Cleopatra: A Life
Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.
Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and -- after his murder -- three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.
Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
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Community Reviews
Even in her own biography the book somehow reads as a partial telling of the three historical figures whose lives intersected hers (Julius Caesar, mark antony, and Octavian), which is well done and potentially inevitable.
The book also casts a spotlight on the role of gender in history’s appraisal of cleopatras role and actions, as well as the role of gender in her life. The author makes a compelling case that much of our received wisdom is interpreted through a problematic lens.
Worth a read.
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life
I picked this book going in because it was a fairly straightforward historical account, not one of those silly romantic non-fiction books that read like fiction. I listened to all 13+ hours and was hooked. I've never watched the movies, never cared for Elizabeth Taylor, so I went into this with very little knowledge of the Queen of Egypt.
Unfortunately, history is written by the winners and Cleopatra was a loser in the sense that Rome won and took over Egypt and she committed suicide. Naturally, being a woman, she was stripped down to her sexuality instead of commended for her intelligence. Good to know that things haven't changed really since then. (/sarcasm)
Cleopatra wed twice, both times to brothers (incest wasn't even a known word then), had a child with Julius Caesar and then had three more children with Mark Antony. Antony proved to be her undoing in the world, as she proved to be his as well. What is written about Cleopatra is scarce and probably not to be believed (written by the winners, remember?). But we can deduce that she was an intelligent ruler who was beloved by her countrymen. It was in her blood to be murderous, but it seemed to be in everyone's blood back then so she can't be faulted for that.
Schiff clearly loves the subject of Cleopatra and this was an engrossing book on history that people pretty much have forgotten
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