This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am Gaius, Germanicus is here and we're using the name Cleopatra to suggest the power of a female ruler, the Queen. We use that in the 21st century because it entertains us. However, we go back to

what we have for facts about Cleopatra, which is chiefly Plutarch's version.

There are other versions. There are other stories.

Good heavens. It's been 2,000 years.

The playwrights have all had their approach to it,

turning on the love story between Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

And not much emphasis of the love story between Caesar and Cleopatra.

Cleopatra.

Cleopatra was 28 when she met Mark Antony on her barge, arrayed with gold and silver.

And he was charmed and soon became her devoted companion.

The playwrights use the word love.

I will not, I'm not against that.

I'm just setting aside the fact that Queen, Cleopatra was a queen and Queensacizing power in the Roman world were up

against a far different civil society than we have here in the 21st century, but there are limits that

strike me as similar.

And the one that comes to me, Germanica's dimension, is a woman with a

wearing a sword, whatever metaphorically that will look like.

In the Roman world it was said that weakened Mark Antony.

In the Roman world it was said that Mark Antony's wife, Fulvia, until her death,

weakened him because she connived against Cleopatra. In the Roman

world it was said that Octavian made marriages for his advancement, his career, not out of love, hence

Libya.

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