[foreboding music playing]
Cleopatra's relationship with Caesar
gives her immense power,
and immense possibilities.
But it's all...
blown apart.
[Caesar groaning]
[ominous music playing]
[Amanda]
Caesar is assassinated,
by a group of senators who are worried
that he is seeking to install a monarchy.
This throws everything into disarray for Cleopatra.
[suspenseful music playing]
[birds chirping]
Caesar is dead.
They murdered him.
You're not safe here anymore.
For Cleopatra, this is a disaster beyond reckoning.
Suddenly, her patron is gone.
Suddenly, her position in Rome couldn't be more precarious.
Cleopatra has gone from being as secure
as she has ever been in her entire life,
to, overnight,
she finds herself under threat
and her entire position called into question.
[tense music playing]
[narrator]
Mark Antony presents Caesar's will
to the Roman public.
To the people of Rome...
I leave 75 denarii each.
The rest of my estate will fall to my...
To my principal heir, Gaius Octavius.
[foreboding music playing]
[Robert]
is his grand-nephew, Gaius Octavius.
He is named as Caesar's heir,
heir to most of Caesar's fortune,
and Caesar offers him posthumous adoption.
Caesarion's mere existence
is a threat to Octavian.
[Melinda]
and dangerous position.
[ominous music playing]
[narrator]
Cleopatra flees Rome for Egypt.
[Prudence]
seems not to have had anything come of it.
There's certainly no birth recorded.
[Aaron]
Cleopatra realizes
she can no longer cultivate dependencies
with those above her.
She has to get others dependent on her
from a position of advantage.
[narrator]
again exposed to her greatest rival...
Her sister, Arsinoe.
Who Caesar banished to the Roman-controlled city
of Ephesus.
[foreboding music playing]
[Amanda]
to stake a claim to the Egyptian throne.
[Patrick]
to some of Egypt's priestly class,
who recognize her claim to the throne over Cleopatra's.
[crowd cheering]
[Patrick]
with the now 15-year-old Ptolemy the 14th,
who is Cleopatra's co-ruler.
[applauding]
[narrator]
Cleopatra cannot strike back directly.
So she tries a different tactic.
[Cleopatra] So...
what great prize did our sister promise
to win your support, hm?
That one day, you'd rule together as equals?
[Melinda]
Ptolemy the 14th disappears from the record.
Many historians believe
that Cleopatra poisoned her brother.
[Robert]
And supposedly,
she even tested poisons on prisoners.
[ominous music playing]
[Aaron]
removing the potential threat.
This is what she's literally been raised to do,
which is to backstab her siblings.
She is having to rule...
and to plan.
And to plot.
To turn herself...
into an iron-fisted monarch.
[tense music playing]
[narrator]
after seven years on the Egyptian throne,
Cleopatra finally gets what she's been striving for.
Absolute power.
With the death of Ptolemy 14,
an opening has been created for Caesarion
to be installed alongside Cleopatra
as co-ruler.
Having Caesarion as her co-ruler
is really perfect for Cleopatra
because he's a baby.
She controls him completely.
[narrator]
Cleopatra tightens her own grip on the throne.
For the next two years,
she rules over a stable Egypt.
Meanwhile, Rome is in chaos.
[ominous music playing]
[Bob]
precipitates a horrific civil war.
In which Mark Antony, Caesar's trusted general,
and Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew,
join forces...
and pursue the assassins
across the Mediterranean
in order to bring them to justice.
[Aaron]
on the battlefield,
Octavian and Antony split the empire between them.
[Robert]
the Eastern part of the empire,
which includes Greece and Syria and Turkey and Libya.
Octavian rules the territories to the West
like Gaul and Spain.
And he's basically close to Rome,
where he can cultivate his image.
[Barry]
is anything but natural.
They are rivals.
Neither one has any reason to trust the other.
And the Roman world is holding its breath,
wondering when the two of them will come to blows.
[ominous music playing]
[Aaron]
Antony decides to engage in military campaign.
This, for the Romans, is the classical way
of getting ahead.
This is a way for Antony
to stay in the forefront of Roman politics.
To do this, though, he needs resources.
And so as many Roman generals have in the past,
he turns to Egypt.
Believing that, there shouldn't be any problems with him
getting whatever food and manpower
and resources he needs.
[Prudence]
an opportunity.
As opposed to hurrying to donate,
she thinks how she can negotiate.
She wants something from Antony.
Majesty, your presence is requested in Tarsus,
by General Mark Antony.
"Requested"?
Demanded.
[messenger] He doesn't have time to meet with intermediaries.
Neither do I.
[foreboding music playing]
[Patricia]
and in Turkey at this point,
sends several letters to Cleopatra, summoning her,
and she refuses to respond and to visit him.
[Robert]
Mark Antony now has to come begging Cleopatra for money,
which is a remarkable rise for a woman
who once hid to meet Caesar in a carpet bag.
[Shelley]
she can put Antony off for the short term,
but in the long term...
she realizes,
that she has to have the Romans on her side.
[birds squawking]
[foreboding music playing]
[Clifford]
she comes to him not as a subject,
bringing money or tribute or taxes,
but as a sovereign over a great power
meeting an equal.
[Amanda]
But even Cleopatra outdoes herself,
with her appearance in Tarsus.
She comes in on a barge,
the sails are purple,
the barge is painted gold,
the oars are made of silver,
the oarsmen are keeping timed to the sound of flutes.
And in the midst of all of it,
Cleopatra is dressed as Aphrodite,
the Greek goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility.
[Simon]
She has to form an alliance with him.
And she knows that the best form of alliance
is a personal one.
[bird squawking]
[drums thumping]
[clapping rhythmically]
-[whooshes] -[crowd cheering]
[festive music playing]
Please.
Antony was a partier.
He was a ladies man.
He liked to drink. He liked to gamble.
He likes pleasure.
And so she's really speaking right to Antony's soul.
[Cleopatra] You certainly drink more than Caesar.
I have 60,000 men waiting to be paid.
Must we talk all night about Caesar?
I might be able to help,
if you fix one of Caesar's greatest mistakes.
[narrator]
with gold and grain for his army,
but not without conditions.
In exchange for all she's doing for Antony,
Cleopatra wants something in return.
[Arsinoe gasps]
She gets Antony to agree to Arsinoe's execution.
[narrator]
Antony controls Ephesus,
where Arsinoe lives in exile under Roman guard.
[ominous music playing]
[Simon]
of Cleopatra's position.
Both as a Ptolemaic queen of Egypt,
but also as a player in the Roman republic.
She exists in a world
where power is a murderous game.
[ominous music playing]
And it's either a case of kill...
[ominous music intensifies]
...or be killed.