Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

CONTEXT - Coggle Diagram

- - - - His rise to power is steady and inevitable. He control much of the action in the play through his manipulation of other characters.
        
        This control is matched in relentlessness by the iron control he excersises over himself - banishing himself from conviviality and emotion.
      - Perhaps, because Octavius' rise to power was so familiar to Shakespeare's audience, Shakespeare does not give this side of the conflict much emphasis.
        
        Instead, he directs attention to those whom Caesar defeats; Antony and Cleopatra.
        
        Shakespeare doesn't mitigate either the characters flaws that contribute to their defeat or bitterness of their loss but he also grants them opportunities to best their conqueror.
        
        He first has them rise above the self-repressed Caesar in their love for each other.
        
        Cleopatra is an object of enduring fascination to the Romans making Antony the envy of the Roman military for enjoying the woman who earlier Roman great men, like Julius Caesar, has enjoyed.
        
        Shakespeare also has them rise above their conqueror as they attempt to frustrate his dearest wish. Octavius wants to capture the fame of the defeated heroes by dragging them as captives through the streets of Rome in a triumphal procession.
- - - - Only Egypt still remained independence amid the fracturing of Alexanders empire. The rest had succumbed to the expansionary ambitions of Rome.
        
        That the Ptolemies were permitted to survive in Alexandria was not a reflection of their strength but their weakness. The Roman general who conquered Alexandria would have the Mediterranean in his hands. By unwritten consent, a prize so dazzling was a prize too far. It was safer to leave them to administer the costs of their own exploitation. They were secure enough to squeeze their subjects dry on behalf of their patrons and impotent enough to never present the slightest threat to Rome. On such a humiliating basis they were allowed to maintain independence.
    - - Alexander's tomb stood in the city where East and West met - Alexandria. Having grown up here, its no wonder Cleopatra dared to imagine herself successor to the legacy of the man who had founded it: the rule, not merely of Egypt, but of all the world.
  - - - It was said Caesar planned to move the seat of the empire to Alexandria, that he planned to marry Cleopatra and to proclaim her the mistress of the world.
        
        Then on the Ides of March, 44 BC, all speculation was silenced. Caesar was assassinated and his murderers proclaimed the restoration of the Republic. Cleopatra fled back to Egypt.
  - - - The two victors, sidelining Lepidus to a sinecure in Africa, portioned it up.
        Octavian, returning to Rome, received the West and Antony receiving the East.
        
        Whilst Octavian's power over the West gave him control of the capital, Italy was in turmoil.
        Sextus Pompeius, son of the man who had led the armies of the Republic against Julius Caesar, had profited from the chaos of the times to establish himself as the master of Sicily and the admiral of 250 ships.
        Preying on the shipping lanes he began to throttle Rome.
        nevitably, the more the Romans starved, the more unpopular Octavian became.
        
        In the East, Antony was having a pleasurable time.
        His indulgences were those that had been traditional among the Republics preconsuls: fighting the Iranian kingdom of Parthia, Romes only surviving major enemy in the East, and patronising Romes subordinates.
        In 41 BC he summoned Cleopatra to his headquarters.
        
        This act should have been an unconscionable humiliation, due to what it communicates regarding the power balance between the two, but she arrived in the harbour with flashing silver oars and cooing attendants which turned the tables.
        She knew Antony of old - vulgar, carnal, ambitious - and had correctly calculated the best way to win his heart was with overblown spectacle.
        
        Antony speedily made Cleopatra his mistress and spent the winter with her in Alexandria.
        As with Julius Caesar, so now with the new master of the world, Cleopatra soon fell pregnant and delivered Antony with twins.
        It began to be whispered among Antony's enemies and followers that he was going native.
        This is the moment at which Shakespeare's play begins.