Nightshift – Kurzgesagt after Dark
Nightshift – Kurzgesagt after Dark
CLEOPATRA'S NEMESIS SOURCES
We would like to thank
Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Martin Steskal, Head of the Department of Historical Archaeology at the Austrian Archaeological Institute, for reviewing our script.
For our story, we relied on two wonderful books we hope you have the time to check out: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley (Basic Books, 2008) and The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry Strauss (Simon and Schuster, 2022).
Intro
Soldiers drag a dark-haired girl past the jeering faces at the Roman forum. Dishevelled and trembling, she bows her face in humiliation. The mob is used to cruel spectacles but an Egyptian queen in shackles is a rare sight.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 254.
Much of the inspiration for the characters’ appearance in this video came from:
#Giorgia Cafici, The Egyptian Elite as Roman Citizens: Looking at Ptolemaic Private Portraiture (Brill, 2021).
https://brill-1com-10089e2me01fe.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/display/title/39548
See also: Cleopatra of Egypt: From history to myth, edited by Susan Walker and Peter Higgs (The British Museum Press, 2001).
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIB2618
Though the ruling elite in Ptolemaic Egypt were mainly of Macedonian-Greek descent, there were many peoples of different backgrounds, origins, and appearances at all levels of society in the Hellenistic period. Research is ongoing:
The Hellenistic court: Monarchic power and elite society from Alexander to Cleopatra, edited by AndrewErskine, LloydLlewellyn-Jones, and ShaneWallace (The Classic Press of Wales, 2017).
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1z27gr0
Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Official Identity and Ethnicity: Comparing Ptolemaic and Early Roman Egypt, Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 208–242
https://brill-1com-1y23y31me03bd.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/view/journals/jeh/11/1-2/article-p208_9.xml
Along the route of Caesar’s triumph, people climb statues and rooftops to see the notorious prisoners paraded toward execution. A whisper spreads through the crowds: is this Cleopatra?
But she is not in chains. She is the one who ordered the execution of her sister Arsinoë. Cleopatra sheds no tears for her rebellious little sister. One more enemy off her list.
Part 1 – Traitors from Birth
Five years earlier, 18-year-old Cleopatra ascends the throne alongside her 10-year-old brother Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic dynasty has ruled for 300 years and like the ancient pharaohs, they marry within their own family to keep power in the bloodline.
Note: The length of the reign of the Ptolemaic Dynasty differs in some sources, but we chose 300 years as given in Tyldesley, pg. 12.
Beyond their palace, the Nile feeds fertile lands that have produced grain surpluses for centuries. Their main buyer is Rome but powerful generals like Julius Caesar begin to see Egypt as a province in waiting rather than a partner. The Ptolemies before Cleopatra stayed in charge by appeasing Rome: supplying ships and borrowing heavily from Roman creditors, up to half of Egypt’s annual revenue, to fund the bribes that keep them in control.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 34-39.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 34.
Grain and silver were two of the main ways of transporting wealth around and out of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Joseph Manning, Hellenistic Egypt, Chapter 15 in: The Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world, edited by Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, Richard P. Saller (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Kostas Buraselis, Ptolemaic grain, seaways and power, Chapter 6 in: The Ptolemies, the Sea and the Nile, edited by Kostas Buraselis, Mary Stefanou, Dorothy J. Thompson (Cambridge University Press)
On top of that, weak Nile floods have battered an already tribute-drained economy, pushing tensions among the people to a breaking point. And the royal couple needs to handle their siblings as well: a teenage sister Arsinoë and an 8-year-old brother, both looming threats in the game of succession.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 29, 38.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
Co-ruler Ptolemy craves the spotlight, propped up by older men who try to pull Cleopatra’s strings as well. She refuses to shrink. For almost two years, she holds ceremonies on her own, signs decrees without her brother’s name and orders coins with her face alone. In council chambers, Ptolemy’s advisers whisper that the girl has forgotten her place and foster a resentment in the boy-king.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 44-46.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 35.
When Rome demands grain and ships again, Cleopatra complies. She knows Egypt cannot afford to defy its creditors. But for Alexandrians wary of Rome’s influence, it is one concession too many. Ptolemy’s advisers turn the outrage against the queen and seize the chance to get rid of her. In the summer of 49 BCE, guards force her out of the city she rules and erase her name from the official records. She leaves in fury, already plotting her return.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 47-48.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
Cleopatra uses her remaining resources to recruit mercenaries. Within a year she’s ready to march on her brother with an army. Then news cuts through her camp: Julius Caesar has arrived in Alexandria to collect the outstanding debt. He needs money to pay his troops. Cleopatra understands that reaching Caesar quickly may turn her luck.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 48-52.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 38.
A reconstruction of ancient Alexandria that we used for our illustrations can be found here:
Night falls. Leaving her troops behind, she sails toward the royal district. If Ptolemy’s guards catch her, she is finished. And if Caesar refuses her, she is irrelevant, so she smuggles herself into his room in a linen sack. Before sunrise, she has his ear. Caesar announces that Cleopatra and her brother will rule jointly. For him, a civil war between siblings means chaos in Egypt and hunger in Rome. But by imposing an unpopular queen over their favored king, he ignites Alexandria. Now Cleopatra finds herself trapped beside Caesar in the palace, with militias and her brother’s army at the gates.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 52-53, 95.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
Her sister Arsinoë is watching. She has spent her life in Cleopatra’s shadow. Now she sees an opening. She slips out of the palace and finds her brother’s general.
Drama added from discussion between Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, author of Adventures in Time: Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile (Penguin, 2023), in:
#The Rest is History Podcast, Episode 196: Julius Caesar & Cleopatra.
https://podscripts.co/podcasts/the-rest-is-history/196-julius-caesar-cleopatra
She steps forward as a new alternative: a queen untouched by Rome. Soldiers roar her name and with the army at her back, she drives the siege for four months. Cleopatra feels the walls closing in: if Caesar falls, she falls with him. At last, Roman reinforcements break through from the east and the city surrenders. Ptolemy tries to flee across the Nile but drowns, while Arsinoë is captured. Cleopatra rules again beside her youngest brother, another Ptolemy, a boy of 13. Without advisors at his side, he is no threat to Cleopatra for now.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 96-98.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
When Caesar departs for Syria, he takes Arsinoë as a prisoner, leaving Cleopatra with three Roman legions to keep the peace, and a newborn son. Little Caesarion becomes her strongest card to legitimize her alliance with Rome.
The dates of Caesar’s journey to Syria are still discussed as is his method of transport. But it is likely he took a boat for at least part of the journey:
#Louis E. Lord, The Date of Julius Caesar's Departure from Alexandria, The Journal of Roman Studies 28 (1938) pp. 19-40.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/296901
#Luciana Canfora, Julius Caesar: The people’s dictator (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) pg. 222
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r26rr
#Fabian Udoh, To Caesar what is Caesar’s: Tribute, taxes, and imperial administration in early Roman Palestine (Brown Judaic Studies, 2020) pg. 34.
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/75385/
According to Tysdesley, the birth date of Caesarion is not certain. See also, Strauss:
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 98.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 12
#Stanley Burstein, The reign of Cleopatra (Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 104-105.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/reign-of-cleopatra-9780313325274/
And with her rival siblings silenced, dead or in chains, she finally stands as the undisputed queen.
Here, Tyldesley sites: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 42: 44, translated by Earnest Cary:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/cassius_dio/42*.html
Part 2 – The Frenemy
But her alliance with Caesar isn’t the shortcut to power in Rome she hoped for. When she visits him with their son, the welcome is cold. Caesar’s enemies say that she is pulling him towards monarchy and away from Roman values. And at his triumph, instead of executing her sister Arsinoë as promised, he yields to the crowd’s pleas and spares her, sending her into exile. Cleopatra starts resenting Rome but neither of them see what’s coming next.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 104.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
On March 15th 44 BCE, Caesar is assassinated. Now everything rests on their son. If he is named heir, her alliance with Rome survives. If not, she is alone in hostile territory. When the will is read, Caesarion’s name is nowhere to be found. Yet another betrayal. With clenched teeth, she sails back to Alexandria and secures her rule first.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 11.
Like with Cleopatra’s life, according to Andrew Lintott: “Most of the main accounts of Caesar’s assassination, as of his reforms and projects, were composed at least 150 years after the event by people for whom the rule of the emperors was inevitable and the best government possible, the murdered dictator being the hero-founder of the government.”
#Andrew Lintott, The Assassination, in: A companion to Julius Caesar, edited by Mirian Griffin (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 72-82.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444308440
She executes her remaining teenage brother, replacing him with the 3 -year-old Caesarion.
Ptolemy XIV was surely dead by August 44 BCE:
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 108.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
Drama about Ptolemy XIV’s murder was added from discussion between Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, author of Adventures in Time: Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile (Penguin, 2023), in: #The Rest is History Podcast, Episode 196: Julius Caesar & Cleopatra.
https://podscripts.co/podcasts/the-rest-is-history/196-julius-caesar-cleopatra
But the threat from Rome doesn’t go away. By 42 BCE the Republic fractures between two men who are co-rulers on paper and rivals in everything else. Caesar's great-nephew Octavian takes the West and Caesar’s favourite general Mark Antony takes the East. Antony now controls Egypt's fate, which makes him Cleopatra’s enemy. And possibly her solution.
Apart from Octavian in the West and Antony in the East, Lepidus was given rule over Spain and North Africa:
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 143-144.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Keith Linley, Antony and Cleopatra in Context (Anthem Press, 2015), pg. 9.
https://anthempress.com/books/antony-and-cleopatra-in-context-pb
Mark Antony is a full-blown Roman hunk: broad, bearded and claims Hercules as his ancestor. Recently married, he still has a reputation as a womanizer. In 41 BCE, he summons Cleopatra to secure resources for his next military campaign. If Antony assumes he will control the encounter, he is mistaken. Cleopatra arrives on a gilded ship with purple sails, a living vision of the goddess Isis.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 146-149.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 15, 30.
Note: While Tyldesley describes that Cleopatra was dressed as the goddess Isis, Strauss writes she identified as both Isis and Aphrodite. Harders also leaves it open:
#Ann-Cathrin Harders, Kleopatra: Ägyptens letzte Königen (C.H. Beck, 2025), pg. 67.
(source in German–we are a German company, remember?)
She keeps him waiting, declines his dinner invitation and instead welcomes him on her own ship. Caesar may have restored her throne but with him dead, she must win Roman backing again. By morning, the outlines of their alliance are in place and a power couple emerges.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 149.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 32.
Strauss cites: Plutarch, Antony 26.3-4, https://lexundria.com/plut_ant/26/prr
Her first request is personal: Arsinoë must finally die. She’s risen as a rival queen before and Cleopatra won’t let it happen again. Antony’s men storm the Temple of Artemis, where Arsinoë lives under Roman protection, drag her from sanctuary and execute her. Satisfied, Cleopatra opens Egypt’s treasury and sends fleets to fund Antony’s eastern campaigns. And when she asks for territory, he grants her vast stretches of the eastern Mediterranean. She gives birth to their twins, sealing their alliance with a bloodline. Cleopatra is already thinking beyond Egypt, towards a dynasty that could unite her world with Rome forever.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 154-165 & 162.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 32.
Antony too is riding high. He launches an invasion of the Parthian empire sprawling across what is now Iran, the one enemy Rome has never conquered. It is meant to be his defining triumph. Instead it becomes a catastrophe. He loses a quarter of his army and limps back to Syria for the winter, with his remaining sick and unpaid soldiers, he turns to Cleopatra for help. But she calculates if he is still worth the risk. His rival co-ruler Octavian is far more successful in the west, mounting his victories by the month. When she finally joins Antony a few months later, Cleopatra brings warm clothes and food but not the silver to pay his troops. She’s hedging her bets. Antony can still win his war. But if he doesn't, she cannot go down with him.
While Tyldesley write that Antony lost two-fifths of his army, Strauss reports a quarter. We went with Strauss’s number.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pg. 164.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 66, 70-74.
Next year, Antony strikes east again and takes Armenia. Flushed with victory, he decides to display his power and his devotion to Cleopatra with a grand ceremony in Alexandria. He crowns her Queen of Kings and grants their children rule over Roman territories and proclaims Caesarion the true son and heir of Julius Caesar - the King of Kings.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 167-169.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 79.
For Cleopatra, it’s the strongest Roman endorsement she has ever secured. But it’s only empty words unless Antony defeats Octavian. And now he has made open war between them inevitable.
#Goltz Huzar, Mark Antony: A biography (University of Minnesota Press, 1978) pg. 209
https://www-1jstor-1org-1se3v2a9e0a9d.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsccd
Part 2 – The Cold-Blooded Equal
Octavian, like Cleopatra, understands that image is everything. He paints himself as the son of Apollo, the voice of youth and reason, against the impulsive Antony who he absolutely loathes. The wife Antony abandoned for Cleopatra was Octavian's own sister, whom he had married to secure an alliance. And Antony's public recognition of Caesarion as Caesar's true son was an even deeper insult: a personal threat to his power and status as Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son, officially his closest living kin. Octavian’s smear campaign against Antony writes itself: weakened and bewitched by an eastern queen. It is the same old slander again and Octavian knows how to exploit it.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 48, 91-99.
In 32 BCE, Octavian unleashes a propaganda assault. He seizes Antony’s will and has its most scandalous part read before the Senate: Antony wishes to be buried in Alexandria, beside Cleopatra. One of Rome’s greatest generals has given his afterlife to an eastern queen. But Rome cannot afford another civil war, so Octavian plays this very smartly: he declares war on Cleopatra instead of Antony. This recasts their internal struggle as a campaign against a foreign queen. And if Octavian wins, he can destroy two enemies at once.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 83-99.
When war is declared, Cleopatra is ready. Across the Ionian Sea in the Gulf of Actium, she and Mark Antony survey an armada of 230 warships, each designed to carry 300 oarsmen and 120 marines. Cleopatra has supplied a quarter of the ships, all provisions and nearly 700 tonnes of silver to pay the troops. Antony's large army stands on a flat strip of land guarding the narrow entrance to the gulf. But what looked like a strong defensive position is turning into a year-long trap. In the marshes, malaria starts killing soldiers before battle even begins.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 84-85, 157, 177.
#Stanley Burstein, The reign of Cleopatra (Greenwood Press, 2004), pg. 117-121.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/reign-of-cleopatra-9780313325274/
Cleopatra is brutally practical: don’t fight a battle you can’t win. Load the treasury, break the blockade, retreat to Egypt and regroup. The war isn’t over while resources remain. On September 2, the fleets finally clash. Behind Antony’s formation, Cleopatra commands a separate squadron of sixty ships loaded with the royal treasury and ready to run. As the afternoon wind rises and the battle turns against them, she’s ready to carry out the plan they had agreed on. Cleopatra ships surge forward and break through Antony’s line toward the open sea. Antony’s flagship follows close behind. The remaining fleet attempts to break out as well, but Octavian captures and sinks most of them. He wins the battle and now only needs two things to win the war: Egypt’s treasury to pay his troops and Cleopatra in chains.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 170-177, 195-198, 213.
Part 3 – The Final Face-Off
For months, Cleopatra and Antony try to cut a deal with Octavian from Alexandria, but it all falls apart. Then, almost a year after the sea battle, Octavian’s army reaches Alexandria. Cleopatra retreats into her mausoleum, locking herself in with her treasure and stacks of firewood. If Octavian tries to take Egypt’s wealth, he will have to watch it burn.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 182-184.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 236-237.
She hears shouting outside and braces herself. This is it, the end has arrived. But instead of Octavian, Antony’s servants burst in, carrying him inside. He thought she was dead and stabbed himself. Cleopatra catches him as he collapses. Her last powerful ally and the father of her children dies in her arms. She barely has time for tears before Octavian’s soldiers seize her and take her to the palace to face her nemesis.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 186-187.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pg. 246.
Octavian lets her think she will be spared but Cleopatra sees through it. She knows she won’t survive. Sixteen years ago her sister was dragged through Rome. This time, the shackles will bite into her own skin, the jeers ringing in her ears. “I will not be paraded in triumph!” she says.
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 253-254.
Refusing to become a pawn, she chooses her own death. On August 10th 30 BCE, Cleopatra dies alongside two loyal handmaidens. Rumours begin almost immediately: poison, snakebite or even murder on Octavian’s orders. Her tomb has never been found and none of Cleopatra’s own words about her life remains.
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 191-196, 209.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, Cleopatra’s Final Exit, Blog Entry from August 2, 2023.
https://barrystrauss.com/cleopatras-final-exit/
Poisons and snake venom were a common form of execution during Cleopatra’s reign:
Everything we know of her story comes from Roman writers, the voices of those who defeated her. Rome’s accounts focus on her beauty and seduction but even in these, she emerges as a formidable strategist and stateswoman. She overcame many enemies but the one who finally destroyed her was unafraid to fight cold and dirty. Octavian’s propaganda turned Cleopatra into a foreign threat to overcome a crisis at home and consolidate his power, a strategy that feels strikingly modern. But every attempt to erase her only made her more persistent. Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, is still its most famous ruler to this day.
As mentioned above about the assassination of Caesar, sources about his period are rare and one-sided. From Tyldesley, pg. 209:
"But history, in Rome, was not the strict discipline that it is (or should be) today. Sparse historical ‘facts’ were woven into a coherent narrative with large helpings of personal opinion and guesswork. Stories were selected in order to make a moral or political point. And, of course,the Roman historians concentrated on Cleopatra’s interaction with the Roman world while ignoring her life in Egypt. The two most influential of Cleopatra’s ‘biographers’ are Plutarch and Dio; from their works come the Cleopatras described by later classical authors. The Roman writer Suetonius and the somewhat unreliable Alexandrian Greek Appian add further to Cleopatra’s tale."
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008) pp. 206-209.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
#Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022) pp. 98, 259.
#Eve MacDonald, The fake news that sealed the fate of Antony and Cleopatra, The Conversation, January 13, 2017.
https://theconversation.com/the-fake-news-that-sealed-the-fate-of-antony-and-cleopatra-71287
The material in our story on The Battle of Actium is drawn mainly from:
Barry Strauss, The war that made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleoptra, and Octavian at Actium (Simon and Schuster, 2022).
We didn’t find much criticism in reviews of this book. Other historians write that Strauss reconstructs the Battle of Actium in a new way, concentrating on the breakout of Antony and Cleopatra’s ships we used in our story instead of the battle itself. He also does not rely on the common sexualized images of Cleopatra and instead shows her intelligence, demeanor, and ability as a strategist. Less well-known characters like Octavia and Caesorion play a larger role in Strauss’s version of events and the descriptions of economics and trade show what life was actually like in ancient Egypt. In a more critical take, one historian remarks the book is clearly pro-Cleopatra and pro-Antony and told from a “Western” perspective. The critic also highlights some passages where Strauss speculates on the past, for example when he writes that Antony was a “great man.” (What is “a great man,” anyway?)
Peggy Kurkowski, A seminal battle is brought brilliantly to life, book review in: Washington Independent Review of Books, May 4, 2022.
Francisco Miguel Ortiz Delgado, book Review: in Revista de Historia Universal, 32 (2025).
Review is in English: https://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs3/index.php/revhistuniv/article/view/9683/8289
Jonathan Eaton, book review in: Journal of Classics Teaching, 24 (2022) pg. 189.
Inspiration for the characters and setting in our story also came from:
#Joyce Tyldesley, Cleoptra: Last queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008).
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra/9780786731633/
This book also received positive reactions. Other historians note how often Tyldesley confronts the image of Cleopatra as a “beguiling” historical figure and instead of her emotion and physical charm, puts her political and social prowess on display. Her book is a good start for a discussion on why these stereotypes persist today and tries to put Cleopatra back in her Egyptian context.
Book review in: Kirkus, A satisfying blend of historical fact and strong, informed opinion about one of history’s most captivating figures.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joyce-tyldesley/cleopatra-3/
Susan Stephens, Book review in: Common Knowledge, 16 (2010) pg. 294
https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2009-103
Mario Ruiz, book review in: The Historian, 72 (2010) pp. 192-193.