Monday, April 25, 2011

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacey Schiff

I enjoyed the audio version of this book. While there's not as much fact as one might be able to find for a more recent figure (there's only one word that may be written in Cleopatra's hand, and no surviving contemporary portraits or statues, besides her coins), this book does a nice job of laying out the possibilities for Cleopatra's life, as well as giving a crash course in the relevant Roman politics and history, so that it all makes sense. I was particularly intrigued by the arguments for Cleopatra's intelligence (apparently she was a gifted linguist); most of her early chroniclers were portraying someone who fit into their historical picture as a problem, and history is, after all, mostly written by the winners.

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