Though Cleopatra's life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. Incest and assassination were family specialties. She took only two men as partners, but they were Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day, both married to other women. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age.
Surviving in imagination, Cleopatra has gone down in history more for her dramatizations than for her own qualities. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new order across the ancient world.
