The World

* A triumph was the victory parade in which, after waiting outside the boundaries of Rome with his army, the triumphator, his face painted with red lead to resemble Jupiter and accompanied by a slave whispering ‘Memento mori’ (Remember you’re mortal), led his troops (singing bawdy songs about their general), wagons of booty and manacled prisoners on a procession through a celebratory Rome, culminating in sacrifices and then, in an underground dungeon, the strangling of VIP prisoners.

* Only the grandest Roman families like the Scipios had tri nomina: Publius the first name or praenomen, Cornelius the clan nomen and Scipio the cognomen. Most Romans just had two names; slaves had one. An agnomen was a nickname, often humorous, or a senatorial reward. The agnomen Africanus was awarded by the Senate as a victory name that became hereditary.

* One of Demetrios’ successors, Menander (Milinda), ruled north-west India and Pakistan, presenting himself as a Greek basileos and Indian maharaja: ‘learned, eloquent, wise and able’, he followed Buddha, who was not yet presented in statues, but these Greek monarchs may have influenced his presentation as a human. When Menander died, his widow Agathokleia became queen in her own right – a first for the Hellenistic and Indian worlds.

* Zhao Gao, now chancellor, tricked the emperor by forcing a loyalty test on courtiers: he presented a deer but insisted it be called a horse. ‘Is the chancellor perhaps mistaken calling a deer a horse?’ asked the emperor, but his courtiers backed the eunuch. It is a story that every leader should bear in mind – and the first historical case of gaslighting.

* This is the story told today in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The Maccabean kings ruled Judaea – encompassing most of today’s Israel, Jordan and Lebanon – for over a century.

* A statue known as The Greek Prince shows a ripped Roman patrician who may well be this Scipio. Roman intermarriage between patrician clans was complex, made worse by adoption that meant a grandee would adopt someone else’s son as his own, complicating already tangled relationships. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus had been adopted by Africanus’ son because his own father Lucius Aemelianus Paullus, conqueror of Macedonia, had so many other sons. While in Greece, his father encountered the future historian Polybius, who, forced to live in Rome as a hostage, became the boy’s tutor. The great Africanus had married his teenaged daughter Cornelia Africana, famed for her virtue and intelligence, to an elder senator Gracchus: their daughter Sempronia, a paragon of Roman pudicitia, was married to Scipio Aemilianus.

ACT THREE

120 MILLION

The Han and the Caesars

KING FATSO, HIS SON AND THE CLEOPATRAS

As if to demonstrate this new interconnectedness, Rome now turned to Egypt, Mediterranean breadbasket and gateway to Asia. After destroying Carthage and fighting in Hispania, Scipio Aemilianus – loathed by the popular faction in Rome for his aristocratic grandeur – was dispatched to talk sense to the most atrocious of Egyptian pharaohs, depraved even by the standards of the degenerate Ptolemies.

Fatso (Physcon) – as Ptolemy VIII was called by the Alexandrians – was effete, obese and sadistic, thriving in a period of mob violence and factional intrigue. Marrying his sister Cleopatra II and fathering a son Memphites, Fatso then fell in love with her daughter, child of his sister-wife and late brother – his niece and stepdaughter Cleopatra III – and married her too, further poisoning the family since the mother and daughter became jealous rivals. Cleopatra II was shocked at the betrayal by husband and daughter, sparking a loathing that led to a revolution. Fatso and his younger wife fled to Cyprus, while Cleopatra II ruled Egypt as sole queen. But Fatso had not given up. Realizing that their son Memphites might replace him, he kidnapped the fourteen-year-old, who trusted his father. Then Fatso had him strangled in front of him before cutting off his head, legs and hands, which he then sent to the boy’s mother, his sister-wife, the night before her birthday. Heartbroken, she displayed the body parts to Alexandrians. Fatso then outplayed her and invaded, taking a terrible vengeance on his enemies, who were burned alive. Rome cared little about Ptolemaic atrocities and much about Roman influence and trade: Fatso, who had visited Rome, carefully cultivated the Scipio family, even proposing to marry a Scipio daughter. Around 139 BC, Scipio was sent to Alexandria to overawe the egregious Fatso, now so fat he could scarcely walk. The Alexandrians watched the royal blancmange bulging out of his silken gowns, moistly panting to keep up with the craggy Roman. ‘The Alexandrians owe me one thing,’ joked Scipio. ‘They’ve actually seen their king walk.’