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Jan. 26th, 2011 11:44 amFor Hanukkah this year, my dad bought me the new biography of Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life. I am pretty sure that this was actually a a not-so-subtle reminder on his part that we had been talking about going to the Cleopatra exhibit at the Franklin Institute (which worked, for the record; I bought us all tickets for his birthday, and we went, and it was vastly entertaining) but, you know, now I also had this book! Which I went into with few expectations, and therefore was enormously and pleasantly surprised to find myself pretty much loving it.
Stacy Schiff is explicitly out to show that Cleopatra was "more than the sum of her supposed seductions," to sift through what little information we have about her and her reign and draw out a picture of an intelligent, practical politician who was one of the most powerful women of the ancient world in her own right. Which is a worthwhile project and one I am excited about, but I'm not going to lie, the main part of my enjoyment of the book lies in Schiff's prose. Schiff is not just a thorough but a very witty writer, who can occasionally go over-the-top in terms of description, but is nonetheless a woman who is very clearly appreciative of LOLHISTORY. She spends several delighted pages discussing the incestuous twists and turns of the Ptolemy family tree; she's hilariously cutting about Cicero, whose dislike for Cleopatra she traces to the queen not delivering a book he'd asked to borrow from her library; she takes a digression to tell us all about Herod and his wife, who "to his frustration, somehow never could get past the fact that Herod had murdered half her family," and his wife's teenaged brother, who was so pretty that Herod's mother-in-law sent a letter and some portraits to Marc Antony basically saying "hey, dude, my kids are SO HOT. CHECK IT," and Antony was like ". . . . yeah, I would be okay taking Herod's brother-in-law as a page or something, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN," and then Herod had to scramble around so that Antony would not show up at his doorstep all "HHHHHELLO. I COME TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR FAMILY (ALL MEMBERS OF WHOM ARE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU)."
. . . and I've lost my dignity in this review, haven't I. ANYWAY, the point is I found this book enormously enjoyable, and am also pleased with its stated feminist project, and now I kind of want to finally get around to watching Rome and also reading Schiff's other biographies. It was also actually exciting to learn about Cleopatra, since somehow she went under my radar when I went through my phases of obsession with various powerful queens as a kid and read up everything I could find on Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
So, my question for you guys: who is your favorite AWESOME QUEEN(/Empress/Woman King/whatever the correct nomenclature is)? Bonus points if it is someone I do not know so I can then go look them up! (But also bonus points if it is Elizabeth I or Hatshepsut or anything else that is pandering to my favorites, so really it is all bonus points.)
Stacy Schiff is explicitly out to show that Cleopatra was "more than the sum of her supposed seductions," to sift through what little information we have about her and her reign and draw out a picture of an intelligent, practical politician who was one of the most powerful women of the ancient world in her own right. Which is a worthwhile project and one I am excited about, but I'm not going to lie, the main part of my enjoyment of the book lies in Schiff's prose. Schiff is not just a thorough but a very witty writer, who can occasionally go over-the-top in terms of description, but is nonetheless a woman who is very clearly appreciative of LOLHISTORY. She spends several delighted pages discussing the incestuous twists and turns of the Ptolemy family tree; she's hilariously cutting about Cicero, whose dislike for Cleopatra she traces to the queen not delivering a book he'd asked to borrow from her library; she takes a digression to tell us all about Herod and his wife, who "to his frustration, somehow never could get past the fact that Herod had murdered half her family," and his wife's teenaged brother, who was so pretty that Herod's mother-in-law sent a letter and some portraits to Marc Antony basically saying "hey, dude, my kids are SO HOT. CHECK IT," and Antony was like ". . . . yeah, I would be okay taking Herod's brother-in-law as a page or something, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN," and then Herod had to scramble around so that Antony would not show up at his doorstep all "HHHHHELLO. I COME TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR FAMILY (ALL MEMBERS OF WHOM ARE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU)."
. . . and I've lost my dignity in this review, haven't I. ANYWAY, the point is I found this book enormously enjoyable, and am also pleased with its stated feminist project, and now I kind of want to finally get around to watching Rome and also reading Schiff's other biographies. It was also actually exciting to learn about Cleopatra, since somehow she went under my radar when I went through my phases of obsession with various powerful queens as a kid and read up everything I could find on Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
So, my question for you guys: who is your favorite AWESOME QUEEN(/Empress/Woman King/whatever the correct nomenclature is)? Bonus points if it is someone I do not know so I can then go look them up! (But also bonus points if it is Elizabeth I or Hatshepsut or anything else that is pandering to my favorites, so really it is all bonus points.)
