“Antony and Cleopatra”
Before we look more specifically at the power relations between Rome and Egypt, and Antony and Cleopatra themselves, we need to consider briefly the political background against which the play is set, especially in terms of how this has contributed to the character of Antony. The Roman state was, at the time, a combination of stability and disruptive political intrigue. The Romans set great store by order, structure, ritual and „proper‟ action: it was the strength of this framework which facilitated the „Romanization‟ of conquered and affiliated states. As Hopkins (1978) notes, infrastructures such as regional governance, religious rituals and so on were allowed to remain, but within an overarching structure which was established, maintained and enforced by Roman authority. Client states considered the payment of tribute in return for Roman military protection to be a reasonable political and economic exchange; rural areas, where cultural and ethnic groups were more diverse, were „seeded‟ by a core population of Romans who brought cohesion to the region and ensured that even semi-autonomous groups would follow Roman political practices. Order, stability, cohesion and structure were the „hallmarks‟ of Roman expansion. However, if we look at the events immediately preceding the time of Antony and Cleopatra, we see that Rome itself had been subject to upheaval and socio-political disruption. Julius Caesar‟s increasingly autocratic rule had been perceived as a threat to the Republic, lead