Grading papers for Ancient Civilization today, I read a lot of short descriptions of Cleopatra and the Second Triumvirate, and it occurred to me that maybe I should have said a bit more about the importance of the competition between Antony and Octavian for the great prize of Egypt, about how much Octavian/Augustus relied on it for funding his regime, and how right up till the end of the period we studied Egypt continued to be a treasure house, feeding for instance Constantine's New Rome.Since I can't go back and say those things, I say them here. Looking over all those short identification "gobbets" (as they say in England) reminded me of those things.
One of the possibly dubious things I tend to do is to mention the anti-oriental attitude of some of Alexander's followers, specifically so I can bring in Octavian's anti-orientalism campaign against Antony. Which means I should probably read Said one of these days ... One can't only rely on Syme.
ReplyDelete