we finished the last video with the assassination of julius caesar on the ides of march march 15 44 bce and you might remember it was the it was it was done by factions opposed to julius caesar who thought that one he had gotten too much power but even more he was using that power to in a lot of ways at least from their point of view undermine their authority that he was a populist and as a populist he was undermining the power of the aristocracy and so they get together and they assassinate him now you can imagine that all sorts of turmoil emerges from that at the time of the assassination julius caesar and mark anthony are co-consuls you might remember mark anthony from the previous video one of julius caesar's generals in gaul he was also put in charge of the italian peninsula when julius caesar went to go and take on his opponents take on pompey in greece and so mark anthony is the remaining consul and he says well what what do i do do i immediately try to punish these conspirators in particular you have brutus brutus and cassius who are considered two of the leaders of the conspiracy and he decides instead of putting the the senate into further turmoil he tries to have a little bit of a compromise and doesn't immediately punish them and they're able to go from rome and then go to the east where they are the de facto leaders of the eastern of the eastern provinces but then in 43 bce things get a little bit more interesting julius caesar in his will he declares that his nephew octavian or will be shortly known as octavian who's 18 years old at the time of the death on the ides of march that he is that he in his will should be his adopted son and so makes him the natural heir of julius caesar now anthony who's also one of julius caesar's right-hand man throughout and his one of his strong supporters as he came to power he also in a lot of ways could have claimed well i i have some rights here to to some of the power that julius caesar has gotten and then there was a third figure lepidus and this is a picture of him right over here this is actually a picture of the three this is mark antony this is octavian and this is lepidus and lepidus was also a significant supporter of julius caesar so the three of them get together and this is lepidus timeline right over here each of these timelines show the lifespans of these characters so you can see when they were born when they die to get a sense of their ages and and when they and when they happen to to pass away and so these three characters get together and they form a triumvirate and this triumvirate is called the second triumvirate because you might have remembered the first triumvirate between julius caesar pompey and crassus and that was an informal agreement this one is actually gets legal backing and not only do they form this triumvirate but they're given incredibly powerful power over the roman republic and they decide to go after the conspirators so in 68 sorry so in 42 i know what my brain is doing in 4 43 the triumvirate is formed and so in 42 they eventually are able to meet the conspirators who killed julius caesar and they meet them at the battle of philippi which is right over let me do this in color you can see the battle of philippi where they're able to defeat the conspirators so after the defeat of the conspirators they essentially divide the the republic although it really is an empire they divide the republic between them anthony mark anthony he becomes the ruler the de facto ruler of the east mark and he becomes a de facto ruler of the east and then he actually is the nominal ruler over gaul as well but then he put someone else in charge there and as we'll see over the course of this 17 this to this this tumultuous 17-year period mark anthony really has a lot of his control and influence in the east but they've essentially split the empire between the three of them and right at that split octavian doesn't get so much of the empire but we'll see that'll change shortly where he's able to be in control of the western half of the empire in a matter of a few years so after that then in 41 and this is where cleopatra enters into the picture and she always makes this a little bit more colorful mark antony decides to that he wants to meet with cleopatra so he's now leading the east he starts leading it from athens then he moves where he governs from to ephesus and he calls cleopatra to and he already knows her he's met her several times to come meet him here in tarsus and here in tarsus and then they go back to alexandria a romance starts between mark anthony and cleopatra one of the most famous romances in all of history remember this is the same cleopatra who had a romance and a child likely through julius caesar and anthony mark anthony and cleopatra will actually have three children together two of which were conceived in this time period right over here this this period of round 41 bce so this is where we are on the timeline right over there but then in 40 bce the parthians invade and you might remember the parthians this is another very significant you really can consider them a pure empire to the romans on this map you're only seeing the very left or the most westward tip of the parthian empire they had control of when you remember the keamanid empire the seleucid empire of most of persia they are a significant empire that was really a check on ancient rome and so they decide to invade they decide to invade and the romans already have trouble with the parthians you might remember crassus one of the first three triumvirs members of the triumvirate he went and while fighting the parthians that's where he was killed and so the romans have had some interest in going after them and now you have the parthians who are taking it to the romans they're they've taken it on the offense so anthony he's go goes from his when he finds out about this and he's he's apparently in charge of the east so it's a bit of an embarrassment for him he goes to tyre which is the remaining significant holding that the romans have while he's entire he finds out that his wife he does have a wife so this this thing that he has with cleopatra is really an affair his wife is embroiled in a civil war with octavian and the civil war and you'll see there's a just general issue throughout the the especially the later part stages of the roman republic and even the roman empire that as rome expands it needs these armies and one of the things that they promised these soldiers are hey after you serve when you're a veteran we're going to give you some land so you could be a nice farmer or at least landlord other people might do the the farming and we'll probably you know and you can have slaves and all the rest now in order to keep doing that you keep needing new land so octavian in order to make some of these veterans happy were was was giving away land some of which was already i guess you say owned by existing romans and so i so mark anthony's wife was using that really as a as an excuse to try to vie for power and just to be clear even though there was this triumvirate between octavian antony and lepidus things were tense from the beginning between antony and octavian both of them both of them saw themselves as natural heirs to julius caesar anthony says hey this young little 18 year old upstart what has he done to deserve this empire i've been i've been beside julius caesar the entire time octavian's here saying hey i am now officially julius caesar's adopted son he takes on the name caesar i am the rightful heir to julius caesar's power and so sitting here in tyre the antony decides okay let me go let me go take on octavian so he takes he decides to go and lay siege to brandisium in order to defend his wife even though he obviously wasn't didn't care too much about his his wife's honor as over there they're they're essentially at loggerheads he he tries to go into the civil war his wife anthony's wife dies octavian and ante decide okay maybe maybe we should not be fighting each other uh so much and so they descend they decide once again to be friends and then they really at that point decide to split the empire more formally between east and west where in the triumvirate you have marc anthony still getting the east you have octavian being in control of the west including including the italian peninsula and then lepidus gets africa and you have lepidus getting africa right over here so i'll leave you in it i'll leave you with that there's a little moment of it looks like a little bit of peace between mark ante mark anthony and octavian but as we'll see in the next video it's about to get a lot worse the big picture from here is that they were able to take care of the conspirators but now they're starting to squabble the triumvirate is starting to squabble especially mark antony octavian lepidus was always kind of the i guess you could say the third wheel here was always between anthony and octavian cleopatra has now has a romantic relationship with anthony she's aligned with antony at the same time remember cleopatra she's considered the richest woman in the world at this time she is the pharaoh of egypt and remember egypt even though the people were egyptian cleopatra is part of the ptolemaic dynasty she is greek but what makes her interesting is that she takes on a lot of the trappings and she learns to speak egyptian so she's actually quite popular from a i guess relatively speaking terms with the egyptian people and the other thing to keep in mind is if these parthians these parthians have just laid another insult on the romans right over here when they invaded syria and able to take over this territory and this is especially annoying to mark anthony who's supposed to be in charge of the east