Cleopatra: Vixon or Brilliant?

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I finished reading this book, I thought, oh, it was okay. But then I started telling a friend about it, and decided I like it much more than I thought. It is fascinating to me that there are really no images of Cleopatra, only her coin portraits are accepted as authentic. So here we have a woman, who

ruled Egypt for twenty-two years. She lost a kingdom once, regained it,nearly lost it again, amassed an empire, lost it all. A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen . . . at the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler

In a way, this book is a myth buster. Consider what you know about Cleopatra. This is what I knew - she was a queen, she was beautiful, she killed herself by allowing herself to be bitten by a snake. Guess what, all of this was wrong in some degree.

• She was a more than a queen, she styled herself as a goddess, and was considered a deity.
• From correspondence of her time we know that she was not a stunning beauty, but a great conversationalist and highly intelligent - go figure, a woman who is loved for her mind!
• The cause of her death still leaves room for speculation, but it is thought to have been from poison, not from a snake bite.
• Cleopatra spoke 9 languages - 9! One of them Egyptian, which shouldn't have been a surprise other than the fact that her family was not really Egyptian at all, but rather Macedonian Greek.

I learned a lot about Cleopatra, Egypt, Rome, and the history of those empires in this book. As is often the case with successful, brilliant women, her accomplishments were attributed to the men she associated herself with. This book sets the record straight.

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