Cleopatra

"It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life."

Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra

When we think of Egypt we think of the Nile and the Pyramids, King Tut and Cleopatra. Thirteen hundred years separate the lives of the two rulers, and, even though she was often portrayed as nothing more than a seductress, Cleopatra had a far more influential rule and skilled rule, skillfully leading Egypt during the turbulent times from 51 BCE to 30 BCE, vastly expanding her territory and wealth before losing it to Augustus.

The story of Cleopatra is fascinating, yet the general knowledge of her is small, often consisting to her seduction of Julius Caesar and her suicide. In this wonderful biography Stacy Schiff delves into the details of Cleopatra's life, which was so much more than those two events. She ruled Egypt successfully for twenty years during an extremely unstable period in the Mediterranean (Rome became a monarchy after years of civil war, ending the idealized "Republic" that it had been), was one of the richest people in the world, and vastly expanded her empire. These events cannot be boiled down to the simple story line of her seduction of two powerful men.   Schiff examines all of the evidence available to tell Cleopatra's story, while also explaining the corruptions that have invaded it from historians of the past, beginning with the prejudices of Cleopatra's own peers.

This book was wonderful. Well researched (notes take up fifty pages of the book) and well written, Schiff adds dimension and complexity to a strong woman who has often been portrayed as weak. She adds context to Cleopatra's story, examining what else was happening in the world at the time and the cultural differences that existed between Egypt and Rome at the time, fleshing out the nuances that would have influenced Cleopatra's decisions and the circumstances that led to the events that took place. The story is wonderfully complex and the characters dynamic.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has heard of Cleopatra, read Shakespeare's play, or is interested in history. Fascinating, interesting, and wonderful, I could not put this book down.