Some miscellaneous bits:
Demetrius in Greece:
"Stilpo remarked that the Antigonid campaign of liberation had indeed left the city a city of freemen because the Antigonid soldiers had stolen all of the slaves. Now let's look a little bit about looting cities. In the Ancient World when an enemy, or an enemy city was sacked, it was not so much the gold, silver and works of art that were taken, although a lot is still collected, but the slaves were the main loot. This would be universal because you could then sell them ultimately for cash that could be divided up amongst the troops. It's easier to carry coin than a 10 pound gold statue"
Ptolemaic Egypt:
"The Macedonians hurt the pride of the Egyptians by refusing to recruit the royal army from the Egyptian warrior class. Instead they used Macedonian troops, even doing what Seleucus and others did is setting up colonies of troops so that they could continue to produce that. It's not that the Egyptians weren't good soldiers - at the great battles of Artemisium and at Salamis in 480 BC it had been Egyptian marines who fought the best amongst the Greek hoplites. The decision by the Macedonians not to use them in the army was political. Though they still served as sailors in the Ptolemaic fleets the Macedonians were afraid that an Egyptian army of trained men might revolt and tear down the infrastructure of both royal and private Hellenistic exploitation"
Reign Ptolemy IV:
"Numbering Ptolemies is a modern invention. The Greeks distinguished them by epithet or nicknames, rather than by numbers."
Reign Cleopatra V Tryphaena and Berenice IV:
"[On Berenice IV of Egypt] As a lone woman ruling Egypt, she was expected to marry and have a man as co-regent. When she didn't, her consuls forced her to marry Prince Seleucus the Seventh Kybiosaktes and remained as sole ruler."
Sulla Provinces and His Death:
"Caesar, after he does his first tour as consul. He is so disliked by members of the Senate that instead of giving him a regular province, they made one up and put him in charge of the roads and alleys and by ways of Rome... There's an old discussion that whenever you change the government of a country, that new government is never safe until everybody who can remember the past government have died off."
Spartacus Slave Revolt:
[On Crassus] "His famous quote that I like is no one is truly rich, unless one is able to support an army on his income"
Rise of Pompey Part 2:
"They shut Mithridates up in his palace, with all hope for escape or mercy gone. He murdered his wives and daughters and then committed suicide by the sword after failing repeatedly to poison himself. Remember, Mithridates is the king of poisons and had created a Mithridatium of 22 substances that he took daily to make him immune to poison. And obviously it worked too well. Mithridates' son Pharnaces the Second turned over his father's body to Pompey who honored him by having him buried in the tombs of the other Pontic kings. If there's one thing that Pompey's really good at, he knows how to do the carrot and the stick, he knows how to honor people when the people around him really appreciate that."
Octavian Responds to Cleopatra and Antony:
"He began to attack Octavian personally. Cassius of Parma alleged that not only was Octavian of low origin, the ultimate snob attack, but claimed that Octavian was named heir to Caesar only after submitting to Caesar’s homosexual desires. Whoa, now we're really going below the belt here to go after him. They also kind of chided Octavian on his lesser military record. He hadn't really done very well at Philippi and all of his great victories at sea had been done by Agrippa"
Death Cleopatra:
"Did Octavian really want Cleopatra to appear in his triumph? And the answer is, quite frankly, no. And the reason is simple. 16 years ago, 16 years before this event, Cleopatra's half sister, Arsinoë was displayed in one of Julius Caesar's triumphs, and the crowd felt such sympathy for that they had to deal with her differently, rather than just kill her, and Octavian had made this, you know, he really whipped up this propaganda machine depicting, you know, Cleopatra, as the Egyptian whore, as the witch would bewitches Roman men, and pretty much the devil incarnate. And she had been to Rome once before and was very popular and very, very happily received, of course, she threw lots of money. If Cleopatra was in chains, and paraded in a triumph, all sorts of things could happen. First of all, the crowd could become sympathetic to Cleopatra as they had Arsinoë. And it could also be interpreted by putting her in that type of situation as an insult to the memory of Julius Caesar… executing a woman would kind of hurt Octavian’s reputation, but if he let her go, good heavens, she could stir up trouble in the east, again, in any number of places. For that matter, she can make it even worse by simply going and sitting on a little island and writing your memoirs of what's going on, which could make him look bad, and everybody else and cause all kinds of problems. So to some extent, the best thing that could happen as far as Octavian was concerned was that she would just die. But of course, it had to be in a manner that would, you know, leave Octavian above suspicion that he wasn't responsible. So playing up the part about the triumphs certainly made it look like the last thing you want to do is to have her die but that's for later consumption"
Octavian takes control:
"Octavian visited Alexander's tomb. He had the thing, the coffin opened. That was glass. Had the sword of Alexander removed so he could use it, and somehow or other, managed to accidentally break off part of Alexander's nose... He wouldn't visit Egyptian temples. He said he revered gods, not animals. Actually he revered gods, not bulls"
