The narrator's speaks English with an accent.
Was Cleopatra One Of History's Biggest Killers? Portrait Of A Killer (Ancient Egypt Documentary)
Posted on 04/01/2019 7:22:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new study of a monument built in Greece near the city of Nicopolis to commemorate Octavian’s victory over Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, in the Ionian Sea at the Battle of Actium has provided new information about Cleopatra’s fleet of warships, according to a report in The Independent. The monument once featured bronze battering rams set in well-fitted niches that had been taken from 35 of the 350 ships captured by Octavian during the battle. Recent excavation and measurement of those niches has allowed archaeologists to calculate the size of the timbers that held the rams and the ships together, and therefore estimate the size of the ships. The largest ship may have been more than 130 feet long and carried rams about five feet tall and eight feet long, or at least four times the size of the largest-known ancient marine battering rams. “Both historically and archaeologically, this remarkable Roman structure is of tremendous international importance -- and continuing research is likely to shed yet more light on the battle that gave birth to the Roman Empire,” said Konstantinos Zachos of the Greek Ministry of Culture. The rams are thought to have been removed from the monument and melted down for reuse by the fourth or fifth century A.D.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
Me, too.
I can’t say for certain but at one time Syria and other lands on the northern shores of the Mediterranean had huge forests. Up river on the Nile is a good possibility too. The river would have made a perfect highway for rafting timber down.
She also had huge.....tracts of land.
L
There's so many different modern versions of how the battle was fought, I've concluded that most, perhaps all, are pulled out of the respective authors' asses. My guess is, the 100 or so ships Mark 'n' Cleo pulled out of the battle line were intended to head for Brundisium (modern Brindisi), troops were to disembark there, and march right up the Appian Way to Rome.
It's also perfectly possible that the naval battle turned hard against their forces, and they ran for it, and as seems to have been the case all day, did a poor job at signaling the orders to the rest of the fleet.
Regardless, the wind was blowing from the north (this is in most of the accounts) leaving them but one option. As Cleo's old rivals (like Herod) turned on them, in favor of Octavian, they were just sitting in Alexandria waiting for the end.
Politically, Octavian was a damned sight smarter than the two of them put together, and while there is no way to ever get verification on this, I think he probably did his best to maneuver everyone into the desired outcome and in the right order and had good fortune that the timing all worked out. He'd gotten ships from Antony to deal with piracy in the west, and had never returned them, and had also delayed (and ultimately never sent) the legions promised for Antony's tangle with the Parthians.
When Sextus Pompey (believed to be the last of Pompey the Great''s surviving sons) finally succumbed after ruling Sicily for years, Lepidus wound up getting into a dispute with Octavian over territorial assignments, and was greatly surprised by the defection of most of his troops in Sicily to his fellow triumvir. Lepidus had saved a lot of people's bacon over his career, but it was then over. Sextus Pompey had beaten Octavian at sea, then lost to Agrippa on land, and was finished off and forced to flee to the east by Lepidus -- but no matter. Octavian was on a path that required the removal of all rivals.
Lepidus had had a closer relationship with Antony; he'd also apparently given troops to his fellow triumvirs for the Battle of Philippi, but didn't go himself, in order to avoid drawing his sword on Brutus and Cassius, his brothers-in-law. Apparently he did a good job administering Rome in the absence of Octavian and Antony.
Octavian needed to declare war. He had probably prepared it for some time: in the preceding years, he had annexed Dalmatia, which would offer him a land road from Italy and Gaul to the Balkans, and was almost certainly a preliminary to a war against Antony... Antony's plan was to cross to Italy, but his advance was halted when Octavian sailed to the east with about 100 ships and landed in Dalmatia. At the same time, Octavian's trusted right-hand man Agrippa sailed to the western Peloponnese with 300 war galleys, and occupied several positions. This manoeuver cut off Antony's line of communication and made it difficult to supply his immense army. Having done this, Agrippa sailed to the north, established another important base at Patras, and finally joined Octavian... The Greek historian Cassius Dio offers a terrible description of the way in which the ships from Italy, which were lighter and easier to turn, attacked the large galleys from the east; with catapults, torches were shot to the ships of Antony, and in the end, his fleet burned to destruction. [Dio, Roman History 50.32-35.] ...Antony's legionaries immediately surrendered to Octavian. [Actium (31 BCE) | Jona Lendering | Livius.org]
She got those large ships on sail.
Hard drinkin' can do that to people...
She's no longer in the dating pool, of course. She was reputedly the best at giving, uh, what we might call the Presidential treatment, in the ancient world, btw.
A loaf of wine, a jug of bread, and, wait a second...
Yes, but she was the brains of the operation...
:^) I think she was given a lot of the blame, was looked on as some kind of manipulative witch, but the reality is, she wasn't a popular monarch, was put up as the puppet ruler by Julius Caesar, and kept in power at the whim of Rome, until Rome was run by Octavian.
And she was a very bad influence on him...
That was her main appeal -- plus, she gave him children, they got married off into some of Rome's finer families, thus Marc & Cleo's living descendants are probably quite numerous (and completely unaware of it), given the length of time involved.
You win.
L
Was Cleopatra One Of History's Biggest Killers? Portrait Of A Killer (Ancient Egypt Documentary)
I'm not sure it's either/oar....
There’s a barge in that hieroglyph? I still can’t see it!
Is a barge in that hieroglyph, or are they just happy to see her?
And I said to her “Hey, baby, wanna come back to my pyramid and see my hundred foot high stone inscriptions?”
She just laughed and said “I wouldn’t be caught dead in your pyramid.”
Cleopatra's mummy has never been found, but people who research that kind of thing are not wrapped too tight.
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