Stacy Schiff masterfully weaves together the story of Cleopatra from literally thin air. There are no remaining first-hand accounts of who she was, what she was like, or what she looked like. We only have a few coins with her likeness on them, and one word written by her. Everything else was erased from history, only to be repackaged and retold by men who were born 60 - 100 years after her death, and didn't think too kindly of her. Hence the lingering tale of being nothing more than a conniving seductress.
Cleopatra became queen at 18, ruled for 22 years, and died at the age of 39 at the hands of Caesar Augustus. She was born 1300 years after Nefertiti and well after the Pyramids and Sphinx were erected. She was the last of the great Ptolemaic Empire, a descendant of Alexander the Great, which made her Greek, not Egyptian. She won over both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony by her wits, her charms, and her intellect - but certainly not by her looks as history would have told us. She had a pointed chin, deep-set eyes, and a crooked hooked nose. Far from a looker, she still managed to have a child by Caesar, who was married at the time, and three by Antony, also married at the time.
She was a master of rhetoric (A girl after my own heart! I studied rhetoric in undergraduate and graduate school.), spoke nine languages, and ruled the greater part of the lands touched by the Mediterranean Sea. She was born in and ruled from Alexandria, Egypt. At the tip of the Nile Delta, Alexandria was the greatest intellectual city of its time and boasted the largest library in the world. (Rome at the time was nothing but an uncivilized city filled with sewage and vagrants.)
Cleopatra: A Life is a history text that reads like fiction. Wars, murder, adultery, unimaginable wealth and opulence - all found in one woman's life story.
One final note - I received a Kindle for Christmas, and Cleopatra: A Life was my very first Kindle-read book! Though it is harder to flip through a Kindle than a traditional book, the ease of the infrastructure and availability (and low cost) of the e-reader book is noteworthy. I was particularly happy to have read this book on the Kindle because of the academic language and historical references. Kindle has a feature where you can highlight a word or name and the definition pops up. This was particularly helpful for the scholarly language (didn't have to keep reaching for a dictionary), the names of cities that no longer exist (the Kindle provided a modern-day location or name of the city), and the historian that Schiff references (birth dates appear, so that you know how far removed Dio - or any other author - was from Cleopatra's life. A most helpful tool!
I've been wanting to read this for a long time. Glad to hear it's a good read--I'll add it to my list.
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