Royal Sex: Cleopatra

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. Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you! Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets, and I'm sure you know the drill by now. But just in case you don't, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way of living, arranged up subjects news being adult too. And I have to tell you that, because if you keep listening and something upsets you, well, frankly, tough tits, that's on you now, because fair dues, we didn't tell you. Right, on with the show.

• 1:06Kate Lister?

  Hundreds of armoured men on horseback are riding through a massive stone archway. They part the crowds of the Roman citizens with ease, carrying staffs aloft as they approach the line of guards in red, behind which sits the emperor, Julius Caesar himself. After the cavalry comes row after row of dancers in turquoise and gold, swaying from side to side and holding branches. 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. The Roman crowds roar, waving flags above their heads as members of the welcoming party rise to their feet.

• 1:48Kate Lister?

  And that's when we see her, sat on a platform at the front of the sphinx. It's Cleopatra, dressed in gold with a low-cut dress and a cloak of bird-like golden feathers and a towering headdress. Her eyes are dramatically outlined in coal, and she sits entirely still, the subject of everyone's gaze, as she moves closer to the Roman emperor, her lover Julius Caesar, with his child by her side. This is Elizabeth Taylor's entrance as the titular character in the 1963 Cleopatra, as she goes to meet her lover Caesar. And the scene itself cost over a million dollars. And it was worth every cent because Cleopatra looks fucking fabulous.

• 2:31Kate Lister?

  But today, we are going to be delving beyond the Hollywood myths and trying to find out who she really was. How much of what we know or think we know about this enigmatic queen is actually true?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  What are you according to have?

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Oh, money, of course.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing it.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.

• 3:16Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. This month, we've been looking at royal sex, specifically the sex lives of female rulers. And today, we are on to Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt in the first century BCE. And I am joined by the one and only, the fabulous Egyptologist, Sarah Parcak. And she is going to help us bust some myths about Cleopatra's sex life. Are you ready? I'm not quite sure I am, but on with the show.

• 3:50Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Parcak. How are you doing?

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Hey, kid. It is such a pleasure to be back. So excited to talk to you. It's been ages.

• 4:02Kate Lister?

  It has been ages. We're going over ground that we have covered before, but it was ages ago. This is part of our little mini series on the sex life of queens, but we're also including empresses and just powerful people within that. So we had to do Cleo.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  I mean, you have to.

• 4:18Kate Lister?

  And who else are we going to talk to about Cleopatra, other than yourself? She's your girl, isn't she?

• 4:23Speaker 04

  She is, she is. I've been reading about her, obsessed with her since, gosh, I started studying her at university. Twenty five years ago, which is a long time.

• 4:35Kate Lister?

  What is it about her then, do you think? I mean, it's not just you. She's woven the spell over people over thousands of years. But what is it that you're drawn to, do you think?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  I think, you know, when everyone thinks of Egypt, they think of two things. They think of Cleopatra and they think of pyramids. And, you know, yes, then comes the gold and the empire and everything else. But I think something about reading about her and just the way that she somehow kept ancient Egypt alive always stuck with me. And I always wanted to know why. And certainly, you know, twenty five plus years ago, we didn't have as much information as we have today. But just something about her demeanor, something about the way that she led Egypt through this series of crises.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  And I think over time, I've come to appreciate what she did was maybe one of the most ingenious things that any ruler has done in all of recorded history. She fully understood who she was. She fully understood the moment that Egypt was in when the Romans invaded in post Battle of Actium. And she knew what she had to do to make Egypt's memory survive. So her plan wasn't just for then. It was a multi-thousand year plan and she nailed it.

• 5:59Kate Lister?

  She is inextricably caught up in this myth of sex. Like, they seem to go hand in hand with this woman. That seems to have been the case right from when she first exploded onto the political stage, at least for the Romans. That, as a historian, must be fascinating for you, but also quite difficult to push past and try and get to, well, who's the real woman beyond the Elizabeth Taylor blockbusters and beyond the knockoff Halloween outfits that make her look really sexy and all this? Like, is that difficult for you? Like, how do you get past that?

• 6:36Speaker 04

  I think my understanding of her and appreciation for her has changed. Even in the last sort of five to 10 years, as I've Entered middle age and been thinking a lot more about sexuality and how we look at women in power today. Because I think more than anything else, Cleopatra is always a lens through which we can view women and power in sex. And that has evolved over time. If you look at so many powerful women who have been in power or been close to power, you know, people like Hillary Clinton, people like Jacinda Ardern, and so many other

• 7:20Speaker 04

  world leaders. I mean, look at how Kamala Harris was treated when she ran for office last year. So, you know, I think you can't decouple women and sex. You know, it's the Madonna whore, mother complex. And this has been going on for thousands of years. So on the one hand, we say it's how women are perceived today. But I think there's so much truth to who she is and what she represents for how men view women and how women view women. So that has remained unchanged, I think, throughout time.

• 7:50Kate Lister?

  Just in case anybody is listening to this going, I've never heard of this person, Cleopatra. I don't know why you'd be listening to this podcast if that's the case. But can you give us just like a potted headline? Who was she and when was she doing her thing?

• 8:04Speaker 04

  Right. So Cleopatra was the last ruler of ancient Egypt. And so she ruled over 2,000 years ago. And it's interesting, I always give this little factoid, which a lot of people have heard, maybe people haven't. So we are closer in history, we are closer in time to Cleopatra than she was to the time of the Great Pyramids, by over 600 years, which is just wild to think of. And Cleopatra was married to first Julius Caesar, and then Mark Antony, had several children.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  And then as she died, she committed suicide when Octavian invaded Egypt. She was viewed by the Romans as a whore, as a seductress, as evil, and certainly was portrayed in that way by historians, by Shakespeare. And most people today would know of her because of the way that she was portrayed by Hollywood. And it's hard to decouple our thoughts around her from popular portrayals.

• 9:06Kate Lister?

  So when Cleopatra became the pharaoh of Egypt, Egypt was already ancient. There was already ancient Egypt.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Right. It was already almost more than 3,000 years old. And certainly much older than that, if you pull in sort of pre-denastic history and earlier history. So Egypt had been around for a long time and had gone through multiple iterations of control, of power, of architecture. And obviously, the language had changed as well. And we can dive too more into how Cleopatra used that history and her knowledge of sexuality and fertility and how that connected to ancient Egyptian religion to consolidate her power. How she understood it, to me, has always been a really essential part of us understanding who she was and how she was able to control Egypt as well as she did.

• 9:56Kate Lister?

  Because that's one thing that's often lost when we talk about it. And it's like, yeah, she had a great rack, but she was also this incredible politician, like, super, super intelligent, like, spoke so many languages, understood the religions and cultures of where she lived, like, super, super smart.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think when we delve into who she was, I think the underlying emotion, when you read how she's been portrayed by the Romans, how she was thought of by the Romans, certainly other people in power in Egypt and throughout history, it's fear, right? Men fear nothing more than an extraordinarily brilliant woman.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  And she spoke eight or nine languages. The way that she grew up, she would have, of course, been raised in the palace and she would have had access to the Library of Alexandria, the museum. She would have had top tutors. We know that she had training in mathematics and language and philosophy. And what was really extraordinary about her was that she spoke ancient Egyptian. There are all these controversies. Who was her mother? We don't know. It's likely that her mom could have been a minor wife of her king, Ptolemy Leti's. We'll never know. We'll never know. But for sure, there's a reason that she knew ancient Egyptian as well as she did. And she grew up with it. She used it to speak to the people of Egypt.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  So her persona, I imagine, even though obviously Bill Clinton is so problematic for so many other reasons today, I've met him and there's this charisma, electricity force that he has around him. And I imagine that's what meaning Cleopatra would have been like. Her intelligence was piercing. She kept up to date on politics. She could talk at length about alchemy and chemistry and anything and everything. So yeah, her persona, her presence was extraordinary and a lot of people don't understand that.

• 11:50Kate Lister?

  Was she supposed to be the pharaoh of Egypt? How did she end up with that gig?

• 11:56Speaker 04

  So her dad got sick and died, actually during a partial solar eclipse, which is sort of magical and mysterious. And she had three other siblings, a sister and two brothers. It was probable around when she was little, obviously growing up around them, that the throne would pass to her brother and her brother alone. But I think what we can appreciate, knowing who Cleopatra was later, you know, she would have shown extraordinary aptitude and intelligence even at a young age. I mean, you always can, even with kids, you can always pick out the ones who are curious, intelligent, interested, interesting, like, oh, this one's, wow, I want to talk to this

• 12:40Speaker 04

  kid, even though they're eight years old. And I think she would have shown her tutors and certainly her father, a finesse for politics, for understanding court life. And I think her dad was very much drawn to her and mentored her. She spent some time in Rome as the child. So she was very well versed in international politics and how things worked abroad. And I think her dad wanted her to see that because of course she had to, right? Rome held such power, was only growing in power and influence. And he knew she would have to contend with them to keep control of Egypt. So yeah, eventually she was crowned co-regent with her brother. But I think, I mean, she was such a force.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Eventually it was just her and we can certainly talk about how she used her relationship with Julius Caesar to wrest control.

• 13:29Kate Lister?

  I mean, we're gonna have to, aren't we? But let's start with husband number one, who was also her brother. So we've gone weird already now by our standards. Like that would be a strange wedding reception to go to. When, when, when the guy was saying, is anyone object or going, nah, this is, this is fine. No problem at all.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I get, I get asked a lot about incest in ancient Egypt, both from students in my class, which is more acceptable and weird men on the internet, which is not so acceptable. But never mind that. So first of all, everyone thinks ancient Egypt was incestuous, brothers and sisters marrying each other everywhere. So the term of endearment in ancient Egyptian was dear sister, dear brother. So when you read this, you're thinking, oh, man, there's, wow, there's bad stuff going on.

• 14:20Kate Lister?

  That's the same in Babylon and Samarian literature, because I've read some of their erratic works. And it is like, oh, brother, I'd like to shag you. And you're just like, oh, oh, oh, God, what's happening here?

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, but just terms of endearment. So first of all, the way we read texts is from a modern lens, but that's not the way it could be read. Also, most of these brother sister marriages, certainly at the level of royalty, was symbolic.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  So everything goes back to ancient Egyptian religion and Amun, Isis, Horus. And this idea of brother sister union was always reflective of the gods and goddesses. But in reality, it was just symbolic of Cleopatra. So Caesar actually wanted Cleopatra to co rule with her brother to kind of calm things down. And they had a marriage ceremony.

• 15:15Kate Lister?

  And it really was her brother?

• 15:16Speaker 04

  It was her brother.

• 15:17Kate Lister?

  It wasn't like just a term of endearment. This actually was her brother.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  This was her older brother, who was a bit of a dingus.

• 15:23Kate Lister?

  Could you imagine marrying, even symbolically? No.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, ugh, ugh, gross. But I think everyone understood what it represented. It was symbolic. And the other thing, too, that a lot of people don't know, everyone assumes Cleopatra was this sex vixen and would have had endless secret liaisons before she got together with Caesar. And absolutely not. She would have most definitely been a virgin when she got together with him.

• 15:53Kate Lister?

  Why do you say absolutely, definitely not?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  So first of all, sexuality, right, through so many ancient cultures, of course, even today, the virginity of a girl slash young woman is highly prized, right? There are all these associations with purity that go back thousands of years. And raised in the court, every moment of her life would have been so highly monitored. She rarely would have been allowed to sneak off on her own. On the other hand, right, she's in ancient Egypt or Ptolemaic Egypt, right? She would have heard noises. She would have seen farm animals. Sex would not have been foreign to her. She would have had access to all of these texts in the libraries of Alexandria and like, we know what teenagers are like. They're always off reading this muddy stuff and looking at pictures. She would have been very well aware of what sexuality was.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  And certainly as she grew older, her tutors, the people surrounding her, would have initiated her, would have prepared her for her duties. So she would definitely have known what sex was. And also she was a priestess. She was representative of the goddess Isis and later Aphrodite and Venus. So again, reading those rites, those rituals, there's so much connected to sex and sexuality and the rebirth of Egypt. So yes, I say she would have been a virgin because she just wouldn't have been allowed to. Sneak off, there would have been people keeping an eye on her every minute. And also, she certainly knew, right? If I have sex with someone, there's a really good chance that I could become pregnant.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  And as and when, it's either decided for me or I decide, or it's useful. I want to know who the father is. It's going to be really important for Egypt. And we also know this, I think, because of how she interacted with Julius Caesar for the first time.

• 17:40Kate Lister?

  I suppose what I'd like to know is, was she supposed to consummate a marriage with her brother? And if not, how would they have continued the line? Was she expected to have a piece on the side?

• 17:50Speaker 04

  I think everyone knew that that marriage was just symbolic. Certainly, her ancestors, other Ptolemies, were just countless partners, parties, drunkenness. But I just think she was not required to. And I think she knew that if she was to liaise with someone, it should be someone very powerful and someone that could help Egypt.

• 18:17Kate Lister?

  Okay, so she can marry someone else. She's just kind of got a bit of a marriage to her brother as well, for symbolic reasons.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  Symbolic reasons. Yeah, I think as she grew in power and influence, she knew that a union with a powerful person like Julius Caesar would help to cement her control of Egypt and certainly be the sole ruler and get her brother moved away. She did not want to co-rule with him.

• 18:41Kate Lister?

  And what happens to this brother? What happens to the husband brother? Does he live a long and happy life?

• 18:47Speaker 04

  No, he did not live a long and happy life. He met a sticky end, as did a lot of the Ptolemies. Anyway, she hears of this Julius Caesar person, right? She would have heard about him quite often. As she grew up, she knew that he was one of the most, if not the most powerful person in the world. And I think she began plotting, you know, how is it that I can meet this person? How is it that I can get to know him and perhaps convince him that Egypt should be left to its own devices? You know, we don't need Rome's control. But I think she's young, she's, you know, late teens, early twenties.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  She knows she has a body to offer and also, and more than that, her mind. The issue for us today, Caesar was 30 years older than her. Right? So that's a big age gap and one today, you're like, oh, that's hmm, that's real not okay. So she sneaks into Alexandria and the stories say that she was wrapped up in a carpet and then, you know, unraveled and rolled out, which we see, of course, from the famous, you know, 1960s Elizabeth Taylor movie.

• 20:05Kate Lister?

  That's a risky strategy. I would have bowled that up so badly if you had to like, wrap me up in like a rug and attempt to undo the rug. I would have just gone flying across the room, smashed into something. But that, to do that elegantly takes some skill, I think, to be unveiled and still look sexy after that.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  So the whole idea of her being in a carpet, I think, is a more modern invention.

• 20:28Kate Lister?

  Or do you think it's nonsense?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  It's nonsense. So if you look at the translation of the term, I guess you could see it as carpet, but it's more linen, it's more wrapping. And far more likely, she would have veiled herself because of course she had to sneak in. And most women in Greece would have veiled themselves going out into public, keeping the women private, you know, we could unveil themselves. And so veiling herself, kind of being snuck in, the guards may have been paid off, they may have looked the other way. Who knows exactly how she got in. So the other interesting thing, and we're tying back to your earlier question

• 21:11Speaker 04

  about, you know, virginity and how do we know? So she gets snuck into Caesar's room and she's wearing a veil and she unveils herself. And there's this whole sense of, you know, a bride unveils herself for the groom on their wedding night.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  And so Caesar certainly would have understood the symbolic nature of this gesture, right? He knew, would have known who she was. And lo and behold, this 50-year-old guy who's exhausted has maybe, historians debate this, you know, maybe not a great marriage to a more age-appropriate woman. This stunning, brilliant woman, who is most definitely wearing very see-through linen clothes and lots of makeup and lots of jewelry, who's probably heavily perfumed, presents herself to him.

• 22:02Kate Lister?

  And he was a proper horn dog Caesar, anyway, wasn't he? He was, oh, maybe, was he at the time known for putting it about?

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. He's had a lot of, a lot of lovers. And, oh my gosh, she, gosh, what could I do? She threw herself at me, Your Honor.

• 22:16Kate Lister?

  I couldn't possibly have done anything else.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  But I think it was a real meeting of the minds. People focus on the sex, but as we wiser humans know, you know, sex and lovemaking is 90-plus percent in the brain.

• 22:30Kate Lister?

  And plus, it'll only get you so far. Like, you can be really good-looking and you can be a great throwdown, but if that's all you bring into the table, like, it doesn't last very long. You do need to bring something else.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  You do. And this woman who spoke all these languages, who could converse with him in depth about history, she would have read his writings, she played to his ego. And let's face it, like, her dad had died, she was always around older men. I think she had daddy issues. Maybe my modern projection.

• 22:58Kate Lister?

  It sounds like she's doing the oldest trick in the book that all women know how to do, which is just like, oh, God, tell me about it. No, I've not seen The Godfather. Do tell me all about it.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, a little lap-sitting, a little eye-batting.

• 23:12Kate Lister?

  Yeah, just, you've written some books. I've read them all.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And like, he probably knew what she was doing.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  But also, this gorgeous, brilliant, younger woman is there not wearing much that leaves nothing to the imagination. You're done. And also, I think being a really clever, not just general, but a political strategist, he immediately saw the full benefit of a union with her. Because, you know, I think she would have talked about probably her parentage, understanding ancient Egypt, you know, would have talked to him about the importance of the people of Egypt to Rome, kind of getting a foothold there, but the importance of her staying in control.

• 23:58Kate Lister?

  Now, this all sounds great, but there must have been somebody at the back with their hand up, just going, Caesar, you do have a wife. You are already married. What's the long-term plan here?

• 24:10Speaker 04

  I think no one else was in the room at the time. And I think he and she, maybe not that night, but certainly very shortly thereafter, would have gotten into bed and that was it. You know, he was an experienced lover. She certainly would have been prepared. And the other thing too, which we can talk more about, so she had someone to fix her hair and she had someone to dress her. So Charmian was her dresser.

• 24:39Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. You know the name.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  We do. And they actually were with her when she died. And so they would have prepared her dress. They would have done her hair up very nicely, put nice makeup on. And she also used that to a great effect later on in her life, as she spent more time in public, as she became the living Isis and solidified her power and hold over Egypt. So, yeah, so she used her body to great effect, but not in the way that we think. And a lot of parallels, I think, to how women today dress and use their looks to consolidate power. And we get into a lot of trouble for commenting on how women look and how women dress. But I think if you're dressing a certain way for power and to share a message,

• 25:25Speaker 04

  we have to talk about it. That's just as important.

• 25:30Kate Lister?

  We'll be back with Sarah and Cleopatra after this short break.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 26:45Kate Lister?

  One of the things that I learnt from you from the last time we spoke about this that I hadn't realised, I was under the impression that Julius Caesar and Cleopatra had this little fling, that it was sort of a bit of a situationship. It was like a bit of that couple of tussles. But no, that is not... It was really serious. They had a baby together and she went over to Rome and stayed there for like a year. And I often think, what the hell was his wife doing at this point? That his girlfriend with their baby has come over. But it was a really serious relationship. This wasn't just casual shagging.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  No. I mean, I think they very much were in love with each other. And again, we have to be careful. We can't project modern sentiment on the past. But, you know, there have been a lot of famous May-September relationships throughout human history. And it was a real meaning of the mind. So you have this extraordinary younger woman who is running Egypt, who understands politics. Has read everything and Caesar, I think in her found, you know, everyone's like, oh yeah, they're having a lot of conversations for sure. Wink. But in this case, they really were. I think he was quite impressed with her. And the thing that a lot of people don't know about is shortly after they got together, he was taken by Cleopatra on this grand journey up

• 28:02Speaker 04

  the Nile. So they started in Alexandria and went up through Memphis, through Saqqara, the Fayum into Luxor and ended in Aswan. And so, you know, whether or not this journey took a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we don't know, probably a bit longer. But they spent a really serious amount of time together and he would have seen her interacting with the priests and the people and enacting rituals. I think he was just head over heels in love with her.

• 28:33Kate Lister?

  And how did this go down back home with all of the Romans who are notoriously friendly towards women, especially women leaders and especially foreign women leaders and especially foreign women leaders from Egypt? Did they go, well done Caesar, this is fab. More of this, please.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  So of course she was branded, you know, a whore, who is this woman, who is this seductress. But it all sort of backfired because this glam, it was like, sort of like Beyonce or, you know, she was this great star and she shows up in Rome and of course she's the living goddess Isis. And what happens? People start doing their hair like her and they start wearing jewelry with Isis. She's a trendsetter because it's kind of interesting and everyone's gossiping about it. And it seems like Caesar's family sort of rolled their eyes and put up with it because what are they going to say to him? So yeah, it's sort of a bit of a mixed bag. But we know of the great influence she had

• 29:32Speaker 04

  in Rome and beyond because of course the cult of Isis just explodes.

• 29:36Kate Lister?

  And she was there for a while. And one of the things, again, I hadn't realized, I think it was, I learned when I was talking to you, she was there when he was bumped off. The two things aren't connected. She didn't do that. But like, that must have been an extraordinary moment for her to, he's been killed. He's been, they've done him in. And now what the hell is she gonna do? She's there, his mistress, effectively, he's now dead, and she's got their baby. Like, what's the plan now?

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Right. So maybe she heard rumors, maybe she was worried for him, but thought, no, they can't possibly kill him.

• 30:08Kate Lister?

  Oh, they wouldn't do that. That's too far.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  And so I think as soon as it happened, she would have heard very quickly. And, you know, the man that you're in love with, the man that you're planning a future with in the way that you can, the father of your child, he's gone. And she would have known almost instantly, oh, oh, no, I have got to get the hell out of Dodge. Because I, everyone's freaking out about him, but you know, by tomorrow, they're gonna come after me. And so as quickly as she could, she exited, stage left, and returned home. She returned home, which was very smart.

• 30:44Kate Lister?

  Because of his relationship with her, maybe not directly, but it was so unpopular, wasn't it? With some people, with some people, the idea that this, this great Roman leader was spending all his time with this Egyptian trollop, just lazing around on cushions and drinking wine.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  It seems to be more connected to power and his declarations. I, maybe it was part of it, maybe it was part like, oh, Caesar thinks he's a god. Caesar thinks he's untouchable. We'll show him. You know, six one a dozen of the other. It certainly wasn't the driving reason, but maybe it played a, maybe it played a part. He's this arrogant guy. What does he think he is?

• 31:21Kate Lister?

  Very quickly, she's got the megabus back to Egypt, or however it was that she got there. Presumably not this giant sphinx that I saw in the movies being dragged in, something quicker than that. She's back in Egypt. That must have been a shit moment. Where does Mark Antony come from? How does that work? Another Roman leader?

• 31:40Speaker 04

  So she apparently, and you know,

• 31:44Speaker 04

  Debated in the scholarly world, she met him when she was very young. I think she was maybe 13 or 14 and he was quite taken with her, but like nothing inappropriate, nothing untoward. And so she went to see him, it was in Ephesus. And, you know, she knew that she had to semi appease Rome, there's great upheaval. And they meet and there she is, you know, she's 26, 27, still stunning. Here's this brusque, burly, slightly goofy, I guess we'd call him like a slightly aging frat boy. It kind of gets a bad rap.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  I think he was not quite as messy as people think. He's no Caesar, but like he has serious good looks and he's a good time guy. And they meet and it's like instant chemistry. So in terms of like sex and power, this is different. This is a very different relationship than the one she had with Caesar. But also I think they were also very much madly in love with one another. But I think it was much more rooted in chemistry of a bodily nature.

• 33:00Kate Lister?

  Cleopatra's got this reputation as being like this absolute screaming sex banshee, just chewing men up, spitting them out. But from what you're saying, so far I've got a body count of two and a brother that she married symbolically. That is not playing up to that reputation, is it? I mean, were there other lovers that we're unaware of?

• 33:21Speaker 04

  No, that was just them. And they were basically, it was like she had husband number one and husband number two.

• 33:25Kate Lister?

  Number two.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  That was it.

• 33:27Kate Lister?

  The idea that she's this big like slag, was that going around at the time? Like, how long after, after she had these relationships, did that start to percolate? Or was it just as it happened?

• 33:40Speaker 04

  I think in both cases, as it happened. So, you know, news would have gotten back to Rome, oh, got Caesar's with another whore. Of course, when she got pregnant, I think a lot of people asked, oh yeah, right, he's not the dad, and yet she calls him Caesarian. And when she's in Rome, people are going to look at the baby and like, you always know, you always know who the daddy is. And he debated, did he acknowledge Caesarion to be his son? And I think he did. I think he acknowledged Caesarion. And certainly, you know, with Mark Antony, she had several children. She was very devoted. I think, yeah, so certainly in ancient Rome, Octavian added fuel to this fire because in Greece and in Rome, women were pure, women

• 34:22Speaker 04

  were devoted, women had their husbands, they were loyal to their family, they were not public. And you have this brazen, powerful woman who, you know, for the Romans, the idea of ancient Egypt, right? It's this, the same Orientalism, the same fetishization that we have today of the quote unquote Near East. It's mysterious, it's sexual, it's otherworldly. But when you really study it, it's not about sex, it's about fertility, it's about regeneration and rebirth and connecting to the annual flooding of the Nile. So it was their misunderstanding of what she represented.

• 35:00Kate Lister?

  Deliberate misunderstanding, I think.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  It was deliberate. And then later on, of course, by the time Shakespeare comes along, the classical world, that's it. That's all they know. This is before the rediscovery of ancient Egypt and our translation of our ability to translate ancient Egyptian. So to them, Rome was king. And who is this whore who tried to get in Rome's way?

• 35:24Kate Lister?

  I suppose the fact that Caesar and Mark Antony did spend a lot of time there, and they did seem absolutely enamored of her, that that must have fueled some kind of idea that she's like a sex witch, that she can just manipulate men and just bring them to her bidding. But there's only two of them. That's a slow weekend, really. That's not slutty behavior.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  No, it isn't. And I think also over time, right? As the cult of ISIS took root, you know, as women were emulating her, I think people were mad. Like, what's going on? Like, what's the deal with her vibes? You know, is she going to infect our culture? You know, are all of our pure women going to turn into whores? Like, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? So there was that going on as well. But yeah, I mean, clearly she had to represent herself as the living goddess Isis. And, you know, the way that she chose to dress, her jewelry, her hair, it was all about fecundity. Because of course, she was the ruler of Egypt. Her job, her main job, the main job of every ancient Egyptian ruler going back 3,000 years,

• 36:28Speaker 04

  was to maintain the sense of balance. And your only job, hashtag you had one job, was to make the annual floods come at the right level, not too high, not too low. And the thing that was going on, which most people don't really acknowledge, there was mass drought, there was famine going on during the time of Cleopatra. And all of that was a backdrop to all this political turmoil and actually may have been the main reason that she lost. She and Mark Antony lost at the Battle of Actium. So slight dorky historical side note, a volcano, I think it was in Alaska, was assessed and in ice cores.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  And that volcano blew up, you know, a little over 2,000 years ago. And it was suggested that widespread famine and drought and weather shifts were due to clouds from this volcano that exploded over 2,000 years ago. And thus, the supply lines kind of that were important for feeding and fueling the army of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, many, many thousands of those men died. I think it was in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So this isn't like fringe weird.

• 37:42Kate Lister?

  No, but this is brilliant information for like a pub quiz or, you know, just outdo a relative. They lost because a volcano exploded, that's why.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  I mean, it's still debated, but I think it's a really interesting, like, there's all this climatological stuff going on at the same time that's contributing to the instability during Cleopatra's rule.

• 38:01Kate Lister?

  How long were Cleo and Mark Antony together? Because, again, I was under the assumption that this was sort of like a brief fling.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  No, they were together for years and years.

• 38:09Kate Lister?

  Really? Wow.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, years. Because, of course, she has three children with him. She has twins and then three kids. So I think 10 years.

• 38:19Kate Lister?

  See, now, this isn't a sexually voracious nymphomaniac, is it? This is a mum who's had two partners.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  And she's an incredibly devoted mother. That's the other thing, right? So she would have taught her kids Ancient Egyptians. She would have made sure they had the best tutors and access to, you know, everything because she wanted them to carry on. I think over time, especially as, you know, Rome is consolidating its rule and Octavian is pushing, right? It's clear that they want to control Egypt. And there's no way that Octavian would let Cleo and Mark Antony rule. Absolutely not. They wanted complete control. And she, I think her mindset started to shift when she realized, you know, certainly

• 39:08Speaker 04

  during and post Actium, that there was just no way that she was going to be able to keep Ancient Egypt under her rule. And that's when I think she made the decision, certainly after Mark Antony's death, to commit suicide.

• 39:25Kate Lister?

  We'll be back with Sarah and Cleopatra after this short break.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of Ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows. Where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week.

• 40:39Kate Lister?

  I've got some stories here about Cleopatra's sex life that you can tell me if these are true or not. Oh, no. I think I know how this is gonna go, but you can just, you can just speak to how true these ones are. You still see these on the internet. Cleopatra invented the first vibrator by taking a hollow tube of metal and filling it with angry bees.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 41:05Kate Lister?

  I just had this- I was feeling embarrassed asking you.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  I just had this vision, like, you know, that famous GIF meme that you see sometimes of Oprah, like, bees!

• 41:20Kate Lister?

  I don't know where this came from. Is, is that, have you discovered anything in your research about a vibrator made of bees?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  I have not. This would have been from Ovid's Art of Love. So, if there are children listening right now-

• 41:36Kate Lister?

  Yeah, send them to bed. You don't need to hear this.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Okay, so, "The poet also advised each woman to know herself and to enter upon love's battle in the pose best suited to her charms. If a woman has a lovely face, let her lie upon her back. If she prides herself upon her hips, let her display them to the best advantage. If you are short, let your lover be the steed. Love has a thousand postures. So then, my dear ones, feel the pleasure in the very marrow of your bones. Share it fairly with your lover. Say pleasant, naughty things. The wild."

• 42:10Kate Lister?

  Wow. Wow, Ovid.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, so-

• 42:14Kate Lister?

  Calm down.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Lots of sexy stuff going on during this time.

• 42:18Kate Lister?

  Does he mention a vibrator filled with bees?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  No, it doesn't.

• 42:23Kate Lister?

  No, that that's that wouldn't work anyway, would it? But there is evidence of sex toys that go right back to pretty much as soon as we worked out how to carve a willy, I would imagine.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, you know, I can't profess to be an expert on ancient dildos. She says pulling open drawers with her ancient dildo collection.

• 42:45Kate Lister?

  There's a swarm of bees coming up behind you. I don't know anything about it.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, yeah, I am sure I am, you know, yeah.

• 42:53Kate Lister?

  Cobblers, that one's absolute bollocks.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Well, and I was gonna say, so while bees and hollow tubes weren't a thing, aphrodisiacs were. And it was said that certain kinds of rocket of lettuce had qualities that could, you know, prolong a man's ability to stay aroused in bed. And even today, even today in Egypt, they think that. So they'll at lunch, they'll offer sort of surreptitiously, you know, this big jar of lettuce, they'll sort of offer it to the man and everyone's giggling. What's so funny? They're like, nothing.

• 43:25Kate Lister?

  Lettuce, lettuce, the horny aphrodisiac. That's I love that that's a really ancient aphrodisiac because it's such a humble vegetable. All right. So the next claim that I've got here is there is a rumor that Cleopatra would let any man who wanted to have sex with her do so for one night, under the condition that he would be executed the next morning. I mean, what would be the point of that?

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Again, it's the whore, the it's about power, it's loose morals, you know? And the fact it's what we said earlier, like she was totally devoted to these two men and that that was it.

• 44:00Kate Lister?

  There was one thing that I heard that apparently the Romans had a name for her that translates as she who gapes.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 44:07Kate Lister?

  That's nonsense as well, is it? If you haven't heard it, that's nonsense.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  I haven't heard it, but I'm not I am not up as much on the classical side of this. And also, like, there's this sort of ongoing battle between classics folks and Egyptologists because I can't stand Octavian. I think he's this weasely, gross, power hungry chode. And I'm saying that out loud to any classicist, I can't stand him.

• 44:31Kate Lister?

  Look, we've just wandered into into a pitched battle here between us, right? Okay.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  And the classics people will be like, oh, well, Cleopatra, we know what she was like. No, actually, you don't.

• 44:41Kate Lister?

  So this is coming from them, the classicists. Actually, I think this is mostly all Latin texts that are making these claims about Cleopatra.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Even today, there are books written by men, shocking male classics folks, who cast dispersions on Cleopatra. I'm like, are you writing 500 years ago? Have you looked at any? So the other interesting, which we didn't have time to talk about, which, you know, may not in detail, but we actually know a lot more about her because, first of all, we have a text that may actually be her signature. No. We do. Cleopatra's signature, I think it was, it's in Germany and it's, it's on, it's, it's basically like, let it be so, kind of the classic, you know, let it be done, signature, but it's her. It's most likely her. Wow. When did they find that? I want to say it was like 10 or 15 years ago. Oh, my God.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  So we may have her signature. And the other thing that we used to not have as many images of her, but there's been all this research done in the last 20, 25 years, especially by people like my colleague Sally Ann Ashton, who was at the Thessaloniki for many, many years. And they looked at the tripartite ureia, or she looked at the tripartite ureia, and it's just opened up this new corpus of material and images of her. So we have a much better sense of what she would have looked like. All this new knowledge has come out about her and about the Ptolemies and about the time she lived in. It's created this rich tableau and helped to increase our understanding of what life was like during the time of the Ptolemies over, over 2,000 years ago.

• 46:15Kate Lister?

  And I haven't found a female ruler of any description, whether I agree with them or not, that hasn't been subject to insane, outlandish rumors and speculation about their sex life. Things like the vibrator made of bees and just absolute nonsense, like Catherine the Great died having sex with a horse and Marie Antoinette was having sex with her children. And it's just this endless procession of made up gibberish and Cleopatra was just another victim of that.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  She was. And, you know, you look. Today, being a professor, I was always trying to tie things. What happened in the past? What's happening today? How is it that we can look through one way and the other to better understand what's happening? So we're still today looking at the power through the lens of sexuality and what is acceptable and what is not. And I think we have to go back in time to women like Cleopatra to understand what this meant. And she certainly curated a vision of herself. On the one hand, she wasn't this whore that the Romans made her out to be. On the other hand, she understood the power of sexuality and she understood how to use not her body, but her image. What did she represent? She represented all the things in Egypt. She represented its power.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  She represented its continuity. And that's ultimately why she decided to kill herself in this iconic way. And she didn't stab herself. She didn't die being bitten by an ass. She probably poisoned herself with a hairpin. She knew poisons really well. She wanted herself to be remembered. She somehow figured out that that would allow ancient Egypt to survive. So again, it's her innate understanding of her body, of her position, of her image, and what that would do long term. So we always have to look both ways when we think about women in power. And it ultimately does boil down to sexuality, but not in a sexualized way. It's more about how we think about women and how women can maintain a foothold in power.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  And unfortunately, you know, there is some sexuality involved with it. Maybe at some point we'll evolve away from it, but I don't know that we ever will.

• 48:19Kate Lister?

  Sarah, you have been magnificent to talk to. Once again, thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Google me, I guess. I'm on social media, Blue Sky. I got off Twitter, so I'm at IndyFromSpace, just like I was on Twitter. I'm working on my next book. Hopefully, it will come out in early 2027. It's called Humanity: A Survival Guide. It's all about the traits we have as humans that allow us to persist through times of great crisis, which we happen to be going through right now.

• 48:51Kate Lister?

  Oh, very present.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 48:54Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You have been marvelous.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Thank you so much.

• 49:02Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Sarah for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we're going to be finding out who the Vestal Virgins were, and what kind of aphrodisiacs the Tudors were using. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt and Sheats, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.