Book: Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Excellent and highly readable history

March 29, 2012

Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra: A Life

Little, Brown, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-316-00192-2

304 pages (main text)

$29.99

Many people will know the outlines of the history that's told in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life. To begin with, the Roman general Pompey the Great (who was awarded that title ironically at first but who grew into it) struck a political alliance with Julius Caesar and Crassus in 59 BCE, which is called by historians of Rome the first triumvirate. A few years later, Crassus died campaigning in the east and shortly thereafter, while Caesar was fighting in Gaul, Pompey started moving politically against him in Rome.

In response, Caesar marched his troops on Rome (illegally bringing them across the Rubicon river). Pompey and the troops he had withdrew from Rome, eventually crossing to the east side of the Adriatic. Caesar pursued. Pompey had the bigger army, but Caesar was the better general and Pompey was eventually running away without any army.

Pompey decided to go to Egypt, where he had had good relations with the ruling Ptolemy dynasty. (Interestingly, that dynasty was not native but was founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals.) Caesar was often magnanimous in victory but if he intended to be in this case, he never got the chance. Ptolemy XIII was determined to get on the right side of Caesar (or more exactly the young pharaoh's advisors were) and had Pompey's head cut off.

Cleopatra VII wasn't there because she and Ptolemy, despite being brother and sister and husband and wife (as was the custom) and being intended to rule together, were fighting each other instead. (Egyptian dynastic politics of that era was a bloody business.) Cleopatra was some distance east of the capital of Alexandria and Ptolemy's army meant to prevent her return. Caesar had summoned her and it was certainly in her interests to try to win him over to her cause.

Cleopatra hit on an excellent stratagem to sneak into the palace and into Caesar's presence. She got a servant named Appolodorus to help. As Ms Schiff says:

    Many queens have risen from obscurity, but Cleopatra is the only one to have

    emerged on the world stage from inside a sturdy sack.... (p. 16)

So begins one of the more fascinating episodes in history. Cleopatra was in her 20s and Alexandria was far more civilized than Rome. Egypt was rich but couldn’t match Rome's might. For those reasons and more, Cleopatra had a difficult role to play. And she played it well and often did so in a distinctly feminine way. For example, she bore Caesar a son and Mark Antony three children. That earned her, at best, incomprehension on the part of a great many (male) historians for a great many years. (A foreign woman who beguiles Roman emperors!?) Ms Schiff does an excellent job of creating a readable history without ignoring the ambiguities and open questions that remain. And it’s very remarkable history, right up until its end in a, literally, Shakespearian tragedy.