When I was a child, we had a series of red books about Greek myths which mesmerised me, just as Greek myths have captured countless other children all down history. All that ephemeral romance has floated in my mind ever since but completely disconnected from Christianity. So, recently, it was with the same old feeling of ‘classical elation’ that I connected up Cleopatra, Antony, Caesar Augustus, the Battle of Actium - and St Paul.
‘Cleopatra’ the film, explains the geography of Actium
By eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18720169
Elizabeth Taylor did a memorable job of conveying Cleopatra VII as a heavily made-up, highly passionate queen but the truth is far more complex. Cleopatra was an astute, ambitious intellectual and strategist. She was building an eastern Hellenistic Empire ostensibly under her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion.
If she had succeeded (and she very nearly did), St Paul and Jesus of Nazareth would have been born into an eastern Hellenistic world ruled from Alexandria by Graeco-Roman Caesarion, dressed as a Pharaoh, not into a Roman world ruled by Caesar Augustus and Rome. The Western Empire, even Britannia’s history, would have been plunged early into a Dark Age. Christianity may never have reached us before it reached Russia. The Christian faith may never have been driven forward by Rome.
How many women in history have had such ambition or such power at their disposal? So where did clever Cleopatra go wrong? The amazing story is told in this film (from 25 mins) and it is worth watching. Cleopatra, who spoke seven languages, was the driving force behind this bid for total world domination. She desperately wanted to destroy Octavian, later Caesar Augustus in a bloody Roman civil war, to assert the direct DNA line of Julius Caesar. She used Antony to try to achieve this.
The peerless lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, had intended to attack Italy from the west coast of Greece, just south of Corfu, but Octavian preempted them by surrounding them on land and sea, amid malaria and shortages of grain and water, having cut their supplies from Alexandria. After a sweltering summer, during which many of their troops defected to Octavian (one taking Antony's battle plan to the other side), they had to break out of Actium or die. So, on 2 September 31BC, Antony engaged the Roman fleet and the Augustan flagship just off Actium (although all his generals had advised him to fight on land). Cleopatra had urged a sea battle possibly to effect her escape more easily. When it appeared that he was losing against Roman General Agrippa (their only general who was also a trained admiral), Cleopatra led her ships through the midst of the battle and headed for the open water. One wonders how many women have been present at a major sea battle? Famously, seeing this, Antony jumped into the sea, climbed aboard a clipper and gave pursuit.
All was lost: they would never rule the entire Roman Empire; Augustus would take over Egypt within a year and Caesarion would be murdered. Agrippa and Augustus (Octavian) would appear as equal heads on the Roman coinage. The skills of Agrippa had changed the course of the entire history of Western Europe.
Shakespeare conveys this scene as a tragedy of lovestruck foolishness but should we see it like that? After the battle, Caesar Augustus commanded that where he had camped on the northern peninsula should become a town called Nicopolis (‘Victory Town’) and a memorial should be built. The base of the building is still there, amid the ruins of Nicopolis and can be visited. Along the ruined podium, archeologists noted strange sockets : they have since realised that thirty now vanished Egyptian beaks or ship rams, weighing half a tonne fitted into them. This is how Romans remembered sea victories, from ancient times.
Jesus was born before 4BC which was only 27 years after The Battle of Actium and Paul was a contemporary of his. Paul, then Saul, was brought up in Tarsus the site of the famous conjoining of Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra had wafted in on her luxury perfumed barge, in 41BC. Someone who was a child inTarsus in 41BC may well have described the scene to a 10 year old St Paul. Even his grandparents could have told the story if they reached their 60s.
The Book of Titus in the New Testament tells us that St Paul decided to spend a winter in Nicopolis (most probably Victory Town near Actium). There was a nascent church there. We can imagine Paul wandering around the town, as he did in Athens, sightseeing. He would have seen the memorial to Mars and Neptune with the thirty intact bronze rams and considered how the skill of Agrippa had thwarted the worldly ambitions of Antony and Cleopatra. How little it took: just a superior plan. Did he get encouragement from that? After all, the Holy Spirit would bring down a pagan Empire, with little more than faith and his pen.
St Paul may have thought about how Cleopatria ‘deified’ Julius Caesar with a temple in Alexandria (outside which Cleopatra’s Needle stood - now in London). The Romans did the same in Rome and wrote on the building that Caesar Augustus was ‘the son of a god’ i.e. of Julius Caesar. St Paul would have scoffed at the blasphemous title.
It is fascinating that without brilliant, plebeian Marcus Agrippa, it is thought that Augustus would never have held the (Western) Roman Empire. His is a legacy which still reverberates today. Agrippa was also responsible for the Pantheon, whose concrete dome has endured 2000 years of blistering sun and weather. One wonders whether there is anyone today achieving two thousand years of legacy?
In essence, this was a battle between the decadent Hellenistic East and the more disciplined West and the latter won. The Hellenistic world of Alexander the Great had collapsed to Rome and into this collapsed world Jesus and Paul were born. This same stand-off continues through history where decadence faces more disciplined forces. The next great sea battle in the West was very close by - the Battle of Lepanto - against the Ottomans, in 1571.
Linking up mythology, Greece, St Paul and Cleopatra is pretty satisfying and merits a trip to see the romantic and historic shores where such exultant female ambition turned to dust, where western history was created - and where nascent Christianity converged.
For a European film (spoken in Greek and Latin) on The Battle of Actium see here
Actium, the Museum at Nicopolis and its ruins, the Temple of Neptune and Mars are accessible from Preveza (BA flights go to Aktium Airport just across the water).
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