Potentially Interesting Roman History

Episode XXV

You know when you see online catfights between two people over who has been sleeping with who? Funny, right?

Well, people have been at it for 2,000 years. Here's Octavian (the future Augustus) and Mark Antony having an argument about the latter sleeping with Cleopatra, complete with angry direct messaging:

Mark Antony spent the winter of 37/6 in Antioch, planning a campaign in Parthia, where he sent for and married Cleopatra. Crucially, Roman law didn’t recognise the marriage of a citizen with a foreigner, a fact that Antony’s allies in the East conveniently ignored. It was also a massive slap in the face for the Roman marriage to Octavia, Octavian's sister, who, by the way, had two children with him and a third on the way. Not only that, but Octavia stayed in Italy, with not only her children but his two other sons by his first marriage.

It might have made sense in Antony's head to make such an allegiance with Egypt, but the optics of it were staggeringly badly handled. Antony now had virtually no defence against Octavian’s charges of ‘anti-Roman’ ways. He couldn’t have allied himself more to the notion of a future Empire wedded to the Near Orient if he tried. The marriage with Cleopatra even echoed the traditions of the Hellenistic superheroes such as Alexander, who had a Persian and a Macedonian wife - one in the East, one in the West. But Antony was no Alexander. Octavian had a field day with this, not least because he got to defend the honour of his own sister against this illegal outrage. According to Suetonius, Antony wrote a furious letter in reply:

"What’s come over you? That I’m screwing the queen [Cleopatra]? We’re married. Is it anything new? It’s been going on for nine years. Is Livia Drusilla the only one you’re screwing? Good luck to you if you haven’t screwed Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia or all of them by the time you read this. Does it matter when you have it away, and who with?"

(Suetonius, Augustus 69)

Antony was spitting mad and all this was music to Octavian’s ears. Yes, it mattered. It mattered very much.

The above is, partly, an extract from my upcoming book, The House of the Caesars, which will be available at some point soon (vague handwaving gestures).

My current book is available to buy right now, on Amazon. Just follow the link below.