NUMBER: 53TITLE: Cleopatra and Rome
AUTHOR: Diana E. E. Kleiner
STARTED: June 12, 2006
FINISHED: June 22, 2006
PAGES: 340
GENRE: Non-Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Cleopatra is one of the most famous women who ever lived.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Cleopatra and Rome reveals how iconic episodes, absorbed into a larger historical and political narrative, document a momentous cultural shift from the Hellenistic world to the Roman Empire. In this story, Cleopatra's death was not an end but a beginning - a starting point for a wide variety of appropriations by Augustus and his contemporaries that established a paradigm for cultural conversion." In this illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra's and Rome's defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture: religious and official architecture, cult statuary, honorary portraiture, villa paintings, tombstones, and coinage, but also the theatrical display of clothing, perfume, and hair styled to perfection for such ephemeral occasions as triumphal processions or barge cruises. It is this visual culture that best chronicles Cleopatra's legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
REASON FOR READING: It came across my desk at the library... with thanks to my roomie Beth.
THOUGHTS: Kleiner took what could have been a fascinating book, and turned it into a mediocre thesis. The ideas were incomplete, the writing pedestrian, and the organization lacking. That being said, I give Kleiner credit for making me think outside the box. One of her main goals was to show how powerful individuals came together to shape history, art, and architecture. This varietion on the sping of "powerful individual changes world" is what kept me reading. But, there were too many areas of the book where the writing was sorely in need of an edit. More than once I found myself asking her to extend her thoughts. There always felt like there was an "and..." missing.
MISCELLANEOUS: Finally, a clipping from my TBR file can be tosssed.
KEEP/SHARE/CRINGE(?): Back to the library it goes.
RATING: 5/10 [I didn't particularly like it or dislike it; mixed review]
CR: The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan
RN: Hopefully the first Hornblower books. Damn Beth for getting me addicted to the series.
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