CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel, continuing my conversation with Professor Toby Wilkinson, the Egyptologist.

His book is the last dynasty, ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra.

It is 44 BC, 44 AD, 44 BC, and Caesar is dead, assassinated by a cabal.

And the battle that will spill out with the triumvirate, the Troika of Octavian and including

Octavian, who is the adopted heir of Caesar, Julius Caesar, who at that point when he died was dictator of Rome,

the Roman Empire, and the master of the horse for Caesar's armies, Mark Antony. And they are

in pursuit of Caesar's killers. However, once that battle is settled, Mark Antony is assigned as a reward by Rome to supervise what was

the Egyptian Empire and is now understood by the Romans to be in their possession.

And he comes to Egypt to take control.

And now a scene that Shakespeare loves, everybody loves, and it turns out it was real.

Cleopatra heard that Mark Anthony was in Egypt, had arrived in Egypt, and she puts together an opera that we put

to music in the 21st century of her first meeting with Mark Anthony, the master of the horse,

who now has pretensions of being almost royal, because he's in partnership with Octavian,

who is royal, that is inherited Caesar's might.

Professor, again, this scene is impossible to believe, but it happened.

Now, she's had a couple of children by Caesar, and she's not a young woman anymore, not by their standards

of Egypt at the time, and yet she totally overwhelms Mark Anthony. How did she do that?

He really does. I mean, she, she deploys really an extraordinary set of skills to woo Mark Anthony.

She knows that he's a man who, a bit like Alexander the Great, now has pretensions of royalty,

perhaps even pretensions of divinity.

And she plays into his wishes.

She arrives to meet him not in a chariot, not on foot, but in a great

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