Cleopatra
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics
BBC
4.8 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Natalie Haynes returns with a new series of sparkling stories from the ancient world which shed light on the world today.
Cleopatra was a brilliant politician, a ruthless leader and a massive brain-box, who spoke nine languages. The Queen of Egypt had charisma to burn, but she probably didn't look like Elizabeth Taylor. Her intelligence and magnetism were more than enough to attract the attentions of the world's most powerful men, and to keep her in power - in a notoriously lethal dynasty - for over twenty years.
Guests Jane Draycott and Llewelyn Morgan join Natalie to make sense of the Ptolemaic family naming system, to discover what it took to stay at the top for so long in dangerous times, and to find out just how besotted Mark Antony was with the Egyptian Queen. Cleopatra knew exactly how to make an impression: she entertained the war-weary Antony on a gold-covered luxury barge, fragrant with burning spices, decked out with fairy lights. She made him rub her feet at a banquet for losing a bet and he famously wandered out of an important lecture because Cleopatra was passing and he preferred to talk to her. 'Rock star mythologist’ and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient world. Here she explores key stories from ancient Rome and Greece that still have resonance today. They might be biographical, topographical, mythological or epic, but they are always hilarious, magical and tragic, mystifying and revelatory. And they tell us more about ourselves now than seems possible of stories from a couple of thousand years ago.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Cleopatra. |
| 0:09.0 | So Cleopatra was born in 69 BCE. |
| 0:24.0 | She is the daughter of Ptolemy the 12th. |
| 0:27.2 | Things you need to know about the Ptolemaic dynasty |
| 0:29.8 | before we can go any further at all are as follows. |
| 0:34.3 | One. |
| 0:35.2 | The first Ptolemy was a Macedonian Greek, a friend of Alexander the Greats, |
| 0:39.6 | who was given charge of Egypt in the aftermath of Alexander's death in 323 BCE. So the Ptolemies |
| 0:46.2 | have been in charge in Egypt for about, was that 260 years, something like that. The second thing |
| 0:51.0 | to note is that everyone, and I really do mean everyone, |
| 0:57.0 | has the same name. |
| 1:02.0 | Cleopatra's family tree is basically 47 men who are all called Ptolemy. |
| 1:10.0 | I am simply not joking. |
| 1:12.3 | This is a matter of objective fact. |
| 1:15.1 | Fathers and sons, siblings, they're all called Ptolemy. |
| 1:19.1 | The women are slightly more varied, by which I mean they are all called either Arsinawe, |
| 1:25.1 | Berenique or Cleopatra. |
| 1:26.6 | That's it. |
| 1:30.3 | There are only four names in the Ptolemaic dynasty. That's your lot. It makes it quite difficult to keep track of who is who, to put it mildly, |
| 1:39.1 | which is why we tend to put numbers after their names. So Cleopatra is technically Cleopatra |
| 1:43.8 | the seventh. Her dad was |
... |
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