Augustus Part 3: Birth of a Dynasty

Paul McGann (0:00)

It's September the 28th, 1960 We're at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, 18 miles west of London. On the back lot sits a recreation of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. It's been replicated in the finest detail, exactly how it would have appeared in the first century BC. Sprawling across 20 acres, it's a staggering piece of set design. There's a huge Ptolemaic palace, six life-size sphinxes, buildings rendered in imitation sandstone, obelisks adorned with hieroglyphics. The boulevards are lined with real-life palm trees, or we had flown in from Los Angeles. To be titled simply Cleopatra, the film being made will star Elizabeth Taylor as the Egyptian queen. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton will toga up as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. For 20th Century Fox, the giant Hollywood conglomerate behind the enterprise, no expense has been spared. This is a movie on which it's staking its shirt.

Just three days into filming and trouble has already come into paradise. There are arguments over the film's as-yet-unfinished script. Producers squaring up to each other. There are trade union disputes. Moreover, there is the stark reality of the decision to film this movie in the UK, a decision undertaken for tax purposes. A sun-kissed Mediterranean playground, Buckinghamshire is not. Things are about to get worse. Words have just come in from the Dorchester Hotel, where Taylor is currently holed up. She has come down with pneumonia. In fact, Taylor's health will deteriorate to such an extent that the pinewood shoot will have to be shut down entirely.

When the production relocates to Rome, a year and several million dollars later, it's enveloped in a whirl of chaos. There's a new director, a revolving door of producers and screenwriters, a tempestuous affair now being conducted by Burton and the fit again Taylor. Amid tales of sex, drink, drugs and fisticuffs, and that's just the stars, Cleopatra is spiraling out of control.

By the time of its eventual release, Cleopatra will have taken three years to film. At $44 million, nearly $500 million in today's money, this extravagant, widescreen epic will go down as the then most expensive movie ever made. In June 1963 in New York, the film will premiere to only so-so reviews. It will virtually bankrupt Fox.

Back at Pinewood meanwhile, British comedy producers will commandeer the abandoned sets to make their own low-budget spoof.

In Britain, Carry On Cleo will make back more money and prove more entertaining than the very film it's lampooning.

Around the fringes of the Cleopatra saga, a sculpt the slight figure of someone called Octavian. As portrayed by actor Roddy McDowell, he is a fey, petulant youth, sickly much of the time. He has the whiff of a bit player, not a warrior hero in the moult of Caesar or Anthony. But in art, as in life, you underestimate Octavian at your peril.

From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is the final part of the Augustus story. And this is Real Dictators.

When we left Octavian, events in the real Alexandria had ensured his supremacy over the Roman Republic. In just thirteen years, Octavian has gone from obscurity to political and military dominance. But that is just a means to an end. Octavian's MO was always about something else. Revenge. By way of the second triumvirate, alongside Antony and Lepidus, he had hunted down the assassins of Julius Caesar, his great uncle. Abroad, the Liberator armies were wiped out. Back home, a bloody pogrom was instigated against all sympathizers. Later when Mark Antony went rogue, building his own Eastern Empire with his lover Cleopatra, Octavian pursued him, too. After the climactic sea battle at Actium, Octavian harried the couple back to Egypt. There, they had committed suicide. He had also seen to the murder of Caesarian, Cleopatra's teenage son. Aged just 33, Octavian is the man.

There is a spectre which haunts all Roman rulers. The ghost of Alexander the Great. The king of Macedon whose conquests were undertaken 300 years before is the yardstick by which all conquerors must be measured. Already dead by the age Octavian is now, he had marched undefeated from Greece to Egypt to India. Before leaving Alexandria, Octavian visits his crypt. In tribute, he places a crown upon the mummified corpse's head. Professor Joyce Tyldesley.

Joyce Tyldesley (6:47)

It's something that Caesar did as well when he was in Alexandria. He went to see the tomb of Alexander the Great. So I think that Octavian is both emulating Caesar. He's also saying, I'm not related to the Ptolemies, because the Ptolemies are no good, but we'll go back to Alexander the Great and he is someone who is worthy of admiration.

Paul McGann (7:05)

In handling the corpse, Octavian accidentally knocks off Alexander's nose.

On arrival in Rome in August 29 BC, Octavian is granted a ticker tape parade, a triumph.