Ebook Cleopatra: A Life
There many books that can be the manner for reaching the brighter future. It will also feature the various styles from literary fiction, socials, business, religions, legislations, and numerous other publications. If you are perplexed to select among the books, you can attempt Cleopatra: A Life Yeah, this publication ends up being a much suggested book that lots of people enjoy to read, in every condition.
Cleopatra: A Life
Ebook Cleopatra: A Life
Happy holiday! In this holiday, what will you do to satisfy the spare time? Have you go with some outings and also getaways? Well, have you had some books to read to accompany you when having vacations? Many people assume that there is no should bring such publication while having holidays. Yet, lots of also constantly think that reviewing books become a friend in any kind of circumstance. So, we will constantly try to supply Cleopatra: A Life as one of reading products to sustain and accompany you in any type of situations.
This is not sort of typical publication. It provides you fantastic web content to get the ideas. Beside, the presence of this book will certainly lead you to always really feel much better. You might not need to develop or spend even more time to go; the Cleopatra: A Life can be gotten from the soft data. Yeah, as this is an online library, you can find many kinds as well as genres of the books based upon the motifs that you actually need.
Obtaining the completed content of the book also in the soft data is really remarkable. You can see how the Cleopatra: A Life is presented. Before you obtain the book, you could unknown concerning exactly what guide is. But, for more viable thing, we will certainly share you little bit concerning this publication. This is guide to recommend that offers you a good thing to do. It is also offered in really fascinating reference, instance, as well as explanation.
Making sure, many people likewise have actually downloaded and install the soft documents of Cleopatra: A Life though this site. Just by clicking web link that is given, you could go straight to guide. One more time, this book will certainly be truly important for you to read, even they are simple, and also they will lead you to be the much better life. So, what do you consider this updated book collection? Let's inspect it currently and also prepare to make this publication as definitely your collection and also analysis products. Believe it!
Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.
Though her life spanned fewer than 40 years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties.
Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and - after his murder - three more with his Antony. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.
Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost.
In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
Product details
#detail-bullets .content {
margin: 0.5em 0px 0em 25px !important;
}
Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 14 hours and 16 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Audible.com Release Date: November 2, 2010
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
ASIN: B004AJDGGW
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
Award winning author Stacy Schiff likes to take the path less traveled; she never wants to write the same book twice which means she journeys far and wide in terms of the subjects for her biographies. CLEOPATRA: A LIFE allows Schiff to dig into the world of antiquity and she gathers the best known facts about Cleopatra dismissing the fiction wherever possible although she'd admit that it's hard to separate sensationalism of the time, myth and fact about one of the best known and most wealthy women of the known world.Schiff mixes biography, history and gathers from contemporary reports as well as historians over the years trying to sort out that fact from the fiction and opinion of the time.Schiff's book is more a collison of history and biography because so little is known about Cleopatra from contemporary sources. The author provides us with the context of history to understand Cleopatra's role as the last great Queen of Egypt and what her allure would have been to Caesar and Marc Antony the two Romans that became both allies and lovers.I'll admit that I'm not an expert on this period nor about Cleopatra herself but did take a number of classics classes in college and have continued to read up on the subject over the years. From that perspective, I found Schiff's book to be informative, entertaining to read and occasionally enlightening with new facts that I had either forgotten or missed in the my past reading. She also debunks a number of myths that grown around Cleopatra over the years through (such as the fact that she committed suicide by the bite of an asp).We really don't know what Cleopatra looks like (aside from her profile on coins and statues that might possibly be her but as with many portraits from that time there's a very good chance they are incorrect)from the time which may not be a "true" portrait of her)some of the things we do know is that she was of Greek descent. There's nothing beyond a single line that was written by her that survives. Heck, she wasn't the FIRST Cleopatra but the seventh. She's a fascinating figure because she demonstrated the intelligence, wit and style that fascinated the known world of the time AND captivated both Ceasar and Antony. Schiff paints a vivid portrait of Cleopatra giving us context as well--there's plenty of history here about her family and the assassinations that would keep people like her in power.Schiff digs in deep pulling from a variety of sources going back to those who were contemporaries of Cleoopatra (such as Cicero who didn't care for her)Strabo as well as Appian, Dio, Plutarch sifting through their opinions, the bias of many historians and more contemporary scholars as well. As Schiff points out this is her work so any mistakes are strictly hers as are some of the observations and opinions she brings up about Cleopatra based on her research.I did expect her style to be a bit more breezy in nature but it is difficult to accomplish that with such a complex subject and, to her credit, Schiff accomplishes it most of the time although occasionally the book gets sidetracked as part of the author's attempt to document everything fully.Schiff's book is well written and, like her other biographies, well sourced (and footnoted)giving us a taste of the world of her subject and the challenges she faced from Rome and her own family. Recommended.
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?
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.â€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, â€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.â€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.â€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 historyâ€: 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.â€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.
Cleopatra: A Life PDF
Cleopatra: A Life EPub
Cleopatra: A Life Doc
Cleopatra: A Life iBooks
Cleopatra: A Life rtf
Cleopatra: A Life Mobipocket
Cleopatra: A Life Kindle