TITLE: Cleopatra: A Life
AUTHOR: Stacy Schiff
STARTED: January 21, 2011
FINISHED: March 6, 2011
PAGES: 368
GENRE: Biography
FIRST SENTENCE: Among the most famous women to have lived, Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt for twenty-two years.
SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com
] 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.
THOUGHTS: I have a (not so minor) obsession with learning about Cleopatra. When Schiff's book appeared all over the place, earning rave reviews, I just had to get my hands in it. Cleopatra: A Life is through, well-written, and interesting take on the famous last pharaoh of Egypt.
While the book took me ages to finish, that's not a knock on the text. Schiff has brought together a massive amount of research into comparatively short pages. The text is absolutely stuffed with details, explanations, and narrative - making it impossible to skim because it's allll good. I wanted to read this book in a rush, but the amount of information it contains is almost overwhelming. I had to take my time reading because I did not want to gloss over or miss anything.
Schiff successfully navigates all of the myths, facts, and fictions surrounding Cleopatra. It is easy to take an opinion on the woman (she's a seductress, etc.), but Schiff writes Cleopatra as a human being. She was a woman ahead of her time who had human faults and quibbles. Schiff has brought Cleopatra down to a more relatable level.
Even with all the facts and research, Schiff's writing somehow manages to not be stodgy and dull. There are enough narrative and descriptive passages to keep the text flowing smoothly. Additionally, when the text calls for dramatic recreations of events, Schiff manages to be descriptive without stepping into flowery or tawdry prose. There is a nice balance in this book between academic work and narrative storytelling.
RATING: 8/10 [Terrific]
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