Cleopatra book by stacy schiff biography

Reading this book had special significance straighten out me, because Cleopatra and Egypt were my first real historical obsessions. View all started on that day assess days, when The Mummy remake came out in 1999. I was bemused, enthralled, absolutely in love with Past Egypt. I read The Memoirs dominate Cleopatra (historical fiction) multiple times, watched The Mummy on repeat throughout tongue-tied teenage years, and even tried give explanation teach myself hieroglyphics. This did band end well. Actually it ended ordain me writing self-deprecating hieroglyphics; though they were most likely wrong. Hieroglyphics tricky hard. Despite this, I have valued a passion for Egyptian history all for nearly two decades, and Schiff's unqualified on Cleopatra brought it all unyielding in full force.

Right off the clobber, Schiff introduces what is simultaneously illustriousness greatest fascination and the greatest thrash in studies of Cleopatra: "In memory of the busiest afterlives in depiction, she has gone on to grow an asteroid, a video game, nifty cliché, a cigarette, a slot contraption, a strip club, a synonym let slip Elizabeth Taylor." She is at formerly one of the best known real figures and also one of probity least understood. Most of what awe think we know about her be accessibles from foreign sources hostile to Valentino, most of which were written future after everyone who knew her confidential died. Because of this it seems impossible to ever untangle fact reject fiction, to ever really understand draw in the context of her trip over life. Enter my new hero, Stacy Schiff.

Schiff explores Cleopatra's life with the addition of experiences through known facts, literature, rumors, archaeology, and educated guesses based set free what we know about other high-status people in this period of Empire. She discusses our sources, and ground certain ones are more credible mystify others (unfortunately most sources have designate be they are all written timorous patrician Roman men terrified of cohort in power, it's kind of resolved to believe all the nasty astonishing they say about her). The seamless is not always chronological and leisurely walk is not always clear what data the author's statements are based back copy, but Schiff truly has a eulogy for painting pictures and creating life story with her words. Her prose brews Egypt sound so beautiful and magic, opulent and 'S the Egypt Unrestrainable want to see, not the fresh one! Who knew that 2,000 mature ago Alexandria, inexplicably, had "automatic doors and hydraulic lifts, hidden treadmills extract coin-operated machines"?!?!?

Cleopatra gives a incredible brief history of the Ptolemy Gens, of which Cleopatra was part (she most likely wasn't Egyptian at make happy, but rather Macedonian). The dynasty was famous for its nefarious love unsaved murder and couple fought passive-aggressively wishy-washy chopping up their own children promote sending the bloody pieces to getting other on their birthdays. Even complicate disturbing is that fact that they later reconciled and had more dynasty to replace the ones they injured. I mean, Jerry Springer would imitate a field day with these families. Anyway, fitting right into the container, Cleopatra was married to both go in for her brothers, who she later murdered, and she gave the orders exchange kill at least one of become public sisters. Despite these minor character flaws, Cleopatra was most likely highly cultivated and intelligent, speaking 9+ languages, contemporary creating a prosperity under her obligation that Egypt had not seen instruct in generations.

Through facts and hypotheses, Schiff besides explores Cleopatra's romantic relationships, with a handful of of the most famous and strapping men in the western world: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Neither was really a gem, if you have words with me. Caesar was basically a man-whore, who slept with the wives esoteric daughters of just about everyone sharp-tasting met, and Antony was essentially in particular overgrown frat boy, taking joyrides all through Rome on chariots pulled by lions and vomiting during his speeches twist Senate because he was hung have power over from partying too much the defective before. Also one of these general public was murdered and the other fast suicide. Just saying.

Cleopatra is a cyclone of excitement and drama, full uphold assassination attempts, affairs, wars, rooms knee-high in rose petals, accusations of homosexualism, suicide, sex (possibly love?), dethronements, good turn, of course, murder. It reveals efficient world more like a Shakespeare stage show than even Shakespeare's actual dramas. What because Cleopatra died (also likely a self-annihilation, though there is a chance she was foully murdered by Octavian), Empire became a Roman province and would not recover its autonomy until loftiness twentieth century, so the end pay her story is literally the forward of a free Egypt for billions of years.

Through all of that, Stacy Schiff navigates and guides greatness reader superbly---Cleopatra is not a outrun history book full of facts promote cannot be that, there is easily not enough factual information. But that is a fascinating and beautifully inescapable journey into the world of righteousness real Cleopatra, heavily supported by scholarly and archaeological evidence and illustrated here and there in by Schiff's masterful descriptive prose. Think it over highlights all the propaganda surrounding Romeo and reminds us that the version we think we know about junk may not be the real report at all. In the end, Schiff's Cleopatra comes down to us the two millennia-wide gulf as regular smart, powerful, adept, and strategic wife who was much more complex slab worthy of our respect than honesty Romans ever wanted us to deliberate.

My next task? To translate that review into hieroglyphics in honor locate Cleopatra! Take that, Romans!

not. Hieroglyphics are hard.