Screening the Battle of Actium: Civil War, Erotic Tragedy, and the Birth of an Empire

Antony & Cleopatra - To historians, this is much more than a love story: These lovers teamed up against Antony’s rival, Octavian, the future Roman emperor Augustus, in the great Battle of Actium fought in 31 BC. In this presentation Dr. Cyrino, a professor of Classics and a Presidential Teaching fellow at the University of New Mexico, analyzes several themes used by filmmakers to represent the battle as the momentous “turning point of history” that gave birth to the Roman Empire.