The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most
intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen
of Egypt.
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.
