Stacy Schiff's Biography of Cleopatra: A Life of Majesty and Mystery

Acacia Grove: And imagine that we were taught that she was a nymphomaniac.
In her short rule she kept the Romans at bay and Caesar fathered her first child and after he was murdered Marc Antony fathered her 2 other children, all the time being a great stateswoman.
Her subjects respected her as she held court and solved problems.
I am amazed. More should be known about her.
The author did her justice.

Canada on Dec 01, 2023

Tracy: Excellent historical research about Cleopatra and age in which she lived. Powerful insights into her relationships with Julius Caesar, Marc Antony & Octavian. Great information about the city of Alexandria and the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt. Stacy Schiff completely changed my perspective about Cleopatra. Highly recommended for those interested in the rise of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and all the political intrigue involved during that era.

United States on Nov 01, 2023

Sushil Nair: It's commendable with the minute detailing the author has laboured to get us this book. Cleopatra who is generally scorned and looked down as the whore queen and a seductress with an equally monstrous libido but she was also a linguist, a father loving daughter, a dutiful mother, brilliant tactics, patriot,highly intelligent and a queen who commanded the best navy and unbelievable riches. It makes for a fascinating read. The narrative for Plutarch and his contemporaries was a bit tiresome and opinionated but the climax for Mark Anthony and Cleopatra makes up for it.

India on Aug 09, 2022

T. Graczewski: The Cleopatra most of us know is a fictional creation. The story we know comes mainly from the early first century Roman writers Plutarch and Dio. According to author Stacy Schiff, that’s like reading a history of twentieth-century America written by Chairman Mao. In short, our image of Cleopatra is “the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.” Schiff’s primary point is that “If the name is indelible, the image is blurry.”

Her real story, as told by Schiff, is every bit as fascinating as that told by Shakespeare. Cleopatra descended “from a line of rancorous, meddlesome, shrewd, occasionally unhinged Macedonian queens,” Schiff writes and would prove to be a true daughter of her ancestors. Her name, which translates to “Glory of her Fatherland,” is fitting. Born in 69 BC, the second of three daughters in a family known for eagerly liquidating siblings, she would prove to be both the strongest and shrewdest of the brood. She may not have been as traditionally beautiful as legend would have it, but she was certainly sagacious, sophisticated, and well-educated, speaking as many as seven languages fluently, including native Egyptian,...

United States on Jun 04, 2018

C. Ball: There are some biographies I think only a woman could do justice do, and Cleopatra's is one. So much of her life, her actions, her historical legacy and vilification can only be understood in light of her sex. Cleopatra was a woman in a man's world, and this is how history has remembered her. She has come down through the ages as the wickedest woman in history, the archetypal seductress - remembered not for her masterful handling of Egypt, not for her wily strategising, not for the way she held her own amongst some of the greatest men of the ancient age, not for the economic strength of her country, not for the love her people bore her - but as the woman who slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. As Stacy Schiff states, "it is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive as fatally intelligent."

Tackling the biography of a personality like Cleopatra must have been a daunting task, but Schiff rises to it and more. She slices deftly through the layers of myth, legend and propaganda that have accumulated over the centuries, writing with a wry tone that both draws the reader in and establishes the necessary distance required to properly assess the evidence at hand....

United Kingdom on Apr 10, 2015

Dinogirl7: This is a pretty solid introduction to the history of the period, well-researched and serious enough to appeal to any armchair historian, and lively enough to keep anyone with a passing interest in the ancient world engaged.

Schiff's point with this was that Cleopatra's myth totally obscured her reality, even in her own lifetime. There are a lot of interesting meditations on fame and power to be had there. Cleopatra died in the wake of a war with Rome, and yet we mainly know Cleopatra from contemporary Roman sources. A few people in other courts left written records of her time, but really her history was written by her enemies. That the old girl has still come off rather well is a testament to how extraordinary her reign really was.

I like a good popular history- Schiff's seems very admirable, but I didn't find her prose as lovely as some people apparently did. Still, she makes a solid effort to put a little color into her history; she paints a picture, something I appreciate. It's hard to get both academic rigor and good storytelling into an account. Two thousand years, and it's debatable that anyone has ever topped Cleopatra for either extravagance or power....

United States on May 17, 2013

JuliaC: To win one Pulitzer Prize is impressive enough, but to win it twice for nonfiction works on completely unrelated subjects, and to be shortlisted for a third, makes for a considerable feat. Stacy Schiff has achieved just that, and her latest winner, `Cleopatra - A Life' is testament to her extraordinary skills of getting under the skin of a subject and presenting it to the world is a completely fascinating new way.

Before I read this book my knowledge of the famous Egyptian queen was limited to the epic film with the sadly late Elizabeth Taylor in the starring role, and to Shakespeare's version of events, most recently enacted wonderfully by Kim Cattrall in Liverpool. (I hasten to add that I have never seen Amanda Barry and Sid James in the Carry On version - and absolutely do not intend to).
Here Schiff makes Cleopatra come to life in a vivid and enthralling way, reading between the lines of history, and adding her own intelligent and completely plausible take on this wonderful story. Cleopatra was born into the dynasty of the Ptolemies, where there was a tradition of inter family marriages and incest as a concept just didn't exist. She was a clever girl, who was the...

United Kingdom on Apr 10, 2011

Anastasia Prozorova: I always wanted to believe that there was something more to Cleopatra than a mysterious personality that made men want to buy a night with her at the price of their lives. Stacy Schiff's book helps to see this woman in a completely different light. While still for the most part an interpretation, her book draws a portrait of Cleopatra that you've never seen before. Cleopatra's origin, her education, financial situation as well as the people she met shed light on why it was and still is so difficult to think of her as an important political figure rather than a mysterious woman...
Even if one comes to grasp the complexity of her character, the grandeur of her inventiveness and ambition, there still remains an unexplained fact: why did her projects end up so sad and tragic? Why did the whole world that she cherished so carefully turned its back on her at the end of her life? And how could she got outplayed by such a mediocre, compared to her, personality as Octavian? And what exactly, after his long reign of Rome, made Octavian come to consider Cleopatra's position, she so proudly occupied, as "dreadful" (p. 297)? It is hard or nearly impossible to understand what Cleopatra might...

Canada on Mar 01, 2011