Conclusions are summarized and final reflections added. Neither Hannibal nor Scipio received cult in the strong sense. The Roman Flamininus did – but only from Greek communities. Herodotus on a Hamilcar’s death might show cult was thinkable for defeated Carthaginian commanders – but the story is dubious. Neither Hannibal nor Scipio founded eponymous cities or aimed at monarchical positions. Both, as overseas commanders, took policy initiatives on the spot, including appointment of key subordinates; but Publius and Lucius Scipio in the east after 190 acted on general understanding of senatorial wishes. Neither was conspicuously successful as politician. Hannibal did at least bravely and single-handedly carry unpopular reforms to curb oligarchic corruption, but it is uncertain how long they lasted after his hasty exit from Carthage. Ancient poets and modern biographers have always found Hannibal, the glamorous failure and precursor of Cleopatra, a more popular and congenial subject than the more conventional Scipio.

This chapter focuses on a selection of recipes included in Byzantine alchemical and pharmacological compendia that are preserved in manuscripts dating between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries: MSS Parisinus gr. 2314, Bononiensis 1808, and Vaticanus gr. 1174. These manuscripts represent important case studies that are compared with similar collections, from late antique medical encyclopaedias to Byzantine alchemical writings and Nicholas Myrepsos’ pharmaceutical handbook. Through an in-depth analysis of the contents and the terminology of these works, I track the transformation of their technical vocabulary, focusing on cross-cultural exchanges between the Byzantine, Arabic, and Latin traditions. Byzantine authors and copyists reshaped and ‘updated’ a long-lasting technical tradition deeply rooted in late antique and early Byzantine writings, which continued to be read and commented on during the Palaiolοgan period, when scholars compiled large selections of formulas and prescriptions belonging to different, yet overlapping fields, such as metallurgy, pharmacology, and cuisine.

Chapter 3 homes in on the intersection of femininity and race: to put pressure on Antony’s curious whitening of the Black Egyptian Queen’s hand in the play’s climactic act. Extending the second chapter’s emphasis on gender, “On the Other Hand: the White(ned) Woman in Antony and Cleopatra” positions Cleopatra as collateral damage, caught in the play’s intraracial crossfire. I depict the significant dangers of the whiteness that gets magically mapped onto Cleopatra’s Black body so she can momentarily become a form of what Arthur L. Little, Jr., has described in Shakespeare Quarterly as “Shakespearean white property.” Through Cleopatra’s whitened body and her interracial relationship with Antony (and by extension, the ensuing intraracial tensions caused by Antony’s movement between Egypt and Rome), I further complicate the white other concept to reflect on integral matters such as white property, white dominance and white women as props: patriarchal, theatrical, cultural, economic, domestic props.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Augustus/Octavian and Apollo’s incarnation as citharoedus (lyre-player). The main contention of the chapter is that the Augustan period fostered a revival of music which resonated with, and to some degree embodied, a restorative political message. Not only did Augustus integrate images of Apollo Citharoedus into his own imagery (both in Rome and in the commemorative monuments around the gulf of Actium), but he also exploited harmonia as a metaphor for his newly established regime, imbuing musical rituals like the Ludi Saeculares of 17 BCE with powerful symbolic resonances. The chapter also makes a case for seeing Mark Antony’s use of music as a key part of a project to present himself through the symbolic language of Hellenistic kingship, against which Octavian in turn defined his own musical ‘programme’.

De bello civili may be an anti-Aeneid, but the contrast depends on a deeper accord. Both poems look back: to the mythic backstory of Rome’s foundation and to the history of the Republic’s fall. Both comment on the present. The inscription of civil war tropes into Rome’s foundation asks whether internal violence is endemic, or if the Augustan refoundation can put Rome on a more secure footing. The Republic’s death at the hands of Pompey and Caesar founds the Empire on perennial discord. The civil war tropes undergirding Vergil’s integrative story become the literal plot of Lucan’s. Foundation and defoundation share tropes: fratricide and rape. In Vergil, these tell an alternative story to the golden age the poem proclaims. In Lucan, the Augustan settlement disappears. As in the Aeneid, discord subtly defines the present: The panegyric to Nero defers peace to an uncertain future as effectively as the Aeneid’s defers the Augustan peace. Alternative cities – Troy, Carthage – reveal Rome’s perverse nature in Vergil. Caesar, embroiled with Cleopatra, founds an oriental empire in Lucan. Turmoil within the soul, between lovers, within peoples, and in the cosmos belies both poems’ promise.

This chapter considers how star roles such as Shakespeare's Cleopatra were sculpted and scored by precisely the kind of physical virtuosity that is demanded in the scenes of skill instruction and sporting display discussed elsewhere in the book. The chapter offers sustained, in-depth readings of a number of leading female roles, placing Cleopatra within a broad theatrical context of corporeally virtuosic leading women including the titular heroine of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe's Dido, Queen of Carthage, Pandora in John Lyly's The Woman in the Moon, and Lucretia in Barnabe Barnes's The Devil's Charter. It also offers sustained, in-depth readings (partially informed by practice-based research) of particularly spectacular features of Cleopatra's stagecraft, demonstrating how specific acts of violence and physical collaboration redound widely across the early modern dramatic canon. These cross-repertorial readings create a complex network of physical feats and corporeal interactions between actors that centre on the dexterity of the leading boy player, further extending the concept of early modern theatrical culture’s shared investment in boys’ corporeal performances.

How did Churchill and Roosevelt communicate with Stalin?In this chapter, we examine the linguistic histories and abilities of a number of prominent figures, both historical and not so historical.

The depiction of Troy and Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid is influenced by the very recent events of the civil war between the future Augustus and Mark Antony and Cleopatra. The orientalising propaganda directed against Cleopatra and her city of Alexandria has left its mark on the depiction of Carthage and Dido, whose temptations for Aeneas recall the temptations of Alexandria and Cleopatra for Mark Antony. The victory at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra represents the defeat of a threat of a Roman reversion to their Eastern origins in Troy.

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra displays a remarkable understanding of the period of history it describes, especially in its understanding of the corporate ideology of the Roman Republic. In describing the collapse of the Republic into one-man rule, Shakespeare highlights the roles of other candidates for power (Lepidus, Sextus Pompey) in order to remind the audience of the corporate state that is being left behind. Shakespeare’s depiction of the Roman civil wars as being wars of brother against brother is very unlike his depiction of the English civil wars, where such imagery is very rare compared to cases of father against son.