Book Report: Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

So, I have a lot to say about this book, but the short version is that I was not hugely impressed.  Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff is a book that Vogue has been pushing down my throat since sometime last year.  Vogue behaved the same way about the Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire and Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov).  Vogue, as far as I can tell, really pushes books about courageous/ disasterous women and then movies are made about these women, and they leave all of their craziness out of the screenplay and it appears that their husbands were mean to them, when really it would be a little upsetting to lose 3/4 of your estates and financial holdings based on your wife's gambling (as in the case of the Duchess of Devonshire).  They always leave those important things out of movies.

ANYWAY, I have read books about Cleopatra before and I am always struck by how little we really know and can prove.  A lot of what we learn about Cleopatra actually came from things that Shakespeare made up.  We know for sure that she had a relationship with Julius Caesar, she visited Rome, and she had a relationship with Mark Antony.  She died by her own hand, most likely after Antony killed himself.  Her three children by Mark Antony were raised by his nemesis Octavian (Caesar's nephew), and were apparently very kindly treated and married well.  That is what we know.

I learned two new things in this book:
1) Caesarion may not have been Julius Caesar's child.  Caesar was childless, and it was noted in Rome and everywhere else that he had never even been rumored to be responsible for a pregnancy with his wife or anyone else.  Yet suddenly, when he was in his 50's, Cleopatra has a child whom she declares is his.  There is a very good chance that she was pregnant by another Roman in a desperate attempt to force a connection between herself and Caesar whom she needed to protect the Egyptian way of life.
2) Cleopatra most likely did not kill herself with an asp, it was most likely poisoned dates.  The whole asp thing would have been a pretty unreliable attempt, and Cleopatra and her aides were apparently determined not to have to show up in Rome in chains after the death of Antony.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize, which is impressive, of course, but there was just no new information outside of the two facts above.  The rest of the book was just big vocabulary words and conjecture, and I felt like Stacy Schiff was using her conjecture to push a feminist agenda that did not quite tie in.  For instance, she went through a chapter (and the chapters are super long) about how "most likely" Egyptian women were able to sue for divorce, sell their own property, be educated, run households, travel alone, ect, ect, ect and she attributed all this to Cleopatra.  She did not, however, seem to have any substantial proof of the lifestyles of Egyptian women and certainly none to prove Cleopatra's connection to those Egyptian female accomplishments.  Egypt had had female pharaohs before, and however strong Cleopatra was, her country had long been a Roman protectorate by the time she came into power and Egyptians were ultimately dictated by Rome.  When Caesar visited, he moved right into the palace as if he owned the place and the crux of the matter is that he did.

It is always frustrating when authors use conjecture to push an agenda, and I feel that that is a problem with Vogue recommended books and certainly this one.

I did not find this book to be a great read, but I did learn two new facts and I figured out a little more about Rome to Egypt geography.  It was not a total loss and I still sort of want to read Stacy Schiff's book about Benjamin Franklin.  We at least have a lot of proven documentation on Franklin, so at least there would not be so much maybe.