willowfall
Senator
apostate630 said:A lengthy, intricate, and downright baffling addition to this thread, Aaron.
I shall let it stand, but I don't have any replies to post. And I still think it likely that Octavian murdered Cleopatra, but I really don't think he used a cross. A sword thrust to the gut or cut throat would have been so much more . . . efficient.
Although Jedakk's "Cleopatra's Handmaiden" could be the point source of such a fantasy. Octavian didn't want a public crucifixion, Cleopatra didn't want it known that it's her hanging naked on that cross.
Octavian and Cleopatra had a mutual interest in this matter. And so this "handmaiden" howling and writhing out her last hours of existence on a Roman cross was not, officially, Cleopatra.
Have to disagree with you Apostate.
I think they cut a deal. If Cleo takes herself as like a lady then Octavian doesn't have her publically executed in the most humiliating manner he can in front of the Roman mob.
Works for both of them.
He sows up Egypt (and remember Cleo wasn't Egyptian she descended from the Alexandian general Ptolomy in a family that practiced incest) without making a martyer of their late great leader (and since she had already had her brothers bumped off there was no ruling dynasty left) cleanly without having to leave a big garrison behind.
She gets to go out in a relatively painless manner and creates the myth of her Heroic Honorable death.
What's the line out of "The Lion In Winter": Geoffry - "Why do you care how you fall? Does it matter?" Richard "When the fall is all that's left, it matters."
The fall was all that was left.