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The Tarsus Gambit: How Cleopatra Turned a Summons Into Power
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In 41 BCE, Mark Antony summoned Cleopatra to answer for her loyalties — she arrived as a goddess and left as his equal. This episode unpacks the political architecture behind the most famous alliance in ancient history.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's what most people get wrong about Cleopatra and Mark Antony. They picture a love story.
Antony had summoned her. After Caesar's assassination, Rome's power had been divided between Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus through the Second Triumvirate.
What they built together in Alexandria went beyond hospitality and celebration. Though celebration was very much part of it.
Antony's situation was never simple. He was a Roman general operating inside Roman politics, and Roman politics had rules about where your loyalties were supposed to lie.
There's a moment in this period worth holding onto. Caesar and Cleopatra had sailed together up the Nile years earlier, in forty-seven BCE, aboard a massive royal barge.
By thirty-one BCE, the confrontation between Octavian and the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra was no longer avoidable. Octavian had formally declared war, not on Antony, but on Cleopatra.
Cleopatra's reign is sometimes told as a tragedy of love. That framing serves some purposes, but it obscures what she actually accomplished.
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