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Cleopatra A Life Stacy Schiff Books

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Cleopatra A Life Stacy Schiff Books

Ms. Schiff is an excellent historian, and a formidable talent as a writer. But, nonetheless, I found her a plodding story teller. The book is loaded with facts and insight into the period's events and numerous characters; but her writing often meanders into arcane, entwined language. She seems to have no sense of grammar, or paragraphing. Once on a thought line she can roll on over several pages, without taking a breath....or allowing the reader to do so. I suggest a good third of this book can be severely reduced, or completely eliminated, by any proficient editor. This book is not a smooth read.....it requires work and commitment.
Having said that...............this book is loaded with deeper human insight into why this passage of history unfolded as it did. The reader easily becomes enamored to Cleopatra, and Anthony. Plus, the events of this period are wonderfully presented (the intrigue, the battles, the politics, the loves, the hatreds) as the saga of the Roman civil war period plays out.........for both serious students or the more casually motivated.
It is said that a sculptor sees his final piece hidden within the block of marble he confronts on day one of a project as he then goes about removing the excess.........such is this book. Ms. Schiff's work would be an excellent basis to extract a crisp screen play.........HBO's Rome possibly?


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Cleopatra A Life Stacy Schiff Books Reviews

A Great Queen

Who was this great woman who nearly pulled off what would have been a dramatic shift in the history of Western Civilization and whose death marks a pivot point in this history? History is not everything that was, it is only a fraction of what could have been. Only in retrospect do we look back at events and construct a narrative based on the limits of what we do know in order to appease our current subjective perspective about the human condition as we pretend to be objective. Every generation reinvents its own Cleopatra, with the aid of Stacy Schiff, this one is mine.

Cleopatra’s bold actions and thoughtful strategy created the last chance of Hellenism to resist Rome and a create a joint Mediterranean empire, as Alexander had dreamed and Cleopatra undertook. She represented more than political continuity; she embodied the continuity of Greek culture and learning as well as Egyptian tradition. She was able to captivate men with her incredible charm as well as her superb intelligence and this arose great passions, both in her lovers as well as in her intimidated detractors who were threatened by her wealth, power, acumen, intelligence and aplomb. Those who hated her, primarily Romans elites such as Cicero, hated her because she represented everything that Rome was not as she flouted every custom and convention that was Roman. She was a young woman with staggering power, stunning guile and astounding ability when young women were supposed to be sequestered until they were pressed into service as dutiful wives. The notion that the world, this world, any world, could be ruled by a woman, any woman, this women, and one not even a proper Roman woman, but a temptress and a seductress, a harlot queen, was simply intolerable to the martial Roman mind. She was a deviant in that she tried to hold the line against the deviance of Roman hegemony. She was a threat to the Roman idea of world order because she was an alien from a strange an alien world. Add to this, the shabby envy of Rome in the realization of its inadequacy in philosophy, language, culture, literature, art and architecture when compared to the accomplished and sophisticated Greek East. In terms of policy, she had no choice but to consistency aligned herself with the future, with the growing and most powerful regional power in the Mediterranean, Rome. The son she had with Julius Caesar, Ptolemy Caesar, represented an alternative future, an alternative world order to unbridled Roman hegemony, a merger between the last great Hellenistic kingdom of the East and the new and undeniable power of Rome in the West. A world in which the Hellenistic Greek world would be a partner of, not subordinate to, Rome. A new dynasty that would fuse the two cultures. She knew that Egypt was the last domino in the Mediterranean to fall to the wolves of Rome. Her acts of seduction were at once acts of political genius and strategic brilliance.

With the death of Caesar, she was left with no option other than Marc Anthony. Marc Antony was granted supremacy in the East via the agreement of the Second Triumvirate and Cleopatra had no choice but to deal with whomever that Roman might be. However, it is difficult to imagine the sallow bloodless, passionless, relentless, charmless and sickly yet martial minded Octavian succumbing to the talents and charms of the Egyptian Queen. Cleopatra was the first Ptolemy to learn Egyptian but perhaps if she was able to speak Latin, history might yet again have been different. She spoke between seven and nine languages and ironically, Latin (or at least enough Latin) was not one of them. Could this have made a difference in smoothing over the antipathies that developed between Cleopatra and Octavian from her visit(s) to Rome without them even having met? She was a great linguist who conversed with ambassadors from foreign lands in their own language. She was able to put people at ease, including the rowdy-boy Marc Antony and the narcissist Julius Caesar. She could assume whatever guise needed, novel or normal, to advance her cause; the cause of and independent Egypt. Could she have done the same with Octavian if only she spoke his language to assuage his Roman pretentiousness and acknowledge his Roman pride?

From a position of great weakness in a dynasty that had reached its life end and rife with internal conflicts she very quickly realized that with the tools of wit and charm, by making herself into what her interlocutors wanted her to be, she could captivate with charm, guile and foresight first Julius Caesar, then Marc Antony resulting in the greatest Ptolemaic empire since the second century BC. With the defeat at Actium, she was left with the very distinct possibility of being ignominiously dragged in chains through Rome as part of a triumph for Octavian, as Julius Caser had done with her sister Arsinoe IV (later murdered at the command of Marc Antony, admittedly at the behest of Cleopatra, compellingly by the connivance of Arsinoe). She would not condescend to such a humiliation and thus frustrated the Roman wolves in her death by walking off the world stage with dignity as well as an air of mystery befitting a goddess. With her death, on her terms, with clarity and conscience, she in a sense took the moral force of the victory at Actium away from Octavian and in her death can now been seen a crucial pivot point in history.

A Beguiling Age

We are treated to a look at the world before it was contaminated by Christianity and infected by Islam, the two most recent monotheistic bullies. The original monotheistic impostor, Judaism, at least was not in a position to do any bullying at this time and tended to mind its place. At least amongst the elite, intellectual curiosity, not myth and legend, was the hallmark of the age and place. A new and virulent revival of the monotheistic form of superstition could not be held off and is still with us today. But still, even in this time of intellectual freedom there was a sense of repetition and nothing ‘new under the sun’. First century BC Hellenistic Alexandria was the product of, and heir to, a staggering intellectual tradition but yet still, there was a sense of weariness, much like our own era. The great classical schools and comprehensive philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle were in a glorious and golden past. The latest intellectual schools of thought, much more modest in their approach and thus less satisfying in their explanations were Stoicism, Skepticism, Epicureanism and Cynicism. This left a gap for those shopping the meaning markets and values bazaars for something more comforting and reassuring. This void of course would be filled by meaning maniacs, desire whores, value junkies and free will fanatics of Christianity and later Islam. This is still true in our own time. It was the achievement of Roman hegemony that gave these impostors a superhighway into the modern world whereas a joint Roman-Hellenistic world order might have blunted the most pernicious edges of monotheism. New age forms of spiritually are just the latest forms of gullibility in much the same way that Christianity filled the void for the gullible at the end of Hellenistic age. The only reality that lies beyond the observable, the measurable and the rational is the reality of wishful thinking. To prove me wrong, I was once asked if I am not spiritually moved by a great work of art or a profound piece of music, to which I replied yes, but that I thought this was called art appreciation. In the new age, has this wish for spirituality simply been reduced to art appreciation? If yes, then I am a pretend spiritual person after all.

The Darkness of Time

We see our time as the present time and Cleopatra’s time as the past, but her time was the present time to her as well. Cleopatra lived in the 'now' and it is still 'now'. The unending succession of present moments is unthinkable and disorderly. We tumble from moment to moment, from nothingness to nothingness. This serves to heighten the isolation of each moment. The truth is that the human condition is trapped by time. What is time? It is regret of the past and dread of the future. We are stuck in the betweenness of the present moment; between regret and dread but no wait, the present moment, this oasis between regret and dread, is only a mirage sitting amid the two deserts of regret and dread, it does not exist. The present moment is only real in the sense that it is the instantiation of regret of the past and dread of the future. By thinking that we are living in the present moment we are being deceived by time itself. In truth, we exist in the cruel midst of regret and dread, nothing more. Time becomes deadlocked and suspended at this dark point. The aftermath of the battle of Actium for Cleopatra and Mark Antony was an example of the two-fold regret/dread nature of time for human beings. Stacy Shift, in the closing lines of the book, tries to fathom how Cleopatra felt. I submit that she experienced the true dualistic nature of time itself, regret and dread, but in a much more intense, but no less true or real manner than us. For Cleopatra, the regret of the past and dread of the future were concentrated in the now. of the present moment.
The Cleopatra most of us know is a fictional creation. The story we know comes mainly from the early first century Roman writers Plutarch and Dio. According to author Stacy Schiff, that’s like reading a history of twentieth-century America written by Chairman Mao. In short, our image of Cleopatra is “the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.” Schiff’s primary point is that “If the name is indelible, the image is blurry.”

Her real story, as told by Schiff, is every bit as fascinating as that told by Shakespeare. Cleopatra descended “from a line of rancorous, meddlesome, shrewd, occasionally unhinged Macedonian queens,” Schiff writes and would prove to be a true daughter of her ancestors. Her name, which translates to “Glory of her Fatherland,” is fitting. Born in 69 BC, the second of three daughters in a family known for eagerly liquidating siblings, she would prove to be both the strongest and shrewdest of the brood. She may not have been as traditionally beautiful as legend would have it, but she was certainly sagacious, sophisticated, and well-educated, speaking as many as seven languages fluently, including native Egyptian, the only Ptolemaic monarch to learn the local dialect.

From the Roman point of view, Egypt was a tricky subject. The richest, most agriculturally productive region in the ancient world, Egypt was, according to the classicist Ronald Syme, ”a loss if destroyed, a risk to annex, a problem to govern.” Julius Caesar arrived on Egyptian shores in 48 BC in hot pursuit of Pompey, his chief rival in the Roman Civil War, who had just been slain at Pelusium by Ptolemy XIII, a deed for which Dante would place the Egyptian king in the ninth circle of hell next to Cain and Judas. Like others who came before and after him, Caesar was entranced by the grandeur of Alexandria, “the Paris of the ancient world,” in Schiff’s romantic language, the most cultured, the most beautiful, the most refined city ever known to man. Caesar found the young Cleopatra equally intoxicating. He would make her queen – and pregnant.

Caesar brought Cleopatra back from Alexandria to Rome, which Schiff likens to “sailing from the court of Versailles to eighteenth century Philadelphia.” He also brought back with him other marvelous creations of Egypt, such as the 12-month calendar, the 24-hour day, and a large public library. “It was difficult for anyone to come into contact with Ptolemaic Egypt and not contract a case of extravagance.” Indeed, one might argue, as Schiff does, that “Cleopatra properly qualifies as the founder of the Roman Empire,” because, as Lucan wrote a century after Caesar’s death, “she aroused his greed.”

Cleopatra was a 26-year-old mother of Caesar’s only male child, Caesarian, living comfortably at Caesar’s villa outside of Rome when he was assassinated on the Ides of March. She was blindsided by events and would never again set foot in Rome. She would eventually fall for Mark Antony, Caesar’s most trusted lieutenant, a man “given to good living, great parties, bad women,” a brilliant cavalry officer who possessed all of Caesar’s charm but none of his self-control. Cleopatra needed Mark Antony. Octavian, the inheritor of the mantle of Caesar, was “a walking, plotting insult to her son,” Caesarian. Mark Antony’s obsession with conquering Parthia proved to be a blessing for her as only the wealth of Egypt could underwrite such an expensive campaign.

Cleopatra and Mark Antony met at Tarsus in 41 BC. Her effect on the Roman general was “immediate and electrifying,” according to Schiff. The queen engaged in “a take-no-prisoners school of seduction.” The author claims that Tarsus was a rare instance when the life and legend of Cleopatra completely overlap. She brought Mark Antony back to Alexandra where he “swallowed the whole Greek culture in one gulp.” The “barrel-chested, thick-thighed Roman” fell in love with Alexandria, “a city of raspberry dawns and pearly late afternoons, with the hustle of heterodoxy and the aroma of opportunity thick in the air.” Cleopatra bore him twins in 39 BC, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene; but more importantly for the stability of the Mediterranean world, Mark Antony married Octavian’s sister, a marriage alliance not unlike Pompey’s to Caesar’s daughter, Julia, in 59 BC, a union that offered a half-decade respite to internecine strife in Rome.

Mark Antony’s long-awaited Parthian campaign was a failure; perhaps not on the scale of the disaster that befell Crassus in 53 BC, but bad enough that he lost 24,000 men (a full third of his army) and recorded no noteworthy victories in 18 modest battles. Meanwhile, Octavian had been piling up successes (e.g. he had crushed Sextus Pompey and kicked fellow triumvir Lepidus to the curb). Schiff writes that Antony was despondent, nearly suicidal. It was Cleopatra’s “blue ribbon rendition of the lovesick female” that rallied him. In the so-called “Donations of Alexandria” in 34 BC, Antony distributed the Roman Empire in the east to their children, who were part Roman and part Egyptian gods. The view from Rome, Schiff says, was that the Donations were “an empty gesture, a farcical overreaching by two slightly demented, power-drunk dissolutes.”

In 32 BC Mark Antony divorced Octavia. The pretext for the final showdown had finally arrived. Antony was, in Octavian’s opinion, “irredeemably contaminated by the Oriental languor and the un-Roman luxuries of the East.” He relished the stories of how Antony fawned over Cleopatra like a eunuch, giving her foot rubs in public, among other embarrassing acts of servitude. With the (dubious) claim that Cleopatra was “poised to conquer [Rome] as she had conquered Antony,” the Senate declared war on Egypt in October 32 BC and then voted to deprive Antony of his consulship and relieve him of all Roman authority.

“The experience, the popularity, the numbers, were all on Antony’s side,” Schiff writes, “he was the skilled commander behind whom stood the most powerful dynasties of the East” and the vast riches of Egypt with its determined queen who could not co-exist with Octavian so long as her son, Caesarian, lived. Indeed, “Antony could not win a war without [Cleopatra]. Octavian could not wage one.” The culminating battle of Actium in early September 31 BC was as decisive as it was anticlimactic. Octavian had eroded Antony’s superior land force over the course of the summer by maintaining a close blockade. Cleopatra and Antony shamefully abandoned their army and fled to Egypt.

The two lovers were cornered. Antony’s army disintegrated. Whole legions defected, as did allied kings. The raucous “Inimitable Livers” of Alexandria, as Antony and Cleopatra once playfully called their retinue, changed their club name to “Companion’s to the Death.” Antony was 53-years-old, Cleopatra 38. Their end was so theatrically dramatic that Shakespeare hardly had to change a thing. When Cleopatra had her death falsely reported to Antony, he fell on his sword in inconsolable grief. He lived long enough to learn that the queen was actually still alive and breath his last breathe in her arms. Nine days later Cleopatra took her own life in turn, most likely by poison, Schiff says. “Cleopatra’s asp is the cherry tree of ancient history” Schiff claims that there is no way a single snake could have killed the queen and her two faithful attendants, Iras and Charmion, so quickly and peacefully. “A fourth casualty of August 10, 30 BC may well have been the truth,” she writes. One thing was for certain Cleopatra would never be the crown jewel in Octavian’s fabulous triumph parade back in Rome, where the enormity of the Egyptian riches quickly led to massive inflation and a tripling of interest rates.

Schiff wants us to appreciate Cleopatra for who she truly was – and for good reason. For far too long the great queen has been a caricature, completely misrepresented, unfairly maligned, and largely misinterpreted. “It has always been preferable to attribute a woman’s success to her beauty rather than her brains,” Schiff writes, “to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.” Clearly, Cleopatra was much more than a celebrated lover. Nevertheless, Schiff bemoans, “we will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight, in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty.” That she was “a remarkably capable queen, canny and opportunistic in the extreme, a strategist of the first rank.”

Like every other book by Stacy Schiff that I’ve read, this one comes highly recommended. It is that rare book that both layman and experts will find satisfying.
Ms. Schiff is an excellent historian, and a formidable talent as a writer. But, nonetheless, I found her a plodding story teller. The book is loaded with facts and insight into the period's events and numerous characters; but her writing often meanders into arcane, entwined language. She seems to have no sense of grammar, or paragraphing. Once on a thought line she can roll on over several pages, without taking a breath....or allowing the reader to do so. I suggest a good third of this book can be severely reduced, or completely eliminated, by any proficient editor. This book is not a smooth read.....it requires work and commitment.
Having said that...............this book is loaded with deeper human insight into why this passage of history unfolded as it did. The reader easily becomes enamored to Cleopatra, and Anthony. Plus, the events of this period are wonderfully presented (the intrigue, the battles, the politics, the loves, the hatreds) as the saga of the Roman civil war period plays out.........for both serious students or the more casually motivated.
It is said that a sculptor sees his final piece hidden within the block of marble he confronts on day one of a project as he then goes about removing the excess.........such is this book. Ms. Schiff's work would be an excellent basis to extract a crisp screen play.........HBO's Rome possibly?