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    Cleopatra: A Life
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    Cleopatra: A Life
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    Cleopatra: A Life
    Audiobook14 hours

    Cleopatra: A Life

    Written by Stacy Schiff

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

    Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

    Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and--after his murder--three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

    Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9781607887027
    Unavailable
    Cleopatra: A Life
    Author

    Stacy Schiff

    Stacy Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2000, and Saint-Exupery, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Schiff's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Times Literary Supplement. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Cleopatra

    3.5/5

    870 ratings111 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Hm. I'm glad I read it, because I really did learn a lot. Cleopatra was always more of a mythological figure to me than a historical one, more story than fact. This went a long way toward (a) rectifying that, while also (b) explaining why she's been more mythology than fact for most of the time between her life and mine.

      But... it was dry and sometimes tedious. I got tired of the suppositions even though I knew they were necessary. I wanted to see some pictures, even if they were artists' renderings. Were there pictures in the actual book, and the Kindle version just didn't have them? That might have livened the book a bit.
    • 3/5
      Cleopatra ruled Egypt as queen for 22 years within the 50 years before the common era (BCE). She was a strong and smart woman.Women were pretty much equal in this time and place – at least in Egypt, though not necessarily in Rome or elsewhere at the time. Unfortunately, though, there is not a lot of contemporary/primary source material on Cleopatra. Also unfortunately for me, I do prefer reading about historical women, not men. This book (by necessity, I think) told mostly of the men who ruled at the time of Cleopatra (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavius…) and for purposes of trying to recreate her life, it feels like she’s an afterthought in the book, always where she is and what she’s doing in relation to these ruling men. Because of that, I tended to lose some interest in the book. It’s too bad, because I really don’t know much about her. I know a bit more now, and I’m still rating it “ok”, but I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more about her.
    • 4/5
      Until reading this book I knew little about Cleopatra beyond the word on the street, which is based more on Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal than on Cleopatra. Schiff's meticulous biography is fascinating. She covers all kinds of detail: life, culture, medicine, politics, government, warfare, and education. She also describes a lavish opulence that is - and was at the time - astonishing. But what Schiff does best is to disparage the image of Cleopatra as a wicked temptress, instead showing the reader a more credible picture of a remarkably intelligent woman and powerful monarch who brought prosperity to her country. This is a compelling book with balanced opinions that I will keep to read again, and for reference. Highly recommended. "Her power has been made to derive from her sexuality... It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life. Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest, against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence, in her ropes of pearls, there should at least be some kind of antidote. Cleopatra unsettles more as sage than as seductress. It is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive than fatally intelligent.""There was a glamour and a grandeur to her story well before Octavian or Shakespeare got his hands on it."
    • 4/5
      A well researched and thoughtful account which presents in comprehensive detail Cleopatra's fascinating life and the turbulent times in which she lived. My only criticism is the author's writing style which is sometimes overly wrought. A more direct style, using active instead of passive, would make this a better read. In addition, the author waxes overly poetic about both the grandeur of Alexandria and Cleopatra's personality- both of which there is unfortunately little evidence for guidance.Nonetheless, a recommended read.
    • 3/5
      I know this book has many fans (Peggy being among them), but I'm sorry to say I just found it boring. I had to listen to it in bits and pieces because otherwise I stopped paying attention. Too much about Roman politics and not enough about the woman herself, though as I understand it, there's not much to go on as far as any factual information, as no document at all remains from her living memory. I guess fiction will serve me better? One anecdote I especially appreciated was in referring to a king and his family who had been captured (the details are already lost to me on who and where and so on). In deference to their status, Schiff says, their captors gave them chains of gold to be carried in. Nice touch.
    • 1/5
      dull plodding
    • 1/5
      I was monumentally disappointed in this book. I've read a lot of ancient Egyptian history, including a lot about Cleopatra. I was hoping for new information, or at least old information synthesized into something new and insightful. What I got instead was a great deal of rehashing with a focus on Rome. Yes, yes, I understand that one can't get any clear picture of Cleopatra without a deep and thorough grounding in the politics and personae of Rome, but this book could have been just as easily titled "The Lives of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, With Notes On Their Friend Cleopatra".

      I wanted more daily life, more Alexandria, more Egypt, more on the Bubonic Plague that Cleopatra had to deal with, more on the flooding of the Nile. Less on the Legions, the Senate, and the marriages of the children of Senators.

      I found the writing muddy and discursive. This book cried out for far more effective editing than it got.
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating books about a woman who is at once one of the most famous and the most infamous women in history.I have not read about her before. I haven't even read Shakespeare's play, nor have I seen the Elizabeth Taylor movie. I've also read very little about Egypt or Rome at that period. This book has filled in some gaps in my knowledge, and at the same time, with a host of colorful characters, more intrigue than you could shake a stick at, and exotic settings, this was anything but dry. That's also largely due to Schiff's writing and her ability to bring the characters and history to life. She did an outstanding job.Now, I'm putting Shakespeare's plays Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Ceasar on my must-read list.
    • 5/5
      Stacy Schiff isn't an Egyptian or Roman scholar and doesn't read the languages that would allow her to do research in early sources. But she puts together a cohesive narrative and a marvelous portrait of a brilliant ruler who guided her country through perilous times. And what a city Alexandria of the Ptolomy's must have been! I thoroughly enjoyed this biography.
    • 4/5
      At the very beginning of this book, I found out that I actually don't know much about Cleopatra. And as it turns out, a lot of what we think we know about her may or may not be true. The relationships with Caesar and Mark Antony are true, although history's depiction of Cleopatra as a seductress are questionable. It's not as if sleeping with foreign queens was really out of character for either of those men. It seems that the imagery of Cleopatra the wanton woman comes mostly from Roman sources who were hostile toward her and also had reason to want to explain away Roman unrest and civil war as caused by the influence of a foreigner. Her famous asp? Unlikely, at best. Because there is a dearth of information on Cleopatra, much of the book is more about what was going on around her, what her Egypt was like, and what she would have been most likely to have done in any given situation. The things we do know, which have been subsumed by legend: she was well-educated, powerful, pragmatic, multi-lingual, a skilled conversationalist, and ruled Egypt effectively. I came out of it thinking that Cleopatra would go on my list of historic personages I'd like to have at a dinner party (although as my husband pointed out, it would probably be better if she were the host; those Alexandrians really knew how to throw a party). I also ended up thinking that Mark Antony was maybe not the sharpest crayon in Rome, and Cleopatra was certainly not to blame for that.The book was occasionally a little hard to follow if you're rusty or unfamiliar with Roman and Ptolemaic Egyptian history (which I was), thanks to the unfamiliar names and the fact that Schiff jumps around through time a bit. If you stick with it, though, you'll eventually get the major players straight and it's very helpful to view Cleopatra in the context of the time and her own family history.Recommended for: people who only know Cleopatra in her Elizabeth Taylor incarnation, anyone who wonders what it was like to be the richest woman in a man's world.
    • 4/5
      When I was a kid I was obsessed with Roman history. Nowadays not that much, although I did like the HBO series Rome. This biography rekindled my interest in Roman history a little bit. I did not know or remember that Julius Caesar was a more than just a dictator or soldier. I definitely did not know that Mark Anthony was such a voluble, fun and pathetic guy. And Cleopatra is, pardon the pun, something of sphinx...a fascinating enigma. Schiff does some great things with contradictory sources and legend, to weave an entertaining and even handed story of what was probably true.
    • 5/5
      I have to hand it to Cicero. His version of Cleopatra the wanton seductress is the one that has survived. The real powerful, intellectual, political Cleopatra has been buried by Elizabeth Taylor. But, isn't that what happens to powerful women?Reading this book made me want to visit the glories of intellectual Alexandria where women were respected as people, and morn for the oppressive regime that has ruined Egypt. What might the world have become if strong women like Cleopatra had been allowed to continue to flourish and maintain their empires instead of just exporting a few of their riches?
    • 1/5
      This book was so dry I was afraid all the sands of the Sahara would fall out of it every time I opened it!
    • 4/5
      This biography, by necessity, contains a lot of speculation. There is very little archival material on Cleopatra, and many sources are unreliable. At times, it seemed as if the author had to grasp at evidence. However, I especially enjoyed the material on how Egypt functioned in Cleopatra's time. Notwithstanding the challenges of writing a biography with little to go on, I enjoyed this book. It has portrayed Cleopatra in a way the fiction of Shaw or Shakespeare did not. Ms. Schiff has a wonderful, accessible writing style. She is imaginative and coherent. She acknowledges the gaps in source material and creates a credible portrait of Cleopatra. She also leaves the reader free to determine the truth. Hard-core history buffs will likely find the book a bit long for the amount of substantive information is includes, but biography fans will enjoy it, I think.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating take on the life of Cleopatra. History (written by men with their own agendas) has not been kind to her, and Schiff does a good job of pointing out where they just may have gotten it wrong. I think now I would put her at the top of my list for that "if you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead" party question.
    • 2/5
      Like a few other readers, I expected to enjoy this book very much, but found myself giving it up after spending enough time to find that I wasn't enjoying it, that I didn't find it interesting, and that there wasn't much point proceeding. Instead of the "Rule of 50" (pages) I applied the "Rule of Two" (hours), since I was listening to an audio edition. Part of my problem is that so little is actually known about Cleopatra; the rest of it may be that I have read a lot of Roman history, so that most of the facts that Ms. Schiff presents were already known to me. Also, and to my surprise, I got bored with the stress on how little scope there was for most women in Cleopatra's time. Maybe the real reason is that I so much prefer Shakespeare's Cleo to the real thing. Ms. Schiff is a serious historian and this is a serious book that identifies what's known and what isn't, so I had to give it some stars. I found it too uninvolving to finish, so I'm only giving it two.
    • 3/5
      An interesting foray into the life of Cleopatra VII. Throughout the book, Schiff switches back and forth between historical accounts and story telling. It is a good way to help the reader stay interested in the overall history of Cleopatra, though Schiff makes it known that there is not a lot of accurate historical accounts of Cleopatra's life that has survived through the ages. I'm glad that Schiff pulls apart the "created" images of Cleopatra that may not be accurate, and sticks to the hard facts of her life. Schiff doesn't embellish too much. History, however, is forever full of mystery and I think the biggest problem with this book, though not Schiff's fault, is that there are too many holes in Cleopatra's life. So many, that you end up using your imagination to fill in the sordid details that were not written. The book is very well written and Stacy Schiff is a wonderful historical author. The only problem is that the topic itself has too many holes because there are so few accurate accounts of Cleopatra's life during the time that she was alive. And the majority of the accounts during her time is now lost or destroyed.
    • 4/5
      So what does Stacy Schiff bring to the study of Cleopatra?A dramatic narrative that opens with a 21 year old Cleopatra smuggling herself, in a rug, to meet Julius Caesar at her old palace in Alexandria. A prose that strives so hard to be elegant that it occasionally trips up, is a bit too discursive at times like going into Florence Nightingale's impressions of Alexandria, comparing the entrance of Cleopatra into Tarsus with other famous entrances that include Howard Carter into King Tut's tomb and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show. A tone of rather conventional feminism - history as one long tale of male domination with strong women resented and lied about - rubs against passages where Cleopatra wistfully fears her most beautiful years are behind her, where she resorts to a woman's first and last weapon of tears. We are sometimes faced with a false choice of seeing Cleopatra as a seducer or a superbly intelligent woman of many talents. Why not both?Those are all minor quibbles. The Cleopatra of drama and song and painting has so much allure, so much name recognition, that Schiff would have to be a truly pathetic writer to make her into a boring, obscure figure, another one of those figures from the ancient world who is mute on their own life. Instead, Schiff's prose accomplishes what a good historical narrative should - propels you forward through a story whose end you already know.Does she bring anything new to Cleopatra? I have no idea. This is the first biography of the queen I've read.I can tell you that, since I usually read general or topical histories of Rome, I found this biography offered some perhaps trivial, perhaps important events not covered in those books. For instance, is Cicero's hostility towards Cleopatra really just because she didn't deliver a book she promised him? It's also an interesting parallax on Caesar's dictatorship and the chaos after his death, a good companion to Adrian Goldworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Because we have, at most, one word in her hand, we must see Cleopatra the seducer, general, poisoner, doctor, and mother through other eyes. And, while I think Schiff is a bit too skeptical of them, I agree with her conclusion, after carefully examining the Roman and Roman collaborator ( i.e. Josephus) accounts of her, that they do sound suspiciously formulaic in parts.Schiff takes time to cover some important contextual matters of Cleopatra's life. The command and control of the incredibly wealthy Egyptian economy was a revelation to me as was the native Egyptians' loyalty to the first Ptolemic ruler to take an interest in them. We also learn a fair amount about the young Herod and his particularly viperous family.And we get a look at some mysteries of the queen's life: Why did she flee the Battle of Actium, a battle vaguely covered in ancient records? Why did she keep the defeated Antony around Alexandria afterwards? Love? Pity? Fear of Roman reprisals if she killed him? How did she die?Schiff gives us a life that is better and more interesting than the legend.
    • 4/5
      Stacy Schiff did an amazing job of, not quite discrediting the classical writings, but instead putting them into perspective of the time period. She painted a far more complete picture of woman fighting for her right to rule, and the amazing job she did of it. Although the end result was not what she wanted she did take a rich country and make it richer and for a brief period stable. She stepped into a predominantly male role and did it better than her counterparts. Her error was allowing her heart (or loins, who knows) to back a losing horse. Stacy Schiff did a great job in being rounded in her arguments and giving an appraising, positive picture of an woman who should be admired and applauded, not reviled like the history accounts tell it.
    • 5/5
      How to capture the essence of any one life within the confines of a book is a difficult task, no matter the subject. Now add to that deed the fact that the subject died two thousand years ago, that only the smallest fragments of any of her actual words remain, and that she has the distinction of being one of the most wrongfully maligned subjects in history, and one begins to realize just the depth of achievement schiff's work on cleopatra is. "Cleopatra" is a powerhouse of a work on the last queen of the ancient empire. Even for someone like me who has studied the region and the period extensively, there were revelations and realizations. What's most notable about Schiff's presentation is how she desexualizes Cleo. That is not to say she neuters her, but she sets the often overly-emphasized sexual attributes of her subject in a historical context, noting that Cleo's so-called exploits were a fraction of both of her infamous partner's, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. History has branded her a harlot, yet she used her body only in a contractual way as did most rulers of this period. (but of course, all other rulers being men, hstory forgos any assignment of lose morals to their legacies.) Trying to understand who Cleo was as a person is like trying to paint a picture of the person whose cavity has been found at Pompeii. So little source material comes to us through a unbiased or even sympathetic lense. Often we can only see what Cleo's light shined upon by examining what fell into her shadow. Schiff has exhaustively sifted through the poisoned voices for whom making Cleo into a scapegoat or holding her up as an example of the dangers of women was a priority. At times, I did feel Schiff was overstepping a historian's boundary and editotralizing, but herein finds the need. Not knowing Cleo's mind except as evidenced by her actions and the impressions of her contemporaries, I don't know that Schiff had any other choice but to present conjecture. Where Cleo's voice falls silent, Schiff tries to present theories of her own. One area I did wish had been explored more thoroughly was the culture of Rome in this period. Julius Caesar and mark Antony were members of a powerful counter culture movement which privately moved in contrast with many traditional roman values whilst publicly claiming to warriors in its defense. This context makes the reader better aware of why the extent of the relationships between the triumvrs's and the queen of Egypt was contributory to the fall of the republic. All in all, however, a stunning work one which should be a must read for those who seek to understand the various roles of women in the ancient world.
    • 5/5
      I never had much knowledge of Cleopatra, though I presumed that the evil seductress/siren image was overblown. It turns out that she was a truly remarkable woman who managed to keep her people in an uneasy coexistence with the Romans for twenty years. This is a fascinating biography which sheds a lot of light on the entire Mediterranean world shortly before the birth of Christ.Thanks for recommending it, JoAnn.
    • 3/5
      I majored in history, but concentrated on modern Western Europe, so much of this book wss new territory for me. Ms. Schiff clearly feels that her subject has been maligned over the years and has set out to correct the record in a very readable biography.If most of your knowledge about Cleopatra comes from Hollywood, you'll find this book entertaining, informative & enlightening.
    • 3/5
      A little dry but interesting in the end...funny how we think we know someone...everything i thought i knew about her...was so wrong...
    • 3/5
      I listened to this, which my low review reflects. As excellent a scholarly work as this may be, this was one of those few books that are very difficult to listen to when driving or doing something else that takes part of your mind. Part of the problems is that the author did not want to stray too far into making assertions without facts, of which there were few. Instead there were many biographers and historians of varying degrees of credibility. Much of what was said had to be tempered by a description of its probability.Yes, it was an interesting book. But after finishing listening to it, I don't feel like I know much more about her than I did before. Due, I'm sure, to being unable to totally focus on what was being said.
    • 4/5
      A lively history, like a big, blood-soaked soap opera.
    • 2/5
      By page 54, I was still having the feeling of waiting for the book to begin. Just didn't compel.
    • 5/5
      Schiff takes on one of the most enigmatic women in history and with an engaging and witty style shows what's history and what's propaganda. The book follows Cleopatra from her youngest days until her death and goes beyond the created myths to what historical proof tells of this woman who is still known many thousands of years later. Lovers of history will find all the facts they desire, while those looking to see a more in-depth version of the story they know will not be disappointed. As a Classicist myself, I particularly enjoyed the acknowledgment of the role Macedonian society played in the Ptolemaic dynasty and how that collided with Egyptian and Roman ideas. Schiff's use of direct quotes from historical sources such as Dio and Plutarch alongside explanations of the biases of these writers helps to form a broader picture of one of the most dramatized eras of history. I would recommend this book to many ages from a high school student who wants to learn history to a Classical scholar, a fantastic read.
    • 3/5
      Cleopatra the book's allure, unlike its subject, fades fast. Schiff, a Pulitzer prize winning historian gets kudos for history, much less for writing. Her sentences are too long. You lose sight of the verb. The book slows down. And, our frustration rises. But, this may be a sign of our times. The rules of writing, represented so cleary and logically in books like the Oxford Book of Plain Writing, we are now told don't count. Even some reviews published in The New York Times Book section proclaim when it comes to writing anything goes. Don't be stuffy. Sigh! In the age of text, tweet and e-mail, structure disappears. While adverbs overcome. And, confusion runs rampant. Still, fans of ancient history must feel duty bound to read this fresh approach to Cleopatra's history. One can only wonder over the amount of research required to produce this detailed and admirable account.
    • 4/5
      Stacy Schiff is one of my favorite authors who always manages to discover new aspects in the lives of the rich and famous. Of the books that I have read by her, the biography of Vera Nabokov remains outstanding. Her Cleopatra does not reach that level. It joins her Benjamin Franklin biography as a worthy conversational biography. The main weakness of the biography is one also encountered by Alison Weir in her portrait of Eleanor of Aquitaine: All their feminist complaints about having to write a biography about a woman from accounts written by men about their men only results in an account of a sequential history of those men. While the book is nominally about Cleopatra, all too often it turns into the history of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and even Herodes. One cannot embrace Wittgenstein's mantle and then still write a biography. The same difficulty probably inspired the terrific cover image which captures the enigma perfectly, perhaps too perfectly as Cleopatra as a short person probably had a shorter neck. I still love the cover which counterbalances the common impression of "le nez".While Schiff as a non-specialist gets a few aspects wrong (especially her Old World, New World comparisons to create some relevance for her American audience). I didn't know that she was in Rome during Caesar's assassination. Her un-Roman presence must have increased the opposition to Caesar. The other element that I wasn't really aware of was that she lived to 39 years. Her relationship with Mark Anthony lasted 10 years, compared to about 3 years for Julius Caesar. Cleopatra's death scene (by poison not snakes) is one of the highlights of the book.Overall, a readable conversational American-focused biography about the most famous woman of the Ancient World.
    • 2/5
      Too dry and boring. Couldn't finish.