Rating: ***
Tags: General, History, Egypt, Biography & Autobiography, Autobiography, Ancient, Royalty, Lang:en
Summary
Cleopatras palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was
richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life
spanned fewer then forty years, it reshaped the contours of the
ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother.
She waged a brutal civil war against the first and she poisoned
the second.Incest and assassination were family specialties.
Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men.They
happen, however to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony,
two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married
to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and - after his
murder, three more with his prot_g_.Famous long before she was
notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong
reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth.
Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her
name. Along the way the supple personality has been lost. In a
masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here
boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen
whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before
the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiffs is
a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling
life.