Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, Virgin, $45.
The richest woman in the world, queen of an enlightened empire, and the lover of two great Roman leaders, Cleopatra made such an impact in her lifetime that she has never been forgotten.
From Plutarch to Shakespeare, through to Elizabeth Taylor, there’s always room for another Cleopatra, and it seems Angelina Jolie could be the next. But who was she?
Stacy Schiff’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography finds a charming but not beautiful woman, a canny politician, a flatterer in dozens of languages, and above all a survivor.
When she was just 21, Julius Caesar helped her win back her empire, and together they had a child. They were so close, Cleopatra was staying with Caesar in Rome when his political enemies stabbed him to death.
Her second great conquest, Marc Antony, loved parties and pranks, and the two scandalised Rome with their shenanigans before famously dying together, defeated and humiliated.
Schiff’s life of Cleopatra is detailed, scholarly and vibrant, and it resists the assumptions, melodrama and sensationalism that haunted Cleopatra in life and in death.
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