#5 Cleopatra; A Life
While everybody thinks they know Cleopatra, a controversial figure without all the propaganda, she was actually much more than history gave her credit for. Part that is do to a lack of written history surviving from her time, to several of her enemies writing her “history” (*cough* propaganda *cough*). Stacy Schiff gave her account of Cleopatra’s history, at least what she was able to discern from her research.
Now she did preface the book with the disclaimer that a lot of Cleopatra’s history wasn’t exactly well cronacled and a lot of what people know of Cleopatra is really just myth. She attempted to keep literary hyperbole out of it as much as possible as well as dramatic filler. But seeing how the author is a woman, there is a very strong feminine bias to the whole biography that I picked up on right away. (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Cleopatra lived in a time when women were silent wives and an educated woman was dangerous.)
Now getting past the fact that this is the first biography that I managed to schlep through for pleasure, it was actually a really interesting read. Cleopatra was fascinating and wildly blown out of proportion. She was actually a great politician as well as a patriot for Egypt and Alexandria. She did nothing accidentally, that included the ancient tradition of killing one’s own family members to cement their hold on the throne; something the Ptolemy’s were very good at. Cleopatra was neither the first in her name nor the first in murdering most of her close family. But she was the first Ptolemy to bring Alexandria out of civil war and to skillfully keep the Romans from coming up and causing problems in Egypt. Unafraid to go toe to toe with a Roman she was very good at manipulating them and getting what was best for Alexandria. She was educated and independent, exactly what Roman men were afraid of back then. Hence why she went down in history as a slut who’s only hold on men was her body. Everyone discounted her brain, political skill, and oratorical skills that made her equal to the men she was dealing with all the time in Rome. Not to mention that Alexandria was way ahead of the pack when it came to equal rights for women, they had more power in Alexandria than they had in “civilized” Rome. Anti-woman Propaganda I Say!