Cleopatra: A Life

While most historians in the primary sources report Cleopatra’s meeting with Caesar in a similar fashion, Schiff attempts a different approach, giving little credence to the widely accepted notion that Cleopatra seduced—or somehow exhibited undue influence over—Caesar to secure her place as the ruler of Egypt. Given the political leanings of historical commentators and the overly moralistic perceptions of many of Cleopatra’s early biographers, Schiff presents this version of the meeting as reflecting issues of Female Leadership in a Male-Dominated World. She implies that the seduction story is so popular because it feeds into the stereotype of Cleopatra as a femme fatale instead of a capable political leader. Instead, Schiff presents Cleopatra as achieving a great rhetorical victory, detailing her education and political training to establish Cleopatra not as a great beauty, but as a formidable mind with an iron-clad will.

In exploring the befuddling time Julius Caesar spent after the Alexandrian War travelling with Cleopatra down the Nile, Schiff suggests that Cleopatra was not merely a trophy or an exotic diversion, arguing that Caesar likely considered her as every bit his equal (73-74). Schiff is once again questioning The Construction and Deconstruction of Historical Myths by offering a contemporary understanding over what is, in terms of the primary sources, a rather cut-and-dried example of Cleopatra’s overwhelming seductiveness. Nevertheless, she does not sidestep the fact that Cleopatra and Caesar did have a child together, which makes their romantic relationship indisputable. In trying to frame their relationship as an equal partnership, however, she attempts to minimize the suggestion that Cleopatra’s femininity was her primary advantage in her dealings with Caesar. In a similar manner, she presents Cleopatra’s attempts to align herself with Isis and learning the Egyptian language as her seeking a deeper connection with her subjects, rather than a cynical use of their culture to ingratiate herself further.

Schiff’s extended portrait of Alexandria in Chapter 3, in which she compares it to Paris and details its luxuries, is meant to color Cleopatra’s world and alter common conceptions of historical cities by treating place as a reflection of The Dynamics of Power. Cleopatra’s vast wealth and luxury highlight the cosmopolitan setting from which Cleopatra emerged. This emphasis on setting, particularly as Rome is not given the same treatment later, suggests that Schiff uses the details of Alexandria to emphasize Cleopatra’s power and prestige as the ruler of the Egyptians. While the later Ptolemies were heavily dependent on Rome’s backing for their political power, they nevertheless still controlled vast lands and significant revenues in their own right. Schiff’s descriptions thus seek to reinforce the idea that Cleopatra could be considered an equal in Caesar’s eyes.  

Schiff continues her project of disassembling historical assumptions in her presentation of Rome. Rome is often enshrined in historical memory as a city of splendor, which corresponds to what it became under the emperors, starting with Octavian/Augustus’s extensive building program. However, at the time Cleopatra visited, Rome was a “provincial backwater” (101), a growing but often austere metropolis that lacked any of the contemporary city’s famous landmarks and which would have appeared largely underwhelming to an Egyptian queen. This place of squalor and backwardness is contrasted with Schiff’s portrait of Alexandria, once again emphasizing the sophistication and power of Cleopatra’s Egyptian empire in comparison to the younger Roman one.

Schiff also contrasts the more limited status of Roman women with Cleopatra’s rank and, more broadly, the freedoms of Alexandrian/Egyptian woman. Rome is the patriarchal society which helped form our own, including helping to form our conceptions of Cleopatra. By describing the reaction of the puritanical Romans to Cleopatra, Schiff is reminding the reader of the sheer length of time that Cleopatra has been lambasted and misunderstood, from her peers and contemporaries to historians writing about her 2,000 years after her death. She suggests that the Romans did not really recognize or understand Female Leadership in a Male-Dominated World, leading them to deride Cleopatra instead of giving fair consideration to her status and achievements.