"Cleopatra: A Life" by Stacey Schiff is one of those biographies that is just as entertaining as a work of fiction.
Schiff freely admits that most of the historical data about Cleopatra is not only written by men who never knew her or where alive when she was, it's also propaganda that is designed to make the Romans more than justified for defeating the Egyptian Queen.
The Romans hated strong women, considering them unnatural. In Rome at this time women had few rights, where as in Egypt women enjoyed rights on par with what we have in America today. Women in Rome were expected to be faithful to their husbands, good mothers, silent but intelligent, sober yet able to host a sumptuous dinner, sexual beings yet not obviously so.
Cleopatra was the opposite of all this. Intelligent, well spoken, schooled in history, chemistry, literature, philosophy, religion, art, speaker of nine Languages (including the incredibly difficult Egyptian language). She could charm anyone, not with her sexuality alone, but her ability to see those around her, navigate the difficult political situations, and position herself to reap the most benefits.
She was richer than any Roman, and any of the monarchs around her. A Queen who was in exile when Caesar helped her win back her throne, Cleopatra was nothing if not resourceful. She believed that she was indeed a daughter of Isis, and her countrymen hailed her as the embodiment of that Goddess. During her almost decade long affair with Antony she was able to restore Egypt to what it had been at the height of the Ptolemy rule three decades earlier.
Schiff references mainly Plutarch and Dio, and some Josephus. She freely shows the discrepancies in their accounts, yet also shows what the historians may have almost gotten right. Each of these major historians were tried and true Romans, and needed to justify Rome attacking and over throwing Cleopatra. They also wanted to show how strong men like Caesar and Antony could be taken in by the Egyptian Queen without admitting that it may have been love, respect, and the ability of these men not only to see the political sense it made to align with the richest kingdom in the ancient world but also the power Cleopatra wielded just by virtue of being herself.
Of course, the easiest course, as Schiff pointed out, was to make Cleopatra an insatiable pervert, saying it was only her sexuality that garnered her such power and not all her other attributes. Cleopatra isn't the only woman of power to have been so maligned by historians, just the one with the most mystery around her.
Schiff does an excellent job of trying to solve the mysteries that surround Cleopatra with little historical record from Egypt during Cleopatra's reign. In the end, there are many questions left for the reader to answer for themselves, though Schiff has definite opinions; as any good biographer does.
In the end, I have great respect for Cleopatra. It has reawakened my desire to know about the glories of ancient Egypt, pre and post Ptolemy reign. I honestly didn't want the book to end. I knew what would happen, I knew Antony and Cleopatra are ruined, driven to Alexandria in defeat, left without any allies and finally commit suicide to avoid being taken by Octavian's forces back to Rome.
What I didn't know was how strong, how intelligent, how broad her interests were. And in the end how all her intellectual prowess, her strength, her pride, her love couldn't save her from blinding defeat.
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