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

00:00:00.000 Hi everyone. Before we begin this week's episode, I have a time-sensitive announcement,

00:00:05.180 which is that today I am currently in the UK researching my book and I'm hosting a meetup

00:00:11.700 for the Tits Out Brigade today. If you're listening to this just fresh as soon as it

00:00:16.400 came in your podcatcher today, Wednesday, August 28th, 2024 in London, England. If you hear this

00:00:22.000 in time and you want to find out the where and the when we're meeting, go to vulgarhistory.com

00:00:26.420 slash meetup. That's vulgarhistory.com slash m-e-e-t-u-p if you're in or near London,

00:00:31.320 England. Fill out the form there and I will let you know where and when we're meeting. Yay!

00:00:47.960 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:00:52.200 My name is Anne Foster, and this is a classic re-release.

00:00:56.820 So this episode about Cleopatra was first, I'm just double-checking, it first came out

00:01:01.900 in February, February 26th, 2020, just pre-COVID lockdown.

00:01:09.640 So, you know, cast your mind back.

00:01:12.020 And also the show itself is still in its very early stages.

00:01:16.200 This is where I would do kind of like six episodes and then take like six months off

00:01:20.060 and not think about it and then come back.

00:01:21.620 And yet, when you listen to the episode, I think it still feels like the vulgar history that you know and love. And honestly, it was early episodes like this that helped develop, you know, all of you, the listeners, the tits out brigade. So I'm happy to revisit this as well. And I think Cleopatra is such a vulgar history coded person. Honestly, the way that the show is developed, if I was covering her now, this would probably be like a 16 part series. So I used to be more concise.

00:01:46.260 But we're going to be revisiting the Cleopatra episode, which I think is very pertinent for numerous reasons. So this was part of this was the first episode of season two. And the theme of season two was women leaders and the men who whined about them. Pertinent to our current political climate, one might say. And also the whole thing about Cleopatra. We talked about this in the episode. I know that Queen's podcast love Katie and Nathan.

00:02:12.200 They also talk about this when they talked about Cleopatra and they regularly post memes on their account on Instagram, making fun of this. But the whole thing about Cleopatra was not super, she was not necessarily conventionally beautiful or super sexy. But that was just the way that men could understand the power she had. It's all interesting. It's all pertinent. It's all like tragically pertinent to the way that women leaders or women, women public figures are even still talked about.

00:02:39.900 anyway so this is an episode from almost five years ago classic vulgar history re-release and

00:02:45.580 also i do think what cleopatra has in common with the current season the marie antoinette season is

00:02:51.240 that marie antoinette and cleopatra are both people whose their names and kind of their look

00:02:56.880 is so well known like they're a classic halloween costume type person you could draw a caricature

00:03:02.540 and most people would probably know who you're talking about but the actual women like their 0.97

00:03:09.060 actual stories are less well-known. So on this podcast, we talk about sometimes people who are

00:03:14.140 not very well-known anymore, but sometimes we look at people who are so well-known and yet

00:03:18.520 their real stories aren't so well-known. So anyway, also you'll notice in here is a little

00:03:23.400 Easter egg. I mentioned that I believe in this episode, I mentioned that I got help researching

00:03:29.340 this from my friend Gina, who does not appear in this episode, but you all know who Gina Berry is

00:03:34.780 now from her. She was the guest on the classic, the iconic, the three hour long Nefertiti episode.

00:03:41.240 She came on again to talk about Hatshepsut, aka Hat. That's what I'm talking about. That's the

00:03:46.420 Gina that I mentioned here. And she did help me research this. And I might have some more news

00:03:50.760 about Gina and this podcast coming up soon. But anyway, until then, you know, listen, here's a

00:03:57.900 much younger, a much younger pre-COVID me talking about Cleopatra.

00:04:04.780 Hello, and welcome to Season 2 of Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster, and this is a feminist

00:04:13.760 women's history comedy podcast where I look at the scandalous stories of women from history,

00:04:21.740 basically, and then we score them at the end to see where they score on our scandalous scale. 0.87

00:04:26.620 So the first season, the theme was well-behaved women don't make history podcasts, and we were 0.97

00:04:33.720 looking at six women who are known about because they bucked societal conventions. They were 0.98

00:04:41.800 accused serial killers. They were con artists. They were murderesses. Basically, they gave birth 0.83

00:04:50.260 to rabbits, various things that made them sort of stand out in a way in various different cultures 0.92

00:04:56.880 and societies where the job of a woman, especially an upper class woman, was just to sort of be quiet

00:05:02.480 and have babies. And this season we're looking at a theme of women and leadership. And I'm not

00:05:10.680 sure what the catchy title will be for, for this season. Although I guess since I'm recording this

00:05:15.940 episode, I should decide pretty quickly, but it's something like women leaders and the men 0.97

00:05:21.100 who wind about it. Because basically just in my, in my free time, I like to, women's history is a 0.99

00:05:29.640 thing I read about all the time for various reasons. And I was starting to notice some weird 0.79

00:05:35.760 parallels between the way that contemporary women political leaders or just women who are

00:05:42.960 prominent in various ways are discussed in almost word for word, like the same way that people

00:05:47.440 complain about women leaders over 2000 years ago. And so I thought it sort of traced the history of

00:05:53.720 some of the more, I guess, successful, yeah, because these are women leaders who actually 1.00

00:05:58.960 accomplished things. They became leaders of things. And just kind of looking at how the various 1.00

00:06:04.020 patriarchal societies that they lived in made it even harder for them to be a woman leader and what

00:06:10.360 maybe that tells us about the world we live in today. The first woman who we're going to look at 1.00

00:06:17.140 is Cleopatra, the main Cleopatra. There were several people called Cleopatra. So just to be

00:06:24.180 clear. The one we're talking about is I think the seventh Cleopatra, but basically she's the one

00:06:29.920 everybody knows about at this point. We're going to get into this in a second, but there's a thing

00:06:34.140 where in this era of Egyptian history, there weren't a lot of different names of people,

00:06:39.400 especially within the royal family. In fact, the Cleopatra we're talking about had an older sister

00:06:43.700 also called Cleopatra. So just like get prepared for some duplicate names. So I was thinking about

00:06:50.820 like this season we're going to be looking sort of in chronological order. Six different women 0.99

00:06:54.920 who had leadership and how the men around them reacted to that and how they kept being leaders

00:07:01.000 even as men were whining about it. The challenges they faced to become leaders when they were

00:07:06.260 surrounded by men who were grossed out by the idea. And so I'm starting with Cleopatra and it's

00:07:12.180 sort of intimidating a little bit. The first season I did women who to me are like medium 1.00

00:07:19.200 well-known, but Cleopatra is like extremely well-known. She's the first sort of heavy hitter 1.00

00:07:23.920 we've looked at on this podcast. And I thought, Ooh, you know, I really wanted to wait until I

00:07:27.560 was really settled in to this whole podcast game before I dove into something this kind of well

00:07:33.000 known, this juicy. But then I was like, well, I don't want to not do Cleopatra just because she

00:07:39.400 is famous. That's sort of like reverse judgmental or something. And it's just a really good place

00:07:43.960 to start because you'll see moving ahead from here how the other the next few women sort of 1.00

00:07:49.180 especially the next two we're going to be looking at how cleopatra's reign sort of affected the way

00:07:53.720 that they led and the way that they were reacted to by mostly by their patriarchal society but i'm

00:08:00.880 going to say mostly men so that's what we're looking at today is the story of cleopatra it is

00:08:06.620 long and it is interesting and she's someone who you know there's always like cleopatra halloween

00:08:12.940 costumes. She's a character on Clone High. Like there's the old show Cleopatra 2525, where I think

00:08:19.220 she was like reincarnated. Like it's a name people have. Pam Greer, I think, played Cleopatra Jones

00:08:25.140 in blaxploitation films. Like it's a name that is imbued with a sort of power. When you think

00:08:31.240 about the name Cleopatra, even just looking at the Halloween costumes, it's like glamour and power

00:08:36.680 and gorgeousness. But the story of the woman herself is not something I knew in super detail

00:08:44.180 until I started researching. And now that's what we're going to look at today. So the thing,

00:08:50.340 many, many things to know. I'll just mention that the main source I used for researching Cleopatra

00:08:58.080 was the biography of Cleopatra written by Stacey Schiff, which is very, um, it's very readable.

00:09:06.300 I mean, in terms of history books, there's like super academic history books and there's kind of

00:09:10.420 like history for kids. And this is like a book for, there's a lot of really great information

00:09:15.860 in it. And it's also written in a very accessible sort of mainstream way, which I think is great

00:09:20.800 because that means more people can, will maybe enjoy reading it. And she has a really long

00:09:27.540 bibliography. Basically she went through all the sources and she explains what those sources are

00:09:31.420 and I'm just gonna use her as my source but just bear in mind that Cleopatra was a very famous

00:09:38.600 person in her day. She was a queen of Egypt and she was of Macedonian slash Greek descent and I'm

00:09:46.320 bringing that up right now because there's no known writing about her by the Egyptians or by

00:09:52.800 the macedonian slash greeks so we don't know kind of how she portrayed herself what she wanted

00:09:59.700 people to think she was like or how what her people from her own country thought of her the

00:10:05.560 writing we have about her is from several roman men who just hated her and many of whom well some

00:10:13.420 of whom lived at the same time as her and some of whom wrote about her after she had died so

00:10:18.760 basically it's like not objective sources but when you look at um all of them in combination

00:10:25.460 you get some facts and that's what we're going to try and look at today to see kind of what what

00:10:32.040 was her deal actually as much as we know and i need to do some place setting into the history

00:10:38.840 of ancient egypt just so you know where she kind of fits into things so because the status of egypt

00:10:45.700 as a country was super it was kind of a trap for her she was in this sort of situation where

00:10:52.340 Egypt as a country was not doing amazing and then she became basically its queen but it was not

00:11:00.940 Egypt was not at the prime of its time as like super amazing country that everybody wished they

00:11:07.240 could live in so briefly a bunch of independent villagers combined into the kingdom of Egypt

00:11:14.840 around the year 3150 BCE. If you haven't come across this before, some people call years before

00:11:22.500 zero BCE for before Christ, and some people call them BCE, which is before common era. I tend to

00:11:29.280 use BCE, but just to save us all from me saying acronyms all the time, I'm just going to say

00:11:33.960 numbers from now on, but just bear in mind, this all takes place before the year zero. So all the

00:11:39.860 numbers are going to be getting smaller the later in time we get basically so egypt founded 3150

00:11:47.920 and then there was the old kingdom there was the new kingdom it was it became a really successful

00:11:55.860 kingdom because of the nile river which flooded every year and that helped with their crops so

00:12:01.740 they had amazing crops which meant that people wanted to trade with them which meant that they

00:12:05.740 themselves, could feed their citizens. So compared to other nearby areas, Egypt was able to progress

00:12:12.780 in a way other places weren't because they didn't have to worry about food and money to the extent

00:12:17.600 that other people did. So they just started developing this kind of sophisticated cultural

00:12:21.660 identity. There were some previous women leaders in Egypt. Cleopatra was not the first well-known. 0.93

00:12:30.460 there was a woman named Hatshepsut who ruled during the what's known as the New Kingdom era

00:12:37.660 which was about 1550 to 1069 so this is still like a thousand years before Cleopatra anyway 0.85

00:12:44.900 so it was uncommon for women to hold solo leadership roles in Egyptian society but 1.00

00:12:51.040 Egypt wasn't like grossed out by the idea of women being in control so Hatshepsut for instance ruled 0.97

00:12:57.320 for about 20 years alongside her husband. So she's powerful in combination with him. Often in 1.00

00:13:03.380 Egyptian scenarios, you had like, there was always a man-woman pair. There's always a king and a

00:13:09.460 queen. And unlike in some other countries where the queen was kind of like just the wife of the

00:13:15.480 king here, the queen like got to have power and influence of her own. Basically, years go by

00:13:22.820 and egypt started fading in its significance and its wealth and this is because the whole thing

00:13:30.380 was dependent on the nile river and that's nature and you can't always count on nature

00:13:36.300 to do the same thing every year so there were times of drought at which point the they weren't

00:13:42.720 able to to get as many crops so egypt started doing less great and then suddenly it's the year

00:13:48.860 332 and the famous greek teenager alexander the great stormed in and conquered egypt at this point

00:13:55.520 egypt had been under the control of the persians so even the alexander the great and his greek

00:14:01.300 forces weren't the first people to take over egypt but anyways he came in alexander the great

00:14:06.280 very successful person who you can read about in other places but basically egypt had been under

00:14:12.120 the power of a series of colonizers for a while but alexander came in and everyone kind of liked

00:14:16.800 his approach. Like they're like, if we're going to be oppressed and colonized, at least this guy

00:14:21.840 sort of respects and pays attention to our culture a little bit. Alexander created a new capital city

00:14:28.300 named after him, which is called Alexandria. And then he left the kingdom under the care of his

00:14:33.280 best friend and trusted general Ptolemy. So over the next 300 years, Ptolemy's descendants would

00:14:39.340 rule Egypt as the Ptolemaic dynasty. And so I mentioned that Alexander kind of respected

00:14:44.100 Egyptian culture a bit. And by that, I mean, it's a complex thing when somebody comes in

00:14:49.960 to take over someone else's country, but basically Alexander and Ptolemy, they didn't come in to be

00:14:56.460 like, okay, guess what? Everything's like Greece now. Let's just make change everything to be 0.61

00:15:00.040 Greek. They adopted several cultural practices from the Egyptians, including their deities, 1.00

00:15:05.580 their religion, the concept of incestuous brother-sister royal marriages. They still 0.92

00:15:11.040 celebrated all of the old architecture and beautiful buildings and statues, hieroglyphs,

00:15:15.960 etc. So they didn't try and erase the pre-existing Egyptian culture. But at the same time, the

00:15:22.000 Ptolemy rulers didn't learn how to speak the Egyptian language, which was its own language.

00:15:27.700 It wasn't Arabic. It was like its own language at the time. So they were the kings and queens

00:15:33.800 of egypt for 300 years but they conducted all their business in greek so they adopted some

00:15:41.080 egyptian stuff but they were still very much even though they've been there for 300 years like the

00:15:45.320 people of egypt knew like these people are not egyptian they're not like us and this is where

00:15:51.560 we get into the fact that the ptolemies only had a couple of of names that they like to use so

00:15:57.300 basically in this royal family, all of the boys and men seemingly were all named Ptolemy. They're

00:16:04.040 just all named Ptolemy, just with a number afterwards. And the girls had one of three

00:16:08.580 names, which were Cleopatra, Ursinawe, or Berenice. And today's heroine who we're looking at

00:16:16.220 are Cleopatra. So she was one of at least four sisters. So she was called Cleopatra. She had an

00:16:21.240 older sister also called Cleopatra. She had a sister called Berenice and a sister called

00:16:25.400 Ursinawe, because those are the only names that existed for royal women. And we're just going to

00:16:30.180 take a little look at the two oldest sisters to get a sense of kind of what life was like in this 0.96

00:16:36.280 royal family. So brother-sister incestuous marriage was a thing the Ptolemy's had been

00:16:42.600 doing for like 300 years, inspired by what Egyptians had been doing before. And it was 1.00

00:16:46.940 basically just to ensure like, quote unquote, the purity of the family line. Like so much stuff

00:16:51.960 in history now makes me be like, oh, like the Targaryens in Game of Thrones, where it's like,

00:16:56.740 no, the Targaryens in Game of Thrones were inspired by the Ptolemies in Egypt. But it's

00:17:02.080 that same sort of thing where it's just like they were marrying within their family to keep it all

00:17:06.040 because they saw themselves as kind of the descendants of gods. And so they wanted to

00:17:09.840 keep it within the family. But at the same time, I think just scientifically speaking,

00:17:15.020 if your brother's sister inbreeding for 300 years, eventually, like I don't, I think you're

00:17:19.900 going to deal with quite a bit of infertility. So there was the Ptolemies, the various men who 1.00

00:17:25.480 were all named Ptolemies, had mistresses and stuff. And sometimes their children would become

00:17:29.720 the new king and queen. So it's, there's a large amount of inbreeding, but also there's like little

00:17:34.920 bits of other genetics coming in to the point that by the time Cleopatra's around, was she

00:17:40.080 entirely just of Greek descent? Like almost definitely not. Anyway, so another reason why 0.57

00:17:47.960 the Ptolemies like to marry within their family and not just in like a 18th century you know 0.64

00:17:54.440 Habsburg cousin marriage way but like literally marrying brothers to sisters. So they're doing 0.99

00:17:58.920 that to maintain the family line but also because they were so busy murdering and scheming against

00:18:03.640 each other that introducing other people would make it be like even more chaotic somehow. So

00:18:08.820 this was a family situation we're going to be looking at in later episodes at some ancient

00:18:13.840 roman stuff and it's it's similar this is just like a time and a place in the world where you

00:18:21.080 were either scheming to murder somebody or someone just murdered you because everyone was always

00:18:26.640 scheming to murder each other so like it's not being paranoid to assume that your brother and

00:18:32.100 sister are trying to murder you because they probably are and oh there's a knife in your back

00:18:35.960 like it's just that's the situation we're looking at so within that context to do well you need to

00:18:43.000 be also scheming and murdering other people so so just bear that in mind i guess basically just

00:18:50.120 like everyone is killing everyone all the time and in order to thrive you basically had to kill

00:18:55.240 your siblings before they killed you so cleopatra she's one of four sisters and their father is

00:19:01.020 pharaoh ptolemy the 12th who was the illegitimate son of ptolemy the 11th and he himself had only

00:19:08.880 wound up pharaoh because all of his other brothers had been murdered by each other because like i

00:19:15.640 can't stress this enough like in this family everyone was constantly killing each other

00:19:20.100 all the time so cleopatra's mother was also named cleopatra so her mother's cleopatra the fifth

00:19:27.140 and their oldest daughter was cleopatra the sixth again that's not our cleopatra this is her older

00:19:32.700 sister with the same name so the mother died which is like thank god that's one less cleopatra

00:19:38.740 in this paragraph um and so cleopatra the sixth again not our heroine her older sister came in 0.51

00:19:44.840 and to become the new queen because there had to always be a man woman pair of king and queens so

00:19:50.480 they weren't married to each other her and her father like that's like the one step i think 0.99

00:19:56.200 or i don't think they actually went to but basically there had to be a king and a queen 0.99

00:20:00.620 so with her mother dead cleopatra the older one came in to become the new queen um but she was 0.91

00:20:07.980 very quickly murdered, probably by the next youngest sister who's called Berenike, because 0.83

00:20:13.760 Berenike wanted to have this power for herself. So Berenike becomes the new queen, and then

00:20:19.620 Ptolemy XII himself left town for, I don't know, a business trip or something, at which point

00:20:24.980 Berenike just sees the throne for herself. She was just like, guess what? I'm not going to share

00:20:29.660 the throne with my father. I'm going to be just the queen, just me, that's it. So in order to get

00:20:34.720 the traditional sort of king and queen pairing, she could have married off one of her brothers

00:20:39.600 to become like a pair to sort of fight against her father that way. But her two younger brothers

00:20:44.000 were both basically preschoolers. So that wasn't going to give her like, especially a lot of power

00:20:48.660 or influence. And so she was, and also she was like, guess what? I'm doing this by myself. I'm

00:20:52.840 Berenike. I'm amazing. So her, the men around her basically pressured her to marry someone

00:20:59.180 because having just a woman in charge made them uncomfortable. So it was sort of like

00:21:04.080 a woman could be in charge shared with a man or even shared with a little boy. But by herself, 0.64

00:21:10.500 everyone was just kind of like, oh, no, that's just not that's not what we do. So after a few

00:21:14.320 months, Berenike agreed to marry her cousin, Prince Seleucid. But after one week, she basically

00:21:20.920 poisoned him to death because she didn't like him. And again, just everyone's killing everyone

00:21:25.540 all the time. She was not messing around basically in terms of killing. She killed potentially her

00:21:31.360 sister. Who knows? Maybe she killed their mother too. She killed, but we do know she killed her

00:21:35.080 husband after one week. So she chose a new husband whose name was Archelaus, but she didn't actually

00:21:40.820 give him any power and continued to be in charge of Egypt basically by herself until her father,

00:21:46.080 Tommy XII, came back with the full support of the Romans. So he took over again, had Berenike

00:21:53.340 executed. So at this point, there's just two sisters left. Cleopatra, aged 14, and this is

00:22:00.340 from now until quite a while into the story, the only Cleopatra there is anymore. So just

00:22:05.240 just when Cleopatra anymore. So she's 14 years old, and she becomes the new queen because

00:22:09.840 Berenice was killed. So she, age 14, becomes the new queen of Egypt. But I just want to mention,

00:22:17.700 so Ptolemy came back with the support of Roman forces. So this is at a time when Rome was having

00:22:23.960 their own drama. Rome was doing well for itself. They were kind of running around, taking over

00:22:29.780 other kingdoms. And they had sort of a decent alliance at this point with Egypt. So the fact

00:22:35.200 that they were allied with the king meant sort of protection for them, meant that things were kind

00:22:41.180 of okay in Egypt. They weren't at war against the Romans at this point. So Cleopatra, age 14,

00:22:48.820 what do we know about her at this point? And the answer is not much. But if you look at what we

00:22:54.440 just went through, she would have seen a lot of murder happening. She would have seen two of

00:22:59.740 her sisters and her mother all die in pretty quick succession. She would have seen her father

00:23:05.920 storm back into town with the Romans. She would have seen like, she was 14 years old, but she was

00:23:11.440 not in any way naive to the world that she was living in, basically. So we don't know a lot about

00:23:16.860 her early years because we don't have any writing about her from the Egyptians at the time. We only

00:23:21.460 know the Romans just started writing about her when she started having dealings with people in

00:23:25.420 Rome, which was when she was a few years older than this. But basically, what we know about her

00:23:30.340 education, for instance, is that it would have been extremely wide ranging. So unlike other

00:23:35.860 societies that we've looked at, and we will look at in other episodes of this podcast,

00:23:40.580 it sort of flips back and forth, various societies, and even within the societies,

00:23:45.760 if it's seen worthwhile to educate girls or not. But luckily for Cleopatra, she was living at a 0.98

00:23:52.340 when it was seen, especially for royal girls, that she should be educated in every subject

00:23:58.660 that was known at the time. So math, politics, history, philosophy, reading, writing. She was

00:24:05.300 fluent in potentially up to nine languages, including the language Egyptian, making her the

00:24:11.160 first person in 300 years in her family to ever bother to learn the literal language of their

00:24:16.540 literal subjects so she's maybe savvy in a way um there's a conspiracy um not a conspiracy but

00:24:24.260 there's like a theory that i that appeals to me which could be one of the reasons maybe she learned

00:24:29.500 the egyptian language could have been that she was at least part egyptian her father's wife was

00:24:34.780 named cleopatra and she died she had two older sisters cleopatra the fifth also the mother of

00:24:40.580 our cleopatra like it's possibly not it possibly could have been another one of ptolemy's mistresses

00:24:44.920 but basically so if she was half egyptian then it would make sense that she would have picked up

00:24:50.120 that language and she would have wanted to pick up that language and that would be sort of important

00:24:53.220 to her in a way but we don't know that for sure um spoiler nobody knows what she looked like at all

00:24:59.200 really what we do know is that she was probably not conventionally beautiful so this is i just

00:25:05.960 want to let that sink in because she's famous as this like elizabeth taylor slash angelina jolie

00:25:12.680 looking like goddess on earth basically but what we know about what she looks like is that there 0.97

00:25:19.140 were some coins and she made every time she made a political move she like had new coins made with 0.94

00:25:24.000 her face on them so we don't know how much the coins look like her actual face and maybe she 0.90

00:25:29.060 wanted to make herself look more manly or something to try and look more I don't know

00:25:34.540 anyway the face that's on the coins is not like has not been done up to make her look 0.95

00:25:39.060 traditionally femininely beautiful um and also just a lot of the men these roman men who were

00:25:47.120 writing about her did not shy away from talking about how gorgeous people were like wait till we

00:25:52.500 get to mark anthony like if she had been beautiful they would have written about it probably and

00:25:58.480 nobody really talks about what she looks like so i think it's easy to assume that she must have

00:26:03.800 been gorgeous because sort of in our paradigm it's sort of assumed that a very successful

00:26:11.100 woman would be gorgeous and able to manipulate men maybe and if she's not gorgeous then it's 1.00

00:26:17.800 like well then how is she able to get so much power could it be that she's actually like smart 1.00

00:26:21.420 and talented and that's just like makes people's brains short circuit to consider but basically we 0.92

00:26:26.460 do know that she had a beautiful voice a beautiful speaking voice and we know that she had this

00:26:32.560 enormous amounts of personal charisma she had that sort of thing where when you go

00:26:37.860 she walks into a room even though like she's the one who's like literally dressed in literal gold

00:26:42.460 like always go to her and she makes people feel special when she talks to them like she had 0.93

00:26:47.080 really great um just skills conversational skills so she had this personal magnetism

00:26:53.080 was probably not conventionally beautiful even for the time but basically what she had learned

00:26:59.360 by age 14, as I would assume, don't trust anyone in your family ever. And if you're going to try

00:27:05.700 to take over as a woman leader of Egypt, you want to make sure you have powerful allies on your side 0.98

00:27:11.360 because people are not going to take to that very well, presumably. And so when she was about 18

00:27:18.480 years old, she'd been queen for four years. She had not been murdered herself. So like, frankly,

00:27:25.080 that's an achievement. Her father died. He had written in his will that he wanted Cleopatra

00:27:30.420 to marry her younger brother. And so that's what happened. He became her co-ruler,

00:27:35.020 Ptolemy XIII. So he was also like 10 years old or something. So basically she had been co-ruler

00:27:43.140 with her father. And then suddenly she's 18 years old and being told she has to job share with her

00:27:48.920 like tween age brother slash husband so right away and she had spent four years i'm gonna guess

00:27:55.580 theorize um making alliances with advisors and that sort of stuff so she was able to work with

00:28:01.020 those people like using pre-existing relationships she already had um to cut him out of most of the 0.96

00:28:06.180 job duties so his name was removed from official documents she minted new coins that showed only

00:28:11.180 her face instead of both of them and both of these actions were basically declarations of war

00:28:15.920 and everybody by everybody i mean her brothers advisors and regents who were a group of men

00:28:22.520 got really mad about this because she had sort of snuck around behind everyone's back to claim

00:28:27.000 extra power and she'd also upended the expectation that queens should be subordinate to and supportive 1.00

00:28:32.660 of kings like a woman the whole idea like going back to what her older sister tried to do like 1.00

00:28:39.480 it was just shocking it just like did not compute to them like a woman having power on her own it's 0.99

00:28:45.640 like no she needs to share it with a man like a woman can have some power a royal woman as long 1.00

00:28:50.420 as she shares it and cleopatra is just like fuck that and off she went so she had her own supporters 1.00

00:28:56.260 but her brother had more supporters and she wound up exiled from alexandria so she headed off or 0.97

00:29:03.000 sorry exiled from alexandria so he was still living there being the pharaoh and she was sent

00:29:07.460 off into exile she took her younger sister arsinoe so that she still had one more sister left i just

00:29:12.760 like picturing them as this like sort of grand duchess anastasia and her sisters slash little

00:29:18.600 women slash pride and prejudice just this group of four girls who are just like each of them more

00:29:24.160 cool than the next so she took her little sister ursine away and they went off and to syria to 1.00

00:29:30.760 just kind of figure out what they're going to do and what she figured out she's going to do was to

00:29:34.860 take advantage of the currently ongoing roman civil war to get them on her side to be her backup

00:29:40.760 to defeat her brother slash husband which brings us to the history of ancient rome which is like

00:29:47.740 there are year-long university courses in that so we just need to blitz through to catch up to

00:29:53.500 where we are so basically what you need to know at this point is that romans roman men roman society

00:30:00.840 roman culture hated women basically they sort of in the sense of like the legitimate meaning of

00:30:08.800 misogyny like they just did not so women in ancient rome did not have any rights at all 1.00

00:30:15.460 like they were so first of all their understanding of medicine um of obstetrics was that basically 0.99

00:30:22.160 within the womb everyone was sort of like starts off as a woman and then just like becomes a man 0.99

00:30:28.360 so people babies were born as girls biologically with the genitalia of of the female sex were seen

00:30:37.160 as sort of like men that didn't quite make it all the way so women are seen sort of as like

00:30:41.800 literally as like incomplete men so they never had any rights in ancient rome like they didn't

00:30:47.760 not just like they couldn't vote but like they couldn't go outside of their houses by themselves 0.51

00:30:51.260 like they were always under the control of a male relative women were possessions um rome ancient 0.99

00:30:58.140 rome at this time was also a place that had slaves and so women and slaves and like chickens 0.90

00:31:03.500 were all just kind of like things that were owned by men that men could control so roman men hated

00:31:09.720 women um and romans at this point really really hated the idea of a hereditary monarchy so this

00:31:17.140 is the situation where rome had been controlled it was the roman republic which was sort of an

00:31:23.320 oh my god this is not my area of expertise but basically a democracy situation people were voted

00:31:30.740 into power they had terms they weren't in charge forever um they got to job share like the at this

00:31:37.460 point there was the tram for it so three people sort of were all in charge but just for a five 0.99

00:31:41.960 year term so cleopatra was a powerful woman who is also from a hereditary monarchy so she was

00:31:48.200 basically their worst nightmare so at this point well i guess we're just catching up to this point

00:31:54.180 20 years before cleopatra was born so roman was constantly having civil wars basically so 20 years

00:31:59.980 before Cleopatra was born, a man named Sulla took over as sort of emergency emperor during the

00:32:06.120 Civil War era. And that was just supposed to be sort of like for short term during the emergency.

00:32:11.760 But then the younger men in Rome were like, oh, so one person could be in charge. And that inspired

00:32:16.380 them to sort of try and want to do that again. So younger men like Julius Caesar and a man named

00:32:22.180 Pompey decided that they'd kind of like to be in charge themselves. Caesar and Pompey didn't want

00:32:27.180 to share. So they became fighting against each other and just kind of kept on fighting. And

00:32:32.400 suddenly it's the year 48 BCE. And that is where we're caught up to where Cleopatra was. So

00:32:37.840 Cleopatra's in Syria with her younger sister, and she's trying to figure out how to defeat her

00:32:42.220 brother husband. Caesar and Pompey are at war against each other. So remember when the Egyptians

00:32:48.000 came or the Romans came to support Cleopatra's father. So there's still a sort of alliance

00:32:53.340 between Rome and Egypt. So Pompey fled to Egypt, where he thought he could find refuge for a while.

00:32:59.620 But basically, he was stabbed to death upon arrival, because that's just like how Egypt 0.99

00:33:04.180 welcomed people, apparently. So he was killed in Egypt. Caesar, even though he'd been at war with

00:33:10.800 Pompey, wasn't sort of upset that Pompey had just been like, randomly murdered in Egypt. So he was

00:33:16.980 just like, okay, Cleopatra, could you please reconcile with your brother husband and just

00:33:21.120 calm down and be like a nice little subordinate ally to Rome. Cleopatra, of course, did not want 1.00

00:33:28.020 to do this. She didn't want to reconcile with her brother. She wanted to defeat her brother.

00:33:31.680 So she decided what she needed to do was to get Caesar to join her side against Ptolemy. So this

00:33:38.360 is where if the people of Egypt have been bigger fans of the Ptolemies, this Greek dynasty that

00:33:45.180 had been in charge of them for 300 years, the Egyptians might have stepped up to offer her

00:33:50.020 assistants to take down her brother but the fact they didn't do this is maybe one small clue to the

00:33:55.280 fact they viewed both her and her brother husband as their oppressor not as their legitimate rulers

00:34:00.180 like they would be her the army but they weren't gonna like revolt for one of them above the other

00:34:06.240 basically so this is the moment the famous cleopatra meets julius caesar moment so in

00:34:11.580 legends based on some very dramatic writings some people think uh she might have hidden herself in

00:34:17.720 a rolled up carpet and then had the carpet carried into Julius Caesar's room. And then she was just

00:34:21.700 like, surprise, like a showgirl popping out of a giant cake or something. That, I mean, again,

00:34:28.640 we're looking at sort of like third, fourth hand information. This may or may not have happened,

00:34:33.300 but we do know for sure that she snuck off without telling her brother and she secretly met with

00:34:38.000 Caesar and whatever she said totally worked because he came out of this meeting willing to

00:34:43.000 ally with her against Ptolemy. And then they basically became a couple. And that is what

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00:37:54.000 so this is where it would be very easy if cleopatra had been very like conventionally

00:38:00.820 beautiful very sexy very sexual it would be an easy way to explain how and why caesar decided

00:38:07.120 to decide with her right at this point if he if she just like literally seduced him but the thing

00:38:12.840 is that she was not conventionally beautiful she was like magnetic and charismatic and like

00:38:18.480 interesting and like super smart and also Julius Caesar had spent his life in Rome a place where 0.99

00:38:25.040 like women were not given this much education women do not have this much power like someone 0.55

00:38:29.120 like Cleopatra would be totally foreign to him so just she is a person could have been part of why

00:38:34.580 he was what attracted him to her and then also just in terms of the like seduction side of things is

00:38:39.700 that Cleopatra had been married to her like tweenage brother for the past several years before that

00:38:45.340 was co-queen with her father. And so I don't think it's a giant leap to think that perhaps

00:38:52.160 she was not at all very sexually experienced, even though she's known as this famous like

00:38:58.700 seductress. The only men we know for sure she ever had sex with were Julius Caesar and Mark

00:39:03.560 Anthony. But basically, she was assertive. She was poised. She had this self-confidence of

00:39:09.880 somebody who had been raised being told that she was literally a goddess and had been queen

00:39:13.740 since she was age 14 and so another thing to consider too is that in the ancient world a lot

00:39:19.640 of times alliances were sealed with people with marriage alliances and or babies so it could have

00:39:26.120 been she was just thinking like i don't we don't know her psychology but also this is the vulgar

00:39:31.640 history podcast so whatever like i don't think she what her first go-to is like i'm gonna seduce

00:39:37.160 this like 50 year old man and then he'll do what i want like i don't think she would think that

00:39:42.460 because that's not a very foolproof plan and cleopatra as we will see always had like a plan

00:39:47.100 a a plan b a plan c like she didn't do things without having it planned out very well in advance 0.96

00:39:53.520 basically she needed somebody to side with her against that um if she had to sleep with caesar 1.00

00:39:59.100 i'm sure she was up for that um she might have thought like having sex with him having a baby 1.00

00:40:03.840 with him would make a sort of alliance like she was technically married to her brother he was 0.89

00:40:08.160 technically married to someone else but like so they couldn't marry each other but basically um

00:40:13.240 having a baby was nothing compared to like murdering family members which is what people

00:40:17.860 doing around her so whatever she did caesar was totally on board but so you're like okay this is

00:40:24.120 great like i see where this is going this is familiar to me from the shakespeare play but

00:40:28.740 oh no because there's time for another plot twist which is that remember her younger sister 0.71

00:40:34.080 arsinoe was just as badass as her three older sisters and if you ask me um i think also sort

00:40:39.940 of in like a little women's pride and prejudice way just like if the younger sibling keeps getting

00:40:44.080 just kind of like learning from the older ones the younger siblings just get cooler and better

00:40:48.900 and more and more badass and so she was just like i think this is my chance you guys so 15 years old

00:40:54.160 arsinoe um decides to try and take over egypt herself with their other brother whose name is

00:41:00.820 also Ptolemy to be with her as her co-regent so basically so she's 15 years old she decides she's

00:41:08.540 going to defeat Julius Caesar and take over all of Egypt and Arsinoe is amazing and you should

00:41:13.140 watch the Drunk History episode about this anyway so Arsinoe what she did is she had this um helper

00:41:20.780 I guess her mentor slash pal slash palace eunuch his name was Ganymedes she just like with his 0.99

00:41:27.920 help and support she declared herself queen arsinoe the fourth and took control of the 0.97

00:41:32.040 egyptian army which is just like 15 years old like these sisters are amazing um she named

00:41:37.420 ganymedes as her second in command she commanded the egyptian army in battle against the romans 0.98

00:41:42.600 um she used some clever tactics like closing off some streets in order to trap caesar and

00:41:47.860 cleopatra in the palace like and they were trapped there for an entire year like this wasn't just like

00:41:52.460 a short-lived thing anyway caesar eventually was like okay i'm going to be defeated by one of

00:41:57.600 history's coolest teenagers cleopatra was like can you just get rid of my sister whatever

00:42:01.340 so what happened here is that there's a final battle ptolemy drowned to death um and ganymedes

00:42:09.920 died in battle so ptolemy the one who was married to cleopatra drowned ganymedes who was ursinoe's

00:42:16.560 helper died in battle and then eventually the egyptian army who again are just kind of like

00:42:21.280 people of egypt who had been sort of colonized and oppressed for a long time who just like

00:42:26.100 can like anything just settle down ever here so they decided ultimately they weren't on team

00:42:32.960 or sin away and so they decided to exchange or sin away for for ptolemy sorry for ptolemy the

00:42:40.180 other one because those two brothers remember basically all told what happens is the egyptian

00:42:45.740 army betrayed or sin away she wound up a roman prisoner and she's forced to be included in julius

00:42:50.940 caesar's victory parade humiliating herself in front of everyone as a captive queen like a parade

00:42:55.620 went down the street like a massive parade um i feel like it was something like a multi-day 0.59

00:43:00.540 parade it was like very visible um and she was like in a cage in front of everybody and it was

00:43:05.940 just very humiliating for all of her and then she was sent into exile and we'll hear about her a bit

00:43:12.420 later but that's basically her big that was her big moment but back to cleopatra so right now so

00:43:18.820 it's the year 48 uh julius caesar's term as consul was due to expire because remember it was just

00:43:24.760 like a five-year thing but he was like inspired by Sula so many decades before he got one extra

00:43:32.000 year as emergency dictator because he was like who else but me can settle the dynastic troubles

00:43:36.480 in Egypt because I'm sleeping with Cleopatra so he appointed Cleopatra co-ruler alongside

00:43:42.660 yet another Ptolemy brother I'm sorry Ptolemy it's it's spelled with a p at the beginning so

00:43:49.080 it's like pterodactyl. And it's hard for me to not say the P, Ptolemy, Ptolemy the 14th. So

00:43:55.000 she, Cleopatra at this point, age 22, pregnant with the baby of Julius Caesar in order to rule

00:44:01.820 Egypt had to marry her 12 year old brother. It's like, she is never not having to marry her 12

00:44:06.020 year old brother, all of whom are named Ptolemy. Um, but basically she was technically married to

00:44:13.520 this little boy, but she lived with Caesar as long as he was in Alexandria. Caesar was out of town

00:44:20.780 when her son was born on June 23rd in the year 47 BCE. The son was named Caesarian, or potentially

00:44:29.160 it's pronounced Kaesarian, but basically it's a Greek name that means basically Caesar Jr. And

00:44:35.740 she told everybody that the father of this child was Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar never officially

00:44:40.320 acknowledged cesarean as his son for various reasons um mostly because he was married to

00:44:46.160 someone else and cleopatra is married to someone else and this was all kind of messy but basically

00:44:50.960 she had just given birth to a son who was maybe going to be the next emperor of rome because rome

00:44:55.880 is headed in sort of a dynastic sort of direction instead of a voting people in direction so

00:45:01.680 cleopatra and her brother husband went to rome um they left baby cesarean behind because it was like

00:45:08.440 47 BCE and like it's hard enough traveling with a baby now imagine then um with no you know

00:45:16.380 antibiotics or whatever anyways they moved across into a villa just across from where Julius Caesar

00:45:21.000 lived with his wife in Rome and everyone kind of found this weird but Julius Caesar at this point

00:45:25.640 was just going full like narcissistic dictator type thing he was very um doing his own thing

00:45:33.460 and not caring what other people thought and that's not going to end well for him but this

00:45:37.100 is an example of the sort of stuff he had done so caesar at this point was busy overseeing the

00:45:41.180 construction of a new temple to the goddess venus which included a huge gold plated statue of the

00:45:46.920 goddess of venus and he was like you know what this this temple needs is a giant gold statue of

00:45:52.260 cleopatra my lover as well so the temple put up a giant statue of venus and next to that a giant

00:45:59.540 statue of the queen of egypt and everyone was just kind of like okay this is all getting kind of

00:46:05.400 weird. And then comes the Ides of March, famously, where Caesar was stabbed to death by a bunch of

00:46:11.200 his former friends who were just kind of mad at his self-declaring himself emperor for the rest

00:46:17.120 of all time, etc. Cleopatra was like, okay, so great. So my baby son is going to be the new

00:46:24.280 emperor of Rome, right? And the Romans were like, actually, no. And in fact, Julius Caesar had 0.78

00:46:29.060 adopted this kid named Octavian. And so we think that person's going to maybe take over. So

00:46:34.820 Cleopatra just kind of packed up her things and pieced out of Rome, heading back to Egypt to 0.74

00:46:39.420 regroup. But knowing what we know about Cleopatra, like I'm sure, like when, by the time you're 14,

00:46:45.700 you've seen so many of your family members call their family members. Like I'm sure she was like

00:46:49.020 saddened, maybe surprised at the details, but like not shocked that Caesar ended up getting

00:46:54.620 stabbed. So I'm sure she already had other plans. She had figured out kind of who had power in Rome,

00:46:58.720 who could maybe be her new ally with him gone. And then wouldn't you know, well, on right back

00:47:03.240 to egypt her brother husband died of some sort of illness slash was probably poisoned probably by her

00:47:10.000 with him out of the way there's no more little brothers thank god finally so her co-regent 0.86

00:47:15.460 becomes her son three-year-old cesarean so she was now basically the solo queen of egypt like 0.64

00:47:21.520 there's still the male female pairing of king and queen but the king in this instance was three 0.92

00:47:26.320 years old so basically she was in charge but she still needed the assistance of rome to stay in

00:47:32.760 power because there was people in egypt who didn't love this whole turn of events basically um and

00:47:39.100 this is when and why she turned to a guy named mark antony so mark antony is like just get ready i love

00:47:47.620 i love reading about mark antony he's just like heartthrob and himbo of the ages so what had

00:47:53.840 happened is that joe caesar was assassinated partially because he wanted to be solo emperor

00:47:58.000 and people were mad about that so they didn't want to make his heir octavian the new emperor

00:48:03.640 on his own instead they said like what was set up and by they i mean the senators of rome 0.97

00:48:08.500 they set up a triumvirate of three leaders so octavian who's this like teenage asshole um 0.75

00:48:16.200 caesar's former right-hand man mark antony who's this like really successful war general and a

00:48:21.460 third guy named lepidus so these three men weren't super psyched to share power with each other

00:48:27.560 because first Sulla and then Caesar had made everyone kind of think like being solo emperor

00:48:32.880 was kind of where it's at. So they sort of divided up most of the Roman empire. So Octavian controlled

00:48:40.420 most of the Western bits. Antony controlled most of the Eastern bits. Lepidus is just like, who

00:48:45.500 cares? And the whole thing drilled down to basically Octavian versus Mark Antony. And one or the other

00:48:51.240 was going to kill the other because basically they weren't going to share. And you remember when I

00:48:55.720 mentioned how people weren't really writing about Cleopatra being gorgeous, even though they wrote

00:48:59.780 about other people being gorgeous. And Mark Antony is one of the people who's written about being

00:49:03.900 gorgeous. He had, quote, mighty thighs, a perfect face, curly hair, total dreamboat, just like

00:49:11.860 amazingly sexy, good-looking guy. He's also really good as a war general. So he's like accomplished,

00:49:18.020 smart, good-looking, thighs, wearing his like little Roman miniskirt, just like

00:49:23.220 basically so he was gorgeous and also really well accomplished and also really really really

00:49:29.860 popular and Octavian was kind of this like sickly skinny teen oh he had blonde hair

00:49:36.960 Mark Antony had dark hair and Roman's like dark hair better so Octavian was just kind of this

00:49:41.800 useless little skinny kid Mark Antony was this like Brad Pitt type thighs god person um and so

00:49:51.460 octavian needed to figure out a way to turn everybody against this like dreamboat basically 0.75

00:49:56.960 here's what happened is that mark antony was fighting against octavian but he needed funding

00:50:01.900 to help support his side of the war um cleopatra needed romans to be on her side to just sort of

00:50:09.060 like maintain her amount of power so mark antony contacts cleopatra to see if she could maybe help

00:50:15.400 fund what he was up to so he sent an invitation for her to come visit him and she was like

00:50:20.440 thanks but no thanks and like totally turned him down and he kept inviting her and she kept

00:50:25.160 refusing because she's just like cleopatra goes or cleopatra decides to go she does not answer

00:50:29.580 other people's invitations finally she was like guess what okay i'll come and visit you so bear

00:50:36.440 in mind that purple was the most expensive and rarest dye in this place in time because it had

00:50:42.980 to be made from a slime of thousands of sea snails which meant it took forever to like make the dye

00:50:48.140 took forever to dye things so the fact that cleopatra sailed up to meet marcantony in a

00:50:53.620 ship with purple sails was just like the equivalent of like flying in in like a plane

00:50:58.940 made of gold and diamonds basically so also the oarsmen were using silver oars like made

00:51:05.760 literally out of silver so it's just like giant knives glinting in the mediterranean sunshine

00:51:10.800 so it's just like this boat that's just like money basically she's like oh you want me to

00:51:16.540 fund your little war i don't know could i spare that much money i don't know what to what do my

00:51:21.740 purple sails and my like silver oars think so antony is just like hanging out waiting for this 0.90

00:51:27.600 meeting and then cleopatra makes comes like sailing up on the ship so she was dressed up like 0.98

00:51:33.320 the goddess isis covered in jewels surrounded by incense so you could literally smell the decadence 0.95

00:51:39.740 of what was happening she had little children dressed like cupids running around her with

00:51:44.480 little bows and arrows which is like who are these children where do they come from i don't know but

00:51:48.560 basically she just like swans in i'm picturing it's just like the most like rihanna thing just

00:51:53.560 like i'm picturing her lying sideways on a sofa because that's how she's always drawn but also

00:51:58.740 it's like how else could you make that entrance basically so her boat is like sailing up to meet

00:52:04.020 mark antony and he's like okay great this is like more than i expected but her boat just keeps going

00:52:08.180 it sails right past him and mark antony is just like what just happened so basically he's like

00:52:14.360 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

00:52:20.200 it works like you come to my ship i don't come to you i'm motherfucking cleopatra so he went over 0.90

00:52:26.820 to her ship and she was like hey we're just having this like opulent feast why don't you just have 0.93

00:52:32.040 some wine and music and jewels and just like hang out here for like literally 48 hours and two days

00:52:38.120 later a deal was struck where she had helped support him in his battle against octavian and he

00:52:42.720 was completely in love with her and like of course he was so also during this sex summit 0.93

00:52:50.040 Cleopatra got Antony to agree to have Ursinawe put to death because she was sort of a threat

00:52:56.820 to her still as the only other surviving sibling Ursinawe still alive just like living in this

00:53:02.040 sort of place in Rome Antony arranged for Ursinawe to be murdered so Ursinawe was murdered on the

00:53:07.500 front steps of this temple where she'd been living in sort of sanctuary and this kind of rubbed the

00:53:11.240 people roam the wrong way because they really took sanctuary and religion really seriously

00:53:15.820 but anyway ursinoe r.i.p cleopatra now the only surviving member of her immediate sibling group

00:53:23.360 so she and mark antony almost immediately seem to have begun a physical affair and like can you 0.85

00:53:30.120 blame her like he was just like gorgeousness personified can you blame him she was just like

00:53:35.580 literally goddess um so like even just in reading reading this stuff reading third-hand accounts of

00:53:43.140 them together it's just like they have like palpable sexual chemistry and also she got

00:53:48.420 she'd been married to her tween age brother her like 12 year old brother she had a child with

00:53:53.540 Julius Caesar who's like 50 when she was like 20 and now she's got this like man who's like

00:53:57.500 similar age to her who's also like literally a sex god they were both into it um bear in mind

00:54:03.800 of course, that Mark Antony was married to someone else because everyone in the story is,

00:54:08.940 but that didn't stop them. Anyway, so Mark Antony had always been known for throwing these like

00:54:14.120 amazing, luxurious, decadent parties. Cleopatra was just like ready to let loose because she 0.98

00:54:18.680 spent her entire life waiting to be murdered by her siblings. They were now all dead. She was on

00:54:23.520 top of the world. And so they just started throwing parties all the time. They started a sort of club

00:54:28.400 called the inimitable livers like l-i-v-e-r-s like the body organ that like gets affected when you

00:54:35.620 drink a lot of alcohol so it's basically just like a bunch of people who could drink a lot

00:54:39.700 they spent literally days in bed together and were just like being amazing all the time they

00:54:45.700 weren't just like shirking their responsibilities either they were also being like successful

00:54:49.660 leaders um just like being amazing doing amazing having this amazing sex life just like good for

00:54:56.760 them. But so what happened is that Cleopatra at this point, who had always been very careful and 0.99

00:55:05.320 very good about planning for contingencies, she seems to have underestimated Octavian who still

00:55:12.200 had it out for Antony. While they were just like having this like power couple dream life, Octavian

00:55:18.240 was just like, I don't know, maybe fleshing out a bit from his like sort of sickly skinniness and

00:55:23.740 becoming more powerful little did they know so in around the year 40 cleopatra gave birth to boy

00:55:29.680 girl twins the daughter was named cleopatra because that's of course um and the boy was

00:55:35.460 named alexander after alexander the great who was actually one of mark antony's ancestors

00:55:40.360 antony actually acknowledged these as his children which caesar never did with

00:55:44.000 cesarean um shortly after the twins were born antony's wife died she probably wasn't poisoned

00:55:51.240 I think she just died. And then to try and make peace between the two warring Roman factions,

00:55:57.360 Antony agreed to marry Octavian's sister, who is named Octavia. So he married someone else,

00:56:03.980 even though Cleopatra had just had his children. So Cleopatra was just like raising three small

00:56:08.800 children. And suddenly her time was being taken up by King Herod of Judea, who is from the Bible,

00:56:16.520 the one who you might know from his greatest hits including demanding that all babies be killed in

00:56:21.840 case one of them was jesus um and sort of inventing christmas basically so the thing is that egypt and

00:56:28.220 judea were both kingdoms allied with rome they were geographically close to each other and

00:56:33.180 cleopatra was friends with herod's mother-in-law against herod and basically so herod was distracting

00:56:40.040 her he's an asshole whatever so cleopatra goes to visit antony in the year 37 um he met their

00:56:47.300 the twins were at this point three years old it was the first time he met them and he enjoyed 0.99

00:56:53.100 meeting them and then later on cleopatra gave birth to another child with mark antony as the

00:56:58.180 father and this was a son named ptolemy because this story needs a ptolemy again but this one's

00:57:02.840 called ptolemy philadelphus so cleopatra is just like having these children she put all of her

00:57:07.860 eggs in the basket of supporting Mark Antony as the next emperor of Rome. And the reason she's 1.00

00:57:11.840 doing this is because she thought he was going to win. And if her lover slash baby daddy was the

00:57:18.060 leader of Rome, then that's great for her. So everything depended on Octavian not winning.

00:57:23.900 But tragically, Mark Antony had started to do less well in his military stuff and his

00:57:30.460 psychological state was becoming sort of undone. And it all sort of came to a head when Cleopatra

00:57:36.320 Antony staged a huge festival slash party called the Donations of Alexandria. So this was sort of

00:57:42.800 a big party where like Antony was not doing amazing vis-a-vis military victories, but he

00:57:48.920 had just had one military victory. So they threw this party to try and like for PR to make everybody

00:57:53.580 think Antony was doing great. So they would all keep supporting him. So his campaigns in Parthia

00:57:59.500 and Armenia. So his campaign in Parthia had not gone well, but the one in Armenia had gone well.

00:58:05.640 And so they just wanted to sort of focus on that.

00:58:07.780 So this is similar to, do you remember when Arsinoe was marched through the streets of Rome as prisoner of war?

00:58:13.340 So this was sort of a similar thing, except they were marching the Armenian royal family in front of everybody as prisoners of war.

00:58:21.320 They were told to kneel before Cleopatra, the Armenian royal family, and they did not, which made her freak out. 0.70

00:58:28.760 And that just kind of made the whole thing not look as good for them as they were pretending like things were. 0.96

00:58:33.920 Anyway, for the grand finale,

00:58:35.520 Mark Antony dressed up in a costume,

00:58:38.140 dressed up like Dionysus, the Roman god of wine.

00:58:41.700 And Cleopatra dressed up as the Roman goddess of love, Aphrodite, 1.00

00:58:45.760 but slash also sort of as the Egyptian goddess of life and magic, Isis.

00:58:50.400 Her son, Caesarian, was dressed up as the god Horus, who is the son of Isis.

00:58:54.420 And then everyone in Cleopatra's family got a new name and or title.

00:58:58.560 So she herself, Cleopatra, was proclaimed queen of kings,

00:59:01.920 queen of egypt as well as queen of cyprus libya and central syria alexander the boy twin was given

00:59:07.620 the middle name helios which means the sun and was named king of armenia media and parthia so now

00:59:13.060 he's alexander helios her daughter cleopatra was given the middle name selene which means the moon

00:59:19.300 so cleopatra selene and she became queen of cyrenaica cyrenaica and libya ptolemy philadelphus

00:59:26.880 was named king of Syria and Cecilia and Caesarian was proclaimed king of kings as well as the

00:59:31.840 legitimate heir of Julius Caesar. So this is just like a full mic drop just like our family is the

00:59:36.620 royal family we're in charge of everything here we go. There's some speculation that potentially

00:59:41.820 Cleopatra and Antony were officially married during this event and certainly they were started

00:59:48.020 acting like he wasn't married to anyone else even though he was still married to Octavian's sister

00:59:53.020 which just kind of made even more bad feelings over the for everybody and ultimately this whole

00:59:58.700 event the donations of alexandria seemed to the people of rome who were like they were never into

01:00:04.520 sort of luxury and glamour and the way that egyptian culture had sort of had these beautiful

01:00:10.600 gold like they just thought it was tacky like egyptian culture to them was tacky roman culture

01:00:17.460 was all sort of like stayed it was like white columns it was just like plain togas like they 0.99

01:00:22.040 were also all killing each other and all having sex with each other but they were like pretending 0.94

01:00:25.780 like they're actually very morally upright so octavian sort of latched on to this being like 0.66

01:00:32.200 i'm octavian like i'm like you rome i'm like really serious and monastic and mark antony is

01:00:38.300 decadent and it didn't help that he dressed up like the god of wine for this party anyway so

01:00:45.180 if you're wondering how a pierre campaign is run in ancient rome in a time before the invention

01:00:49.440 of the printing press the answer is um hand calligraphy flyers so octavian just started

01:00:57.100 having a bunch of flyers printed up or calligraphied for everybody to read that we

01:01:04.340 basically just said like mark antony is decadent he's terrible he likes luxury unlike i octavian

01:01:11.140 who i'm just like super straightforward mark antony wrote a letter back that also got printed

01:01:15.420 on a flyer for everybody to read that was like dear like the letter was like dear Octavian yeah 0.97

01:01:20.280 I'm fucking Cleopatra who cares I know that you're fucking lots of sex workers etc like 0.99

01:01:26.540 what are we even doing you suck love Mark Antony like it was a pretty baller move it was pretty 0.99

01:01:32.360 excellent like you literally said something in the letter I don't have it in front of me but it's 0.95

01:01:36.280 something like like this is the thing people have found it's like it's a letter that says like dear

01:01:40.340 octavian yeah so what if i'm fucking cleopatra you wish like anyway so just a lot of flyers and

01:01:47.660 this is where a lot of the big rumors we still know about cleopatra came into existence like 0.96

01:01:52.060 that she's sexy and manipulating men with her beauty or she's using witchcraft or she is just 0.98

01:01:58.360 using seduction to destroy caesar and antony because she wants to destroy rome um also she's 0.96

01:02:04.160 too powerful and smart it's unnatural for a woman mark antony does whatever she says which is gross

01:02:09.080 because women aren't people and men should be in church etc um just the whole idea that she was 0.98

01:02:14.600 like either beautiful and blinded them with sex or if she wasn't beautiful she blinded them with

01:02:20.040 witchcraft and basically just misogyny basically but it was a way to bring down mark antony by

01:02:27.320 bringing down her as well and honestly the whole thing about like did she ruin his life is totally

01:02:34.040 backwards because really he was kind of ruining her life really like when they started hooking up

01:02:40.300 he was this like roman hero who seemed destined to become the next emperor but then his hard

01:02:45.320 drinking and partying lifestyle caught up with him um as did maybe you know that is cte that

01:02:51.960 like brain injury that happens with football players slash ptsd from being in war constantly

01:02:57.600 his whole life like he was just having some psychological issues um and he was sort of

01:03:03.840 falling apart basically like the whole deal of their relationship was based on him being this

01:03:09.000 amazing military leader and her financing him but he started he was losing battles and so it was

01:03:15.800 starting to look like a poor investment on cleopatra's part but she couldn't really

01:03:18.660 extricate herself from this meanwhile her whole life wasn't about rome like during this whole

01:03:23.680 time she'd been running egypt literally like a boss um she her history there um she had forward

01:03:30.580 thinking decisions about taxes and budgeting she's doing her best to lead a country that 0.72

01:03:34.540 was entirely dependent on whether the nile flooded or not every year like she was governing egypt as

01:03:40.980 well as dealing with this whole roman situation anyway so what happened is that so the whole

01:03:47.420 thing with the whole five-year job expiry thing is that Mark Antony's time as a consul expired,

01:03:56.420 but Octavian got re-elected. So now Mark Antony was no longer a consul from the Roman triumvirate.

01:04:02.500 He's now just like a regular Roman guy. So the fact that he continued to battle against Octavian

01:04:07.460 with Cleopatra's funding became sort of illegal, just like a private citizen waging war against

01:04:13.020 a country. So Octavian used sort of a legal loophole. He had Rome declare war on Cleopatra

01:04:19.800 for providing military support to a Roman citizen who's not a consul. So now the war wasn't just

01:04:25.280 Octavian versus Antony. It was all of Rome versus Antony. And Cleopatra was in this kind of like

01:04:31.460 awkward situation. So this war was mostly waged at sea. And Cleopatra and Antony initially were

01:04:37.740 doing well there because they had more ships than Octavian did. But the thing is that their ships

01:04:41.780 were kind of like a combination of like mercenary ships and like allies from various places whereas

01:04:46.740 Octavian's ships were full of like very well trained Roman troops and soldiers and it all

01:04:52.980 came down to the Battle of Actium which began on September 2nd in the year 31 BCE and basically

01:04:59.900 the battle ended when a bunch of people from Cleopatra and Antony's troops defected from their

01:05:05.160 team to Octavian's team and then Cleopatra and Antony fled the scene. Cleopatra headed back to

01:05:11.780 where, again, the people of Egypt weren't there like, oh my God, our queen, we're here and we'll

01:05:16.840 support you, etc. This is where the whole 300 years of oppression meant that the people of

01:05:22.000 Egypt weren't super interested in standing up to her to fight Octavian. They'd do their job and be

01:05:28.240 royal guards, but they weren't prepared to lay down their lives and fight for her, as they might

01:05:32.100 have done for someone from a different dynasty. Cleopatra was now trapped in Egypt. It seemed

01:05:39.320 inevitable that octavian was going to capture her but you know never count her out she started

01:05:43.500 figuring out a new scheme so she knew that octavian wanted to keep her alive so he could march her 0.80

01:05:48.420 through in one of these like humiliation parades and she was determined that she would not let that

01:05:54.580 happen she also knew that he was intent on looting her treasure all the gold and things that she had

01:06:00.440 in her you know little secret caves and whatever so she sent him a message saying that she's

01:06:05.160 prepared to light herself and offer treasure on fire. This got his attention, and so he sent a

01:06:10.260 representative to negotiate with her. The negotiations obviously didn't go well, and it

01:06:15.680 ended with Octavian deciding to invade Egypt. Mark Antony was taken prisoner in his attempt

01:06:21.400 to protect Cleopatra, and he died by suicide while in captivity. He was 53 years old at this point.

01:06:29.560 octavian permitted cleopatra to attend antony's funeral um so she participated in the mourning

01:06:35.100 rituals of the time which basically meant screaming for hours and beating and clawing

01:06:39.860 at your own skin and as a result of this she wound up with a bunch of infected septic wounds

01:06:45.120 she stopped eating possibly in sort of like a slow suicide attempt um trying to die on her

01:06:53.660 own terms rather than by execution or after having to be in the humiliation parade um octavian was

01:06:59.520 not into that and eventually she healed up but during this time pre-humiliation parade cleopatra 0.98

01:07:07.300 ended up dying age 39 sometime that same month two of her loyal maid servants iris and charmian 1.00

01:07:14.660 died with her this is where there's the rumor of the whole asp to the breast thing and she did 0.99

01:07:20.520 probably die of poison. Although the rumors of a snake bite are probably false. Cleopatra had

01:07:25.900 always been really organized, really decisive. If she's going to kill herself, she wouldn't leave 0.98

01:07:30.720 it to chance. Like what if the snake didn't bite her in the right place? What if she didn't die

01:07:34.540 of the venom? Like there's too many, too many chances. So allegedly poison was smuggled to her

01:07:39.240 in a basket of figs, which would be a terrible way to sneak a venomous snake in to see someone.

01:07:44.480 So it's probably more likely the figs themselves are poisoned or there's a vial of something in

01:07:48.160 there. Anyway, R.I.P. basically. And just of interest, if you look at ancient Roman history

01:07:54.680 and mythology, women dying by suicide is a weirdly common theme of women sort of wanting to not be a

01:08:01.820 bother and just sort of like delicately and politely removing themselves from narratives.

01:08:08.180 So and this is kind of how Romans wanted women to behave in this kind of quiet way. And it seems

01:08:13.340 sort of antithetical to how Cleopatra behaved. So the news of her suicide came from Octavian

01:08:19.780 and was written about by these other same Roman men who hated her and they wanted to please

01:08:24.440 Octavian. So it's possible that the whole suicide thing is a cover-up story concocted by Octavian

01:08:30.520 and his men to try and hide something else that happened. Like maybe Octavian did kill her. Maybe

01:08:36.000 she was able to rally up supporters, staged a big coup and tried to escape and was killed in the

01:08:39.980 battle basically we know she died age 39 we know it is said it was suicide but whatever the manner

01:08:47.240 of her death she almost certainly died on her own terms and it really pissed off Octavian and so at 0.98

01:08:52.960 least her death was a final fuck you to this guy who spoiler for later episodes really sucked her 0.94

01:08:59.860 legacy is sort of bittersweet so her son Caesarian was renamed Ptolemy the 15th and he reigned for 0.99

01:09:07.420 only 18 days as the new pharaoh of Egypt. So Octavian tricked him to come and visit. Octavian 0.60

01:09:14.300 was like, hey, Ptolemy, like, why don't you come and visit me? I'm totally not going to murder you.

01:09:19.040 And then he, in fact, murdered him. So upon the death of Caesarian, the Ptolemaic dynasty came

01:09:24.460 to an end and Egypt was absorbed as a province of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra Selene, her daughter,

01:09:31.660 married King Juba II of Namibia and Mauritania, with whom she had one daughter and one son.

01:09:36.740 She had a son whose name was Ptolemy. Ptolemy, because that is just like the name of every

01:09:43.320 little boy in the story. But anyway, this son, Ptolemy, grandson of Cleopatra, was later murdered

01:09:48.220 by his cousin, his cousin who was Caligula, the emperor, who, spoiler, we're going to be talking

01:09:54.540 about also in a later podcast. 300 years later, Syria's Queen Zenobia, who faced off against the

01:10:00.560 Roman Empire in her own badass story that maybe we'll look at another time, claimed to be a

01:10:04.540 descendant of Cleopatra Selene. The fates of Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus,

01:10:10.360 Cleopatra's other two sons, are unknown, although they seem to have been sent to Rome to be raised

01:10:14.700 by Antony's widow slash Octavian's sister, Octavia, following the death of their parents.

01:10:20.160 And I mean, I would not be surprised if they were murdered, but who knows. Octavian renamed himself

01:10:28.480 Augustus and became the first official non-emergency Roman emperor. He renamed the

01:10:34.400 month of August after himself, Augustus, because that was the month in which he had defeated

01:10:39.960 Cleopatra. And it's still called August. And that makes me hate August because I hate Augustus

01:10:46.420 and what a dick thing to celebrate. Anyway, much of the legend of Cleopatra developed based on 0.98

01:10:52.460 the Roman writings from around the time of her downfall. And they describe her as this witch

01:10:56.340 slash slut slash seductress slash femme fatale who single-handedly destroyed Mark Antony's life 1.00

01:11:01.300 in this like sexy way. But although these are the most widely known sources of information about 0.99

01:11:07.080 her life, a few other things have been found that explore a bit more about not just her love life,

01:11:13.400 but her political career and persona. Some medieval Arabic writings seem to have been

01:11:18.680 drawn from Greek sources that may present Cleopatra similarly to how she wanted herself

01:11:24.400 to be portrayed. So these sources don't refer at all to her beauty, or lack of beauty, or even to

01:11:29.580 her love affairs. The focus instead is on her as a scholar. So she's depicted as a scholar known as

01:11:36.440 Cleopatra the Wise, or the Virtuous Scholar, a woman revered for her intelligence and inventiveness

01:11:41.300 with keen interests in philosophy, alchemy, mathematics, and medicine. So that is the

01:11:49.040 saga of Cleopatra um it's such a story and I can't even so time to uh score her on our various

01:12:00.120 scales um so the Scandalicious scale has got four categories so the first category is

01:12:07.940 Scandaliciousness so this is sort of the quality of the scandal surrounding them so I feel like

01:12:15.840 in this instance so scandalousness would be things like her brother husband coincidentally

01:12:23.120 dying just at the convenient time for her to want him to be gone um scandalousness is like her

01:12:29.620 having a child with a roman emperor and then he supported her or like her having these children

01:12:36.520 with mark antony but it's tricky because okay scandalousness killing her brother mega

01:12:43.040 scandalousness she was surrounded by scandalousness lots of other people killing other

01:12:48.720 people but she had children with two different men both of whom she was seemingly like committed

01:12:55.220 to and yes she was married to her brother at the same time which is like medium scandalousness but

01:13:00.020 it's not like they were little boys at the time and it was sort of had to be that way for various

01:13:05.120 reasons i'm honestly when you actually look at the facts of this whole story i think the

01:13:09.780 scandaliciousness scale is like not super high. I'm going to give her a five for scandaliciousness. 1.00

01:13:16.840 I think the next category is scheminess. And this is where like, I, I think it has to be a 10. I

01:13:23.160 mean, she took over Egypt. She convinced Julius Caesar to side with her. She then got Mark Antony 0.55

01:13:29.180 to side with her. She seemingly killed her brother. Um, she had Arsinoe killed like her plans.

01:13:35.620 She had plans. They were good plans. She had backup plans. She executed those plans.

01:13:40.540 Ten for scheminess, for sure. Significance is an interesting one because she is certainly a

01:13:46.320 famous name. People know about her and her involvement with Julius Caesar. Her story

01:13:55.540 is certainly captivating. At the same time, she did more than I think anyone else could have

01:14:01.780 as sort of in this era being the pharaoh of egypt but it was it seems like sort of inevitable that

01:14:07.400 egypt would eventually be subsumed into the roman empire and it was also sort of obvious not obvious

01:14:14.560 but like that octavian was probably going to end up winning against mark antony i don't like her

01:14:21.540 significance like she backed mark antony who didn't win so like cultural significance she had 1.00

01:14:26.680 children um her daughter went on to marry the king of another place but like in terms of like

01:14:33.100 did she change the world um it's tricky i don't want to give her too little credit but at the

01:14:40.220 same time like she did amazing stuff she's significant to me i think a lot of people see

01:14:45.220 her as an inspiration but in terms of like success in the various cool things she was doing i don't

01:14:51.160 know. I'm going to give her a six for significance. The final category is the sexism bonus, which is

01:14:59.680 giving bonus points based on how much sexism held people back. How much did that play a role in

01:15:07.000 there? What they were or were not able to do. And I mean, she faced, come on. I mean, like the Roman

01:15:12.240 empire is like famously misogynistic. Even in Egypt, where she was allowed to be educated and 0.89

01:15:19.120 to be co-ruler she still couldn't be the queen on her own the way that octavian used sort of 0.75

01:15:24.260 slut shaming against her slash against mark antony um it's pretty high i'm gonna give her a seven for

01:15:31.380 that so the total here is 28 so in terms of where that fits her and this is all just like subjective

01:15:39.260 scale it's the same score as lucy hay um and one below elizabeth bathory so i think she's up there

01:15:47.560 she's up there at the top I don't know I feel like we're not saying who's the coolest woman

01:15:52.200 we're not saying like who's better than another one we're just saying like in terms of this scale

01:15:57.440 where do people rank and she ranks like pretty high like I don't know how many people are going

01:16:02.960 to get any higher than that and now it's time for some some facts and information so I have my first

01:16:09.840 little sponsor which is exciting which is audible which is where you can listen to audiobooks and I

01:16:16.900 did i do a lot of my researching through audiobooks because that way you can just be like learning

01:16:21.960 facts while you're like doing the dishes while you're out walking while you're doing your laundry 0.99

01:16:26.120 etc and one of the sources i used for this is a book called when women rule the world

01:16:32.600 by kara cooney which is a book all about cleopatra and some other egyptian queens um and you can get

01:16:39.000 that on audible.com and so the thing is if you go to audible trial.com slash vulgar history

01:16:46.380 then you get your 30-day free trial and a couple little dollars go to me to support this podcast

01:16:52.060 which is very appreciated and i'm really excited about this season

01:16:56.320 so the thing with cleopatra's scoring is it does need to be revisited but i'm not qualified to do

01:17:08.020 that myself which is why next week gina berry is going to join us for a special cleopatra

01:17:14.520 follow-up episode. And honestly, I was like, Gina, can you just join me to just talk about

01:17:20.420 Cleopatra and look at these scores? And of course, it turned into an hour plus long conversation

01:17:25.340 because that's what happens when Gina and I get talking. So next week, it's going to just be

01:17:29.980 Cleopatra response. And that's where we're going to revisit the score, which is definitely not

01:17:35.680 the way that Cleopatra should be fitting into this scale at this point with how many other people

01:17:40.520 we've talked about on the podcast. So next week, stay tuned for a super special for the third,

01:17:45.560 the third appearance of everyone's favorite guest, Gina Berry. So that's going to be next week.

01:17:51.080 And I want to just let you know about other things that are happening. So I've been on this trip

01:17:56.620 to the UK. I visited Edinburgh, I visited London, and I visited Brownschweig, aka Brunswick,

01:18:04.540 which is where Carolina Brunswick is from because I'm writing a book, y'all. And I wanted to see

01:18:09.220 these things in places where carolina brunswick went asterix she didn't go to edinburgh but if

01:18:15.100 you follow my blogs you'll know why i went there so anyway if you want to see everything that i

01:18:19.480 was experiencing during this trip um all my blogs and my vlogs are all available on my patreon page

01:18:24.840 at patreon.com and foster writer and those are all if you become a member you can read all those

01:18:29.460 posts for free so um yeah that's we can go there see what happened when i met some llamas um in

01:18:37.140 Germany. Uh, when I saw the portrait of Francis Howard, um, all these iconic things. When I saw

01:18:42.980 the Rizzio bloodstain on the floor, like all these amazing, like life dream coming true

01:18:49.360 moments for me. Anyway, you can read all about that again for free. Um, if you just join my

01:18:53.960 Patreon, patreon.com slash Anne Foster writer, uh, is where you can see all my trip memoirs.

01:19:00.400 And then also once you're there, if you're like, Oh, I like it here. Um, and you want to become a

01:19:05.440 paid member of the Patreon, if you pay just $1 a month, you get early ad-free access to all

01:19:09.840 episodes of the podcast. And also I want to mention all the members after an episode comes out,

01:19:14.580 even the free members can share. I post just like a discussion post. So, you know, like this

01:19:20.200 episode came out and then everyone can just like chit chat about it, have a little kiki.

01:19:25.220 So that's, um, again, for free, you can see my travel blogs and you can comment on things like

01:19:31.400 Hepburn is here. She's commenting on, I've been recording too long. Anyway, if you pledge

01:19:35.420 five dollars or more a month you get bonus episodes access to episodes of vulgar peace

01:19:39.480 theater where we talk about costume dramas myself elson upstein and lana wood johnson we haven't done

01:19:44.760 a cleopatra movie and that's mostly because cleopatra movies are all like five hours long

01:19:49.860 and elson and lana have forbid me from choosing movies that long anymore there's also so this 0.58

01:19:55.320 asshole episodes where i talk about shitty men from history i'm pretty sure i talk about some 0.85

01:19:59.080 shitty men from ancient roman history but again those were recorded in like 2020 my memory's not 0.99

01:20:04.460 right? Because I am an elderly crone. Hepburn is here. That's my cat if you don't know. Anyway, 0.60

01:20:11.020 if you're really feeling Cleopatra and you're like, I want to represent my love for Cleo

01:20:14.680 via jewelry. Well, guess what? We have a brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, and

01:20:19.480 they have a Cleopatra pendant. They have a Cleopatra, I think, ring sometimes. Anyway,

01:20:24.660 Common Era Jewelry is a small woman-owned business that makes beautiful jewelry inspired by

01:20:28.900 women from history and from classical mythology, including Cleopatra. So their pieces are available

01:20:35.500 in solid gold, as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. And Vulgar History listeners can

01:20:39.860 always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code

01:20:46.300 vulgar at checkout. And honestly, when we talk about a person that they actually have jewelry

01:20:52.300 of, I feel like the vibes are good. Vibes are strong. You can also support this podcast by

01:20:58.280 buying merch, perhaps not the merch that I mentioned in 2020. The store has been refreshed

01:21:02.940 since then. Um, but our current merchandise store is vulgarhistory.com slash store takes you to the

01:21:10.220 TeePublic store, which is great for Americans. If you're outside the U S you can shop at our

01:21:14.460 red bubble store, vulgarhistory.redbubble.com. And you can get in touch with me, um, with your

01:21:20.860 comments, your concerns, your kudos. If you go to vulgarhistory.com, there's a little like message

01:21:26.880 me button or you can message me my dms are open on instagram and threads um you can follow me there

01:21:33.360 at vulgar history pod next week the return of gina berry talking about cleopatra um i can't 0.99

01:21:40.340 wait for you all to hear this conversation um until then keep your pants on and your tits out 0.98

01:21:45.220 vulgar history is researched written and hosted by ann foster that's me the editor is christina 0.99

01:21:52.440 Lumagi. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History Show image is by Debra Wong.

01:21:59.060 Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - August 28, 2024

Women Leaders, part 1： Cleopatra Was That Bitch (Rerelease)

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Transcript