Sunday, November 11, 2012

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

 
Here is a link to her website with videos and information about the book: http://www.stacyschiff.com/cleopatra-a-life.html, including interviews with the author.  One of her goals, it seems, is to make her more than the “woman who bared her breasts” in all those paintings.

Cleopatra lived from Late 69 BC – August 12, 30 BC, and she was the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

Initial Thoughts

  • I know so little about history that everything was new.
  • The author presumed you knew more.  Cleopatra’s contemporaries just showed up, without a lot of background story about what those contemporaries were doing at that historical time period.  Cleopatra is contemporary to King Herod!
  • We were reminded that the library at Alexandria burned – so did all the ancient texts.  The author is trying to retell a story from letters, coins, and hieroglyphics.
  • This book seems to be more of a scholarly attempt than a story.  Some of us felt that either a historical fiction or nonfiction playing out of events would have been better.  This version made you question what was real. 
  • Cleopatra’s wealth and adoration is mind-blowing.
  • There is little discussion of the poverty, slavery, or “average” person’s life.
  • The author really brings in the legacy of female rulers and the value of education.  Women were educated and owned business.  What happened?
  • The people who wrote about Cleopatra didn’t necessarily shed a good light on her.
  • There wasn’t as much about Egyptian gods/goddesses as you’d think there might be.
  • The goddess, Isis, could become Mary later.
History
  • Egypt was so much more evolved than Rome. 
  • Greece was also more evolved than Rome.
  • After her death, Cleopatra enriched the Roman Empire with her Egyptian symbols.
  • After her death, women began to have a role in public life.
  • Rivalry with women, like her sister and Octavia
Contemporaries
  • Julius Cesar (shared a son)
  • Mark Anthony (shared a boy/girl set of twins) – over a 9-year relationship
  • Herod (this is happening in 32 BC)
Myths
  • Cleopatra is younger than we thought.
  • Cleopatra spent more time with Ceaser, and then with Marc Anthony than we thought.
  • We aren’t really sure how the figs and Asp played into her death.
  • Cleopatra had more children than we thought, and they weren’t all killed.
Achievements – Quotes
  • Cleopatra ruled Egypt for 22 years and it flourished and experienced peace.
  • While living in Rome: “To relax her guard was to be sent home, to maintain it was to offend”
  • Augustus: “Men ruled women and Rome ruled the World”
  • “A capable woman is suspect.”
  • “One would rather find a woman fatally attractive, than fatally intelligent.”
  • “A man who teaches a woman to write should recognize that he is providing poison to an Asp.”
  • “There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only lions were sculptors, there might be a different set of statues, said the Lion to the man in Aesop’s fables.” 
  • Cleopatra is portrayed as someone whose power came from her sexuality.  How much more attention people pay to their fears than to their memories.  It has always been preferable to attribute a woman’s success to her beauty rather then to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.  Against a powerful enchantress, there is no context, but against a women with intelligence, there is no antidote. (paraphrased from book)
We remember Cleopatra for having a relationship with two powerful men, and not for her leadership.  She was a capable, strategist, queen who inserted her self into world politics through improvisation, grandeur, and glamour.  She was astute, spirited, pampered, and inconceivably rich.  She remains one of the only women a table of men who had a royal flush.

For those who might want further reading in the fate of Cleopatra’s lineage, here are several books:
Alexander Helios is a main character in the book Cleopatra's Daughter, by Michelle Moran, which is about his twin sister Cleopatra Selene.


Similarly, he is followed in Lily of the Nile by Stephanie Dray, another novel that follows him and his young sister from the tragic fall of Alexandria to the cusp of her marriage to Juba II of Numibia.

In Cleopatra's Moon, by Vicky Alvear Shecter, Alexander Helios is also mentioned, along with Ptolemy Philadelphos and Cleopatra Selene, the main character of the book.

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