6/28/2023 0 Comments Cleopatra a life![]() ![]() The Coliseum did not yet stand, nor did the Pantheon or any number of other Roman architectural marvels. She also reminds us that Caesar’s Rome was not the Rome of later glories and depravities. Schiff reminds us that Cleopatra and her family were not related to the Egyptian pharaohs but descended from Ptolemy, a Macedonian general with Alexander the Great. ![]() During that time, she took into her bed some of the most powerful men in history (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony), maneuvered through a male world with intelligence, skill and sanguinary brutality, met and failed to charm Herod and bore children to both Caesar and Antony. ![]() Cleopatra, a suicide at 39-despite the legend of the asp bite, it was probably poison, writes the author-ruled for 22 years. New Yorker contributor Schiff ( A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, 2005, etc.) acknowledges that our image of Cleopatra VII arrives through the distorted lenses of biased (male, Roman) history, romanticized and melodramatic stage productions and films and the distortion of time itself. A Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer presents a swift, sympathetic life of one of history’s most maligned and legendary women. ![]()
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