The World

‘Either fuck or fight,’ she says. Doesn’t she know

My prick is dearer to me than life itself? Let the trumpets blare!

* Antony’s Semitic clients, the Jewish king Herod and the Arab king Malik, delayed sending troops – both aggrieved by gifts of valuable territory to Cleopatra.

* The three children of Cleopatra and Antony were raised by Octavia in Rome. Two died young, but the third, Cleopatra Selene, was married to Juba II, king of Mauritania. This was the Berber prince Juba’s reward for fighting for Octavian at Actium, along with a new-fangled kingdom named Mauritania in today’s Algeria. Together they built a Grecian–Roman capital of cultural sophistication, while Juba sent trading expeditions that reached the Canary Islands. Cleopatra Selene died in AD 6. Their son Ptolemy, a mixture of Euro-African, Berber, Roman and Greek, Antonian and Ptolemaic, succeeded his father in AD 23.

* Princeps was the origin of our word prince, much as the Palatine was the origin of palace. Augustus avoided the title dictator, abolished after Caesar’s assassination. From now on, dictator became an insult, not an office.

* Yet he disliked cruelty for its own sake: one of his earlier supporters, Vedius Pollio, was a rich but a notorious sadist who fed slaves who angered him to his carnivorous lampreys in the pond at his villa. When Augustus was there for dinner, a slave dropped a valuable cup and Vedius ordered him thrown to the lampreys, at which Augustus ordered his retainers to smash the rest of the cups until the slave was released and spared.

* Herod was a brilliant player of Roman politics, switching from Antony to Augustus, then becoming almost a foreign member of the Caesar dynasty. Much of his monumental building work survives today. Of his Temple, only the outer walls survive: its western wall is the Kotel, the Western Wall, today’s most sacred shrine for Jews.

* Ovid was the outrageous chronicler of just the sort of delicious love affairs with other people’s wives that were now out of favour under Augustus. Admitting not just a ‘poem and a mistake’ but also a ‘crime worse than murder’, Ovid was lucky to be alive, exiled to the faraway town of Tomis (Romania). He never returned.

* Livia was said to have poisoned Augustus with figs. She was also rumoured to have poisoned all his earlier prospective successors. There is no proof of any of this and much of it was pure chauvinism, as poison was supposedly feminine – secret, insidious, concealed in food consumed trustingly. In an era when many died of scarcely understood infections, poison or necromancy could explain the sudden deaths of healthy people. Yet, as we have seen, poison was the ideal weapon for family murders: it preserved the image of a smooth succession. In an age when auguries, spells and omens were believed by everyone, poison was part of the political arsenal and all potentates had access to experts on necromancy and poisons. ‘Livia, remember our married life,’ said Augustus as he died, ‘and farewell.’

* Traditionally the praetorians were the guards of a Roman general on campaign: they slept across the doorway of his tent. Since the legions were not allowed inside the pomerium, the city limits (except when a Sulla or Caesar broke the rules), Augustus had created his own praetorians who along with a guard of Germans protected the emperor.

* After Herod’s death, the ineptitude of his sons and a rash of Jewish messiahs – sacred kings – had convinced Tiberius to annex Judaea, which was governed by a mix of Roman prefects, Jewish high priests and Herodian princes.

* At the same time, Caligula summoned his African cousin King Ptolemy of Mauritania, only grandchild of Cleopatra and Antony, and had him executed, annexing the kingdom, possibly because his royal Ptolemaic descent could have interfered with his plans in Egypt.

Trajans and First Step Sharks: Romans and the Maya

SWINGER IN THE PALACE: MESSALINA’S COUP

‘So be it!’ shouted Chaerea. He drew his sword and swung it against Caligula’s neck, but it only shattered his jawbone. Another slash almost sliced off an arm. One forgets the sheer messiness of assassinations. Caligula twitched on the ground. ‘I am still alive!’ he cried, begging to be finished off.

‘Hit him again!’ shouted the praetorians, who stabbed Caligula thirty times, including in the genitals. When his German guards learned what had happened, they went berserk in the theatre, nearly slaughtering the entire crowd. Chaerea planned to liquidate the whole family, sending guards to kill Caesonia and her baby daughter, but she had rushed out and lay sobbing next to the deserted body of Caligula. They killed her there, then dashed the baby’s head against a wall.

Excited senators debated who to appoint princeps, but some praetorians found Claudius hiding behind a tapestry. Aided by his longstanding friend the Jewish king Herod Agrippa, Claudius negotiated with the praetorians and the Senate.