4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Did Cleopatra have a bee-powered vibrator? Why did she marry both of her brothers? And how serious were her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony?
Kate is joined by Egyptologist Sarah Parcak to find out where Cleopatra's seductress reputation came from, and whether she lived up to it.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.
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0:00.0 | Hello everyone, it's me your host, Kate Lister. I'm just jumping in before the episode to ask you for a little favour. |
0:07.6 | If you are enjoying betwixt, and I hope that you are, we'd love it if you could vote for us for the |
0:12.5 | Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes, |
0:17.9 | it should take you to the place you need to go and it would mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year and the one before that and the one before that. |
0:27.8 | We were so close and it just made us want it even more. I think we can do it this year. Right, |
0:34.5 | on with the show. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening |
0:39.3 | to Bertwikster sheets and I'm sure you know the drill by now, but just in case you don't, |
0:45.0 | this is an adult podcast book by adults to other adults about adultery things and an adulty way |
0:49.0 | covering away. Not subject's being an adult too. And I have to tell you that because if you |
0:52.3 | keep listening and something upsets you, |
0:54.4 | well, frankly, tough tits, that's on you now because fair do's, we did tell you, right on with the show. |
1:02.0 | Hundreds of armoured men on horseback are riding through a massive stone archway. They part the crowds of |
1:12.8 | the Roman citizens with ease carrying staffs aloft as they approach the line of guards in red, |
1:18.6 | behind which sits the emperor, Julius Caesar himself. After the cavalry comes row after row of |
1:26.5 | dancers in turquoise and gold swaying from side to side and holding branches, |
1:31.3 | and then behind them through the stone archway emerges an enormous black sphinx towering over the people on the ground and being pulled forward by enslaved people. |
1:42.3 | The Roman crowds roar waving flags above their heads as members of the welcoming party rise to their feet. |
1:48.0 | And that's when we see her, sat on a platform at the front of the Sphinx, it's Cleopatra, |
1:54.0 | dressed in gold with a low-cut dress and a cloak of bird-like golden feathers and a towering headdress. Her eyes are |
2:01.8 | dramatically outlined in coal and she sits entirely still, the subject of everyone's |
2:06.3 | gaze as she moves closer to the Roman Emperor, her lover, Julius Caesar, with his child by her |
2:12.5 | side. This is Elizabeth Taylor's entrance as the titular character in the 1963 Cleopatra, |
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