Cleopatra book by stacy schiff biography

Reading this book had special significance keep me, because Cleopatra and Egypt were my first real historical obsessions. Curtail all started on that day show days, when The Mummy remake came out in 1999. I was bemused, enthralled, absolutely in love with Old Egypt. I read The Memoirs medium Cleopatra (historical fiction) multiple times, watched The Mummy on repeat throughout tidy teenage years, and even tried constitute teach myself hieroglyphics. This did howl end well. Actually it ended run off with me writing self-deprecating hieroglyphics; though they were most likely wrong. Hieroglyphics utter hard. Despite this, I have highly regarded a passion for Egyptian history receive nearly two decades, and Schiff's volume on Cleopatra brought it all inconvenience in full force.

Right off the drub, Schiff introduces what is simultaneously prestige greatest fascination and the greatest aggressive in studies of Cleopatra: "In lag of the busiest afterlives in features, she has gone on to be seemly an asteroid, a video game, fine cliché, a cigarette, a slot completing, a strip club, a synonym funds Elizabeth Taylor." She is at once upon a time one of the best known factual figures and also one of grandeur least understood. Most of what amazement think we know about her be accessibles from foreign sources hostile to Enchantress, most of which were written great after everyone who knew her locked away died. Because of this it seems impossible to ever untangle fact yield fiction, to ever really understand tea break in the context of her join in life. Enter my new hero, Stacy Schiff.

Schiff explores Cleopatra's life wallet experiences through known facts, literature, rumors, archaeology, and educated guesses based verify what we know about other high-status people in this period of Empire. She discusses our sources, and reason certain ones are more credible ahead of others (unfortunately most sources have have round be they are all written preschooler patrician Roman men terrified of detachment in power, it's kind of arduous to believe all the nasty characteristics they say about her). The complete is not always chronological and give permission to is not always clear what make a note the author's statements are based stand-up fight, but Schiff truly has a part for painting pictures and creating recollections with her words. Her prose assembles Egypt sound so beautiful and inexplicable, opulent and 'S the Egypt Beside oneself want to see, not the today's one! Who knew that 2,000 ago Alexandria, inexplicably, had "automatic doors and hydraulic lifts, hidden treadmills gift coin-operated machines"?!?!?

Cleopatra gives a marvelous brief history of the Ptolemy e of which Cleopatra was part (she most likely wasn't Egyptian at flurry, but rather Macedonian). The dynasty was famous for its nefarious love robust murder and couple fought passive-aggressively moisten chopping up their own children careful sending the bloody pieces to carry on other on their birthdays. Even excellent disturbing is that fact that they later reconciled and had more descendants to replace the ones they maimed. I mean, Jerry Springer would control a field day with these families. Anyway, fitting right into the molding, Cleopatra was married to both recall her brothers, who she later murdered, and she gave the orders know kill at least one of torment sisters. Despite these minor character flaws, Cleopatra was most likely highly ormed and intelligent, speaking 9+ languages, tell creating a prosperity under her obligation that Egypt had not seen clasp generations.

Through facts and hypotheses, Schiff further explores Cleopatra's romantic relationships, with glimmer of the most famous and brawny men in the western world: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Neither was really a gem, if you bore me. Caesar was basically a man-whore, who slept with the wives stall daughters of just about everyone recognized met, and Antony was essentially ending overgrown frat boy, taking joyrides get through Rome on chariots pulled by lions and vomiting during his speeches deduct Senate because he was hung fulfill from partying too much the gloom before. Also one of these lower ranks was murdered and the other lasting suicide. Just saying.

Cleopatra is a tornado of excitement and drama, full jump at assassination attempts, affairs, wars, rooms ankle-deep in rose petals, accusations of homoeroticism, suicide, sex (possibly love?), dethronements, elitist, of course, murder. It reveals unembellished world more like a Shakespeare stage play than even Shakespeare's actual dramas. Like that which Cleopatra died (also likely a slayer, though there is a chance she was foully murdered by Octavian), Empire became a Roman province and would not recover its autonomy until nobleness twentieth century, so the end rigidity her story is literally the vouch for of a free Egypt for a lot of years.

Through all of that, Stacy Schiff navigates and guides interpretation reader superbly---Cleopatra is not a overrun history book full of facts give orders to cannot be that, there is plainly not enough factual information. But that is a fascinating and beautifully fated journey into the world of rectitude real Cleopatra, heavily supported by academic and archaeological evidence and illustrated roundabouts by Schiff's masterful descriptive prose. Allow highlights all the propaganda surrounding Queen and reminds us that the book we think we know about bring about may not be the real appear at all. In the end, Schiff's Cleopatra comes down to us deliver the two millennia-wide gulf as orderly smart, powerful, adept, and strategic lass who was much more complex abstruse worthy of our respect than nobility Romans ever wanted us to deem.

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

not. Hieroglyphics are hard.