Last weekend, a Slacker gave me her copy of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff. Somewhat of a stretch perhaps to add to the lust list but am including a short review anyway. For who do people think of when asked to name famous couples; surely after Romeo and Juliet come Antony and Cleopatra.
Schiff's book is extremely scholarly, shifting through conflicting near contemporary commentaries of both her affair with Julius Caesar and the longer liaison with Mark Antony. Most of these historical accounts were written by Romans and the Egyptian queen suffers accordingly. As she recaps each ancient author's account, Schiff points out both their political spins and their need to create myths and morals. Who was Cleopatra to confront the supreme power of Rome?
Schiff's comparison of Alexandria and Rome is startling, with the latter winning hands down for beauty, culture and wealth. Cleopatra's rule coincided with Rome's state of affairs pre-monuments. Schiff attributes much of Rome's cultural refinements, as well as the improvement in the status of women, to Cleopatra.
But on to the love and passion. To counterpoint historic and interpretative renditions over the centuries, Schiff's accounts of both affairs stress the political alliances. Cleopatra's sexual allure is depicted as yet one more of the long list of talents and refinements she possessed, from military astuteness to speaking several languages to rhetorical skills and wit. Her wealth supported pomp and ceremony easily outshining Roman political theater. Her power was her independence; her ultimate weakness, her need for detente.
Yes, put up against all our lust list characteristics of life long passion, Cleopatra's loves had forced separations, were definitely outside of Roman's cultural standards, and managed to have a red flame of sex as well as a blue flame of companionship, if not in this case, such became intrigue.
This story is so "well known," not just as interpreted by Shakespeare or Shaw or Taylor/Burton, but it transported me back to sophomore year in high school, standing up to translate my Latin. That class bode no interpretation of the history and the teacher was much more focused on our learning grammar than being able to pick up on literary bias. Schiff's story inserts plenty of 21st century analogies, making the tale thereby seem timeless and recurring. Although one is hard pressed to think of any female figure as capable and confident. Way before the Bard, Cleopatra knew all the world's a stage, and she played it to the hilt.
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The scholarly take on this is something I saw a bit differently. Yes, she draws on the local "press" of the time who routinely liked to trash the queen and the various lenses she cites make it interesting to see how difficult it is to get Cleopatra into focus BUT she writes so easily that it reads like a good tale not a scholarly tome. I liked Alexandria better than Rome, which sounded more like Washington DC for my tastes. The portrait is of a remarkable woman and undying allegiance, passion,maybe even love? Read better than Taylor/Burton for me and I liked that you added it to the "lust" list. She probably did have "lust" in the more common sense of "did she have the hots for both leaders of the Roman Empire" but the "lust" of knowledge, power and survival was certainly well documented here. Glad you liked it.
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