Date Started: 6/1/11
Date Finished: 6/16/11
One-Word Summary: Amazing
As anyone who has read this blog can attest, I lean strongly (almost exclusively) to fiction. Every once in a while I delve into non-fiction and I decided, after a long absence, to dive back in with Cleopatra: A Life. She is a famous historical figure about whom I knew basically nothing. The reviews for this book seemed promising and they were right: this was one of the best books I've read in a while.
As I mentioned, I read some reviews before I purchased this book. One of the critiques was that there is a lot of couching. Cleopatra "probably" grew up with a certain kind of education and "likely" experienced this and that with respect to life in Alexandria. The thing is, this didn't bother me at all. There are so many details about Cleopatra's life that are unknown that sometimes the best an author can do is surmise what might have been and paint us a picture. Stacy Schiff did just that and spun together the story of one of the most amazing women in history.
The world she portrays is so incredibly real. When we look back at history we feel so removed from it - perhaps because of the technological advances that take us farther and farther from the experiences of our parents much less generations before us. One of the more powerful statements in the book is that in Cleopatra's time, history was all around them; that although she was removed from Alexander the Great by over a thousand years, she lived and breathed that history. And yet we, as Americans, are so removed from our founding fathers, and we're only separated from them by a couple hundred years. That disparity was incredibly telling about the value placed on the past during Cleopatra's time. And the things I learned! We think that the people of antiquity were so backwards when in fact the opposite was true. The technology they had, the learning, the civilization - it was so eye-opening. The fact that women could divorce their husbands in Alexandria, that they could own property, own businesses and sue for their dowry back if their husbands left them - this was a world that I had no idea existed.
And Cleopatra, what can you say about her after reading this book? Men shaped her story, true, but when you read through the lines you find someone so incredibly smart (and lethal) that she must have been a force. The fact that she romanced two of the most famous men not only of her times but of history is just part of her story. There is so much more to discover. Go read this book!
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