Answer to Question #178890 in English for Everlyn Ndirangu

Question

1. According to Octavian, in what ways was Antony “un-Roman”? What role did Cleopatra

play in pulling Antony away from Roman values and traditions? In your own words in a paragraph

2. What connections did Octavian make between Rome and masculinity? What about

between “foreignness” and femininity? How did those connections shape his presentation

of the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra? In your own words in a paragraph

3.Why did Ashoka convert to Buddhism? What does this edict reveal about Buddhist

ideas about war? In your own words in a paragraph

4. According to Ashoka, what is a Buddhist conquest? How should a Buddhist king

rule? In your own words in a paragraph

Answer 1

Mark Antony was a Roman general under Julius Caesar and later triumvir who ruled Rome's eastern provinces. He was the lover of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and was defeated by Octavian in the last of the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. Cleopatra actively influenced Roman politics at a crucial period and was primarily known for her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. She came to represent, as did no other woman of antiquity, the prototype of the romantic femme fatale. Cleopatra controlled Anthony, a great soldier and led by his heart, and jeopardized his place as an officer. Love made Anthony pull away from Roman values and traditions.

Octavian becomes a symbolic rapist of Roman masculine values. Octavian's words hold great weight throughout the play. As the ruler of Rome and as the inheritor of Caesar's great name, Octavian has an authority that, despite his lack of virile qualities, grants him a status as a labeler of virile Roman values. Octavian showed her feminist when she denounced Antony as a man in a foreign queen's thrall and waged war on the couple. When she returned to Rome in triumph, Octavian added Augustus's title to Caesar's adopted surname and remained imperator for life, illustrating her foreignness. The vast Roman Empire, long contested by consuls and generals, was now firmly in the grasp of an emperor: Octavian. It made her fight the marriage of Antony and Cleopatra.

Ashoka converted to Buddhism because he felt remorse on account of the conquest of Kalinga because, during the subjugation of a previously unconquered country, slaughter, death, and taking away captive of the people necessarily occur. It strengthens the fact that non-violence is at the heart of Buddhist thinking and behavior since even the first of the five precepts is that all Buddhists should follow is to avoid killing or harming any living thing. Nothing in Buddhist scripture gives any support to the use of violence as a way to resolve conflict.

According to Ashoka, a Buddhist conquest is the one that is unarmed such that it doesn't cause sufferings to people and even the weak. A Buddhist king should rule in a way that preaches the dharma and serve his subjects and all humanity as Ashoka did after transforming. The king should uphold socio-moral virtues of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, mercifulness, benevolence, non-violence, and considerate behavior toward all, little sin and many good deeds, non-acquisitiveness, and non-injury to animals.