EP17: What Cleopatra Taught Me About War - TRANSCRIPT

 Hi! You're listening to Hyba is Writing, and I am your host, Hyba. A while back, I picked up reading again, a bit obsessively, because I was reading several history books concurrently in order to get some research done for my fantasy novels. I'll admit that I've always been a huge fan of history. I love learning about history - it's always such a fascinating subject - and I especially love learning about interesting little details.

I've been planning ahead for my series - not outlining, because I can't follow an outline for the life of me - but just thinking vaguely about how the overall plot is going to proceed in general, especially since a lot of changes have happened in book two of my series, The Pirates of Sissa, that will have a big influence on the rest of the plot, and that includes, as of right now, a new book, making the total number of books in this series six.

One of the major plot points that it coming up is a war, and I realized while I was considering this that I had no idea how big armies and fleets were supposed to be. I found myself wondering if one-thousand soldiers were enough for an army, or ten-thousand, or somewhere in between! At around the same time, I picked up a bibliography of Cleopatra - a very quick read by Hourly History, which I would definitely recommend because it was not only a fast read, but also surprisingly detailed and easy to follow along with. I suspected when I picked it up that the book would provide me with a wealth of information about the lives of the wealthy and powerful in Ancient Egypt, since I do have an Ancient Egyptian thriller in the works, and I also suspected that it would give me some solid information about  politics and warfare that I could perhaps use in my fantasy series. I was right in both suspicions!

At one point in the book, it discusses how Cleopatra and her brother, who was ruling at her side at the time, decided to grant Pompeius 60 ships and 500 troops. So, this is interesting because the assumption here is that Cleopatra and her brother were providing only part of Pompeius's military force in his campaign. I actually went ahead and looked it up, and I believe the battle in question here was the Battle of Pharsalus. Pompeius had at least a good 42,000 people on the battlefield, while Caesar, his opponent, had about half that much. So, in terms of numbers, that was most definitely interesting for me to learn about. More interesting still was the fact that Caesar, despite having fewer soldiers, still won the battle because he seemed to have had a superior strategy that basically unsettled Pompeius's soldiers and caused them to break formation and flee. This was also interesting, because I quite like the idea of having an army in my fantasy books that is outnumbered but wins anyway - because, and I'm not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but there will be a battle, and I've been working on how to make the outcome that I want work.

At another point in this biography, the size of Mark Antony's army at some point during his campaign against Octavian - who would later become known as Augustus - is hinted at. They say that he "lost almost half his men, more than 24,000 soldiers, due to severe winter weather and disease", and also because they had no supplies and weren't even dressed well for the cold weather. This also brought to mind Napoleon's disastrous defeat upon his invasion of Russia during winter. And it's another very important lesson to keep in mind: weather and the environment can mean the difference between life and death, and winning a battle or losing it.

At another point during his fight against Octavian, it says that "Antony summoned his allied kings, and the couple traveled to Ephesus to pull together a naval force of 800 ships, including 200 of Cleopatra's", and later on it mentions that they also had 100,000 troops. I think what I find really interesting here is that the number of ships or soldiers that a ruler or general was able to scrounge up sort of depended greatly on their ability to mobilize people, and sometimes even more so on their ability to persuade allies. Because at this particular time, Antony and Cleopatra had to secure military force from their allies, including smaller kings and other nobility, if that is the right word. So, when they call it a military campaign, it truly is a campaign in the sense that you have to rally the people around you, or you will not have an army large enough to actually go and do battle.

So, this was an intriguing read, and I really enjoyed getting all of this information from this book that I had hoped to find and was lucky enough to actually find. I've been reading a lot of other books that deal with war and battle and the specifics of it, and also books dealing with colonialism and imperialism, and there's a lot of stuff to get to in future - lots of great tidbits from history that I'd love to continue sharing with you all, so I hope you'll enjoy learning with me!

Well, that's it for today, dear listeners! Thanks so much for tuning in for this episode, and if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or requests, please let me know via my Tumblr or my Twitter! Until next time!