The Donations of Alexandria Ceremony

This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm not with you, o? Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshherers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. Welcome to the History Extra podcast We often think of Cleopatra as a bewitching beauty who used her feminine wiles to get to the top. Was that really the case And what other skills and qualities did she have In today's third installment of our four part Sunday series on the Life and Times of Cleopatra, I'll be tackling these questions with my expert guest, Professor Islam Isa from Birmingham City University He's an author and broadcaster whose books include Alexandria, The City That Changed the World, and the pererfect person to help us get a sense of the realal Cleopatra. Islam, thank you so much for being with us again. In our third episode, we're going to be exploring a particular aspect of Cleopatra and that's her as a leader and trying to reframe the narrative around her strengths and her skills. that role. I'd like to start today's episode with one of the most famous dates in all of ancient history, which is the fifteenth of March forty four BC which is of course the moment when Julius Caesar was assassinated. So fill us in on the lead up to this and to Center Cleopatra in this story. Where had Clear patchra been in the months and the years leading up to this point And what was the relationship now like between these two figures Yeah, thinking about such a monumental event in world history. One of the most famous deaths in world history, Julius Caesar Before that, of course, they've had their relationship. She's had a child, Caesarean, Little Caesar whom Caesar of course, is not really recognizing as his child but who is really championed as a kind of phharaoh figure in Egypt by Cleopatra There are certain aspects of their relationship that are less well known. Caesar does erect a bronze statue of Cleopatra as a goddess in Rome. That's a very bold move because the Romans let's say wanted to keep that kind of statue for their own divine figures. And also they tended to put statues of people who'd left this world, not people who are still in it. Cleopatra in turn, begins constructing a building in Alexandria called the Caesareium in a prime spot on the harbour to honor Julius Caesar. So they' doing these littleittle moves, big moves maybe to honor each other and they're quite public and they're very sort of brazen But Cleopatra is essentially commuting between Alexandria and Rome by this time She's spending a lot of time in Rome She's staying in a suburban park villa in Rome We know, for example Caesar seeks her support or let's say Alexandria's support in the calendar reforms, because there was a calendar that was made in the research Center at the Library of Alexandria that actually is the first to account for Lapiers. So Lapiers basically invented in Alexandria But when it was introduced by early Atolemies in Egypt 's not welcomed by the Egyptian priests because they have their own traditions and they fear that this calendar reform is going to change the Egyptian traditions. When Caesar comes along, he actually decides to use that calendar reforms. So Alexandrians, through Cleopatra are sent to Rome to create the calendar reforms for him and that's how we get the Julian calendar. that's going to be ever so slightly tweaked to become the Gregorian calendar I had no idea about that contact. That's really interesting. Those the kinds of influences that Alexandria has now that Rome has access to the knowledge that's coming out of Alexandria, because the library is still operating, the research center and so on Albeit not quite as extensively as it was with her grandparents, but the knowledge is still there And there's an interesting letter where Cicero who's a statesman and a writer, he writes the clip after was arrogant because she didn't bring him the books that he requested So what we get from that is actually An indication that the Romans were asking Cleopatra to bring knowledge with her books with her from Alexandria. It's interesting that even at this point that is what this city is associated with knowledge. It's a real powerhouse still of knowledge and of books. It's interesting because it's a knowledge hub, and knowledge capital, but it's also seen as a place of excess and a place where people are frivolous and They're like foodies and they're very liberal because there's lots of different religions there and the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews. So it's also looked down upon in some way there's a bit of a contrasting image going on here. It is a knowledge capital that they can benefit from. And it's also a very different, foreign place And Cleopatra is therefore a foreigner. And that's really interesting because we' talked there about the way these cultures were perceived Did that map onto the way in which these two individuals were perceived and how they saw each other, even at this point I would say that they needed each other in some way Caesar was benefiting, as we've said, from Cleopatra in ways that we might not originally have thought of like these knowledge reforms that he's trying to carry out in Rome. She's benefiting from him as an ally. and bytlemic, standards this is relatively stable. Her siblings are not attacking her There's no usurpation. There's no protests in Egypt. So it's relative stability and she probably has Rome to thank for that in some partart least But he's still not recognizing Caesarean as their son that's probably a key factor. So to return us to the moment at which Julius Caesar is assassinated Where is Cleopatra? and do we know what she was doing in the lead up to this pretty seismic event? What we do know is that Cleopatra couldn't see an obvious air Let's say. and nobody knew quite who the air would be should Caesar die? And what we do know is that Cleopatra waits in Rome to find out who the heir is. That's quite an important detail. She's not just hanging around in Alexandria in Rome, trying to find out who the heir is Don't anticipate that she's just gone to Rome to sit there and hang out. probably making moves to try and ensure that her son Caesarean, littleittle Cesar. is the air to the Roman Republic. So I think that says a lot. the fact that she's that she's she goes to Rome and she she wants to ensure Caesarean has this new role. So she might not have been aware of the wider political machinations that were going on But she was looking after her own interests and had her own agenda that she was trying to make sure came into force. Yeah and when you think about it, it's a long time in the making, it's a serious endeavour to become an ally with Caesar to Basically rule the Ptolemic dynasty alone to have a child with Caesar I mean, that's quite the long game. And in some ways, history could have been very different for Egypt and Cleopatrra as well had Caesar not been assassinated. Who knows? we don't often think of it in these terms, but if he'd have lived another ten, twenty years. Would he have been convinced to recognize his arean Maybe Cleopatra would would have worked her magic and that would have happened. and we' have had a very different World History But instead it is at the end of the day, unexpected ccurrence. Yes, there were people who disliked Caesar and he did upset his Senate and the rest of it But it's still an outlandish event, isn't it, the assassination? These are shifting sands and what Cleopatra seems like she's doing is trying to react shrewdly to them as they evolve, even if she herself didn't know that he was going to be assassinated or didn't know what might happen next. Is that fair to say? It is fair to say, but I'd add to that that she's playing a long game. I don't think that necessarily plan was complete yet and the assassination changed the landscape of that plan. and it makes sense for her to think that Caesarean had a good chance of being there Just to clarify, if he was to become heir as was her plan What would he have been heir of? What would he have been the figurehead of, if you like? I think at that stage, it would be the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic. empire in the same way that he's Caesar, Cleopatra, Rome, Egypt He would be leader of the Romans and leader of the Egyptians. It's almost unimaginable, as I say it. In a previous episode, you refer to him as being almost like a super baby. and that really gets over the extent to which this would have been a huge undertaking. And the extent to which she's thinking outside the box, we often don't give her the credit for thinking outside the box in that way It's an outlandish idea. It's a kind of wild card, isn't it? If she pulls it off, she's really pulled something off, but there's a huge risk The risk factor is great, but the reward could have been unimaginable big moves on a massive stage, what were the repercussions of Caesar's assassination? Well, he seems to have left Rome airless initially And that's why Cleopatra is in Rome waiting to see if her plan has worked His only daughter had died He was married to Calpurnia and hadn't had any children with Calpurnia It made sense that there was a chance for her son to be heir But he'd actually left a will naming Octavian who's his grand nephew Okay's air. It's not the most immediate We often say nepw. But we it's actually grand nephew, like It's not the most immediately obvious heir. Okay. And so as far as the repercussions are concerned for Cleopatra, within a month of Caesar's death, she is back in Alexandria It's a very difficult situation for her to be in Rome now. She's back in Alexandria. She has to take care of domestic issues. She maybe has to regroup and replant An Octavian who you mentioned there, who will go on to become really important Other than being grandnephew, What is his role at this point in the story? Well, Octavian at this point in the story has been been on Caesar's side But he's also still a teenager. That's something people don't notice. So Octavian is a teenager. He's been on Caesar's side. He's had political training, he's had military training but he's a young aspiring candidate for the role, let's say. You spoke in a previous episode about the perilous financial situation in which Egypt found itself which is an idea I'd like to return to at this point How important a factor was it that Egypt was virtually on the verge of bankruptcy, I think I'm right in saying when Cleopatra came to the throne. This is Her father's ineeptitude. So her father was taking loans from Rome He was using those loans to bribe Roman officials or to win them over for military campaigns and that kind of thing. So she inherits what in today's money would be about billion pounds of debt So she's already inferior to Rome as a result. So there's a political thing, not just an economic thing going on here because it sets the hierarchy against her, It's not in her favour. But then she's also got to deal with the raised taxes that her father had put in place because he needed to get that money. raised prices as well. So Alexandria in Egypt are more expensive than they used to be. She's also unlucky in the sense that nature is not to operating, let's say So there's a drought, the annual Now flooding has coming at a lower level than usual that year as well. And just to fill us in on this detail, she's returned to Alexandria after Caesar was assassinated In what capacity has she returnered? Is she now quQeen outright or is she ruling with somebody else, what's the situation there? She very much is Queeness, right? Her young son is also nominally ruler as well she's got huge powers and There's an interesting document signed by her in her hand about attacks issue where she signs let it be done along those lines So she's obviously involved day to day running of the country. She's not just like an image pets or in some bubble. She seems like she's very involved. And this feels like a really good point at which to pause and to consider her as a leader, What do you think her economic and political strategies were and her skills at diplomacy. Well, we've seen some of those skills at diplomacy already in the way that she's dealing with Rome. Economically, with the rising prices, she does something very interesting. Alexandria has been minting its own coins for some time They often have very relevant images on them actually And like the local temple, the god Sarapis who was championed by her ancestors and so on, the Pharos lightighthouse, which was an ancient wonder of the world. But what she does is she reduces the silver and bronze content in the coins So what she's doing is she's creating more emphasis on the nominal value of the coin rather than the actual, what would you call it material Yeah value of the coin. And that's a smart move because it means that they can mint more coins that are worth more while actually costing them less as a government So that nominal rather than tangible value, I think is a good move. She increases the production of bronze coins which means that there's more circulation of lower denomination coins So that's the intention behind that is for prices to drop. For confidence of people I don't know if you remember there was a phase government ago where they thought of cancelling the one P in two P. I remember this. Yes.es And there was a symbolic outcry because it's like you're saying that life is now more expensive. Some people don't need one and two pe coins. It was seen as a kind of elitist to do. So she does the opposite of that. She increases the bronze coins in circulation and What she also does is she puts her face on them. Now, many of her ancestors didn't do that. They put their face on the silver coins At least they're worth more, but she's saying I'm a queen for the people. So my face is on the bronze coins as well. so in your day to day you encounter this queen who's trying to make life more affordable when you're buying you know bread or whatever staple you're buying as an Egyptian at that time I'm so struck again, here in this part of the story at how important ability to understand the power of image and symbolism was to leadership in this era and Cleopatra's ability to navigate those curs. And she's able to do that. Be of the kinds of things that we talked about in earlier episodes about her upbringing as well. She's able to do that because she understands the importance of being Hellenistic and Egyptian And there's evidence actually that she repaired or approved the repair of synagogues in Alexandria. So She's even portraying herself as a queen for the Jewish population in Alexandria despite the fact that some of her ancestors persecuted Jewish people The vast majority the Ptolemies didn't They were phases where where that happenens So It's a fascinatingly broad, nuanced understanding of what it means to be a leader. Let's explore that some more then How did she use religion specifically to boost her power? The key thing she does is she presents herself as ISIS. queeneen as the goddess Isis She's the second Cleopatra to do that, but it's a very clever move because Isis is the goddess of L, fertility, sustenance All these things that are important to Egyptians at that time And dynasty at that time when it's being attacked when the prices are high The economic situation isn't as good and when the harvest isn't as good as it could be. there's another element to presenting yourself as ISIS, which is that ISIS. is the mother of Horus Now it's one of the most influential stories of the time for Egyptians, which is that setet kills and dismembers his brother, Osiris. and throws his pieces into the nile That story of the brother, the evil brother who tries to usurp which has a huge influence later on actually in the Old Testament, Cain and Ael Later on, you know we have Hamlet and Lion King and so on. So Isis does is she remains loyal to Osiris. manages to locate his different pieces them together like a puzzle. brings him back to life So she's a loyal And Osiris is in the Nile and's his blood is the essence of the Nile. So the Nile was the center of Egypt's prosperity when you think about the way that we see these Images of Egypt, which which was s pretty much a desert and it's all green in the ancient times. It's because of the Nile and obviously the Mediterranean, but the Nile is in many ways more important to ancient Egyptian culture. So she brings him back to life and they have their son, Horus. and Horus is a very influential important. God who's going to bring justice, especially against his uncle And so suddenly, if she's ISIS, who's Caesarean? Caesarean? Her son is Horus And then she can also be that mother goddess because she's looking after Horus. It's alist like her a miraculous mother who's doing it alone, kind of like preempting Mary in some ways, mother of Jesus,s this mother who does everything. who raises this holy child So it gives her legitimacy. gives Cesareian legitimacy And it also tells the Egyptian people priesthood that she's part of their culture. She's aligning herself with them. So we've got here her using currency, which you spoke about just then, and then also religion in an attempt to present or to shift a particular image of herself Do we get a sense of how the Egyptian population did see her and the extent to which these attempts were successful. I think the emphasis on religion made her popular that they saw her as somebody who understands their culture. She's respectful of both Egyptian and Greek culture. I've given an example of where she was seen as respectful to other cultures like the Jews of Alexandria. So I'd say she becomes a more popular queen. There's an element of stability and we have to think in relative terms. It's relative in relation to the previous Ptolemyies. The last few decades have been quite horrible. There's been prisings, there haveve been riots corruption. So Previous Ptolemies were seen as quite greedy. Some of them were seen as like having a lavish lifestyle while people struggled. They had, for example, what we today consider super yachts and that kind of thing So she's not going for that image She's somebody who understands all the different cultures who's putting Egypt's best interest first and I think to a large extent, That stability is welcome. She wasn't afraid though, to also be ruthless, and I think we can see that most strikingly, perhaps in the treatment of her sister Arsinwe What did she do because we've spoken about sibling rivalry in previous episodes What happened in this particular episode here and why is it important? Well, Arsinum was initially taken to Cyprus to rule there. That was Caesar's idea. Now, Cleopatra had already asked Caesar to kill her sister. I'm still not sure why she doesn't do it herself because she she she's obviously capable of it One thing that's intriguing is she doesn't seem to kill her siblings herself. She seems to ask other people to kill them But Caesar spared us Anway's life at the time and it's obviously still bothering her Patrass seen her older sister in the past usurp her father She knows all about the history of the Ptolemies and how sibling rivalry has really been quite lethal and changed the political landscape And she doesn't want to rest until her sister is gone. And so she doesn't do it herself. Caesar does it on her behalf. She does ask others to do it for her. Yeah and her sister will fittingly disappear. And I suppose this might be an impossible question. We've spoken a little bit in previous episodes as well about the extent to which these siblings fought with each other and the extent to which this was a family in which really This kind of rivalry was nothing new Do we get any sense of the emotional impact of these kinds of decisions? Not specifically on Cleopatra, perhaps, but on this family as a whole. I mean, there's just so much happening, isn't there? They are almost always in a state of Dysfunction. It's a very dysfunctional family, isn't it? Yes. It's a tough question. I think Cleopatra is certainly human and they're all human, they can't be otherwise. They've kind of normalized. this ridiculous behaviour and maybe she's become immune to those kinds of sensitivities when something so big as at stake as the Ttolemaic dynasty. So what's slightly ironic about Cleopatra, I guess, is that she's really concerned about keeping the Ptolemaic dynasty alive doing so, she has to get rid of other Ptolemies Yeah I'm not so sure that previous Ptolemies were quite so concerned about the dynasty as they were about themselves So again, that's that long game idea playing out here as well. It's a long game idea and we've seen with other ptolemies that they don't just kill there siblings, they kill their children, whatever it is to remain in power On this occasion, she's planned it a bit differently, but yes, whatever it is to remain in power. We should pause at this point and just check in on two figures who have been floating in and out of this story as we've told it. And that's Mark Antony and Octavian Can you reintroduce us to these two men what they're doing at this point and why it's important Octavian and Mark Antony are both on Caesar's side. That's probably the first thing we should mention because obviously Lots of people are not on Caesar's side, hence the assassination that took place in which many people contributed to Octavian has been He's trained he's a military man. he's politician in the making. he's still a teenager Mark Antony was a commoner Cleb as they would have said, and he has risen up the ranks to become an influential military man He was in fifty five BC when Cleopatra's father went back to Alexandria after his daughter had not Cleopatra had usurped his throne Mark Antony was leading that cavalry. Therach' fa. back into power at this stage Mark Antony is going to be almost forty at thirty nine when Caesar's assassinated. so he's couple of decades older Octavian he's obviously wielding power. He has an army at his disposal And what Mark Antony does is he quickly seizes the state's treasury and Caesar's widow, Calpurnia gives him possession of Caesar's properties Caesar's documents. So suddenly he's Paying the role of Caesar's app in a way that maybe Octavian isn't doing, but Octavian on paper is Caesar's heir Caesar's great nephew And that's intriguing because although Caesar's clear in his will that it's Octavian who's the heir Antony to me, is basically acting like he is the new seesason You get a real sense there of the shifting power play between these two men How did this play out, I suppose, specifically in the way in which it impacted on Cleopatra? So you have these two groups in Rome, esssentially, you have the group that's assassinated Caesar like Brutus most famously. And then you have the pro Caesar group which has both Anthony Octavian in it Cleopatra has to make a choice initially, who does she side with? Does she side with Cassius and the people who assassinated Caesar Or does she side with Caesar's people? That's actually a tougher decision than it sounds becausecause at that stage, there's a chance that actually Caesar's folk are going to lose power and maybe she should side with the people who assassinated him. I guess she makes the decision. to be loyal to Caesar, even in his death. That's my reading of it. because she picks the side of Antony and Octavian. Antony and Octavian are initially on the same side. And there are a couple of contexts that might explain why One of them is that Antony has a lot of fighters and he has made the error of promising them huge bonuses for their fighting, and he can't really afford those bonuses Interestingly, there's a kind of inversion here of the economic dynamic because Cleopatra is the one who's going to help fund Antony going forward Pompy who appears in the story is obviously dead, but his son is threatening to attack Alexandria. and he has a fleet of pirate ships around Sicily. So Cleopatra thinks or Antony's Navy can help protect me from him. So there's a kind of mutual benefit going on And it's for that reason, I think that she begins to side with Anthony. Also going back to your earlier question wanted someone to execute us in a way, her sister for her, and she thought that Anthony would be the right person to do that. So she asks him to do that as well And so it came to be that they needed one another And so she sides with Antony Octavian. Anntony needs money. Cleopatra needs protection byy the end of their meeting, They are allies. he's protecting her rule of Egypt She's helping fund him and they are in love. We're going to start to pull some of these threads together as we head into the final stretch of this episode to explore this evolving relationship between these three individuals a bit more What role do we see propaganda playing in how it changes over time? Well, the propaganda is rife for Octavian, certainly he's uncomfortable with Antony's position now that Antony seems to be spending a lot of time in Alexandria and a lot of time with Cleopatra So he doesn't quite trust what's happening there There's a rumor that begins Anntony wants to move the ittle The Roman capital to Alexandria That's something that will make him hugely unpopular I don't think it's true in any way That's one of the roomors that comes out it While we may think that the rumors are only about Cleopatra, th know they're actually about both There were also illustrations, engravings of them in very lewd positions together actually, Anntony and Cleopatra So this idea that they were sort of these sexual maniacs existed in their time. Why was that an important thing to have happened? Why were those images so powerful? The idea that Antony isn't putting Rome's best interest first, he's putting his own best interest first and he's coming to the beauty of this foreign woman This idea that this foreign woman can wield such power over two great Romans to heroes. Julius Caesar and Mark Antony must have been quite uncomfortable for some people And Octavian makes use of that. Could she do that She must be a witch or a seductress or An evil person. And so that's the kind of image that begins of Cleopatra at that time that she's sexually mad, that she's seductorous. and what's Almost bizarre is that two millennia later those have still had an influence on our perception of her today. It's like those propaganda images and thoughts have become so flattened into our image of her that we have trouble picking them apart even now, as you say all this time later. too such an extent that Octavian actually wrote about it. Octavian O obbviously a biased source, and he's one of the key sources for Plutarch a century later. And Plutarch is one of our key sources today about Cleopatra. He's a source that we've used in the podcast. He's a source that Shakespeare used for his play So it really was written by the enemy her history. And it was deliberately designed propaganda to shape the way in which she was seen and which he was seen. Yes, and like I said, not just Cleopatra, but this danger that Cleopatra is posing to the Romans through her relationship. with Mark Anntony. Mark Anntony said Again, I don't know this one I like to believe that he took off his, you know tunic and began wearing Alexandrian cloaks. I like to believe that because it's a nice image, but be a piece of propaganda as well. that's telling us, Oh, look in his attire, he's forgotten about his own culture and he's now part of Cleopatra's culture. So we have to be really careful when we're telling these stories and talking about these people that we're really conscious of the fact that a lot of what we think we know about them is a story written by someone else for a deliberate purpose. Yeah and and it's not written necessarily for the purpose of history or chronicling history. but rather political ends and even today, where we have political propaganda, political stories They can be very different to rigorous scholarly history, right And it's no different then because they are what we might call classical or ancient texts, we might assume that they are histories, whereas in reality they were very political texts and it's not just the case here, it's throughout the centuries that follow. But what's really striking to me about this particular time and place we're talking about here is how complicated and how sophisticated these techniques are and how skillful people need to be in order to make sense of them or to try to wrest back control of the narrative. It's difficult and we live in a time now where news travels so fast. where people's responses are so fast, politicians these days might put something on social media within a minute of an event happening So it's a different world, it's a fast moving world, but we also have access to lots of different perspectives through the web. kind of thing. So It's a different world. It's a world where you could control the narrative In a slower way, it takes longer for things to be debunked, for example. There is an element of s state censorship that we have to remember as well I'm not saying that that's only on the Roman side because Cleopatra herself was very careful about her own image. We've spoken about how she treat herself as the Godess IsSIS and that kind of thing So She's also careful about her image. maybe less of that survives. like we don't actually know what the anti Roman propaganda was because as we've said, Things like Ancient Alexandria Library of Alexandria much of Her city is under the modern city or under the water today So There's a chance as well that there was anti Roman propaganda, surely So let's foreground now, Alexandria as a place, as a place in time start talking about the ways in which it played a role, or it was the backdrop against which the final breakdown happened between Octavian and betweenween Mark Antony, what happened? Can you talk us through these pretty seismic events, I suppose. Yeah. So like we said, they initially are on the same site. They're the pro CSar group. There's a discomfort with the relationship that Anthony has with Cleopatra. She's assisting him, he's assisting her And then they have a battle Anthony wins separate to this that they begin to celebrate. So this is a battle between Anntthony and the Pons. Okay. yeah. they celebrate that kind of victory and also to an extent celebrating their relationship, I would say And they celebrate in Alexandria. Now Alexandria to ground things again People love the festival And still today, Alexandrians are a fun people They love the festival. And since the time of Tld me the First, Tld me the Second They had these huge festivals. The inventors from the research centre by the library created these floats, mechanical floats. wine would come out of them and milk and fountains and the first vending machines, by the way, in Alexandria. So you have these festivals. So I believe that when we think about this moment in time where Cleopat and Antony decide to have a festival celebrating their successes. We put it into the context of the Alexandrian people loving a festival. So their baseline is quite high already for wanting a good time. Yes. And so she's giving the people what they want also formalizing her relationship with Anthony. and the importance of her son again, Caesarean So in thirty four BC, we have this event that's known as donations of Alexandria The best way of explaining it is that it's a big celebration. It sounds very serious and it does have elements of a coronation, but we know Even in recent years, there's a coronation can also be a celebration. So they have that event. She dresses as Isis, the quQueen What's interesting is he dresses as Bakse I say it in the Egyptian way Bus because My family is from an area of Alexandria called Becz because he's such an important Jege God of wine and festivity to Alexandrians. I had no idea it was such an important figure. That's interesting. Yeah. So the fact that he dresses as B and that He kind of takes Macus as his patron deity. is probably unsettling to the Romans because Beacus remains the Greek god So they're dressed as IsSis and but course. they parade through the city They're sitting on golden thrones. It's a very extravagant show of their power of their relationship as well. They arrive at the gymnasium, which is where you'll have these big events and Cleopatra is then declared I love this phrase, Queen of Kings. She's the queen of kings. Why is she quQeen of Kings? Because her son, Caesarean. Little Caesar from Julius Caesar is King of Kings which is a very unsettling phrase for the Romans for Caesarean to be king of kings, especially because she's claiming that he is the son of this great Roman figure, Julius Caesar, whom some people venerate and some people hate. and she begins to distribute the territories of her dynasty to children, but the Roman Senate han't approved this distributing her Empire and having such a celebration the Romans reserved for their huge victories was something that the Romans didn't like. The Roman Senate hadn't approved that either of these things, they hadn't approved of the distribution of the land. They hadn't approved of these titles. they hadn't approved of such a ceremony And actually they were probably insulted that she was carrying out such a ceremony in that style outside of Rome And for what to them was a kind of non event. this was reserved for the biggest and most important victories Octavian, let say, seems to have interpreted this as a declaration of hostility It wasn't an innocent event as far as they were concerned It's at that moment actually that Octavian propaganda machine really does hit swwing And it's at that moment that Octavian probably makes the decision that he's going to venture to Alexandria and Athony and Cleopatra are going to have to face his full force And that is a big moment in this story and we're going to pick up on that and its implications and what happens next in our next episode. But for now Thank you so much again And thank you for listening to this third episode of our four part series on the life and Times of Cleopatra If you've enjoyed this episode and want to go beyond the podcast, you can visit the History Extra app where I've curreated a list of wider content that explores the life and afterlife of this fascinating figure You can find a link to that in the episode description