Review by Choice Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Schiff paints a lavishly detailed portrait of Cleopatra VII, skillfully integrating anecdotes from ancient documents, material evidence from art and archaeology, and the work of modern scholars to produce a thoroughly engaging and eloquently related life history that is a fine addition to other recent biographies of the queen. The action-packed and sumptuous chronicle puts readers not only into the time of Cleopatra, but into her mind as well--indeed, readers might find themselves empathizing with the last pharaoh of Egypt while reading Schiff's eloquent account of her triumphs and setbacks. It is obvious that the author has performed extensive research in order to paint so dense a portrait; references to the academic literature on Cleopatra VII and a selected bibliography conclude the volume. While most historians of ancient history will already be familiar with the details of Cleopatra VII's story and their sources, and some may be irked by the chronological fluidity that Schiff occasionally employs in setting scenes, the book nevertheless contains observations of interest for emerging scholars and laypersons alike. Several maps and color illustrations complement the vivid narrative. Summing Up; Highly recommended. General and undergraduate readers. E. A. Waraksa UCLA Young Research Library
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Papyri crumble away. What remains of her home is 20 feet underwater. She died before Jesus was born. Her first biographers never met her, and she deliberately hid her real self behind vulgar display. A cautious writer would never consider her as a subject. Stacy Schiff, however, has risen to the bait, with deserved confidence. "Saint-Exupéry: A Biography" and "Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)" demonstrated her mastery of the form. "The Great Improvisation," Schiff's analysis of Benjamin Franklin's years in Paris, revealed a different genius: the intellectual stamina required to untangle the endlessly tricky snarls created by the intersection of human personalities and international relations. "Mostly," Schiff says of "Cleopatra: A Life," "I have restored context." The claim stops sounding humble when we understand what it entails. Although it's not Schiff's purpose to present us with a feminist revision of a life plucked from antiquity, in order to "restore" Cleopatra - to see her at all - one must strip away an "encrusted myth" created by those for whom "citing her sexual prowess was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts." Lucan, Appian, Josephus, Dio, Suetonius, Plutarch - the poets, historians and biographers who initially depicted Cleopatra were mostly Roman and all male, writing, for the most part, a century or more after her death with the intent to portray her reign as little more than a sustained striptease. And although Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the known world and Egypt an ancient pioneer of gender equality, the country had "no fine historian" to counter the agendas of those for whom "impugning independent-minded women was a subspecialty." As Schiff observes, Cleopatra may boast "one of the busiest afterlives in history," including incarnations as "an asteroid, a video game, a cliché, a cigarette, a slot machine, a strip club, a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor," but the single piece of documentary evidence that might be traced to her own hand is "perhaps and at most, one written word" (translated as "Let it be done," with which she or her scribe signed off on a decree). The woman left no primary sources. Born in 69 B.C., Cleopatra ascended the throne of Egypt at 18. As childhood was not a subject of great interest to the ancients, Schiff explains, "players tended to emerge fully formed" into the public consciousness, their recorded lives beginning when they first influenced history. To distract the present-day reader from the absence of her subject's early years, Schiff neatly draws our attention to a different, albeit geographic, femme fatale - Alexandria. Balanced on the sparkling Mediterranean coast, with a parade-ready colonnade running the length of the city and mechanical marvels like hydraulic lifts, coin-operated machines and statues with flickering eyes, Egypt's capital made Rome look like the "provincial backwater" it was. Schiff's rendering of the city is so juicy and cinematic it leaves one with the sense of having visited a hopped-up ancient Las Vegas, with a busy harbor and a really good library. When Cleopatra came to power it was, in accordance with her father's will, as co-ruler with her 10-year-old brother, Ptolemy, to whom she was wed. Probably her parents were also full siblings. The Egyptian practice of incest among royals was adopted by her Macedonian forebears, who had ruled Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great. But Cleopatra had no more intention of consummating a pro forma marriage than she did of sharing power with a little boy. Educated rigorously with an eye to her future rule, she'd paid careful attention to her father's missteps as well as his triumphs. To keep her crown required Rome's allegiance, which she captured in 48 B.C., swiftly and with the flair and ingenuity for which she would be remembered. Goaded into exile as a result of a failed attempt to oust Ptolemy and his advisers, Cleopatra, 21, had herself stuffed into a sturdy sack, smuggled back into her own palace, and presented thus to Julius Caesar, who, taking advantage of Egypt's political upheaval, had installed himself in the capital. While even her detractors agree, grudgingly, that Cleopatra was blessed with megawatt charisma as well as a formidable intelligence - she spoke nine languages - there is no record of how she persuaded Caesar to support her hegemony rather than making Egypt a province of Rome, and "no convincing political explanation" for his remaining with her in Alexandria for months while his own empire languished. We do know that when he left, Cleopatra was pregnant. Clearly a seduction had been accomplished, and she had far the most to gain from it. To discover what truths remain after two millenniums, Schiff must consider her limited and inconsistent sources through the lenses of anthropology, archaeology and psychology, revealing a ruler who, centuries before those disciplines had been invented, used a similar set of tools to consolidate and maximize the power she inherited. What Schiff describes as Cleopatra's ability "to slide effortlessly from one idiom to another" depended on what was in fact an astute and arduous campaign to secure the allegiance of a people whose religion and culture she borrowed to suit her own ends. Detractors misrepresented her use of jaw-droppingly over-the-top spectacle as proof of decadence rather than the art of a political visionary. From the beginning of her reign, the young queen had manipulated her largely illiterate populace by staging elaborate productions that underscored and cemented the idea of her divinity and her therefore incontestable rule. Gliding up the Nile, having styled herself as Isis, Cleopatra presented Caesar to "cheering crowds" agog at the gigantic royal barge embedded with gold and ivory and bearing colonnades and 18-foot gilded statues. For as long as nine weeks Cleopatra displayed herself and her alpha mate as "the earthly visitation of two living gods." And her auspiciously timed pregnancy allowed her to advertise the fertility of their union. When her child was born, she named him Caesarion and, in a further reworking of the myth she inherited, installed "little Caesar" as her co-ruler after his father's assassination in 44 B.C. Caesar fit neatly into the role of Isis's partner, Osiris. The supreme male divinity was murdered by enemies who spared his "young male heir and a devoted quick-thinking consort." As Schiff dryly observes, "the Ides of March handily buttressed the tale." Egypt had the wealth to underwrite Roman wars; Cleopatra needed Roman clout to keep her throne; it had long been Rome's intent to annex Egypt. In 41 B.C., Mark Antony, intending to learn where Cleopatra's post-Caesar loyalties lay, summoned her to Tarsus. Fluent in pantheons other than Egypt's, Cleopatra there descended as Venus, with an entourage befitting the goddess of love. Her silver-oared barge had purple sails and an orchestra of lyres, flutes and pipes, everything perfumed by "countless incense offerings." Fair maidens dressed as nymphs and graces worked the ropes while beautiful cupids fanned the queen under her golden canopy. The "blinding explosion of color, sound and smell" captivated another gaping multitude, and the equally astonished Mark Antony followed Cleopatra back to Alexandria. Again using biology to shape destiny, she promptly bore him a son and a daughter, and then another son; she and her lover remained together for the better part of a decade. Death didn't part so much as bind them together indefinitely, with tandem suicides concluding their biographies on a note of high drama and guaranteeing the staying power of a romance that had held their contemporaries in thrall. Cleopatra mythologized herself before anyone else had the chance. Roman contemporaries misread the pageants she acted out; early biographers were biased, xenophobic, politically motivated and sometimes sensationalistic, writing for an audience that expected to be dazzled by intrigues reflecting its assumptions. It's dizzying to contemplate the thicket of prejudices, personalities and propaganda Schiff penetrated to reconstruct a woman whose style, ambition and audacity make her a subject worthy of her latest biographer. After all, Stacy Schiff's writing is distinguished by those very same virtues. As Stacy Schiff observes, Cleopatra may boast 'one of the busiest afterlives in history,' including incarnations as 'an asteroid, a video game, a cigarette.' Kathryn Harrison writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her new novel, "Enchantments," will be published next year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 30, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
For those who think they know enough about Cleopatra or have the enigmatic Egyptian queen all figured out, think again. Schiff, demonstrating the same narrative flair that captivated readers of her Pulitzer Prize-winning Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) (1999), provides a new interpretation of the life of one of history's most enduringly intriguing women. Rather than a devastatingly beautiful femme fatale, Cleopatra, according to Schiff, was a shrewd power broker who knew how to use her manifold gifts wealth, power, and intelligence to negotiate advantageous political deals and military alliances. Though long on facts and short on myth, this stellar biography is still a page-turner; in fact, because this portrait is grounded so thoroughly in historical context, it is even more extraordinary than the more fanciful legend. Cleopatra emerges as a groundbreaking female leader, relying on her wits, determination, and political acumen rather than sex appeal to astutely wield her power in order to get the job done. Ancient Egypt never goes out of style, and Cleopatra continues to captivate successive generations.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
From its opening strains of music, this audiobook of Schiff's stellar biography of the Egyptian queen rewards the intellect and the senses. As Schiff dusts away history's spider webs, romance's distortions, and sexism's corruptions to reveal the true (or at least the truest possible) portrait of Cleopatra, Robin Miles's voice is deep, confiding, the perfect instrument to introduce a history that has been variously forgotten, misunderstood, or suppressed. Her enunciation is crisp, her pacing pure charm: she wrings every sentence for meaning, irony, and wit, taking us through pages of description or analysis with a stately pace. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Schiff (Vera) finally frees us of our two-dimensional understanding of Cleopatra, bringing to life an extremely fascinating woman at once intelligent, ruthless, resourceful, and cunning. She further enhances this vivid portrait with descriptions of life in ancient Egypt and Rome, providing a detailed history that includes many of the important names of the time. Audio is the ideal format to highlight Schiff's monumental research in this massive undertaking; actress/Audie Award nominee Robin Miles's appealing voice works well with the sparkling descriptions. Even the footnotes, so easy to skip when reading, are a pleasure to hear. Biography, Egyptology, and ancient history buffs will be highly rewarded by this fascinating biography. [Includes a bonus PDF of historical documents; the Little, Brown hc was recommended for "undergraduates, lovers of biography or ancient history, and those seeking an introduction to Cleopatra," LJ 9/1/10.-Ed.]-Susan G. Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Pulitzer Prizewinning biographer presents a swift, sympathetic life of one of history's most maligned and legendary women.New Yorker contributor Schiff (A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, 2005, etc.) acknowledges that our image of Cleopatra VII arrives through the distorted lenses of biased (male, Roman) history, romanticized and melodramatic stage productions and films and the distortion of time itself. Cleopatra, a suicide at 39despite the legend of the asp bite, it was probably poison, writes the authorruled for 22 years. During that time, she took into her bed some of the most powerful men in history (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony), maneuvered through a male world with intelligence, skill and sanguinary brutality, met and failed to charm Herod and bore children to both Caesar and Antony. Schiff reminds us that Cleopatra and her family were not related to the Egyptian pharaohs but descended from Ptolemy, a Macedonian general with Alexander the Great. She also reminds us that Caesar's Rome was not the Rome of later glories and depravities. The Coliseum did not yet stand, nor did the Pantheon or any number of other Roman architectural marvels. Born in 69 BCE, Cleopatra entered a family for whom the word internecine was surely inventedkilling family members standing in the way was routine, and Cleopatra was not above it. The young girl was intellectually quick, savvy and willing to learn, and she soon made her first significant conquest: Caesar. She came to Rome to see him, causing uproar, for Rome was an empire that had a gender test for human rights (women need not apply). Schiff notes that Caesar's assassination was a political disaster for Cleopatra, but she quickly recovered, won Antony and enjoyed a number of amazingly powerful and profligate years before history and the forces of Octavian brought her down.Successfully dissipating all the perfume, Schiff finds a remarkably complex womanbrutal and loving, dependent and independent, immensely strong but finally vulnerable.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
