy to assume that she must have

00:22:08.740 been gorgeous. Because sort of in our paradigm, it's sort of assumed that a very successful

00:22:16.020 woman would be gorgeous and able to manipulate men, maybe. And if she's not gorgeous, then it's 1.00

00:22:22.740 like, well, then how is she able to get so much power? Could it be that she was actually like 0.94

00:22:25.980 smart and talented? And that's just like, makes people's brains short circuit to consider. 0.99

00:22:30.680 But basically, we do know that she had a beautiful voice, a beautiful speaking voice. And we know

00:22:36.660 that she had this enormous amounts of personal charisma she had that sort of thing where when

00:22:42.420 you go she walks into a room even though like she's the one who's like literally dressed in

00:22:46.500 literal gold like all eyes go to her and she makes people feel special when she talks to them like 0.58

00:22:51.480 she had really great um just skills conversational skills so she had this personal magnetism was

00:22:58.800 probably not conventionally beautiful even for the time but basically what she had learned by age 14

00:23:05.480 as I would assume, don't trust anyone in your family ever. And if you're going to try to take

00:23:10.940 over as a woman leader of Egypt, you want to make sure you have powerful allies on your side, 0.97

00:23:16.300 because people are not going to take to that very well, presumably. And so when she was about 18

00:23:23.400 years old, she'd been queen for four years. She had not been murdered herself. So like,

00:23:29.740 frankly, that's an achievement. Her father died. He had written in his will that he wanted

00:23:34.640 Cleopatra to marry her younger brother. And so that's what happened. He became her co-ruler

00:23:39.600 Ptolemy XIII. So he was also like 10 years old or something. So basically she had been co-ruler

00:23:48.060 with her father and then suddenly she's 18 years old and being told she has to job share with her

00:23:53.840 like tween age brother slash husband. So right away, and she had spent four years, I'm going to

00:24:00.220 guess theorize um making alliances with advisors and that sort of stuff so she was able to work

00:24:05.760 with those people like using a pre-existing relationships she already had um to cut him 0.99

00:24:10.520 out of most of the job duties so his name was removed from official documents she minted new

00:24:15.200 coins that showed only her face instead of both of them and both of these actions were basically

00:24:19.760 declarations of war um and everybody by everybody i mean her brothers advisors and regents who were

00:24:26.780 a group of men got really mad about this because she had sort of snuck around behind everyone's 0.61

00:24:31.480 back to claim extra power and she'd also upended the expectation that queens should be subordinate 0.88

00:24:36.360 to and supportive of kings like a woman the whole idea like going back to what her older sister 1.00

00:24:42.760 tried to do like it was just shocking it just like did not compute to them like a woman having 0.92

00:24:49.460 power on her own it's like no she needs to share it with a man like a woman can have some power 1.00

00:24:53.460 a royal woman as long as she shares it and cleopatra is just like fuck that and off she went 1.00

00:24:59.220 so she had her own supporters but her brother had more supporters and she wound up exiled from 0.98

00:25:05.020 alexandria so she headed off or sorry exiled from alexandria so he was still living there being the

00:25:11.260 pharaoh and she was sent off into exile she took her younger sister arsinoe so that she still had

00:25:16.500 one more sister left i just like picturing them as this like sort of grand duchess anastasia and

00:25:21.820 her sisters slash little women slash Pride and Prejudice, just this group of four girls who are

00:25:27.160 just like each of them more cool than the next. So she took her little sister Ursina away and they 0.99

00:25:33.520 went off and to Syria to just kind of figure out what they're going to do. And what she figured out

00:25:38.860 she's going to do was to take advantage of the currently ongoing Roman civil war to get them on

00:25:44.480 her side, to be her backup, to defeat her brother slash husband, which brings us to the history of

00:25:50.860 ancient rome which is like there are year-long university courses in that so we just need to

00:25:56.440 blitz through to catch up to where we are so basically what you need to know at this point

00:26:01.440 is that romans roman men roman society roman culture hated women basically they sort of

00:26:09.980 in the sense of like the legitimate meaning of misogyny like they just did not so women in ancient 0.99

00:26:17.720 Rome did not have any rights at all. Like they were, so first of all, their understanding of

00:26:23.220 medicine, um, of obstetrics was that basically within the womb, everyone was sort of like

00:26:30.080 starts off as a woman and then just like becomes a man. So people, babies were born as girls,

00:26:36.840 biologically with the genitalia of, of the female sex. We're seen as sort of like men that didn't

00:26:43.940 quite make it all the way. So women are seen sort of as like, literally as like incomplete men. So

00:26:49.100 they never had any rights in ancient Rome. Like they didn't, not just like they couldn't vote,

00:26:53.960 but like they couldn't go outside of their houses by themselves. Like they were always under the

00:26:57.500 control of a male relative. Women were possessions. Rome, ancient Rome at this time was also a place 1.00

00:27:04.260 that had slaves. And so women and slaves and like chickens were all just kind of like things that

00:27:10.680 were owned by men that men could control. So Roman men hated women and Romans at this point

00:27:17.040 really, really hated the idea of a hereditary monarchy. So this is the situation where Rome

00:27:23.960 had been controlled. It was the Roman Republic, which was sort of an, oh my God, this is not my

00:27:30.400 area of expertise, but basically a democracy situation. People were voted into power. They

00:27:36.440 had terms they weren't in charge forever um they got to job share like the at this point there was

00:27:42.760 the tram for it so three people sort of were all in charge but just for a five-year term so cleopatra 0.98

00:27:48.380 was a powerful woman who is also from a hereditary monarchy so she was basically their worst

00:27:54.080 nightmare so at this point well i guess we're just catching up to this point 20 years before

00:27:59.920 cleopatra was born so roman was constantly having civil wars basically so 20 years before cleopatra

00:28:05.540 was born a man named sulla took over as sort of emergency emperor during the civil war era and

00:28:13.020 that was just supposed to be sort of like for short term during the emergency but then the

00:28:17.120 younger men in rome were like oh so one person could be in charge and that inspired them to sort

00:28:21.880 of try and want to do that again so younger men like julius caesar and a man named pompey decided

00:28:27.940 that they'd kind of like to be in charge themselves caesar and pompey didn't want to share

00:28:32.720 so they became fighting against each other and just kind of kept on fighting and suddenly it's

00:28:37.940 the year 48 BCE and that is where we're caught up to where Cleopatra is so Cleopatra's in Syria

00:28:44.020 with her younger sister and she's trying to figure out how to defeat her brother husband

00:28:47.860 Caesar and Pompey are at war against each other so remember when the Egyptians came or the Romans

00:28:54.420 came to support Cleopatra's father so there's still a sort of alliance between Rome and Egypt

00:29:00.040 So Pompey fled to Egypt where he thought he could find refuge for a while. 0.91

00:29:04.560 But basically he was stabbed to death upon arrival because that's just like how Egypt welcomed people, apparently. 0.94

00:29:11.360 So he was killed in Egypt.

00:29:13.580 Caesar, even though he'd been at war with Pompey, was sort of upset that Pompey had just been like randomly murdered in Egypt.

00:29:20.820 so he was just like okay Cleopatra could you please reconcile with your brother husband and

00:29:25.880 just like calm down and be like a nice little subordinate ally to Rome. Cleopatra of course 0.96

00:29:32.420 did not want to do this she didn't want to reconcile with her brother she wanted to defeat

00:29:35.700 her brother so she decided what she needed to do was to get Caesar to join her side against Ptolemy

00:29:42.260 so this is where if the people of Egypt have been bigger fans of the Ptolemies this Greek dynasty

00:29:49.900 that had been in charge of him for 300 years, the Egyptians might have stepped up to offer her

00:29:54.940 assistance to take down her brother. But the fact they didn't do this is maybe one small clue to the

00:30:00.200 fact they viewed both her and her brother-husband as their oppressor, not as their legitimate

00:30:04.720 rulers. Like they would be the army, but they weren't going to like revolt for one of them

00:30:10.320 above the other, basically. So this is the moment, the famous Cleopatra meets Julius Caesar moment.

00:30:15.820 So in legends based on some very dramatic writings, some people think she might have hidden herself in a rolled up carpet and then had the carpet carried into Julius Caesar's room.

00:30:26.000 And then she was just like, surprise, like like a showgirl popping out of a giant cake or something that I mean, again, we're looking at sort of like third, fourth hand information.

00:30:36.440 This may or may not have happened, but we do know for sure that she snuck off without telling her brother.

00:30:40.920 and she secretly met with Caesar and whatever she said totally worked because he came out of

00:30:46.760 this meeting willing to ally with her against Ptolemy. And then they basically became a couple

00:30:53.260 and that is what happened. And now for a quick advertising break. And we're back. So this is

00:31:01.440 where it would be very easy if Cleopatra had been very like conventionally beautiful, very sexy,

00:31:08.420 very sexual it would be an easy way to explain how and why Caesar decided to side with her right

00:31:14.460 at this point if he if she just like literally seduced him but the thing is that she was not

00:31:20.040 conventionally beautiful she was like magnetic and charismatic and like interesting and like 0.58

00:31:25.600 super smart and also Julius Caesar had spent his life in Rome a place where like women were not 0.98

00:31:32.340 given this much education women didn't have this much power like someone like Cleopatra would be

00:31:36.280 totally foreign to him so just she is a person could have been part of why he was what attracted 0.99

00:31:41.920 him to her and then also just in terms of the like seduction side of things is that Cleopatra 0.66

00:31:46.540 had been married to her like tweenage brother for the past several years before that was co-queen

00:31:52.660 with her father and so I don't think it's a giant leap to think that perhaps she was not at all

00:32:00.020 very sexually experienced even though she's known as this famous like seductress the only

00:32:05.860 men we know for sure she ever had sex with were julius caesar and mark anthony but basically she

00:32:12.040 was assertive she was poised she had this self-confidence of somebody who had been raised

00:32:17.060 being told that she was literally a goddess and had been queen since she was age 14 and so another

00:32:23.120 thing to consider too is that in the ancient world a lot of times alliances were sealed with people

00:32:28.300 with marriage alliances and or babies so it could have been she was just thinking like i don't we

00:32:34.760 don't know her psychology but also this is the vulgar history podcast so whatever like i don't

00:32:40.780 think she her first go-to is like i'm gonna seduce this like 50 year old man and then he'll do what

00:32:46.280 i want like i don't think she would think that because that's not a very foolproof plan and 1.00

00:32:50.760 cleopatra as we will see always had like a plan a a plan b a plan c like she didn't do things

00:32:56.180 without having it planned out very well in advance but basically she needed somebody to 0.99

00:33:01.500 side with her against that um if she had to sleep with caesar i'm sure she was up for that um she 0.98

00:33:08.000 might have thought like having sex with him having a baby with him would make a sort of alliance like 0.97

00:33:12.240 she was technically married to her brother he was technically married to someone else but like 0.71

00:33:16.060 so they couldn't marry each other but basically um having a baby was nothing compared to like 1.00

00:33:21.900 murdering family members which is what people doing around her so whatever she did caesar was

00:33:27.400 totally on board but so you're like okay this is great like i see where this is going this is

00:33:32.160 familiar to me from the shakespeare play but oh no because there's time for another plot twist 1.00

00:33:38.100 which is that remember her younger sister arsinoe was just as badass as her three older sisters and 1.00

00:33:43.800 if you ask me um i think also sort of in like a little women's pride and prejudice way just like

00:33:48.580 if the younger sibling keeps getting just kind of like learning from the older ones the younger

00:33:52.960 siblings just get cooler and better and more and more badass and so she was just like i think this

00:33:58.100 is my chance you guys so 15 years old arsinoe um decides to try and take over egypt herself

00:34:04.420 with their other brother whose name is also ptolemy to be with as her co-regent so basically

00:34:12.620 so she's 15 years old she decides she's going to defeat julius caesar and take over all of egypt

00:34:17.560 and arsinoe is amazing and you should watch the drunk history episode about this anyway so

00:34:22.460 So Ursinawe, what she did is she had this helper, I guess her mentor slash pal slash palace eunuch.

00:34:31.200 His name is Ganymedes.

00:34:32.500 She just like with his help and support, she declared herself Queen Ursinawe IV and took control of the Egyptian army, which is just like 15 years old.

00:34:40.740 Like these sisters are amazing.

00:34:43.000 She named Ganymedes as her second in command. 0.96

00:34:45.520 She commanded the Egyptian army in battle against the Romans. 0.97

00:34:48.580 um she used some clever tactics like closing off some streets in order to trap Caesar and

00:34:54.060 Cleopatra in the palace like and they were trapped there for an entire year like this

00:34:58.060 wasn't just like a short-lived thing anyway Caesar eventually was like okay I'm gonna be

00:35:03.020 defeated by one of history's coolest teenagers Cleopatra was like can you just get rid of my

00:35:06.860 sister whatever so what happened here is that there's a final battle Ptolemy drowned to death

00:35:14.700 and Ganymedes died in battle so Ptolemy the one who was married to Cleopatra drowned Ganymedes

00:35:21.640 who was Arsinoe's helper died in battle and then eventually the Egyptian army who again are just

00:35:26.940 kind of like people of Egypt who had been sort of colonized and oppressed for a long time who

00:35:31.780 just like can like anything just settle down ever here so they decided ultimately they weren't on

00:35:38.740 team arsinoe and so they decided to exchange arsinoe for for ptolemy sorry for ptolemy the

00:35:46.380 other one because those two brothers remember basically all told what happens is the egyptian

00:35:51.940 army betrayed arsinoe she wound up a roman prisoner and she's forced to be included in

00:35:56.740 julius caesar's victory parade humiliating herself in front of everyone as a captive queen like a

00:36:01.560 parade went down the street like a massive parade um i feel like it was something like a multi-day

00:36:06.740 parade it was like very visible um and she was like in a cage in front of everybody and it was

00:36:12.120 just very humiliating for all of her and then she was sent into exile and we'll hear about her a bit

00:36:18.620 later but that's basically her big that was her big moment but back to cleopatra so right now so

00:36:25.020 it's the year 48 uh julius caesar's term as council was due to expire because remember it was just

00:36:30.960 like a five-year thing but he was like inspired by Sula so many decades before he got one extra

00:36:38.200 year as emergency dictator because he was like who else but me can settle the dynastic troubles

00:36:42.680 in Egypt because I'm sleeping with Cleopatra so he appointed Cleopatra co-ruler alongside

00:36:48.860 yet another Ptolemy brother I'm sorry Ptolemy it's it's spelled with a p at the beginning so

00:36:55.280 it's like pterodactyl. And it's hard for me to not say the P Ptolemy, Ptolemy, the 14th. So

00:37:01.200 she Cleopatra at this point, age 22, pregnant with the baby of Julius Caesar in order to rule Egypt

00:37:08.260 had to marry her 12 year old brother. It's like, she is never not having to marry her 12 year old

00:37:12.460 brother, all of whom are named Ptolemy. Um, but basically she was technically married to this

00:37:19.900 little boy, but she lived with Caesar as long as he was in Alexandria. Caesar was out of town when

00:37:27.380 her son was born on June 23rd in the year 47 BCE. The son was named Caesarian, or potentially it's

00:37:35.540 pronounced Kaesarian, but basically it's a Greek name that means basically Caesar Jr. And she told

00:37:42.240 everybody that the father of this child was Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar never officially acknowledged

00:37:47.080 caesarean as his son for various reasons um mostly because he was married to someone else

00:37:52.860 and cleopatra was married to someone else and this was all kind of messy but basically she

00:37:57.680 had just given birth to a son who was maybe going to be the next emperor of rome because rome is

00:38:02.200 headed in sort of a dynastic sort of direction instead of a voting people in direction so

00:38:07.880 cleopatra and her brother husband went to rome um they left baby caesarean behind because it was

00:38:14.300 like 47 BCE and like it's hard enough traveling with a baby now imagine then um with no you know

00:38:22.580 antibiotics or whatever anyways they moved across into a villa just across from where Julius Caesar

00:38:27.200 lived with his wife in Rome and everyone kind of found this weird but Julius Caesar at this point

00:38:31.840 was just going full like narcissistic dictator type thing he was very um doing his own thing

00:38:39.660 and not caring what other people thought and that's not going to end well for him but this

00:38:43.300 is an example of the sort of stuff he had done so caesar at this point was busy overseeing the

00:38:47.380 construction of a new temple to the goddess venus which included a huge gold plated statue of the

00:38:53.120 goddess of venus and he was like you know what this this temple needs is a giant gold statue of

00:38:58.460 cleopatra my lover as well so the temple put up a giant statue of venus and next to that a giant

00:39:05.720 statue of the queen of egypt and everyone was just kind of like okay this is all getting kind of

00:39:11.600 weird. And then comes the Ides of March, famously, where Caesar was stabbed to death by a bunch of

00:39:17.400 his former friends who were just kind of mad at his self-declaring himself emperor for the rest

00:39:23.320 of all time, etc. Cleopatra was like, okay, so great. So my baby son is going to be the new

00:39:30.480 emperor of Rome, right? And the Romans were like, actually, no. And in fact, Julius Caesar had 0.78

00:39:35.260 adopted this kid named Octavian. And so we think that person's going to maybe take over. So

00:39:41.020 Cleopatra just kind of packed up her things and pieced out of Rome, heading back to Egypt to 0.74

00:39:45.600 regroup. But knowing what we know about Cleopatra, like I'm sure, like when, by the time you're 14,

00:39:51.900 you've seen so many of your family members call their family members. Like I'm sure she was like

00:39:55.220 saddened, maybe surprised at the details, but like not shocked that Caesar ended up getting

00:40:00.820 stabbed. So I'm sure she already had other plans. She had figured out kind of who had power in Rome,

00:40:04.900 who could maybe be her new ally with him gone. And then wouldn't you know, well, on right back

00:40:09.440 to egypt her brother husband died of some sort of illness slash was probably poisoned probably by her

00:40:16.200 with him out of the way there's no more little brothers thank god finally so her co-regent 0.86

00:40:21.660 becomes her son three-year-old cesarean so she was now basically the solo queen of egypt like 0.64

00:40:27.720 there's still the male female pairing of king and queen but the king in this instance was three 0.92

00:40:32.520 years old so basically she was in charge but she still needed the assistance of rome to stay in

00:40:38.960 power because there was people in egypt who didn't love this whole turn of events basically um and

00:40:45.280 this is when and why she turned to a guy named mark antony so mark antony is like just get ready i

00:40:53.540 love i love reading about mark antony he's just like heartthrob and himbo of the ages so what

00:40:59.900 had happened is that joe caesar was assassinated partially because he wanted to be solo emperor and

00:41:04.760 people were mad about that so they didn't want to make his heir octavian the new emperor on his own

00:41:11.000 instead they said like what was set up and by they i mean the senators of rome they set up a 0.87

00:41:15.760 triumvirate of three leaders so octavian who's this like teenage asshole um caesar's former

00:41:23.120 right-hand man mark antony who's this like really successful war general and a third guy named 0.78

00:41:28.420 Lepidus. So these three men weren't super psyched to share power with each other because

00:41:34.260 first Sulla and then Caesar had made everyone kind of think like being solo emperor was kind

00:41:39.600 of where it's at. So they sort of divided up most of the Roman empire. So Octavian controlled most

00:41:46.840 of the Western bits. Antony controlled most of the Eastern bits. Lepidus is just like, who cares?

00:41:52.340 And the whole thing drilled down to basically Octavian versus Mark Antony. And one or the

00:41:57.320 other was going to kill the other because basically they weren't going to share. And you remember when

00:42:01.800 I mentioned how people weren't really writing about Cleopatra being gorgeous, even though they

00:42:05.840 wrote about other people being gorgeous. And Mark Antony is one of the people who has written about

00:42:09.800 being gorgeous. He had, quote, mighty thighs, a perfect face, curly hair, total dreamboat, just

00:42:17.600 like amazingly sexy, good-looking guy. He's also really good as a war general. So he's like

00:42:23.580 accomplished, smart, good looking, thighs, wearing his like little Roman miniskirt, just like

00:42:29.420 basically. So he was gorgeous and also really well accomplished and also really, really,

00:42:35.820 really popular. And Octavian was kind of this like sickly, skinny teen. Oh, he had blonde hair.

00:42:43.620 Mark Antony had dark hair and Roman's like dark hair better. So Octavian was just kind of this

00:42:48.000 useless little skinny kid mark antony was this like bread pit type thighs god person um and so 0.80

00:42:57.660 octavian needed to figure out a way to turn everybody against this like dreamboat basically 0.86

00:43:03.160 here's what happened is that mark antony was fighting against octavian but he needed funding

00:43:08.100 to help support his side of the war um cleopatra needed romans to be on her side to just sort of

00:43:15.260 maintain her amount of power. So Mark Antony contacts Cleopatra to see if she could maybe

00:43:21.200 help fund what he was up to. So he sent an invitation for her to come visit him. And she

00:43:26.140 was like, thanks, but no thanks. And like totally turned him down. And he kept inviting her and she

00:43:31.140 kept refusing because she's just like, Cleopatra goes or Cleopatra decides to go. She does not

00:43:35.460 answer other people's invitations. Finally, she was like, guess what? Okay, I'll come and visit

00:43:41.140 you so bear in mind that purple was the most expensive and rarest dye in this place in time

00:43:48.300 because it had to be made from a slime of thousands of sea snails which meant it took forever to like

00:43:53.440 make the dye took forever to dye things so the fact that cleopatra sailed up to meet mark antony

00:43:59.460 in a ship with purple sails was just like the equivalent of like flying in in like a plane

00:44:05.140 made of gold and diamonds, basically. So also the oarsmen were using silver oars, like made

00:44:11.960 literally out of silver. So it's just like giant knives glinting in the Mediterranean sunshine.

00:44:17.520 So it's just like this boat that's just like money, basically. She's like, oh, you want me

00:44:22.560 to fund your little war? I don't know. Could I spare that much money? I don't know. What do my

00:44:27.920 purple sails and my like silver oars think? So Antony is just like hanging out waiting for this

00:44:33.800 meeting and then cleopatra makes comes like sailing up on the ship so she was dressed up 0.82

00:44:39.380 like the goddess isis covered in jewels surrounded by incense so you could literally smell the 1.00

00:44:45.340 decadence of what was happening she had little children dressed like cupids running around her

00:44:50.480 with little bows and arrows which is like who are these children where do they come from i don't know

00:44:54.500 but basically she just like swans in i'm picturing it's just like the most like rihanna thing just

00:44:59.760 like i'm picturing her lying sideways on a sofa because that's how she's always drawn but also

00:45:04.940 it's like how else could you make that entrance basically so her boat is like sailing up to meet

00:45:10.220 mark antony and he's like okay great this is like more than i expected but her boat just keeps going

00:45:14.360 it sails right past him and mark antony is just like what just happened so basically he's like

00:45:20.560 okay so he went up her ship like docks and she goes over to her ship and she's like that's how 0.94

00:45:26.400 it works like you come to my ship i don't come to you i'm motherfucking cleopatra so he went over 0.90

00:45:33.020 to her ship and she was like hey we're just having this like opulent feast why don't you just have 0.93

00:45:38.220 some wine and music and jewels and just like hang out here for like literally 48 hours and two days

00:45:44.320 later a deal was struck where she had helped support him in his battle against octavian and he

00:45:48.920 was completely in love with her and like of course he was so also during this sex summit 0.93

00:45:56.260 Cleopatra got Antony to agree to have Ursinawe put to death because she was sort of a threat

00:46:03.020 to her still as the only other surviving sibling Ursinawe still alive just like living in this

00:46:08.240 sort of place in Rome Antony arranged for Ursinawe to be murdered so Ursinawe was murdered on the

00:46:13.700 front steps of this temple where she'd been living in sort of sanctuary and this kind of rubbed the

00:46:17.440 people roam the wrong way because they really took sanctuary and religion really seriously.

00:46:22.680 But anyway, Ursinawe, R.I.P. Cleopatra, now the only surviving member of her immediate sibling

00:46:29.120 group. So she and Marc Antony almost immediately seem to have begun a physical affair. And like,

00:46:35.860 can you blame her? Like he was just like gorgeousness personified. Can you blame him?

00:46:40.860 she was just like literally goddess um so like even just in reading reading this stuff reading

00:46:48.180 third-hand accounts of them together it's just like they have like palpable sexual chemistry

00:46:52.800 and also she got she'd been married to her tween age brother her like 12 year old brother she had

00:46:58.860 a child with Julius Caesar who's like 50 when she was like 20 and now she's got this like man who's

00:47:03.500 like similar age to her who's also like literally a sex god they were both into it um bear in mind

00:47:10.000 of course that Mark Antony was married to someone else because everyone in the story is,

00:47:15.140 but that didn't stop them. Anyway, so Mark Antony had always been known for throwing these like

00:47:20.320 amazing, luxurious, decadent parties. Cleopatra was just like ready to let loose because she 0.98

00:47:24.880 spent her entire life waiting to be murdered by her siblings. They were now all dead. She was on

00:47:29.720 top of the world. And so they just started throwing parties all the time. They started a sort of club

00:47:34.600 called the inimitable livers like l-i-v-e-r-s like the body organ that like gets affected when you

00:47:41.820 drink a lot of alcohol so it's basically just like a bunch of people who could drink a lot

00:47:45.900 they spent literally days in bed together and were just like being amazing all the time they

00:47:51.900 weren't just like shirking their responsibilities either they were also being like successful

00:47:55.860 leaders um just like being amazing doing amazing having this amazing sex life just like good for

00:48:02.960 them. But so what happened is that Cleopatra at this point, who had always been very careful and 0.99

00:48:11.520 very good about planning for contingencies, she seems to have underestimated Octavian who still

00:48:18.400 had it out for Antony. While they were just like having this like power couple dream life, Octavian

00:48:24.420 was just like, I don't know, maybe fleshing out a bit from his like sort of sickly skinniness and

00:48:29.940 becoming more powerful little did they know so in around the year 40 cleopatra gave birth to boy

00:48:35.880 girl twins the daughter was named cleopatra because that's of course um and the boy was

00:48:41.660 named alexander after alexander the great who was actually one of mark antony's ancestors

00:48:46.480 antony actually acknowledged these as his children which caesar never did with

00:48:50.200 cesarean um shortly after the twins were born antony's wife died she probably wasn't poisoned

00:48:57.440 I think she just died. And then to try and make peace between the two warring Roman factions,

00:49:03.560 Antony agreed to marry Octavian's sister, who is named Octavia. So he married someone else,

00:49:10.160 even though Cleopatra had just had his children. So Cleopatra was just like raising three small

00:49:14.980 children. And suddenly, her time was being taken up by King Herod of Judea, who is from the Bible,

00:49:22.720 the one who you might know from his greatest hits including demanding that all babies be killed in

00:49:28.040 case one of them was jesus um and sort of inventing christmas basically so the thing is that egypt and

00:49:34.420 judea were both kingdoms allied with rome they were geographically close to each other and

00:49:39.380 cleopatra was friends with herod's mother-in-law against herod and basically so herod was distracting

00:49:46.220 her he's an asshole whatever so cleopatra goes to visit antony in the year 37 um he met their

00:49:53.500 the twins were at this point three years old it was the first time he met them and he enjoyed 0.99

00:49:59.300 meeting them and then later on cleopatra gave birth to another child with mark antony as the

00:50:04.380 father and this was a son named ptolemy because this story needs a ptolemy again but this one's

00:50:09.040 called ptolemy philadelphus so cleopatra is just like having these children she put all of her

00:50:14.060 eggs in the basket of supporting Mark Antony as the next emperor of Rome. And the reason she's 1.00

00:50:18.040 doing this is because she thought he was going to win. And if her lover slash baby daddy was the

00:50:24.240 leader of Rome, then that's great for her. So everything depended on Octavian not winning.

00:50:30.100 But tragically, Mark Antony had started to do less well in his military stuff and his

00:50:36.640 psychological state was becoming sort of undone. And it all sort of came to a head when Cleopatra

00:50:42.520 Antony staged a huge festival slash party called the Donations of Alexandria. So this was sort of

00:50:49.000 a big party where like Antony was not doing amazing vis-a-vis military victories, but he

00:50:55.120 had just had one military victory. So they threw this party to try and like for PR to make everybody

00:50:59.780 think Antony was doing great. So they would all keep supporting him. So his campaigns in Parthia

00:51:05.700 and Armenia. So his campaign in Parthia had not gone well, but the one in Armenia had gone well.

00:51:11.820 And so they just wanted to sort of focus on that.

00:51:13.980 So this is similar to, do you remember when Arsinoe was marched through the streets of Rome as prisoner of war?

00:51:19.520 So this was sort of a similar thing, except they were marching the Armenian royal family in front of everybody as prisoners of war.

00:51:27.520 They were told to kneel before Cleopatra, the Armenian royal family, and they did not, which made her freak out. 0.70

00:51:34.960 And that just kind of made the whole thing not look as good for them as they were pretending like things were. 0.93

00:51:39.660 Anyway, for the grand finale, Mark Antony dressed up in a costume, dressed up like Dionysus, the Roman god of wine.

00:51:47.900 And Cleopatra dressed up as the Roman goddess of love, Aphrodite, but also sort of as the Egyptian goddess of life and magic, Isis.

00:51:56.600 Her son, Caesarian, was dressed up as the god Horus, who is the son of Isis.

00:52:00.860 And then everyone in Cleopatra's family got a new name and or title.

00:52:04.180 so she herself Cleopatra was proclaimed queen of kings queen of Egypt as well as queen of Cyprus

00:52:09.980 Libya and central Syria Alexander the boy twin was given the middle name Helios which means the sun

00:52:15.780 and was named king of Armenia Media and Parthia so now he's Alexander Helios her daughter Cleopatra

00:52:22.100 was given the middle name Selene which means the moon so Cleopatra Selene and she became queen of

00:52:28.120 Cyrenaica, Cyrenaica and Libya. Ptolemy Philadelphus was named king of Syria and

00:52:34.600 Sicilia and Caesarian was proclaimed king of kings as well as the legitimate heir of Julius

00:52:39.220 Caesar. So this is just like a full mic drop. Just like our family is the royal family. We're in

00:52:43.640 charge of everything. Here we go. There's some speculation that potentially Cleopatra and Antony

00:52:49.460 were officially married during this event. And certainly they were started acting like he wasn't

00:52:55.300 married to anyone else even though he was still married to Octavian's sister which just kind of

00:53:00.000 made even more bad feelings over the for everybody and ultimately this whole event the donations of

00:53:06.060 Alexandria seemed to the people of Rome who were like they were never into sort of luxury and

00:53:11.740 glamour and the way that Egyptian culture had sort of had these beautiful gold like they just

00:53:19.920 thought it was tacky like Egyptian culture to them was tacky Roman culture was all sort of like 0.86

00:53:24.320 stayed it was like white columns it was just like plain togas like they were also all killing each 0.98

00:53:29.480 other and all having sex with each other but they were like pretending like they're actually very 0.97

00:53:33.380 morally upright so octavian sort of latched on to this being like i'm octavian like i'm like you

00:53:40.360 rome i'm like really serious and monastic and mark antony is decadent and it didn't help that he

00:53:46.780 dressed up like the god of wine for this party anyway so if you're wondering how a pierre campaign

00:53:52.900 is run in ancient rome in a time before the invention of the printing press the answer is

00:53:57.800 um hand calligraphy flyers so octavian just started having a bunch of flyers printed up or

00:54:05.920 calligraphied for everybody to read that we basically just said like mark antony is decadent

00:54:13.220 he's terrible he likes luxury unlike i octavian who i'm just like super straightforward mark

00:54:19.100 Anthony wrote a letter back that also got printed on a flyer for everybody to read that was like 0.94

00:54:23.600 dear like the letter was like dear Octavian yeah I'm fucking Cleopatra who cares I know that you're 0.99

00:54:29.860 fucking lots of sex workers etc like what are we even doing you suck love Mark Anthony like it was 0.99

00:54:36.820 a pretty baller move it was pretty excellent like you literally said something in the letter I don't 0.99

00:54:41.500 have it in front of me but it's something like like this is the thing people have found it's 0.70

00:54:45.440 Like, it's a letter that says, like, Dear Octavian, yeah, so what if I'm fucking Cleopatra? 0.93

00:54:49.620 You wish. 0.90

00:54:50.340 Like, anyway, so just a lot of flyers.

00:54:53.760 And this is where a lot of the big rumors we still know about Cleopatra came into existence. 0.92

00:54:57.700 Like, that she's sexy and manipulating men with her beauty, or she's using witchcraft,

00:55:02.780 or she is just using seduction to destroy Caesar and Antony because she wants to destroy Rome. 1.00

00:55:09.340 Also, she's too powerful and smart. 1.00

00:55:11.520 It's unnatural for a woman. 1.00

00:55:12.860 mark antony does whatever she says which is gross because women aren't people and men should be in 0.99

00:55:16.980 church etc um just the whole idea that she was like either beautiful and blinded them with sex 0.97

00:55:23.940 or if she wasn't beautiful she blinded them with witchcraft and basically just misogyny basically

00:55:30.480 but it was a way to bring down mark antony by bringing down her as well and honestly the whole

00:55:36.940 thing about like did she ruin his life is totally backwards because really he was kind of ruining

00:55:43.280 her life really like when they started hooking up he was this like roman hero who seemed destined to

00:55:49.420 become the next emperor but then his hard drinking and partying lifestyle caught up with him um as

00:55:54.440 did maybe you know that is cte that like brain injury that happens with football players slash

00:56:01.620 ptsd from being in war constantly his whole life like he was just having some psychological

00:56:06.040 issues um and he was sort of falling apart basically like the whole deal of their relationship

00:56:13.880 was based on him being this amazing military leader and her financing him but he started

00:56:19.820 he was losing battles and so it was starting to look like a poor investment on cleopatra's part

00:56:24.140 but she couldn't really extricate herself from this meanwhile her whole life wasn't about rome

00:56:29.160 like during this whole time she'd been running egypt literally like a boss um she her history

00:56:34.920 there um she had forward thinking decisions about taxes and budgeting she's doing her best to lead

00:56:40.140 a country that was entirely dependent on whether the nile flooded or not every year like she was 0.95

00:56:45.220 governing egypt as well as dealing with this whole roman situation anyway so what happened is that

00:56:52.640 so the whole thing with the whole five-year job expiry thing is that mark antony's um time as a

00:57:01.100 consul expired, but Octavian got reelected. So now Mark Antony was no longer a consul

00:57:06.840 from the Roman triumvirate. He's now just like a regular Roman guy. So the fact that he continued

00:57:12.380 to battle against Octavian with Cleopatra's funding became sort of illegal, just like a

00:57:16.700 private citizen waging war against a country. So Octavian used sort of a legal loophole.

00:57:23.660 He had Rome declare war on Cleopatra for providing military support to a Roman citizen

00:57:28.280 who's not a consul so now the war wasn't just octavian versus antony it was all of rome versus

00:57:34.740 antony and cleopatra was in this kind of like awkward situation so this war was mostly waged

00:57:40.760 at sea and cleopatra and antony initially were doing well there because they had more ships

00:57:45.720 than octavian did but the thing is that their ships are kind of like a combination of like

00:57:49.860 mercenary ships and like allies from various places whereas octavian's ships were full of like

00:57:54.620 very well trained roman troops and soldiers and it all came down to the battle of actium

00:58:00.960 which began on september 2nd in the year 31 bce and basically the battle ended when a bunch of

00:58:08.000 people from cleopatra and antony's troops defected from their team to octavian's team and then

00:58:13.340 cleopatra and antony fled the scene cleopatra headed back to egypt where again the people of

00:58:20.280 Egypt weren't there like oh my god our queen we're here and we'll support you etc this is where the

00:58:24.920 whole like 300 years of oppression meant that the people of Egypt weren't super interested in

00:58:31.260 standing up to her to fight Octavian like they'd do their job and be royal guards but they weren't

00:58:35.560 prepared to lay down their lives and fight for her as they might have done for someone from a

00:58:39.480 different dynasty so Cleopatra was now trapped in Egypt it seemed inevitable that Octavian was

00:58:47.080 going to capture her but you know never count her out she started figuring out a new scheme

00:58:51.200 so she knew that octavian wanted to keep her alive so he could march her through in one of these like

00:58:55.660 humiliation parades and she was determined that she would not let that happen she also knew that

00:59:02.220 he was intent on looting her treasure all the gold and things that she had in her you know

00:59:07.840 little secret caves and whatever so she sent him a message saying that she's prepared to light

00:59:12.000 herself and all for treasure on fire um this got his attention and so he sent a representative

00:59:16.820 to negotiate with her. The negotiations obviously didn't go well and it ended with Octavian deciding

00:59:23.000 to invade Egypt. Mark Antony was taken prisoner in his attempt to protect Cleopatra and he died

00:59:29.700 by suicide while in captivity. He was 53 years old at this point. Octavian permitted Cleopatra

00:59:37.600 to attend Antony's funeral. So she participated in the mourning rituals of the time, which basically

00:59:42.960 meant screaming for hours and beating and clawing at your own skin and as a result of this she wound

00:59:49.020 up with a bunch of infected septic wounds she stopped eating possibly in sort of like a slow

00:59:55.640 suicide attempt um trying to die on her own terms rather than by execution or after having to be in

01:00:02.780 the humiliation parade um octavian was not into that and eventually she healed up but during this

01:00:10.140 time pre-humiliation parade Cleopatra ended up dying age 39 sometime that same month two of her

01:00:18.540 loyal maidservants Iris and Charmian died with her this is where there's the rumor of the whole

01:00:23.860 asp to the breast thing and she did probably die of poison although the rumors of a snake bite are 1.00

01:00:30.340 probably false Cleopatra had always been really organized really decisive if she's going to kill 0.61

01:00:36.160 herself she wouldn't leave it to chance like what if the snake didn't bite her in the right place 0.98

01:00:39.940 what if she didn't die of the venom like there's too many too many chances so allegedly poison was 0.95

01:00:44.720 smuggled to her in a basket of figs which would be a terrible way to sneak a venomous snake in

01:00:49.460 to see someone so it's probably more likely the figs themselves are poisoned or there's a vial

01:00:53.740 of something in there anyway r.i.p basically and just of interest if you look at ancient roman 0.99

01:01:00.480 history and mythology women dying by suicide is a weirdly common theme of women sort of wanting 0.69

01:01:06.880 to not be a bother and just sort of like delicately and politely removing themselves

01:01:12.840 from narratives. So, and this is kind of how Romans wanted women to behave in this kind of

01:01:17.760 quiet way. And it seems sort of antithetical to how Cleopatra behaved. So the news of her

01:01:24.520 suicide came from Octavian and it was written about by these other same Roman men who hated

01:01:29.500 her and they wanted to please Octavian. So it's possible that the whole suicide thing is a cover

01:01:34.720 up story concocted by Octavian and his men to try and hide something else that happened like maybe

01:01:40.380 Octavian did kill her maybe she was able to rally up supporters staged a big coup and tried to escape

01:01:45.440 and was killed in the battle basically we know she died age 39 we know it is said it was suicide but

01:01:52.340 whatever the manner of her death she almost certainly died on her own terms and it really 0.98

01:01:57.320 pissed off Octavian and so at least her death was the final fuck you to this guy who spoiler for 0.99

01:02:03.380 later episodes really sucked. Her legacy is sort of bittersweet. So her son Caesarian was renamed 0.99

01:02:11.060 Ptolemy the 15th, and he reigned for only 18 days as the new pharaoh of Egypt. So Octavian tricked 0.92

01:02:19.020 him to come and visit. Octavian was like, hey, Ptolemy, like, why don't you come and visit me?

01:02:23.740 I'm totally not going to murder you. And then he, in fact, murdered him. So upon the death of

01:02:28.440 Caesarian, the Ptolemaic dynasty came to an end and Egypt was absorbed as a province of the Roman

01:02:34.320 Empire. Cleopatra Selene, her daughter, married King Juba II of Namibia and Mauritania, with whom

01:02:41.380 she had one daughter and one son. She had a son whose name was Ptolemy. Ptolemy, because that is

01:02:48.060 just like the name of every little boy in the story. But anyway, this son, Ptolemy, grandson

01:02:53.020 of Cleopatra was later murdered by his cousin, his cousin who was Caligula, the emperor, who,

01:02:59.600 spoiler, we're going to be talking about also in a later podcast. 300 years later, Syria's queen

01:03:04.540 Zenobia, who faced off against the Roman Empire in her own badass story that maybe we'll look at

01:03:09.400 another time, claimed to be a descendant of Cleopatra Selene. The fates of Alexander Helios

01:03:14.880 and Ptolemy Philadelphus, Cleopatra's other two sons, are unknown, although they seem to have

01:03:19.620 been sent to rome to be raised by antony's widow widow slash octavian's sister octavia following

01:03:25.320 the death of their parents and i mean i would not be surprised if they were murdered but who knows

01:03:32.300 octavian renamed himself augustus and became the first official non-emergency roman emperor

01:03:39.300 he renamed the month of august after himself augustus um because that was a month in which

01:03:45.400 he had defeated Cleopatra and it's still called August. And that makes me hate August because

01:03:51.220 I hate Augustus and what a dick thing to celebrate. Anyway, much of the legend of 0.98

01:03:57.460 Cleopatra developed based on the Roman writings from around the time of her downfall. And they

01:04:01.520 describe her as this witch slash slut slash seductress slash femme fatale who single-handedly 1.00

01:04:06.200 destroyed Mark Antony's life in this like sexy way. But although these are the most widely known 0.99

01:04:12.140 sources of information about her life, a few other things have been found that explore a bit

01:04:17.840 more about not just her love life, but her political career and persona. Some medieval

01:04:22.420 Arabic writings seem to have been drawn from Greek sources that may present Cleopatra similarly to how

01:04:29.160 she wanted herself to be portrayed. So these sources don't refer at all to her beauty or lack

01:04:34.640 of beauty or even to her love affairs. The focus instead is on her as a scholar. So she's depicted

01:04:41.540 as a scholar known as cleopatra the wise or the virtuous scholar a woman revered for her 0.60

01:04:46.260 intelligence and inventiveness with keen interests in philosophy alchemy mathematics and medicine

01:04:52.480 so that is the saga of cleopatra um it's such a story and i can't even so time to uh

01:05:04.260 to score her on our various scales um so the scandalous scale has got four categories

01:05:11.040 so the first category is scandalousness so this is sort of the quality of the scandal

01:05:19.060 surrounding them so i feel like in this instance so scandalousness would be things like

01:05:26.180 her brother husband coincidentally dying just at the convenient time for her 0.93

01:05:31.440 to want him to be gone. Scandaliciousness is like her having a child with a Roman emperor 0.99

01:05:38.500 and then he supported her or like her having these children with Mark Antony. But it's tricky

01:05:45.460 because, okay, scandalousness. Killing her brother, mega scandalousness. She was surrounded 0.97

01:05:51.320 by scandalousness. Lots of other people killing other people. But she had children with two

01:05:58.280 different men both of whom she was seemingly like committed to and yes she was married to her

01:06:02.980 brother at the same time which is like medium scandalousness but it's not like they were little

01:06:07.560 boys at the time and it was sort of had to be that way for various reasons i'm honestly when you

01:06:13.320 actually look at the facts of this whole story i think the scandalousness scale is like not super

01:06:19.180 high i'm gonna give her a five for scandalousness i think the next category is scheminess and this

01:06:26.020 is where like, I, I think it has to be a 10. I mean, she took over Egypt. She convinced 1.00

01:06:32.740 Julius Caesar to side with her. She then got Mark Antony to side with her. She seemingly

01:06:37.680 killed her brother. She had Arsinoe killed, like her plans. She had plans. They're good 0.62

01:06:43.600 plans. She had backup plans. She executed those plans. 10 for scheminess for sure. Significance

01:06:49.720 is an interesting one because she is certainly a famous name. People know about her and her 0.74

01:06:57.520 involvement with Julius Caesar. Her story is certainly captivating. At the same time,

01:07:05.400 she did more than I think anyone else could have as sort of in this era being the pharaoh

01:07:10.260 of Egypt. But it seems like sort of inevitable that Egypt would eventually be subsumed into

01:07:16.180 the roman empire and it was also sort of obvious not obvious but like that octavian was probably

01:07:23.660 going to end up winning against mark antony i don't like her significance like she backed mark

01:07:29.200 antony who didn't win so like cultural significance she had children um her daughter

01:07:34.780 went on to marry the king of another place but like in terms of like did she change the world

01:07:42.180 um it's tricky i don't want to give her too little credit but at the same time like she did

01:07:47.680 amazing stuff she's significant to me i think a lot of people see her as an inspiration but in

01:07:52.820 terms of like success in the various cool things she was doing i don't know i'm gonna give her

01:07:58.960 a six for significance the final category is the sexism bonus which is um giving bonus points

01:08:07.140 based on how much sexism held people back um how much did that play a role in there what they were

01:08:14.640 or were not able to do and i mean she faced come on i mean like the rumen empire is like famously

01:08:20.060 misogynistic even in egypt where she was out to be educated and to be co-ruler she still couldn't

01:08:26.800 be the queen on her own the way that octavian used sort of slut shaming against her slash

01:08:32.880 against Mark Antony um it's pretty high I'm gonna give her a seven for that so the total here 0.87

01:08:38.800 is 28 so in terms of where that fits her and this is all just like subjective scale it's the same

01:08:47.220 score as Lucy Hay and one below Elizabeth Bathory so I think she's up there she's up there at the

01:08:54.640 top I don't know I feel like we're not saying who's the coolest woman we're not saying like

01:08:59.400 who's better than another one we're just saying like in terms of this scale where do people rank

01:09:05.260 and she ranks like pretty high like I don't know how many people are going to get any higher than

01:09:10.700 that and now it's time for some some facts and information so I have my first little sponsor

01:09:16.840 which is exciting which is audible which is where you can listen to audiobooks and I did

01:09:23.580 I do a lot of my researching through audiobooks because that way you can just be like learning

01:09:28.160 facts while you're like doing the dishes while you're walking while you're doing your laundry 0.98

01:09:32.320 etc and one of the sources i use for this is a book called when women rule the world

01:09:38.800 by kara cooney which is a book all about cleopatra and some other egyptian queens um and you can get

01:09:45.200 that on audible.com and so the thing is if you go to audibletrial.com vulgar history then you get

01:09:53.540 your 30 day free trial and a couple little dollars go to me to support this podcast, which is very

01:09:59.540 appreciated. And I'm really excited about this season. And I want to just let you know about

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01:10:10.560 at patreon.com slash Anne Foster writer. And those are all if you become a member, you can read all

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01:10:39.560 so that's um again for free you can see my travel blogs and you can comment on things like Hepburn

01:10:46.800 is here. She's commenting on I've been recording too long. Anyway, if you pledge $5 or more a month,

01:10:51.480 you get bonus episodes, access to episodes of Vulgar Peace Theater, where we talk about costume

01:10:55.840 dramas. Myself, Alison Epstein, and Lana Wood Johnson, we haven't done a Cleopatra movie. And

01:11:01.600 that's mostly because Cleopatra movies are all like five hours long. And Alison and Lana have

01:11:06.240 forbid me from choosing movies that long anymore. There's also So This Asshole episodes where I talk

01:11:11.560 about shitty men from history. I'm pretty sure I talk about some shitty men from ancient Roman 0.99

01:11:15.280 history. But again, those were recorded in like 2020. My memory is not great because I am an 0.92

01:11:20.400 elderly crone. Hepburn is here. That's my cat if you don't know. Anyway, if you're really feeling

01:11:26.720 Cleopatra and you're like, I want to represent my love for Cleo via jewelry, well, guess what?

01:11:32.180 We have a brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, and they have a Cleopatra pendant. They have a

01:11:37.100 Cleopatra, I think, ring sometimes. Anyway, Common Era Jewelry is a small woman-owned business that

01:11:42.020 makes beautiful jewelry inspired by women from history and from classical mythology, including

01:11:47.400 Cleopatra. So their pieces are available in solid gold, as well as in more affordable gold vermeil.

01:11:53.420 And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to

01:11:58.440 commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout. And honestly, when we talk about a

01:12:06.020 person that they actually have jewelry of, I feel like the vibes are good. Vibes are strong.

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01:12:16.320 the store has been refreshed since then but our current merchandise store is vulgarhistory.com

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01:12:28.800 you can shop at our redbubble store vulgarhistory.redbubble.com and you can get in touch

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01:12:46.280 threads. Um, you can follow me there at vulgarhistorypod. Next week, the return of Gina

01:12:51.840 Berry talking about Cleopatra. Um, I can't wait for you all to hear this conversation. Um, until

01:12:57.780 then, keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne 1.00

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Vulgar History - February 26, 2020

Women Leaders, part 1： Cleopatra Was That Bitch

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