The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 24, 2025


PREVIEW： Epochs #195 ｜ Pompey and Caesar Part XX

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Cleopatra Pompey Alexandria Liz Taylor Rex Warner Mithridates Cappadocia Dolabella Domitius Achaeus Epochs Plutok Sulla
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1085 PREVIEW： An Analysis of Nosferatu (2024)

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

185.85

Word count

3,176

Sentence count

191

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

After the fall of the Roman Republic in the first century CE, Julius Caesar went on to become one of the most famous Roman leaders of all time. He was a man of many talents, but his greatest strength lay in his ruthlessness and ruthlessness, and in his desire to rule over the empire as an absolute dictator.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where I shall be once again continuing my narrative of the
00:00:04.900 decline and fall of the Roman Republic, focusing now solely on Caesar, because last time, if you
00:00:10.760 remember, Pompey had been killed. So there can be only one. Caesar couldn't really suffer anyone
00:00:18.820 being above him in the Roman state. So it's now a case of Caesar trying to mop up, and there's still
00:00:24.880 a few years to go yet before his own early untimely death. So the story of what happens to Caesar in
00:00:30.900 the remainder, the short remainder of his life. So let's pick up the story with Plutarch's life of
00:00:37.060 Caesar, where he's in Egypt. So Plutarch tells us this, quote, he arrived at Alexandria just after
00:00:44.360 Pompey's death. When Theodotus came to him with Pompey's head, Caesar refused to look at him, but
00:00:49.640 he took Pompey's signet ring and shed tears as he did so. He offered help and his own friendship to
00:00:55.760 all who had been friends and companions of Pompey, and who, without anywhere to go, had been arrested
00:01:01.080 by the king of Egypt. And he wrote to his friends in Rome to say that, of all the results of his
00:01:06.200 victory, what gave him the most pleasure was that he was so often able to save the lives of fellow
00:01:10.860 citizens who had fought against him. As I've said before, Caesar's clemency is a bit of a double-edged
00:01:16.440 sword. He's sort of ruthless with his clemency, if you like. It doesn't leave the people pardoned
00:01:23.360 unscathed. It's often still a complete humiliation. Although most people, but not all, would say
00:01:30.180 they'd prefer that to death. But there you go. Plutarch goes on. As for the war in Egypt, some say
00:01:36.600 that it need never have taken place, and that it was brought on by Caesar's passion for Cleopatra,
00:01:41.320 and that it did him little credit while involving him in great danger. Others blame the king's party
00:01:46.620 for it, and particularly the eunuch Pothinus, who was the most influential person at the court.
00:01:51.780 He had recently killed Pompey, had driven out Cleopatra, and was now secretly plotting against
00:01:57.060 Caesar. Because of this, they say, Caesar now began to sit up for whole nights on end at drinking
00:02:02.600 parties, in order to be sure that he was properly guarded. Even openly, Pothinus made himself
00:02:08.100 intolerable, belittling and insulting Caesar, both in his words and in his actions. For instance,
00:02:14.300 the soldiers were given rations of the oldest and worst possible grain, and Pothinus told them
00:02:18.900 that they must put up with it and learn to like it, since they were eating food that did not belong
00:02:23.100 to them. And at official dinners, he gave orders that wooden and earthenware dishes should be used,
00:02:28.340 on the pretext that Caesar had taken all the gold and silver in payment of a debt. The father of the 0.91
00:02:33.740 present king did in fact owe Caesar 17 and a half million drachmas, and though Caesar had previously
00:02:40.240 remitted part of this debt to the king's children, he now demanded 10 million for the support of his
00:02:45.860 army. Pothinus suggested that for the time being, he should go away and attend to more important
00:02:52.100 matters, promising that later on they would be delighted to pay the money. But Caesar told him
00:02:56.380 that Egyptians were the last people he would choose for his advisors, and secretly he sent for 0.97
00:03:01.200 Cleopatra from the country. Cleopatra, taking only one of her friends with her, Apollyodorus the
00:03:06.560 Sicilian, embarked in a small boat and landed at the palace when it was already getting dark. Since
00:03:11.640 there seemed to be no other way of getting in unobserved, she stretched herself out at full
00:03:16.400 length inside a sleeping bag, and Apollyodorus, after tying up the bag, carried it indoors to Caesar.
00:03:22.440 Some say it was a rug, but this translation says a sleeping bag. Anyway, this little trick of
00:03:27.280 Cleopatra's, which showed her provocative impudence, is said to have been the first thing about her 0.96
00:03:32.060 which captivated Caesar, and as he grew to know her better, he was overcome by her charm, and arranged
00:03:37.780 that she and her brother should be reconciled, and should share the throne of Egypt together.
00:03:42.260 So, a few words then about Cleopatra. She's still very young, she's like 20, 21 years old at this
00:03:47.880 point. Caesar's in his 50s. It's thought that possibly within hours of their meeting, her being
00:03:54.260 unrolled in this rug, this carpet, or this sleeping bag, being unrolled before him. Classic scene,
00:04:01.300 another classic image from ancient history. Perhaps within hours, within a day or so, they
00:04:05.820 were lovers. They were sleeping together. Now, Caesar was a ladies' man, and some say, you know,
00:04:12.440 may have even been bedded by the king of Bithynia. Needless to say, he's experienced sexually,
00:04:18.080 and she isn't. She might even have been a virgin. So, you know, take from that what you will.
00:04:23.760 She is said to have been very clever, very, very clever, very well read for her age,
00:04:29.620 fluent in loads of languages, seven languages, more. She knew Egyptian, one of the very, very few 0.78
00:04:34.940 Ptolemies, one of the very, very few Hellenistic Greek rulers of Egypt that ever learned Egyptian.
00:04:41.900 She's supposed to have understood maths. And also, she was highly educated. And also, she was supposed 0.99
00:04:48.540 to have been charming, a good conversationalist. So, sort of, quite a, well, if we believe it,
00:04:54.920 very well-rounded person. And she knew who she was. She knew her power. She knew her position,
00:05:01.540 her status, what it was worth, the value of her position. So, you know, what we might, in modern
00:05:06.900 parlance, call a politician. She was a good politician. She had an acute mind for what was going on
00:05:11.880 around her. She was no dummy. And though not, you know, Liz Taylor beautiful, apparently she had
00:05:16.660 some sort of physical charm about her. She wasn't completely ugly or disgusting, although the coins
00:05:22.140 of her don't look very attractive to me, anyway. But there's some question over, really, how pretty 1.00
00:05:27.200 she really was. But needless to say, apparently, she was an impressive human, put it that way.
00:05:32.560 And Caesar sees this. One of Caesar's many, many gifts is to be able to spot talent and utilise it.
00:05:39.620 Okay, let's let Plutarch go on. So Caesar wants her and her brother to be reconciled.
00:05:45.000 Everyone was invited to a banquet to celebrate the reconciliation. And while the banquet was in
00:05:50.100 progress, a servant of Caesar, who acted as his barber, and who, because of his unexampled cowardice,
00:05:56.360 was in the habit of looking into everything, listened to every scrap of gossip, and generally having
00:06:00.780 something to do with everything that was going on, managed to find out that the general Achaeus and the
00:06:05.300 eunuch Pothinus were plotting together against Caesar. Once Caesar had discovered this, he set
00:06:10.580 a guard round the banqueting hall and had Pothinus killed. Achaeus, however, escaped to the camp and
00:06:16.260 involved Caesar in a full-scale war, and one that was very difficult to fight, since he had a great
00:06:21.100 city and a large army against him, and only a few troops with which to defend himself. So remember,
00:06:26.220 Caesar only went to Egypt to chase Pompey, and he knew Pompey didn't have any sort of army with him.
00:06:31.360 So Caesar, always wanting to do things as quickly as possible, always wanting to have the initiative
00:06:36.640 and the momentum, went to Egypt with barely a legion, just a few Roman soldiers, really.
00:06:42.320 And now he finds himself in Egypt, besieged inside the palace in Alexandria, which is a giant
00:06:49.280 palace complex. It's sort of a big percentage of the whole city is the palace. And apparently it's
00:06:56.060 something approaching impregnable. The walls were very, very, very sturdy. He could have stayed holed
00:07:02.320 up in there almost indefinitely, but nonetheless, he's got a tiny number of men versus, well, the
00:07:08.680 entire Egyptian army. In various ways, the entire Egyptian state ranged against him. So once again,
00:07:18.560 Caesar finds himself in a very, very tight spot. Plutarch goes on.
00:07:22.560 First of all, the enemy dammed up the canals, and he was in danger of being cut off from his
00:07:27.260 water supply. Then they tried to intercept his communications by sea, and he was forced to deal
00:07:32.060 with this danger by setting fire to the ships in the docks. This was the fire which, starting from
00:07:36.800 the dockyards, destroyed the Great Library. People might know of the terrible tragedy of the Great
00:07:41.440 Library of Alexandria burning down. There's actually a couple of different occasions. The big one,
00:07:46.700 the main one, really, is much later, centuries after this, in a Christian riot, actually. But this
00:07:53.600 is the first time that there was a fire at the Great Library of Alexandria, and, you know, who knows
00:07:58.760 how much knowledge was lost in these fires. The Great Library was supposed to, every ship with
00:08:05.360 scrolls that came to Alexandria, they were said to have copied them and kept a copy in this Great Library.
00:08:10.480 So, if that library had survived through late antiquity, the Dark Ages, the medieval period,
00:08:17.380 into modernity, we would have so much more information. Among the greatest tragedies in the
00:08:23.740 human story is the various fires that happened at that library of Alexandria. Anyway, this is one of
00:08:30.960 them, the first one. Plutarch goes on.
00:08:32.400 And, thirdly, he was hard-pressed during the fighting that took place on Pharos. He had sprung
00:08:38.080 down from the mole into a small boat and was trying to get the help of his men who were engaged in
00:08:42.980 battle. But the Egyptians sailed up against him from all directions, and he was forced to throw
00:08:47.620 himself into the sea and swim. So he's having to flee for his life. Lucky he could swim. The ability
00:08:52.340 to swim was kind of rare in the pre-modern age. Nowadays, we're all little kids, aren't they? You'll learn to
00:08:58.400 read and write, and do a little bit of maths, and you're taught to ride a bicycle, and you're taught
00:09:02.380 to swim, right? Most people can swim. Well, that wasn't the case for most of human civilisation.
00:09:08.700 It's almost something of a specialist skill. But luckily, Caesar could swim, and was obviously a
00:09:13.360 strong enough swimmer as well to get away, just about get away by the skin of his teeth.
00:09:18.440 Okay, so Caesar himself was forced into the sea to swim, only just managing to escape. This was the
00:09:23.080 time when, according to the story, he was holding a number of papers in his hand and would not let them go,
00:09:28.140 though he was being shot at from all sides, and was often underwater. Sounds like he'd very nearly
00:09:32.400 drowned. Holding the papers above the surface with one hand, he swam with the other. His small boat
00:09:37.040 had been sunk immediately. Finally, however, after the king had gone over to the side of the enemy,
00:09:42.100 Caesar marched against him and defeated him in battle. Many fell in this battle, and the king
00:09:46.320 himself was one of the missing. Caesar then set out for Syria. He left Cleopatra as queen of Egypt,
00:09:51.380 and a little later, she had a son by him, whom the Alexandrians called Caesario, end quote. So, a bit more
00:09:57.440 detail on that. At a certain point, the 13, 14-year-old king of Egypt, Pharaoh, Ptolemy,
00:10:04.440 realises that Caesar has become a partisan of Cleopatra, or that he has essentially picked
00:10:10.960 Cleopatra's side, that he's not going to act as a fair arbiter in this civil war. Ptolemy realises
00:10:17.100 this, and probably, who knows exactly, but probably realises or knows, gets intelligence, that Caesar and
00:10:22.580 Cleopatra have become lovers. So, he knows he's not going to get a fair shake from Caesar. So, he
00:10:27.380 appeals to the people of Alexandria. Now, the people of Alexandria are famously volatile, shall we say.
00:10:34.340 They will rise up and do a full-scale riot at the drop of a hat very often. So, they usually need very
00:10:40.540 little encouragement to get rowdy, and that's an understatement. Ptolemy goes before them and says,
00:10:46.100 look, Caesar's trying to usurp my power. Caesar's trying to pervert the Egyptian state who's with 0.97
00:10:52.040 me. And, you know, the common folk of Alexandria are with him. They don't appreciate being the vassal
00:10:57.600 in all but name to the Romans. They'll become a full Roman province in the next generation, but
00:11:01.800 they've already had the complete mickey taken out of them by the Romans for a few generations already,
00:11:06.080 and they don't like it. They don't take kindly to it. So, they rally to Ptolemy's side, and Ptolemy's
00:11:10.280 got the army with him and everything. But, as we were told there, months go by. Actual months go by
00:11:15.440 while Caesar is holed up in the palace at Alexandria, sort of unable to leave. Eventually,
00:11:20.500 there is an actual engagement, and Caesar, against the odds, heavily outnumbered, as usual,
00:11:24.620 wins. Ptolemy's forced to flee. Some accounts say that he was, well, he was, he was sort of forced
00:11:30.080 one way or another to try and get across the river, the Nile, and his armour was too heavy. Perhaps it
00:11:34.600 was golden armour, and it weighed him down, and he drowned. He either couldn't swim or wasn't a strong
00:11:38.920 enough swimmer. I mean, even a very, very strong swimmer's going to struggle to swim in golden armour.
00:11:43.300 Gold is really heavy, stupidly heavy. I'm not sure how a 13 or 14 year old could even wear
00:11:48.840 golden armour and walk around in it. But anyway, there we go. Depends how much of it he was really
00:11:54.160 wearing. But he sinks to the bottom and drowns, and that's, that's the end of him. He's dead.
00:11:58.760 So, Cleopatra can rule, at least for a while, for an interim period. She's going to need to get 1.00
00:12:02.940 remarried. She can't really be a full-blown, absolute queen in her own right. She has, she has to have 1.00
00:12:09.440 a husband. But for a while, anyway, she could be sole ruler. But as, as Plutok told us there,
00:12:15.180 she got pregnant by Caesar and had a son, Caesarion, who features in the story a bit. And if anyone
00:12:21.800 doesn't know, that's Caesar's only child now. Before, he'd only ever had one other child, and
00:12:26.200 that was Julia, who, you know, had grown up and been married and been pregnant herself, but had died.
00:12:31.440 So, now Caesar is childless. Well, he's late in life, got another, got a son now, the ill-fated
00:12:38.020 Caesarion. Okay, let's let Plutarch continue the story, where Caesar goes from, from there, after
00:12:43.660 he's able to actually leave Egypt, after having spent months and months there. The whole rest of
00:12:48.900 the Mediterranean is still in the midst of this civil war, and Caesar's had his foot off the gas
00:12:54.060 for a while. Well, he hasn't had any other option. He couldn't have left Egypt, or the royal 0.56
00:12:58.100 palace in Alexandria, even if he'd wanted to. And it has given his enemies, from Spain to North
00:13:03.020 Africa to Syria, a bit of a breathing space. So, now he's finally escaped from Egypt, it's all on 0.98
00:13:09.180 again. So, Plutarch says this, quote, from Syria he went to Asia when he heard that Domitius had been
00:13:14.820 defeated by Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, the king of Pontus, that is, and had fled from Pontus
00:13:21.660 with the few troops that remained. He heard, too, that Pharnaces was making the fullest possible use of
00:13:27.020 his victory. He was in control of Bithynia and Cappadocia, was aiming at taking over the country 0.97
00:13:32.420 called Lesser Armenia, and was encouraging all the princes and tetrarchs there to revolt. So, 0.56
00:13:37.980 Caesar's potentially got another Mithridates on his hands, i.e. a king of Pontus, who, above and
00:13:42.640 beyond his means, really, is spreading his power and dominion far and wide. A real headache for any
00:13:48.200 Roman dreams of dominance in the Near East. So, with three legions, he, Caesar, marched against him
00:13:55.520 immediately. He fought him in a great battle near the city of Zella, drove him out of Pontus,
00:14:00.840 and annihilated his army. No big deal, just Caesar doing what Caesar does. In describing the sharpness
00:14:06.240 and rapidity of this battle, Caesar wrote to, in Latin, however, the words have the same inflexible
00:14:11.340 ending, and this gives them a remarkable effect of brevity and concentration. We usually translate it
00:14:16.560 as, I came, I saw, I conquered. Rex Warner, the translator of this Penguin edition of Plutarch,
00:14:23.000 translates Plutarch's Greek simply as, came, saw, conquered. Okay, Plutarch goes on.
00:14:27.600 After this, he crossed over to Italy and came to Rome. It was now a year since he had been chosen
00:14:31.980 dictator for the second time, though previously this office had never been held for a whole year,
00:14:36.520 and for the following year he was proclaimed consul. So, whenever Caesar goes to Rome, he just
00:14:40.540 sort of, because there's no one to stop him, issues himself with more powers and titles and things.
00:14:45.900 So, you know, no proper elections anymore, right? He can just say, more or less, I'm going to be
00:14:50.760 consul next, and nothing can be done to stop that. There's no one left to prevent it or thwart that
00:14:56.180 in any real way. You know, making himself dictator multiple times in a row. Each time Caesar returns
00:15:02.100 to Rome, he cements his authority on paper legally. We all know it's sort of extra-legally, but, you know,
00:15:08.620 on paper, he cements his authority every time he's there. Plutarch continues.
00:15:12.340 People spoke badly of him because, after his soldiers had mutinied and killed two men of
00:15:17.500 Praetorian rank, Galba and Cosconius, the only reprimand which he gave to them was to address
00:15:23.160 them as citizens instead of fellow soldiers, after which he gave each man a thousand drachmas
00:15:29.260 and a large allotment of land in Italy. So, Caesar's turning a blind eye, or even actually
00:15:35.140 rewarding killers, people that are prepared, at least in a limited way, to murder his political
00:15:40.920 opponents. Again, it's nothing like Sulla, is it? The odd political opponent being murdered,
00:15:45.280 literally one or two here or there. It's about as bloodless as it could be. Not entirely bloodless,
00:15:51.000 but nothing close to what Marius did or what Sulla did. Plutarch.
00:15:56.080 Other things which were held against him were the irresponsible behaviour of Dolabella,
00:16:00.560 the greed of Amantius, the drunkenness of Antony, and the conduct of Corphinius,
00:16:05.360 who enlarged and refurbished Pompey's house, as though it was not grand enough for him.
00:16:10.160 All these things caused much ill feeling at Rome. Caesar was quite aware of what was going on
00:16:16.060 and disapproved of it. But, because of the general political situation, he was forced to make use
00:16:21.220 of those who would do his will. If you would like to see the full version of this premium video,
00:16:25.840 please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our premium content.
00:16:35.360 For more information, visit www.fema.org