This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Bachelor.

A new book to tell the story of Caesar is dead.

Mark Antony, the speech the funeral galvanizes Rome.

However, there is a young man listening into all of these events named Octavian.

And from the death of Caesar until the rise of Augustus, aka Octavian,

there is a battle between Romans that involves the Queen of Egypt, the Queen of the

Talaamic Empire, Cleopatra.

A new book, the war that made the Roman Empire, Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium.

Barry Strauss, I welcome him, he's the Beaumard Chair of Humanistic Studies at Cornell University.

He is also my guide on these matters because I do not have the classical languages.

Barry does, and he can help us understand moving between the Greek historians and the Roman historians to remember these events.

Barry, congratulations and a very good evening to you.

The first thing we must attend to is the source of these reports of this drama between these three.

The Antony, Octavian and Cleopatra, who left us the notes that you're working from.

Good evening to you, Barry.

Good evening, John. Thanks very much for inviting me to speak to you.

So, an answer to your question, the first source that we turn to is Plutarch.

Plutarch, a Greek living more than a century after the events that are recounted here.

His life of Antony is our best single source for these events.

And then secondly, a later writer, Cassius Dio, another Greek, he's from E.J. Minor.

He is a senator, a Roman senator, and he's living even later, so around the year, 200.

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