From the start Cleopatra.s story was larger than life: epic in scale, mythic in symbolism and operatically
over the top in its grandeur and its spectacle. As Stacy Schiff describes it in a captivating new biography,
Cleopatra.s meeting with Julius Caesar was .a singular, shuddering moment,. when .two civilizations, passing
in different directions, unexpectedly and momentously. touched.

Cleopatra was born a goddess, became a queen at 18 and at the height of her power, Ms. Schiff writes, .she
controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler.
For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands.. Having inherited a kingdom in
decline, Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose
it all.

She was a resourceful leader: disciplined, self-assured and shrewd in her management of her country.s affairs;
a sovereign who .knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine..
She would go down in history, however, not as .the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play
a role in Western affairs,. Ms. Schiff writes, but as the consort of Caesar and later Mark Antony: a woman
depicted by historians and poets as a wanton temptress symbolizing .insatiable sexuality. and unlawful love.

In .Cleopatra: A Life,. Ms. Schiff strips away the accretions of myth that have built up around the Egyptian
queen and plucks off the imaginative embroiderings of Shakespeare, Shaw and Elizabeth Taylor. In doing so,
she gives us a cinematic portrait of a historical figure far more complex and compelling than any fictional
creation, and a wide, panning, panoramic picture of her world.

Though this volume obviously retraces some familiar ground . covered in earlier books like Lucy Hughes-Hallett.s
.Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions. . Ms. Schiff deftly sifts legend from fact, reminding the reader
that the first drafts of Cleopatra.s life were written by followers of her enemy Octavian (who vanquished her
and Antony, and went on to become Caesar Augustus) and that the great poets of Latin literature were .happy to
expound on her shame..

Instead of the stereotypes of the .whore queen,. Ms. Schiff depicts a .fiery wisp of a girl. who grows up to
become an enterprising politician: not so much a great beauty as a charismatic and capable woman, smart, saucy,
funny and highly competent, a ruler seen by many of her subjects as a .beneficent guardian. with good intentions
and a .commitment to justice..

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