CLEOPATRA: A LIFE by Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra may have been colorful and engaging, but this book is not.  I appreciate that historical sources are slim to none, but I think that the biography of a woman who reigned over a flourishing Egypt and seduced both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony would be a little more lively.  Instead, I found this book to be crushingly dull.  The accounts of battles and murders just run together after a while, and it doesn’t help that the names are confusing and sometimes similar; I had particular difficulty with Arsinoe (Cleopatra’s sister) and Auletes (her father).  On the plus side, I learned a few things.  For example, Mauritania is now Algeria.  Also, the city of Alexandria in Cleopatra’s day was incredibly beautiful, cultured, and modern compared to Rome.  Cleopatra was very well educated, spoke nine or more languages, and charmed the Romans with her intellect more so than her questionable beauty.  Unless I dozed through that section, however, the author never mentions who the three triumvirs were.  (Actually, there was a first and second triumvirate, but I was mainly interested in the second, made up of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.)  Since so little of Cleopatra’s life is documented, we can’t know if her missteps were inspired by love and loyalty or if she just miscalculated.  Certainly she was not a military strategist.  One particular episode in the book did not ring true to me.  The author claims that at one point Cleopatra wins over Mark Antony’s continued affection by crying and staging a hunger strike.  Really?  Since when have tears and histrionics ever swayed a man to a woman’s favor?