The True Story Of ‘Antony And Cleopatra’ They’re arguably the most notorious suckers in history. Marcus Antonius of Rome stood at the peak of power fighting to be the most important man in the given world; and Cleopatra VII Philopator was the queen of one ancient civilization, Egypt, and heir at law at law at law to the unmatched artistic achievements of another, Greece.

Their love affair their war together their defeat and eventually their tone- murders have been told and retold for centuries. But ultimate of those retellings have been far from accurate, according to author and annalist Adrian Goldsworthy.

Goldsworthy, author of Antony and Cleopatra describes the couple’s true story and why so much of what we know about them is wrong.

Extract’ Antony And Cleopatra’

Antony and Cleopatra are notorious. With just a sprinkle of others including Caesar, Alexander the Great, Nero, Plato and Aristotle, they remain ménage names further than two thousand times after their spectacular tone- murders. Cleopatra is the only woman in the list which in itself is intriguing and a testament to her enduring appeal. Yet most constantly Antony and Cleopatra are flashed back as a couple, and as suckers– maybe the most notorious suckers from history.

Shakespeare’s play helped them to grow into fictional characters as well, and so their story can now be numbered alongside other tales of passionate but doomed love, as woeful as the homestretch of Romeo and Juliet. It’s unsurprising that the tale has been reinvented time after time in print on stage and, more lately, on screen. Since they both had explosively theatrical stripes this enduring fame would no doubt have pleased them although since neither was inclined to modesty it would presumably not have surprised them or sounded lower than their due.

The story is intensively dramatic and I can not flash back a time when I hadn’t heard of Antony and Cleopatra. As immature boys, my family and I discovered a small box containing coins collected by our father a man who had failed long before either of us was born. A friend spotted one of them as Roman and it proved to be a tableware denarius formed by Mark Antony to pay his dogfacesin31B.C. for a crusade incompletely funded by Cleopatra— the same coin shown in the snap section in this book.

Formerly interested in the ancient world the discovery added to my enthusiasm for all goods Roman. It sounded a connection not only with a grandparent but also with Marcus Antonius the Triumvir whose name circles the face of the coin with its picture of a warship. We don’t know where our father acquired this and the other coins– an miscellaneous admixture several of which are from the Middle East. He may have picked them up in Egypt where he served with the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. It’s fluently nice to suppose that.

So in some ways, Antony and Cleopatra have always had a special place in my interest in the ancient history, and yet the desire to write about them is fairly recent. A lot has been written utmost especially about the queen and it sounded doubtful that there could be much more worth saying. also a multitudinous times agene I fulfilled a long- held ambition by working on Caesar The Life of a Colossus, which amongst other goods involved looking in far further detail at his affair with Cleopatra, as well as Antony’s political association with him.

Some of what I set up surprised me and– though this was less unanticipated– there were vast differences to the popular print of the story. However, and to emphasize the mortal element in his own gets and that of his associates and opponents, it soon came clear that utmost other aspects of the period would profit from the same approach, If it was precious to look at Caesar’s career with a straightforward report.

For all their fame, Antony and Cleopatra admit little attention in formal study of the first century b. C Engaged in a power struggle, they were beaten and so had little real impact on after events. Academic history has long since developed a deep aversion to fastening on individualities no matter how attractive their personalities rather searching for ‘ more profound’ morning trends and explanations of events. As a pupil I took courses on the Fall of the Roman Republic and the creation of the Principe, and latterly on as a speaker I would contrive and educate analogous courses myself.

Training and studying time is always limited, and as a result it was natural to concentrate on Caesar and his absolutism before skipping ahead to look at Octavian/ Augustus and the creation of the proud system. The times from 44 – 31b. C, when Antony’s power was at its topmost infrequently admit anything like similar detailed treatment.

Ptolemaic Egypt is generally a more technical field, but, indeed when it’s included in a course, the reign of its last queen– inadequately proved and anyway in the last days of long decline– is infrequently treated in any detail. The fame of Cleopatra may attract scholars to the subject, but courses are fairly nicely and largely unconsciously structured to stress more ‘ serious’ motifs and flinch down from personalities.

Antony and Cleopatra did not change the world in any profound way, unlike Caesar and to an indeed lower extent Augustus. One ancient pen claimed that Caesar’s campaigns caused the death of one million people and the servitude of as multitudinous further. Whatever the provocation, he led his army to seize Rome by force, winning supreme power through civil war, and supplanted the Republic’s democratically tagged leaders.

Against this, Caesar was notorious for his charity. Throughout his career he supported social reform and aid to the poor in Rome, as well as trying to cover the rights of people in the businesses. Although he made himself oppressor, his rule was generally benevolent, and his measures sensible dealing with long- neglected problems. The path to power of his espoused son Augustus was vastly more vicious replacing charity with revenge.

Augustus’ power was won in civil war and maintained by force and yet he also ruled well. The Senate’s political freedom was nearly extinguished and popular choices rendered insignificant. At the same time he gave Rome a peace it had not known in nearly a century of political violence and created a system of government that served a far wider section of society than the old Republic.

Antony and Cleopatra proved themselves just as suitable of atrociousness and ruthlessness, but the disasters in a civil war do not get the chance to shape the future directly. piecemeal from that, there is no real trace of any long- held beliefs or causes on Antony’s part, no suggestion that he plodded for elevation for anything other than his own glory and profit. Some like to see Cleopatra as deeply wedded to the substance and welfare of her subjects, but this is largely wishful thinking.

There is no factual evidence to suggest that her enterprises went any further than icing a steady flux of taxation into her own hands, to cement her hold on power. For only a small part of her reign was she secure on the throne, at the head of a area monstrously dependent on

Roman goodwill, and it would presumably be unreasonable to anticipate her to have done further than this.

Julius Caesar was largely successful. He was also largely talented across a remarkable range of exertion. Indeed those who dislike the man and what he did can readily admire his gifts. Augustus is an indeed harder figure to like, especially as a youth, and yet no bone would fail to admit his truly remarkable political skill. Caesar and his espoused son were both truly clever, indeed if their characters were different. Mark Antony had none of their artfulness, and little trace of profound intelligence.

He tends to be liked in direct proportion to how important someone dislikes Octavian/ Augustus, but there is little about him to admire. rather, fictional descriptions have corroborated the propaganda of the 30sb. C, differing Antony, the bluff, passionate and simple soldier, with Octavian, seen as a cold- pedigreed, cowardly and designing political motorist. Neither description is true, but they continue to shape indeed scholarly accounts of these times.

Cleopatra was clever and well- educated, but unlike Caesar and Augustus the nature of her intelligence remains fugitive, and it’s truly hard to see how her mind worked or fairly assess her intellect. It’s the nature of bio that the author comes to develop a strong, and largely emotional, station towards his or her subject after spending several times studying them. nearly every modern author to come to the subject wants to admire, and constantly to like, Cleopatra. Some of this is a healthy response to the rabid hostility of Augustan sources.

Important has to do with her commerce, for as we noted at the launch, it’s a rare thing to be suitable to study in detail any woman from the Greco- Roman world. Novelty alone encourages sympathy– constantly corroborated by the same nausea for Augustus that powers affection for Antony. In itself sympathy need not count, as long as it does not encourage a distortion of the evidence to glamorize the queen.

There is much we simply do not know about both Antony and Cleopatra— and indeed most other figures from this period. The gaps should not be filled by confident assertions drawn from the author’s own internal picture of Cleopatra as she ought to have been.