WI : Mark Anthony and Cleopatra not commiting suicides after defeat at Actium?

Yeah, title said that, basically :

1) what if Cleopatra still try to use her OTL charms to seduce Octavian instead? :p Ditching Anthony out? And trying to rally Egypt once more? :rolleyes:

2) what if Anthony isn't broken hearted and decide to run somewhere else with Cleopatra? :p
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
what if Cleopatra still try to use her OTL charms to seduce Octavian instead?

She tried. It didn't work.

Ditching Anthony out?

She tried that, too. It didn't work, either.

And trying to rally Egypt once more?

If somehow legions of Egyptians rally to Cleopatra after all the crap she and Antony have put them through, Octavian's legions will simply slaughter them.

what if Anthony isn't broken hearted and decide to run somewhere else with Cleopatra? :p

IIRC, there was some talk of them fleeing to India. They would then end their days as exotic refugees, unless Octavian's assassins get them or some Hindu king turns them over to his emissaries.
 
I wouldn't say she didn't have a chance with making a deal with Octavian-not because of any of her seductive powers, but because she was sitting right on the Egyptian treasury that Octavian so craved.
 
I wouldn't say she didn't have a chance with making a deal with Octavian-not because of any of her seductive powers, but because she was sitting right on the Egyptian treasury that Octavian so craved.


Cleopatra had something else that Octavian craved that often gets overlooked in the accounts re her demise and his MO- namely Ceasarion purportedly sired by Julius Ceasar himself whom even with 'taint' of having been borne by a non-Roman mother still would have had a stronger claim to Caesar's legacy and Rome itself than would Octavian a mere great-nephew of Caesar had he not been assassinated before he was an adult! Octavian [and Rome] already had virtual possession of Egypt so getting Cleopatra be paraded through Rome was not at the top of his list. However; the longer Caesarion lived (especially with Cleopatra living backing his claims), the more chance he would be able to gain supporters even amongst Romans and therefore be a threat to Octavian's authority even more so than Antony ever could have hoped for and Octavian hardly was above slaughtering his own kin to advance.
Perhaps it might be worth another thread to envision a world in which Caesarion lived to adulthood and openly challenged Octavian.
 
Cleopatra had something else that Octavian craved that often gets overlooked in the accounts re her demise and his MO- namely Ceasarion purportedly sired by Julius Ceasar himself whom even with 'taint' of having been borne by a non-Roman mother still would have had a stronger claim to Caesar's legacy and Rome itself than would Octavian a mere great-nephew of Caesar had he not been assassinated before he was an adult! Octavian [and Rome] already had virtual possession of Egypt so getting Cleopatra be paraded through Rome was not at the top of his list. However; the longer Caesarion lived (especially with Cleopatra living backing his claims), the more chance he would be able to gain supporters even amongst Romans and therefore be a threat to Octavian's authority even more so than Antony ever could have hoped for and Octavian hardly was above slaughtering his own kin to advance.
Not necessarily. The Romans weren't very warm to the idea of a child of a foreign queen getting anywhere in Roman politics-especially when said foreign queen had been demonized. Furthermore, I'm not even sure Rome recognized the status of children born between Romans and foreigners, much less Romans and foreign rulers.

Either way, Caesarion was set to go to India while the Cleopatra situation was playing out. He was really out of her reach at that point.


Perhaps it might be worth another thread to envision a world in which Caesarion lived to adulthood

*See "After Actium"
 
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