Triumph of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, 31 BCE

[guy]

 

This is a great article on the alternative history scenario in which Mark Antony defeated Octavian at Actium. I had linked the article before, but I think the GIF adds something:

 

http://web.stanford.edu/group/dispersed_author/docs/NotbyANose_Ober.pdf

 

Quote

If Antony had won at Actium, Jesus of Nazareth, born just a short generation after the battle, would have come to manhood in a very different society--one administered by highly trained professional Ptolemaic bureaucrats, rather than nervous Roman amateurs like Pontius Pilate. Those Ptolemaic bureaucrats would have had a much closer sense of how Jerusalem politics worked: they might well have found some solution to local concerns about a self-proclaimed messiah that would not have required his crucifixion. They might, for example, have arranged for him to move to Alexandria, where the sophisticated, hellenized local Jewish population would not be scandalized by his audacious ideas. So Jesus might have grown old, gathering to himself a following attracted by his socioreligious message rather than by a dramatic martyrdom. If so, Christianity would have developed quite differently and Alexandria, not Rome, would be its center.

 

 

Edited September 16 by guy

[guy]

After reading the interview with the well-respected and excellent author Adrian Goldsworthy about his book Antony and Cleopatra, I still feel that Antony may have been unfairly and inaccurately depicted by history. There may have been more of an element of enlightenment to Antony than his critics, including Augustus, would admit.

 

http://www.unrv.com/book-review/interview-adrian-goldsworthy.php

Quote

Maty: One gets the impression you do not like Mark Antony much.
Adrian: It's hard to like almost anyone in this period. But though Caesar and Pompey were in many ways just as unloveable, at least they had agendas. They had plans for themselves and for Rome. Antony appears simply to want power for its own sake, and the way he goes about getting it makes him one thug among many. As Cicero points out, he is a man with few redeeming features.

 

Edited September 16 by guy