Cleopatra

Cleopatra
Stacy Schiff
November 2010
302 pages 
Published by Little Brown

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The wonderful Trisha of eclectic/eccentric lent me her copy of the ARC of this book. Three cheers for Trisha! Had I actually bought this, I think I would’ve been pretty disappointed.

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The cover of this book is quite telling. We don’t see Cleopatra’s face because it’s hard to know what she looked like. A few coins with her images survive, but that’s about it. Also, very little is known about her. Most of what was written was written years later, or by Romans who were biased against her (Cicero, you ass, I’m looking at you).

The cover is also quite representative of what I know know about Cleopatra. Sure I learned some things, but Cleopatra wasn’t much of a presence in her own book. I think I learned more about Caesar (playboy) and Marc Antony (playboy), and even Octavius (playboy, although he’d deny it) and Herod (whack job), than I did about the title character.

The author obviously has a good sense of humor (one example: “Even the fiction writers cannot agree about Caesar and Cleopatra. He loves her (Handel); he loves her not (Shaw); he loves her (Thornton Wilder).” p. 7), as there were times when I was amused by her insights and certain turns of phrase. Ultimately, though, I found the book to be dry, due to the emphasis on Roman history. I also thought it jumped prematurely into Cleopatra’s adult life (to be fair, little to nothing is known about her childhood). I would’ve liked a little more history of the Egypt she inherited…Egypt and its people were conspicuously absent from this book. The story was definitely oriented towards the Mediterranean…Africa was largely ignored. And the last part of the book was very heavy on military campaigns, which I loathe reading about (did I ever tell you I took a class on Military History? Holy crap, was that ever boring.).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the book wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as enthralling as I had hoped for. And it was more about the guys…Cleopatra remains almost as mysterious as ever.

A few interesting (at least to me) tidbits from the book:

• Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Ptolemies were from Macedonia. They continued the pharaonic tradition of sibling marriage. They also were pretty fond of intrigue and sibling murder. At one time, Cleopatra had two sisters and two brothers. What their father started (he killed his eldest daughter), war and Cleopatra finished.
• Alexandria, Cleopatra’s capital, was a “mechanical marvel.” There were automatic doors, hydraulic lifts, and coin-operated machines. Statues moved and lit up.
• Cleopatra was filthy rich…because just about everything in Egypt was taxed, and Egypt was remarkably productive and fertile. Being Queen of Egypt was a very good gig, if one survived one’s siblings.
• She had four children…one son by Caesar, and 3 children (including twins) by Marc Antony. She was married twice. Both times to her brothers (one brother at a time, so at least it was it was monogamous incest. Although is it technically incest if you never have sex?).
• She most likely died by poison, not asp. Still self-inflicted, though. And judging by the sexual exploits of both Caesar and Marc Antony (the phrase man-whore springs to mind), I’m surprised they didn’t all die of STDs.
• After her death, Cleopatra’s children by Marc Antony were raised by Marc Antony’s ex-wife, Octavia. Who was sister to Octavius, the man who defeated Marc Antony.