Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff!
(Illustrated,Paper Back, Bay Back Books, 394 pgs)
Few women in history command the attention and curiosity that Cleopatra does. Most of what has been written about her has however been not too flattering or perhaps true. Rather, she has been reduced, by her erstwhile male biographers to a beautiful and scheming seductress. The myths have masked her as an eastern whore (Boccaccio), a lustful sinner (Dante), an avaricious nymphomaniac (Cassius Dio) and most condescendingly as ‘silly little girl by George Bernard Shaw.
Nothing could be farther than the truth which the author Stacy Schiff has remarkably argued in this brilliant book of a not beautiful woman , but one of incredible grit, courage and a formidable intellect. According to Schiff, she has mostly restored context and makes her readers understand how, why and by whom ancient history was written. The poets and historians who initially wrote about Cleopatra were mostly Romans (Lucan, Appian, Josephus, Dio, Suetonius, Plutarch) writing almost a century after her death and Schiff scathingly lambasts a lethal chauvinism which made these men feel smug, comfortable and less threatened to dismiss the intellectual prowess of this Queen of Kings.
One must of course appreciate the engaging style and command over language plus a firm belief/faith or her extraordinary subject by Stacy Schiff, who has earlier won the Pulitzer prize for her biographies of Vera Nabokov (Vladimir Nabokov’s wife)and Benjamin Franklin. Rich in the descriptions of a bygone era, Schiff has deftly woven drama and reality to restore Cleopatra’s reputation. Although a Greek and the last of the Ptolemy dynasty, she ruled over Egyptians, Syrians, Thracians, Jews and Buddhists. The city of Alexandria was stable, prosperous and bewitchingly beautiful as well as home to intellectuals of numerous fields. It was a city not only of of dazzling luxury, beauty and culture scholarly colleges, an unparalleled library, bookstores etc ) but boasted of a social structure that – unlike any other cities of those times – allowed women formal education, divorce rights, property ownership and, most unusual of all, the chance to exploit their business skills. Egypt’s coffers sustained Rome; Cleopatra’s wealth and love for pageantry made Rome look shabby and cloddish; the two most powerful men of Rome--Julius Caesar and Mark Antony—were ‘duplicitously’ won over by her and she beget them children.
All this was really not liked by the Romans who wrote about her. Witness for example, the great orator of his day, Cicero. He spat venom about her because he felt inadequate in front of her tremendous intelligence and powers of speech/persuasion. Such abhorrence translated into willful manipulation of facts and reality, ultimately condemned this great Queen to nothing but a vacuous sex siren.
This book dispels the myths, the propaganda, the twisting of facts and gives us an unbiased perception into what truly could have had transpired in those times. Without any primary sources but just a whole lot of systematic and painstaking research, Schiff, as she peels away centuries of myths, has come out with a magnificent biography of a truly magnificent woman.
Rating: 5 *
