Hi there. My name is Derek, and you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast. Episode zero, beginning at the end the scene is set in the city of Alexandria in Egypt often thought to be the

most beautiful and sophisticated in the world at least the Mediterranean world of 30 BC

Cleopatra the 7th Philippatyr the Mediterranean world of 30 BC.

Cleopatra the 7th Philippatyr, the last queen of Egypt, and the last ruling member of her house, lay dead in her palace at the age of 39 years.

Her death, romanticized and brought to popular culture by the likes of artists such as William

Shakespeare and others too innumerable to count, and her legendary romantic escapades with the likes of Mark such as William Shakespeare and others too innumerable to count, and

her legendary romantic escapades with the likes of Mark Antony and Julius Caesar, are often

what comes to mind when people think of the name Cleopatra.

Those a bit more invested in history, often viewed in the context of the collapse of the Roman

Republic, and the rise of the Roman Empire under Antony

and Cleopatra's rival, Octavian Caesar, better known as Augustus, who would assume the title

of Princeps and absorb Egypt as a Roman province only a few years later. I have to admit, I myself

was prone to this line of thinking, and while it isn't incorrect to view her death in such a

manner, it often doesn't get the whole picture. Cleopatra's death not only marks the end of the

Roman Republic, but it also marks the end of her royal house, and a world order that stretched

back some 300 years prior. She was of a line of rulers known as the Ptolemies, founded by a Macedonian general

known as Ptolemy, son of Lagos, who had served under the banner of the greatest king Macedon

ever produced, Alexander the Great. Her death is often considered the end of what scholars like to

call the Hellenistic Age. But what exactly is the Hellenistic

age? Traditionally, what we classify as the Hellenistic Age is an artificial grouping of a period

of history covering the lands of Eurasia and North Africa from 323 to 30 BC, from the campaigns

and death of Alexander the Great to the subsequent demise of

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