Transcript

EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea

From Dan Carlin · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 9 min · 12,173 words · 71 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea", an episode of Dan Carlin published April 16, 2022 (1 h 9 min, about 12,173 words). It mentions 19 people, works and ideas, including Cleopatra, Barry Strauss, The Battle of Actium, Julius Caesar, Roman Empire.

What this episode is about

A discussion of how Rome transitioned from republic to empire, examining the hinge moments, key figures, and why this pivot fascinates historians, with a focus on naval warfare and the broader historical context leading to Cleopatra’s era. It highlights the complexities of defining the republic versus empire and the brilliant yet brutal military innovations of the period.

Key takeaways

  • History hinges on decisive moments: Actium reshaped empire, yet the ‘romance’ of Cleopatra often obscures naval strategy.
  • Publishers want tidy start points; historians crave messy causality, revealing how eras bleed into each other.
  • Cleopatra’s dynastic complexity challenges stereotypes: powerful female rulers were not anomalies, but outcomes of lineage.
  • Scale and logistics astound: naval fleets of hundreds of ships show ancients mastered modern-sounding coordination and tech.
  • Counterfactuals matter: a Antony-Cleopatra victory could’ve redefined Rome’s trajectory beyond ‘Empire or Republic’.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Cleopatra, Alexandria, Julius Caesar, The War That Made the Roman Empire
  2. – 20:00: Julius Caesar, Roman Republic, Cleopatra, Mark Antony
  3. – 30:00: Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Ptolemy
  4. – 40:00: Cleopatra, Alexandria, Roman Empire, Julius Caesar
  5. – 50:00: Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Caesarion, Mark Antony
  6. – 1:00:00: Cleopatra, Alexandria, Actium, The Battle of Actium
  7. – 1:08:51: Cleopatra, Barry Strauss, Roman Empire, The War That Made the Roman Empire

Notable quotes from "EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea"

  • Series on this there was a republican period and then an empire and what's so fascinating in the history books is that hinge point during the transition when it becomes an empire out of a.
    about Roman Empire · at
  • Climactic encounter and the reason that the cleopatra story plays into this is she's on one side of this affair right with mark antony this is just like shakespeare right these are these famous figures we've come to know.
    about Mark Antony · at
  • Conduct right now barry strauss with his brand new book the war that made the roman empire antony cleopatra and octavian at with me professor barry strauss to talk about his brand new book on the battle.
    about Barry Strauss · at
  • Cleopatra's fleet at ephesus and my editor wisely said no you got to start the story with the assassination of julius caesar that's where it has to begin because you can't…
    about Julius Caesar · at
  • And in either case he creates what becomes in its day and for many centuries the greatest city in the mediterranean world it is the great cultural center and i think we…
    about Alexandria · at
  • As separate from egypt and yeah they are they're conquerors and cleopatra is as far as we know the only one who could speak egyptian and it's money right i mean the ptolemies…
    about Cleopatra · at
  • Brother he wants to welcome you're both the sons of julius caesar and then he is executed he's executed in alexandria that's fast again it's interesting to think the of the murderous i mean there's there's a there's a godfather.
    about Caesarion · at
  • Naval warfare by the way and if that is something you like he's got a great book on the battle of salamis from the greek and persian wars also he wrote one on the death of…
    about The Battle of Salamis · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Cleopatra — Person · Central historical figure (referenced subject) · 40 mentions · first at
    The episode frames the late Republic’s transition to Empire through Cleopatra’s alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and her role in the Actium conflict.
  • Barry Strauss — Person · Main guest (historian/author) · 4 mentions · first at
    Interviewee and expert guiding the discussion of Actium, Octavian’s strategy, Antony/Cleopatra’s position, and the broader hinge from Republic to Empire.
  • Julius Caesar — Person · Key historical catalyst (referenced subject) · 22 mentions · first at
    His assassination is presented as the necessary starting point for understanding Actium and the ensuing power struggle among Antony and Octavian, with Cleopatra drawn into the Roman civil wars via Caesar.
  • Mark Antony — Person · Key historical contender (referenced subject) · 9 mentions · first at
    Presented as Cleopatra’s Roman partner and Octavian’s main rival; his strategic and political choices are contrasted with Octavian’s, culminating in Actium.
  • Caesarion — Person · Dynastic/legitimacy stake (referenced subject) · 3 mentions · first at
    Discussed as Cleopatra’s son (presented as likely Julius Caesar’s biological son) whose existence threatens Octavian’s legitimacy and whose fate symbolizes the ruthless consolidation of power.
  • Ptolemy — Person · Dynastic reference point (ambiguous; referenced as dynasty founder/line) · 4 mentions · first at
    Used to explain Cleopatra’s Ptolemaic heritage and the dynasty’s Alexander-linked prestige; the transcript references ‘Ptolemy’ both as dynasty founder (Ptolemy I) and as later Ptolemies (e.g., Cleopatra’s father).
    Alexander is the one who founded and laid out the city of alexandria but there's reason to doubt that and reason to suspect that it's actually ptolemy who does that but he takes the aura of the great alexander he wants to borrow it to say.

Books & papers

  • The War That Made the Roman Empire — Book · Primary recommendation · 5 mentions · first at
    The book discussed in detail, providing insights into the Battle of Actium and its significance.
    Conduct right now barry strauss with his brand new book the war that made the roman empire antony cleopatra and octavian at with me professor barry strauss to talk about his brand new book on the battle.

Concepts & topics

  • Roman Empire — Concept · Core topic · 9 mentions · first at
    The transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire is a central theme of the episode.
  • Roman Republic — Concept · Core topic · 5 mentions · first at
    Discussed as the precursor to the Roman Empire, highlighting its decline and transformation.
    Series on this there was a republican period and then an empire and what's so fascinating in the history books is that hinge point during the transition when it becomes an empire out of a.
  • Ptolemaic Dynasty — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at
    The dynasty's history and its influence on Cleopatra and the events leading to the Battle of Actium.
    Caesar so there's there's something artificial no matter where you start it well in her dynasty you know the ptolemaic dynasty is itself as you point out three centuries of…
  • The Death of Caesar: A Historical Account — Media Product · Book discussed in the context of Roman history and its transition from Republic to Empire · 1 mention
    Provides insight into the pivotal events surrounding Julius Caesar's assassination and its aftermath, which is crucial for understanding the historical context of the Roman Empire.
    Series on this there was a republican period and then an empire and what's so fascinating in the history books is that hinge point during the transition when it becomes an empire out of a.
  • The Alexandrian Folk — Concept · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in passing as part of the historical context of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
    Well in her dynasty you know the ptolemaic dynasty is itself as you point out three centuries of history dating back to you know the ultimate royalty in ancient western heritage the alexandrian folk talk about so let's set this up maybe.

Places & events

  • The Battle of Actium — Event · Core topic · 4 mentions · first at
    Central theme of the episode, discussing the pivotal naval battle that determined the future of the Roman Empire.
    Really the transition figure from the republican era to the empire and this battle sort of determines how that hinge point is going to go obviously if octavian wins which he…
  • Alexandria — Place · Setting · 10 mentions · first at
    Key location in the narrative, especially in relation to Cleopatra and the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
  • Actium — Place · Setting · 6 mentions · first at
    The location of the pivotal naval battle discussed in the episode.
    Antony cleopatra and octavian at with me professor barry strauss to talk about his brand new book on the battle of actium the war that made the roman empire and i just want to…
  • Punic Wars — Event · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as part of the historical context leading to the events discussed.
    Explain julius caesar without explaining you know this and that and then i mean it eventually goes all the way back to the end of the punic wars and barely even touches upon…
  • The Battle of Salamis — Event · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a comparison to the Battle of Actium in terms of naval warfare.
  • Ephesus — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a location where the Roman fleet gathered, adding historical context.
    Yeah no it's it's a tough question i had some trouble myself when i first started writing the book i wanted to start it in the spring of 32 bc with the gathering of the roman…
  • Syracuse — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as part of the historical extent of the Ptolemaic Dynasty's influence.
    Naval power and a great land power stretching to greece to asia minor as far west as syracuse which is an ally of the ptolemies and certainly around the levant in egypt and libya and down to the red.

Full transcript with timestamps

it's hardcore history so like most of you i have my historical pet peeves and one of them is when sort of the lightweight media program here or there i'll be listening and they will confuse the roman empire and the roman republic they mean the roman republic but they say the roman empire russia is the fall of the roman empire or whatever so you know that gets under my skin in a way that is totally out of proportion to the seriousness of the crime but you know like i said we all have our little things but as many of you know and we did an exhaustive long series on this um there was a republican period and then an empire and what's so fascinating in the history books is that hinge point during the transition when it becomes an empire out of a republic and this is traditional right i mean it's caesar it's shakespeare i mean you know everybody understands this is a very interesting spot here

and our entire long series death rose of the republic was supposed to be a not very long show about this fabulously interesting person from the ancient world cleopatra and as is you know i have problems but uh one of those problems is the need to try to go back earlier in the story to set up you know the way things are by the time you get to the story and i can't ever find a logical beginning point because every time i get to something earlier that has a history of its own right that explains how that so you know we ended up covering centuries i believe and and barely got to cleopatra ended the story kind of at the hinge point area that is so fascinating the author i want to talk to today the historian barry strauss um he's a cornell university professor uh he is um an expert on this period and he just finished a book and it's a very military history book for people who like naval warfare um from this period

which is if if you ever want to have your mind blown about what our ancestors were able to do in terms of achievements and and and well i mean in these naval battles there's like 600 ships right wooden ships big ships and you you the mind has a hard time grasping that right but but this is uh so so the book is fascinating you want to know about naval warfare you want to know about one of the most famous naval encounters in all human history well he's just finished a book on the battle of actium 31 bce right when uh the people who fought it out after julius caesar is assassinated have their climactic encounter and the reason that the cleopatra story plays into this is she's on one side of this affair right with mark antony this is just like shakespeare right these are these famous figures we've come to know um and on the other side is octavian the guy who will become augustus caesar really the transition figure from the

republican era to the empire and this battle sort of determines how that hinge point is going to go obviously if octavian wins which he did it goes the way it went if the other side wins marc anthony and cleopatra together united if that wins nobody knows how it goes right maybe you go back to a republic which i guess seems pretty doubtful after my talk with uh professor strauss or maybe the empire goes in a different direction where they focus more in the east as professor strauss is going to say in the interview we're going to conduct right now um barry strauss with his brand new book the war that made the roman empire antony cleopatra and octavian at

with me professor barry strauss to talk about his brand new book on the battle of actium the war that made the roman empire and i just want to tell you professor strauss that i tried to do a show on cleopatra once upon a time and and i started trying to figure out where a program like that should start and i kept moving the timeline farther and farther back because first you go to julius caesar and then how do you explain julius caesar without explaining you know this and that and then i mean it eventually goes all the way back to the end of the punic wars and barely even touches upon cleopatra when we get to 20 some hours so how does one tell a story like this without without going back almost to when the republic starts to fray yeah no it's it's a tough question i had some trouble myself when i first started writing the book i wanted to start it in the spring of 32 bc with the gathering

of the uh the roman fleet or anthony and cleopatra's fleet at ephesus and my editor wisely said no you got to start the story with the assassination of julius caesar that's where it has to begin because you can't really explain what it's all about without doing that and i realized his wisdom and that he was right so that that is where i start the story but as you know cleopatra has a whole life and career well before that and even before she meets caesar so there's there's something artificial no matter where you start it well in her dynasty you know the ptolemaic dynasty is itself as you point out three centuries of history dating back to you know the ultimate royalty in ancient western heritage the alexandrian folk um talk about so so let's set this up maybe by talking about cleopatra herself a little bit because she's an unusual person in the ancient world you know as we all know powerful women did not get

the sort of historical press that they deserve and so there's precious few of them and when they are in the sources you kind of get this bias like you get with alexander's mother where she's somewhat nefarious and tricky and you know conniving talk a little bit about this this this background that the the the ptolemaic dynasty is and that that imparts into cleopatra's sense of who she is and what she represents well great question cleopatra as a ptolemy has a built-in sense of grandeur uh the the founder of the dynasty was one of alexander's friends and one of his generals and he is the guy who takes over egypt and turns it into a kingdom and he hijacks alexander's funeral train and brings his mummified corpse to alexandria you know tradition says that alexander is the one who founded and laid out the city of alexandria but there's reason to doubt that and reason to suspect that it's actually ptolemy

who does that uh but he takes the the aura of the great alexander he wants to borrow it to say that this is alexander city and he's following the footsteps of the founder and in either case he creates what becomes in its day and for many many centuries the greatest city in the mediterranean world it is the great cultural center and i think we underestimate even today the importance and influence of alexandria for for a roman who visited it in caesar's day i think it would have been overwhelming in some way it really is like going from the farm and seeing perry rome was the great military and naval power but it was not an impressive urban center it didn't have the monuments yet alexandria had the monuments and alexandria had the culture and the science uh it really was a glittering capital and and cleopatra was was raised in uh the glory of this dynasty they had they had con they had ruled an empire in the eastern

mediterranean for centuries and it had its ups and downs but it at its height had been a great naval power and a great land power stretching to greece to asia minor as far west as syracuse which is an ally of of of the ptolemies um and certainly around the levant in egypt and and and libya and and down to the red sea where the egyptians had trade with with india so uh it was a great center with a tremendous heritage the hijacking of alexander the great bodies one of my favorite stories and maybe the best example of that phrase that possession is nine tenths of the law right uh love the and i love the the visits to alexander's mummified corpse and there's one in your story and then there's was it caligula or nero that also went and maybe supposedly stole the armor later so i love that story but i also love the fact that you can tell that this is a conquest dynasty the ptolemies because they're there for

three centuries or something and their last ruler cleopatra is the only one to speak egyptian in the whole group yeah i know it really is it is kind of amazing uh and some people think it's it's more evidence for what might be possible that her mother and maybe her grandmother were egyptian or at least party partly egyptian you said persian maybe too yes there is definitely some persian in there because the ptolemies the ptolemies intermarried but yeah i mean they they really kept themselves apart from the egyptians they used egyptians increasingly in the as the dynasty in the later years of the dynasty they used egyptians in the beginning they kept themselves quite aloof from uh egyptians and some ancient texts referred to alexandria's alexandria at egypt alexandria by egypt we might say rather than alexandria in egypt it saw itself as separate from egypt and yeah they are they're conquerors and and cleopatra is as far

as we know the only one who could speak egyptian and it's money right i mean the ptolemies and egypt represent in this period when one talks about the balance sheet and what what each side has as its strong point the ptolemies in egypt have money right they have money yes this is the wealthiest place in the mediterranean they are sitting on a lot of money and the romans know it um the romans could have conquered egypt before this but probably the reason they don't is that the various men in the roman elite are all too jealous of each other and too suspicious of each other they don't want anyone to have control of this place so let's talk about those people then so you know the this is where if if you are trying to argue against the great man theory of history right the ancient or even churchillian way of looking at these things it's so hard when you get to this era because the individual

personalities you know seem to be seem to be defying any rules about trends and forces or marxist economic theory or anything i mean you know you say octavian julius caesar cleopatra anthony how do you get how does one integrate that with the fact that there are obviously massive trends and forces being exerted during this time period and yet these individuals even in modern histories that are trained to maybe not you know put individuals out there so front and center it's hard to avoid in this case isn't it yeah well it's one of the reasons i find that perry is so attractive because i'm an old-fashioned historian i mean of course i think trends are important and and one of the overriding trends of this era is figuring out how to bring the elites and the concord of the roman empire into into the tent of the roman empire that's what the old roman nobility had so much trouble doing um that being said

there's all the difference in the world between someone like anthony who's very talented and someone like octavian who's just a supernova when it comes to what it takes to be a strategist and to to win a war personality really does make a difference okay well let's talk about that then because one often wonders how some of these people come to the fore right and often one thinks of self-made people or pseudo self-made people and maybe a guy like julius caesar falls into that category but has adopted son octavian or his adopted nephew i mean his his his successor here who is hand-picked is not a person that had to go through that um that period of the self-made pull yourself up from the bottom although caesar wasn't from the bottom either but but you know what i'm saying in other words somebody looked at this kid and kid he was at the time and maybe it was julius himself and said you're destined for great things you have these

specific qualities i'm going to make you my heir so it seems like this is this is almost like in my weird way of thinking julius caesar's uh last will and testament that allows his kind of his disruptive force maybe he would have thought about it as as something pop more positive than that but but allowing it to live on how how does this octavian guy make his way to the historical stage yeah it's a great question i think there are three people in particular who were important first of all there's his mother the romans really thought the mother-son relationship was tremendously important uh when octavian's four years old his father dies probably of a stroke or a heart attack um and so uh he and his older sisters no longer have a father um and it's his mother atya she remarries she marries a prominent roman politician named um golly i'm blanking on his name excuse me but she marries a prominent roman

politician and she looks after her son her young son she uh hands him over at a certain point to her mother julia and julia is a pure roman member of the nobility and she happens to be the sister of julius caesar and we can be sure that julia is whispering in her brother's ear i got this grandson you got to see this kid he is so talented and caesar when he comes to rome which isn't all that often but from time to time he does see uh young gaius octavius and he does get a sense of just how talented how precocious he is and caesar gives him certain offices he holds minor offices even as a teenager and he plays a role in caesar's triumphs as well he's one of these people who caesar is clearly marking out for an important role caesar doesn't have a legitimate son of his own and his his daughter who he was hoping would uh you know bring him grandchildren she dies in childbirth so he doesn't have

that either so he looks to members of his extended family then um in in the last battle of the roman civil war so the campaign in spain in 45 bc in the battle of munda uh octavius goes to spain he doesn't arrive in time for the battle but he arrives shortly afterwards and he spends about six months traveling around spain uh with his great uncle julius caesar the two of them together uh octavius is sitting at the foot of the master and learning from him and caesar is getting really impressed with this kid and realizing you know the guy really has the guy really has something so i think that helps octavius a lot to be recognized now we all know that trying to draw lessons or conclusions about modern times from times in the past is a silly endeavor yet there are things there there's precious few examples from the ancient world when you look at governments like republics and try to figure out what the heck went wrong in

that situation then try to figure out if you have any of the same uh potential downsides in your own situation um if you look at something like the roman republic and and as the founders of the united states used as one of the examples of things we might take lessons from what was going wrong by caesar's time julius caesar's time that led to the conditions where you have i mean as i look at it i almost see everybody seems to be fighting on the side of rome and the senate and the republic traditions and all that side but but nobody actually really seems to be fighting on the side of rome in the senate the republic i mean this is a culture that that so hated the idea of the return of the ancient kings that that became almost a terrible word and that when you but when you look at it in this time period maybe julius caesar certainly octavian certainly mark anthony you're seeing a bunch of people who as you point out are

looking in one shape or another to create a monarchy out of the republic the most hated thing that the republic ever i mean there's almost a visceral knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a king coming to the fore and yet somehow the senate rolls over and by the end of octavian's reign we've come to a time where the roman republic at least in terms of the way it really functions as opposed to the way it maybe presents itself you know the rest of the world or to its own people i mean is gone and as you correctly point out we transition from an era that really represents the ancient world into something that is starting almost the timeline of the modern world from the very beginning what the heck happens to a to an anti-monarchical society like rome that gets it to a place where they have their own version of the equivalent of a king great question a long question i apologize for that no not at all um a

revolution happens a century of revolution a century of violence and upheaval and war and you know tearing each other to pieces to they get to the point where the romans say anything is better than this anything is better than this and they get luckily for them they get a politician who's incredibly shrewd and knows how to package things i mean caesar offends people by his arrogance by the way he means julius right julius yes julius caesar sorry julius caesar offends people by his his arrogance and he makes people beg his pardon and even though he grants his pardon it hurts them these nobles to have to ask another roman noble for for pardon uh and he takes the term of dictator perpetuo dictator and perpetuity um just this is to the romans them's fighting words he also experiments with wearing the boots the red boots of a king and he sits on a um i think it is a golden ivory folding chair which is reminiscent of a king and

he ostentatiously uh turns down a crown when it's offered to him by his lieutenant mark anthony who's pretty close to him so people suspect is a put up job octavian is much smarter than that he says actually the term dictator had been abolished by anthony of old people after caesar's death octavian says i'm no dictator i'm no king i'm just the first citizen you know and i have i govern by having the power of tribunes and i have the power of the power of a consul but but the republic has been restored or the latin can also mean the republic has been renovated so it's nicely ambiguous and you know i i'm just going to take an honorary title i want you to call me the reverend which is more or less yeah that's what augustus means more or less the reverend you know the revered one it's it's a quasi-religious title uh rome the romans said that their city had been founded by an august augury augusto augurio um so

it seems traditional-ish sort of um and it allows some people to say well nothing much has really changed and yet everything has changed so then you get the obvious knee-jerk response of a of a group of people that are concerned about their own position in society right all these senators all these roman knights these roman nobles and the natural reaction is an assassination so you the odds of march happen 44 bc you see uh you see the assassination of julius caesar and then all hell breaks loose in a different way than the earlier hell that had broken loose so so describe a little bit because this is the setup to this this major battle that your book focuses on so explain this the second version of all hell breaking loose after julius caesar is killed so the second version of all hell breaking loose is the assassins think that they're going to be able to get away with it and in some sense restore

the republic by which they meant an oligarchy of what they saw as the few best and most patriotic and intelligent men in rome but they fail i think in large part because they don't understand that you need to pay the soldiers and give them a raise if you expect to get away with something like this they're they're forced out of rome and then they regroup and um anthony who is one of the two consuls one of the two leading magistrates in rome at the time thinks he's going to inherit the mantle of julius caesar but the problem is that caesar has left this will in which to many people's surprise he names his 18 year old great nephew octavius as his heir and he offers him posthumous adoption by the way there's no such thing as posthumous adoption in rome it exists because julius caesar says because i say so and then uh octavian who happened to be abroad at the time because caesar was planning a great new military expedition

against uh parthia the persian empire octave artegan is a part of it he works his way back to italy and works his way back to rome and he shows that caesar's faith in him was very well placed because he he makes he just gets himself introduced to caesar's faction to the leading men in it and persuades them that he is an alternative to anthony and then he he um he has his agents negotiate with anthony's troops once again anthony makes the mistake of stiffening the soldiers of not offering them enough money octavian offers them a big raise and he in effect he steals some of anthony's legions from him and creates a private army and then turns around and says you know what i'm on the side of the assassins i'm on the side of the republic and i want to help you fight anthony and drive anthony out of italy which he proceeds to do um it's a long uh and juicy story and i won't bore you with all the details but

he draws anthony out of italy anthony crosses the alps goes to gaul regroups makes new allies builds a new army of his own and then octavian says on second thought i'm friends with anthony he turns around and double crosses the senate and anthony and octavius and a third general of caesar's marcus lepidus they form a conspiracy outside of the city of bologna in november of 43 bc and they create what's called the second triumvirate the three of them are going to govern rome they march on rome and this time no more mr nice guy caesar pardoned most of his enemies in the first civil war um they do not pardon them uh they uh put their names up in prescriptions like sulla uh many of them these are public execution lists right yes these are public execution lists public execution lists so uh many of the names on the list flee their property gets confiscated because anthony uh and octavian and lepidus need money

they need money because the surviving assassins led by brutus and cassius are in the east and they're in the process of uh squeezing the east until the pipsqueak raising taxes everywhere because they figured out you have to pay the soldiers and create a great army if you want to save the republic so um the most famous victim of these prescriptions is cicero who does not escape and cicero is uh assassinated on the kill executed killed on the order of his great enemy mark antony and octavian later says well i tried to stop it but if he did he didn't supposedly had a needle put through his tongue yes a needle put through his tongue and his hands were cut off and tied up on uh posted to the roster in rome speaker's platform so let me interrupt you for a second so that people understand how weird this all is though um imagine the u.s civil war and imagine that the north and south's generals controlled the armies instead

of the state and imagine that they could get defections from the other side so if general lee was able to get some of ulysses s grants units to come over to his side if he just promised them a better deal or something i mean that's part of it and then this goes back and this is why i had such a hard time figuring out where to start that story on cleopatra but at some point you know rome goes from the state and the senate controlling the armies and their loyalty to individual generals doing so you know from the from the marius reforms and all that so now so now you're in a period where you know these these troops are beholden to mark antony or to octavian and not necessarily to the state and if somebody offers them a better deal or doesn't pay them or or follow through on the deal they thought they had you're in danger of having mass defections it's like having an army that you can't trust

yourself as a commander that's absolutely right that's absolutely right the whole nature of the roman military changes and it changes because of just the enormous dislocations and changes that rome underwent in the process of winning an empire conquering an empire using the manpower of italy to conquer the empire enormous new wealth poured into italy and it wasn't distributed equitably it ended up in a few hands and they used this power unfairly uh to hurt some of the ordinary people of of rome you know i think like many societies the republic was faced with the challenge of what to do about change because things do change and in the case of rome they changed in an enormous dramatic explosive way and and the romans didn't really know what to do with it they didn't handle it very well oh one is one is tempted to ask who would you know um when you when you look at you know a a society and a

governmental system designed for a small you know city state or regional power that has to deal with after the third punic war this this massive world juggernaut and all the money coming in and all the uh the the accruing of individual i mean i think of marcus akinius crassus and the amount of money he's bringing i mean that kind of money warps systems and and and then when you have the private army and the armies can be built up through that money it just seems like a recipe for disaster but let's talk about how the heck a a descendant of one of alexander's generals 300 years later a queen running egypt ends up into this story yeah well you know the the ptolemies were already part of this story the romans had essentially made it clear that they were going to call the ultimate shops shots in egypt already in the middle of the second century bc uh by the time of cleopatra her father uh ptolemy el leyte is ptolemy the flute

player as he was called for reasons that's when you know the empire's in decline i'm just gonna say yeah that's when you know it's in decline not not kind of the name you want to have nobody called alexander the great the flute player to his face not to his face yeah well this guy you know to save his kingdom uh he had to borrow a huge amount of money from rome and then he had to basically mortgage his kingdom to to to pay it back uh so he was in hawk to the romans and egypt uh was essentially belonged to rome already it was only semi-independent and cleopatra was raised knowing that um egypt could do nothing uh without paying attention to its relationship with rome okay and so she comes to the fore she's got a brother that she's that she's uh uh forced to rule with how would you describe the relationship the ptolemies had a brother-sister thing that went back maybe to maybe even before that

time maybe ancient egypt explain the brother-sister deal here and then how the heck does julius caesar get his hands in this situation well the the ptolemies uh like uh like egyptians many people in egypt before that engaged in brother sister marriage you know um you know it's great that can lead to a decline right there over time maybe that could it could but they didn't only engage in brother sister marriage i mean that was one of the things they did but the siblings sibling rivalry was a big part of the story and cleopatra and her siblings did not get along they had murderous relationships with each other she was at war with her older brother and she um she possibly poisoned her younger brother and probably ordered the murder of her sister so it's it's not a pretty picture and then the famous story true or not i keep wondering what would have happened had shakespeare not not talked about

these things had they not become such great stories for for entertainment value but the story about her being unrolled in a bedroll or a rolled up carpet for for you know who tell me a little about that well in order to you know cleopatra had been uh pushed off her throne by her brother and she wanted to get it back caesar had come to egypt hoping to catch up with pompey who he defeated he had defeated in a great battle in greece earlier that year but when pompey landed in egypt he was assassinated on the order of one of the king's ministers so he was dead by the time caesar got there caesar wanted to arrange things in egypt to his liking because egypt had been friendly with pompey beforehand but caesar didn't have many troops with him and he was effectively a prisoner he had to fight his way out of alexandria and he does so successfully eventually but while he's there cleopatra sussing

up the situation realizes i can make a deal with this guy we each need something and we each need to fight my brother and so she sneaks into the palace her brother would never let her get into the palace she's camouflaged in some way and we get the story from plutarch uh that she was rolled she was carried uh by a servant uh rolled up in a bedroll or a rug and then unrolled in front of julius caesar there's an entrance for you yeah that she knew how to make an entrance and if it wasn't love at first sight uh it didn't take long between the two of them were lovers and she was young at the time right yes she was young he was uh decades older well he's 55 or something by then probably yeah and she's she's in her 20s okay so there you go and now we have so this is interesting you have one of the examples and i think you make the case multiple times in your book you have one of the examples of a truly

august clever uh a politician slash world leader who because of the way media's portrayed her ever since becomes more of a femme fatale sort of figure can we describe the difference between the the romantic image of this person versus the reality of one of the one of the few justifiably powerful women controlling things in the western ancient world yeah well i mean part of it frankly is shakespeare i mean shakespeare's play is called antony and cleopatra and the focus of the play is the love affair between the two of them and the relationship between the two of them and the interplay of love and politics richard burton and elizabeth taylor richard burton and elizabeth taylor yes the legend that was better than the movie but certainly uh added to the aura around cleopatra but even without them just the play itself and the various actresses who've played uh cleopatra uh the real cleopatra we don't really know

what she looked like but as you know the coins give her a hook nose and make her look kind of masculine not very no one's idea of feminine beauty the uh the busts that may be cleopatra and there's only one that uh scholars agree probably really was cleopatra they make her much better looking and we don't know if the coins are the real cleopatra or the image that she wanted to put out since she was effectively ruling alone she wanted people to think she was as tough as a man i might have wanted to look excuse me might have wanted to look like a man but i think if we want to think who cleopatra really was we ought to think of catherine the great or elizabeth the first of england yeah that's interesting yeah indira gandhi someone like that that's uh golda meir that's uh cleopatra in effect or or or maggie thatcher i like that if you look at what she's doing here from a gambling standpoint right taking take i mean here you have a

the ptolemaic empire if things just go the way they're going in terms of the the momentum and the impetus when she's you know first meeting julius caesar it doesn't look good so she takes a roll of the dice here and tries to get the best outcome for her country and the best outcome is allying with one side of the roman civil war here and hoping she turns out victorious if mark anthony wins this thing instead of octavian how does that change in other words if if she rolls the dice here and wins what does that look like well it's incredible i mean how different things would have been um if if anthony had won then the roman empire would in effect have had two capitals rome and alexandria the empire would inevitably have turned eastward instead of what we get from with augustus which is an attempt to conquer germany that fails and then his successors who succeed in conquering britain um i think anthony

would have gone back to his attempt to conquer at least part of the parthian empire probably too much to imagine him conquering all of it i think rome would have turned eastward you know the roman empire even as it was was really a greco-roman empire uh with uh increasingly as much greek culture as there was roman culture i'd like to say that the two best sellers of the roman empire today are the new testament and the meditations of marcus aurelius and they're both written in greek not in latin well if alexandria had remained as a cultural and political capital uh then the culture that would have developed the roman empire would have even been more easter and more greek um more looking towards the east than than what develops in rome and that would have had a big impact on western culture as well what have extended the alexandrian generals empire is even longer too and i mean when you think about what's going to

come in the 500s and the 600s and you wonder had alexandria been this major world locus of power at the time i mean does that impact uh islam's rise or or the power of the of the sasan it's because it's going to be the sassanids and the byzantines for so long i mean the change in the in the balance of power over the next several centuries would have been fascinating it really it really would have it would have been absolutely fascinating i think you would have seen something more like the byzantine empire earlier uh and it might have even taken taken an even bigger bite of the apple than than it actually does but i'm totally fascinated by the power of greek culture um you know in general but especially in the eastern mediterranean and the near east and i think we would have seen even more of it than than we do okay let's talk about the specific battle that your book discusses because naval battles in the ancient world don't

naval battles particularly anywhere but in the ancient world don't often get their due and this is more of a of a land-sea combined operation here where the sea power ended up being the outmaneuvering force but let's because i'm fascinated and always have been with the fact that the ancients are able to pull off the things they're able to pull off without computers you know without without i mean all of the stuff we would require today xerxes trying to put together a massive invasion of greece you know without with without word documents i mean whatever whatever it might be so so i'm thinking about the the naval capacity here and it boggles the mind when you try to think of the creation of these 400 and 500 ship fleets including these massive massive um you know you call them the you know they're not the triremes they're not the queen cry they're the 10 row right what's the word for that um so describe

the because to me nothing says that our ancients were so clever and so amazing than the raising and operating of these massive fleets yeah i mean it is amazing that they they build these ships that they have the technology uh to build them and then the technology to row them uh and to fight battles with navigate to now navigation is really fascinating it's been great work done on the question of how did the ancients navigate and there's a whole art of navigation for pre-modern societies it's mostly not written down but get lots of hints of it from ancient sources and you can learn a lot talking to fishermen in the mediterranean even today but they they they could do a lot they really could do a lot well you point out the difference between the way we would do things now which you might plot a course over the waves as the crow flies whereas back then that wasn't generally if you especially if you had any options

the way it was done was it they sort of did a point-to-point thing um in with land bases and and the part that blows my mind and i'm sorry if i focus on on insignificant things sometimes but when you talk about them going to the isthmus of corinth and having to i assume it's carrying maybe you can describe this to me the ships across the isthmus so that they don't have to go around the dangerous storm filled you know peloponnesian area i mean how do they even do that is that like moving houses i mean what are you doing they have a roll way i mean they can put them on rollers but that being said the sad truth is the answer is slavery slave labor i mean the ancient world is this horrendous exploitation of human labor as slaves and a lot of what the greeks and romans do at least on the you know the purely uh mechanical level uh has to do with the exploitation of slave labor so that is really part of it

i should have thought of that myself having completed a slave show it should have occurred to me um okay so then then let's get to then the battle itself so we have a situation where these two generals octavian and and octavian's going to have generals working with him in a fantastic admiral agrippa that you you talk about quite a bit and he's dealing with mark anthony who has plenty of military experience himself uh both of them have a lot of troops both of them have big fleets but the one thing about your book that sort of i guess caught me by surprise and then i did some more information and found out it was something i probably should have known better anyway which is how sort of one-sided this thing became as it progressed onward it it seemed a lot less equal after a while than i had assumed it was it looks to me like marc anthony was kind of outmaneuvered and by the time you know there's that old

military adage that if you do the strategy right the tactics don't matter that much and i feel like that that's what happened in this case does that make sense it makes total sense yeah you know i i'm a big fan of sun tzu and uh his art of war and this strikes me almost as if octavian had read sun tzu which i know he hadn't but just setting things up strategically so that the enemy has very few options and the enemy chances of winning i mean anthony would have had a play to an inside straight and then some in order to win this battle and it shouldn't have been the case he starts out with more ships and better ships and more money and lots of political support and yet he loses and that's a tribute to to octavian and agrippa and their strategic acumen and of course their operational ability as well okay so both sides at one time no nobody's got the guts or the willingness or it's just politically untenable to

say yes i'm fighting for the monarchy and if i win you know you're going to have a king so both sides neither side actually can can say that if mark antony wins this thing do we still have a roman empire i mean or are any of these people actually thinking about reestablishing anything like a functioning republic i don't think so i mean i think anthony is a full-blooded roman noble octavian isn't uh he's a noble on his mother's mother's side the other members of his family come from wealthy but upper middle class types not from the roman nobility uh it may be because of that that he is much he he doesn't much care about the old roman way of government he has much less respect for it than anthony does much more willing to come up with something new if anthony had won i think he would have given the senate more he would have given them more respect he would have deferred to them more i don't even know if anthony would

have lived in italy because anthony cares about the east i think he would have gone back to the east so perhaps in a way there would have been more of a republic in italy but i think a lot of the power in the brains would have drained eastward i'm fascinated by the people who are born in history with almost no chance of reaching adulthood because they're so dangerous so you think of like alexander the great's potential children right these these are people whose chance i mean they remind me of like the the little turtles that are born on the sand and then have to make it to the ocean with all the predators in between them in this case julius caesar who slept with everybody and you would think and you would think would have children all over the place seemingly doesn't until allegedly there's a child with cleopatra you know right before he dies cesarean and this kid looks to me like one of

those turtles with this giant stretch of sand between them and the ocean like he's born to die and he's never going to make it did cesarean ever have a chance or was this kid never gonna make i mean if marc anthony wins does this kid somehow still die no if mark anthony wins i think khazarian becomes the he becomes the pharaoh of egypt i i think in some ways he's anthony's ticket to legitimacy because the name of caesar is still magical to to many people around the roman world and one of the reasons why octavian is so threatened by anthony and cleopatra is that he knows that they have the real caesar i really do think caesarean was caesar's caesar's son no i can't prove it um you said he walked like him you know those kinds of that had his sort of gate he had his gate uh and um you know i think if there was any and caesar remember caesar allows cleopatra to name the kid caesar yes he doesn't recognize him officially but

the guys in egypt and caesar's in rome um there's some reason to think it's not crazy that caesar allows a stand we know that caesar puts up a statue of cleopatra outside of his forum in in the form of caesar outside the temple of venus the founder of the julian dynasty and there's some reason to think that she's holding the kid in her arms holding kaiserine in her arms there's also a painting from pompeii that has plausibly been described as cleopatra holding kaizerian as in the statue he comes awfully close to saying this is my son and allies of of octavian go to great lengths to say no no no way no no way it couldn't be true um you know i think they did protest too much uh i think it was caesar's son and i think that that octavian is very threatened by this that that suddenly his claim you know he doesn't call himself octavian we call him octavian but he called himself caesar he said i'm caesar um as as

ludicrous as that might have seemed to some that's not fair it's not ludicrous but questionable as it might have seemed to some um and there there are here are these people in egypt saying no no we've got the real caesar you're just an imposter this is tremendously dangerous to octavian okay pulling out a little sherlock holmes here if i ask for some speculation on your part but caesar julius caesar is a guy that knows the game better than anyone right the backstabbing interior roman political so so he's he's he has no illusions at all yet this is a guy who in his supposed last will and testament uh makes octavian his heir knowing full well that he probably has a child though in egypt with with uh cleopatra also understanding full well that this will set up a situation where either his heir is probably going to die or his kid is probably going to die probably at the hands of one another how does this even

make sense when you're looking at this i mean it argues i would suggest for something being wrong maybe for like the original will that octavian uh cites not being writer i mean something seems amiss here in the sherlock the dog that didn't bark type situation what do you make of this what a great question thank you for that great question so um i would say possibly caesar just made a mistake or possibly caesar did the best that he could under the situation um and you know he thought if octavian is as talented as i think he is he'll figure it out but yeah he didn't fit he did figure it out he did figure it out but it does raise the question well how is his how is his you know birth son going to survive yeah he's prescribing his son in advance kind of but what's he going to do what should he should he say he wants look he does care about rom and he cares about his family he wants romans did not

like to adopt people outside of their family uh romans were cool about adoption but it had it generally had to be within the family it didn't have to be within the nuclear family but someone who is a relatively close relative that's what they liked to do so um there are only three guys who would fit the bill and the other two are kind of also rans they are not they they're nowhere near octavian's talent um caesar's not a healthy man he had epilepsy right either epilepsy or a series of mini strokes the uh the the medical sherlock holmes who've looked at it disagree um it's not entirely clear but yeah he had problems it had occurred to him i'm sure that he might not last that much longer but also think about this you know where's cleopatra when caesar's assassinated she's in rome she's there we don't think about it because it's not in shakespeare but it's in all the ancient sources she's there

so where's she living she's living in caesar's palace actually he calls it caesar's villa it's across the tiber she can't live in rome because foreign monarchs are not allowed to enter the sacred space of the city of rome but she's living across the tiber and there's good evidence that she was pregnant at the time she and julius caesar are still having their affair even though caesar's wife calpernia uh is in rome um apparently she she miscarries uh but she's gonna have another child by her and just just to be fun it should have been a boy also and then we could have had all kinds of weirdness break out so all kinds of awareness yes okay so i i we can't stop this conversation though without getting into the military stuff a little bit sure because ancient naval warfare has never made complete sense to me because you know when one thinks of the i mean let's imagine a 400 ship fleet in trying to operate without

you know communications in the sort of sense that we would think or i mean how this this goes back to the xerxes not having word document type stuff but i mean i can't i try to imagine how something like this even is coordinated in a leadership kind of sense um i mean and and how i mean we understand rams because rams have always been in my mind as part of the but the thing that i can't make sense of is all of the the missile weapons involved right the catapult talk to us a little bit about how ancient naval warfare might have functioned well you know it depends who where and when there are there are fleets that are elegant and they they fight elegantly in with maneuverability so the athenian fleet in the classical period the example of that par excellence and there are other navies that don't have as good seamanship they go for heston the roman navies are generally of the latter sort um

the romans like to basically use their ships as floating manpower platforms and they would send in the marines from ship to ship but they would do ramming as well the egyptian navy is a greek navy and they're much better at ramming and anthony and cleopatra's ships uh have reinforced prows which means that they can do if they do head-on ramming they have an advantage so if if they can ram into the enemy's fleet at first they can do very serious damage for octavian and agrippa's fleet they can do some ramming but for them um missile weapons and boarding are i think are going to be more likely tactics but they've had a lot of experience so they can do some ramming as well by this point to your earlier question of how when you have 400 ships how do you coordinate this it has to be done in segments you're not going to be it's very difficult to have the entire battle line uh working in coordination uh as you say

the communications ability was quite primitive uh and yet they did communicate with uh flags with trumpet blasts uh with um shields and swords that had uh you know they used flashing shield and swords for signals and they had small ships that went from ship to ship uh to send signals so they weren't totally in the dark in one of these battles but yeah it's really difficult and really loud and there's going to have to be a lot there's going to be a lot of chaos in a naval battle so help me understand this better because one of the things that fascinates me about the pre-modern era are these questions about whether or not early so so if i said to you to set up the question if i said to you how would a a an army from the franco-prussian war uh in the in the 1870s fair against a second world war army it's a ludicrous question um for obvious reasons but it's not so ludicrous when you go to the pre-modern

era right i mean could alexander's army have defeated a viking force yeah so so my question is is how was this going in naval warfare if we had a battle if you could bring back the athenian fleet from salamis or something from that era to fight a roman fleet in the era of augustus caesar is that something that is a thing or is that going to be an outrageously one-sided thing and if so why well it depends it's a great question and it depends where the battle is fought uh the athenians win at salamis remember because they set up the battle sun tzu setting up the battle in the perfect place for them geographically in the narrow salamis streets right with the island there and everything yes yes with the persians who have uh outnumber them and have faster ships can't use that advantage so if the i i think if it's the battle is going to be fought on open water that the romans are going to have an advantage uh against the

athenians particularly if they have well in general their ships had reinforced prows compared to what they were like in the in the age of the tri-ring so they will have that advantage they're better at ramming and they have missile technology that the athenians don't they have they have much bigger ships their ships are clunkier but as long as they can get in there and ram i think they are they're likely to win but that being said so you know earlier when agrippa and octavian were fighting sextus pompey uh in the decade before actium they had to build a navy from scratch they didn't really have a navy rome would have these great navies such as would use against carthage and then it would let naval technology uh go down and then you get someone like pompey and he and his family specialize in building new navies pompeys ships fleets were very maneuverable and at first octavian and agrippa's fleets weren't

maneuverable they had to reinvent the navy they had to come up with new technology they had a kind of harpoon that they used to attach themselves to the enemy ship and they got enemy admirals to defect to their fleet to give away the enemy's secrets and also to help them improve their maneuverability but remember the other thing to remember about octavian and agrippa is as you said earlier they win these naval battles partly on land they always attack the enemy's land bases and the enemy's logistics so that the enemy is left with a fleet that can can't fight very well because they can't feed the men very well and anthony actually has to burn some of his ships a lot of his ships before before the battle of actium so it's this this really great strategic vision and the ability to to cut off the enemy before the enemy can actually fight that contributes so much to their success all right let's talk about getting back

to our shakespeare romantic parts of the story or romantic it's a weird word when you're talking about suicide but but cleopatra's famous death by the bite of the asp supposedly or whatnot first of all why did she have to die why was this a setup situation where this was perceived as the necessary step and then let's talk about what we know about the the reality or lack thereof of of the actual event itself sure so i think that cleopatra was a problem for octavian as as long as she was around first of all he'd declare a war on cleopatra he didn't declare a war on antony uh and um generally you you not you often marched the enemy general in the triumph and then you had him killed the caesar did with ferris and gatorax the problem with that is that and octavian knew that cleopatra would win the sympathy of the roman uh public as a mother as a woman uh they'd already had this problem with her sister that uh the romans did not

want to have have killed uh killed earlier so he feared that she would live and as long as she lived she is dangerous this is one dangerous person i mean she's brilliant she's cunning she's charming she's seductive she's not great for anthony to have around but then there's the problem of her son what's he going to do you know anthony can't allow kaise ptolemy caesar kaisarian to live you mean octavian can't allow that excuse me that's amazing octavian can't allow ptolemy caesar to to live so what's he going to do kill him and then say to cleopatra no hard feelings you know just just come to rome um no she's she is a major major problem she also was caesar's lover and that's not great for him you know because he wants to be caesar nobody else can have a piece of caesar so there are all sorts of reasons why he wants her off the stage and he most definitely wants her oldest son off the stage

and explain what happens to him because erin yes so um so cleopatra understands that he's not long for this world once octavian enters alexandria so she sends him south uh with a trusted aide his tutor and they are on their way to india they're going to go to the red sea coast take ship and go to india and earlier cleopatra and anthony had hoped that they could go to india as well but their enemies burn their fleets and there are we should say there are successor greek uh states in in parts of uh i think it's what's now pakistan but there are there are places to go with with a cultural affinity for for cleopatra's background kind of excellent point excellent point that is true yes yes yes uh but unfortunately uh his tutor betrays kaizerian he wants to be on the side of the winners so he either kills kaiserion or brings him back to alexandria and says you know uh uh gaius julius caesar octavian is your

brother he wants to welcome you you're both the sons of julius caesar and then he is executed he's executed in alexandria that's fast again it's interesting to think the of the of the murderous i mean there's there's a there's a godfather sort of feel to some of this where it's it's it's the air and and kin of julius caesar that snuffs out the true arabs i mean the end of the roman republic and the beginning of the empire is so i it's there's a sopranos kind of a vibe to the whole thing most definitely so so what and we'll leave it with this but we'll actually leave it with me asking you if i left anything out but i would love to find out what you think the average um well-educated well-informed person should know about these events 2000 years later well that is a great question i think they should know first of all that um battles and wars really do matter if this had gone the other way we would be

speaking a language today we might well be speaking a language today with a greek base rather than a latin base uh to the extent that western culture was a christian culture it'd be more like orthodox christianity than western christians that's fascinating yes yeah i think that's that's that's the case um and i think that western civilization would look eastward in many ways it would be more like islamic civilization uh than the civilization that develops in in europe later and the roman heritage would have been much even more it was a greek roman heritage but it would have been even more of a greco-roman heritage so that's one thing uh another thing is that as you said strategy is the most important thing in a war and you can have the best weapons and the most money and you still lose because that's exactly what happened to anthony and cleopatra and of course there are some more recent

examples as well so this this i think is you know a a permanent lesson and then something you said earlier just the fascinating importance of of character and personality and you know anthony said when octavian was first starting he said ah that guy he's nothing but a name he has nothing but caesar the name of caesar but that wasn't true the guy was just immensely talented he was just a genius when it came to the art of politics and strategy and and that's the ultimate reason why he succeeds what haven't i asked you about that's worth talking about in this your book had so many different wonderful little avenues and i just touched upon some of them maybe you can give me an idea of the question that i didn't ask you did you want to know about the asp sure i always want to know about the ass but it's foremost in my mind most of the time you did mention it yes are we talking cobra here or is this something else

multiple cobras baby cobras what are we talking about i think we're talking baby cobras first of all there are some scholars who say this is all made up octavian had her assassinated and he makes up this fairy story about the assassins that could be true yeah maybe i just i find that really hard to believe because all the ancient sources buy it and there are people there at the time in cleopatra's court who write memoirs and i don't believe they're so scared of anthony of octavian that they aren't going to say oh by the way she didn't commit suicide i actually think that she and octavian made a deal that if she committed suicide he would let her three children by anthony live and he kept his side of the bargain so um that's kind of my guess so i see it as a scene in a godfather when tommy hagan tells frankie fantangily uh you know to commit suicide in the bath like the old roman emperors and don't worry about

your family they'll be fine it's a general rommel situation yeah that's kind of how i see it uh with cleopatra i was very skeptical of the asp because the ancient sources say we don't know if it was a it was an asp a snake it's just a generic word for a snake or if it was poison and i consulted a colleague of mine a a herpetologist and he said there's no problem it could have been it could have been a baby cobra it could easily have been a baby cobra that would have done the job just fine so i came away a believer thinking sometimes weird things happen in history and this is just one of those weird things and you pointed out the connection between the cobra and the ancient even by then pharonic egypt connection to the snake and her being the last in this line and the first one to speak egypt egyptian i mean there's a whole there's a there's so much symbolism that that makes me question the uh

the the uh historic historicity of it but you know and and maybe we'll leave it at this because i don't want to open up a whole other can of worms but i love the fact and you you just alluded to it how much an ancient person or a person you know in in 100 a.d would have had in a library sense in terms of research materials from primary sources that have been gone for 2 000 years to find out i mean like you said octavian's got memoirs a lot of the people involved in this thing wrote stories i mean if if they find a buried library someday from the ancient world where we can translate the documents um those are the kind of things weirdos like yours truly dream about professor strauss this is wonderful the book is wonderful um and thank you for illuminating a bunch of this stuff that's hard to imagine without some guidance you're very welcome thanks for the conversation

my thanks to professor barry strauss for coming on the program today and talking about this absolutely critical naval battle at this hinge point between two important periods in human history the transition from the roman republic to what we'll call later the roman empire his new book is called the war that made the roman empire antony cleopatra and octavian at actium he is an expert in uh ancient naval warfare by the way and if that is something you like he's got a great book on the battle of salamis from the greek and persian wars also uh he wrote one on the death of julius caesar called the death of caesar so he's got several books you may want to check out um this one on actium is a wonderful reminder for me as i read it it's a deep dive on this stuff about what it signifies for these ancient societies i mean to be able to put 600 giant wooden ships on the waves coordinate their activities

feed their crews i mean the number of things involved to me without any of our modern tools just reminds me that our ancestors were very clever and these societies were more sophisticated and capable than we commonly think they were i also and we've talked about this before there's nobody who's seen anything like what the battle of acting looked like i feel the same way about land battles in the ancient world and i've talked about how i would love to have although it would probably give me ptsd later a hot air balloon hovering over one of these ancient land battles to see what it looked like because nobody knows and the ancient writers left out key points because well if people 500 years from now we're reading about one of our wars we're not going to explain common things like what a gun is and how a bullet fires and what that looks like and how you know we assume that you're aware of certain

realities but eventually they won't be and so no one knows really what ancient warfare looked like on land or at sea all i can say is this if you study naval history you'll notice that there are lots of naval battles that have lots of ships in history so the battle of leyte golf in the second world war a naval battle famously with hundreds and hundreds of ships right just like the battle of actium the difference though is at the battle of leyte gulf these ships are spread out over hundreds and hundreds of miles of ocean a huge area they're not all congregated in a small space but at actium they are and at salamis they are i mean what do 600 ships on the waves at the same time in one place that can all see each other i mean what does that look like and when they start hurling bolts and stones at each other from a distance and then javelins and arrows as they get closer and the marines start

you know boarding hall to hull i just visually i can't picture it that's why i need a time machine and my hot air balloon right my i'm gonna spend all my money on a hot air balloon as i've said to hover over an ancient land battle so that i can get an idea of what it really looks like right the physics of ancient warfare as i always call it well there's a physics of ancient naval warfare 2 and i have just as much of a hard time imagining what the heck that's like um thanks to barry strauss for uh helping clear some of that up in uh the war that made the roman empire now the semi-legendary pseudo-mythical producer of this program is once again uh on my case about not pushing merchandise hard enough to you folks i'm just not much of a self-promoter um he says is it too much trouble to just say we have hats and t-shirts available and it's not so we do and if you want those they're available

from dan carlin.com also as you probably know we also have in addition to the free shows that are always available after a couple years we cycle those things into the paid archives and we charge what we hope you think is a fair price for those programs i of course would want to redo every one of those programs but i am told by listeners that they appreciate watching the evolution of this show which was going at the time hand in hand with the evolution of the podcasting medium standards were different in 2006 for example um but there's something interesting about watch just like watching old television shows i guess it's interesting to see you know how they did things back in the old days compared to how we do things now hey was certainly shorter and sweeter back then wasn't it in any case if you're interested in that that's available from the website too we live in interesting times as always everyone

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Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea"?

Dan Carlin (Host), Barry Strauss (Guest).

What is "EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea" about?

A discussion of how Rome transitioned from republic to empire, examining the hinge moments, key figures, and why this pivot fascinates historians, with a focus on naval warfare and the broader historical context leading to Cleopatra’s era. It highlights the complexities of defining the republic versus empire and the brilliant yet brutal military innovations of the period.

What is mentioned in this Dan Carlin episode?

19 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Cleopatra, Barry Strauss, The Battle of Actium, Julius Caesar, Roman Empire, Mark Antony. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "EP 20 A Republic Lost at Sea"?

The episode runs 1 h 9 min; the transcript is about 12,173 words in 71 timestamped sections.

More from Dan Carlin

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated October 29, 2026.