THE WOMAN MOST LIKELY TO FASHION HERSELF IN THE IMAGE OF A GODDESS

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff - Little, Brown & Co. (2010)

Last Summer, I interned at Literary Arts in Portland, where I assisted with the Archive Project. Together with NPR, Literary Arts endeavored to create an online database of recorded lectures. My job was to listen to various speeches, catalogue relevant information, and write short summaries and author bios. I learned several things during the course of my internship. Firstly, there is no universal decree against engaging lectures. If you think lectures are the monotone versions of lullabies, you should strive to locate more caffeinated professors. Your lecturer should never sound like a Benedictine monk. Secondly, talented writers do not always make for talented public speakers. Some authors simply do not feel comfortable dissecting their writing process in front of an audience. Listening to several nervous speakers, I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around their shoulders, give them a supportive squeeze, and throw a ‘shame on you’ scowl over the assembled crowd. 

Stacy Schiff needed no such encouragement. I imagine her striding into the spotlight, basking in the glow of her staggering success, thrilled to be respected and admired for doing exactly what she loves to do. She was speaking that evening about another woman whose ambition and talent could not be corralled. Schiff’s prolific biography, Cleopatra, was published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 2010. Had it been published during the Egyptian queen’s lifetime, there would have been much feasting and revelry and perhaps a triumphal procession as well. Already the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for her 2000 biography of Vera Nabokov, Schiff’s treatment of the last Ptolemaic sovereign earned her a PEN award for biography, and a spot on pretty much every reputable ‘Top 10’ list that year. 

Listening to her fluid and confident delivery, I was astounded by the incredible amount of factual knowledge that can be stored in a single human mind. Schiff’s brain is built like an immense apothecary cabinet—each narrow drawer neatly packed with index cards of information. Her ability to infuse the early days of the Roman Empire with some kind of chronological logic deserves its own award. She handles dates, shifting geographical boundaries, and complicated family relations like a one-man-band. I would have shredded my notes upon discovering that there were approximately six names in the ancient world. Schiff somehow manages to keep her characters separate, even as they indulge in regular murder, incest, and reinvention. 

Cleopatra is about a woman whose considerable political and strategic talents have been overshadowed by her cultural depiction as a promiscuous witch. Our knowledge of the ancient world comes to us almost exclusively from masculine lips. It was easier for the Roman chroniclers to attribute Marc Antony’s embarrassing downfall to an Eastern enchantress, than to admit that he was capable of error. After all, when you attach qualifiers like ‘invincible’ and ‘indomitable’ to your name, it can be difficult to acknowledge military blunders. With every turn of the page, Schiff challenges her reader to reevaluate the inherited image of Cleopatra and to consider who had a hand in her cultural preservation. Schiff asks—Can anything good be said about a woman who slept with the two most powerful men of her time? Schiff answers—Possibly, but not in an age when Rome controlled the narrative. 

Cleopatra is incredible precisely because it reveals our overlooked assumptions to be so blatantly flawed. Schiff’s language is sharp, biting, and hyperbolic. If we believe the words of Plutarch and Dio—writing well after Cleopatra’s death—the Egyptian queen was greedy, morally corrupting, a practitioner of dark magic, and excessively rich. She embodied the degrading wealth of the mystical East. She used her sexuality to ‘enslave’ serious Roman men and turn them into drunken despots. Her unrivaled wealth was evidence of her moral decay (also fuel for an entrenched Roman envy) and her theatrical spectacles were presumptuous. She dared to pose as the goddess Isis and claimed descent from Alexander the Great. 

Stacy Schiff offers us an entirely different perspective. In the conclusion of her account she laments that:

 The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: 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. 

Schiff is determined to shine a light on Cleopatra the Ruler rather than Cleopatra the Harlot. She provides ample historical evidence to support a narrative in which Cleopatra maintained peace in a culturally diverse and politically turbulent empire. She headed a bureaucratic agricultural system which made her one of the richest rulers in the world. She controlled the grain supply to Rome and could starve that noble city if it pleased her. She eliminated all those who challenged her supremacy. She was fluent in at least six languages and loved by her people, who viewed her as a minor deity. She presented herself—variably—as the reincarnation of Isis or Venus depending on the tastes of her audience. She was infinitely adaptable; what her early biographers might call ‘slippery.’ She gave birth to the sons of Caesar and Mark Antony. Had the rickety cart of history shuddered in a different direction, she would have been the woman who united East and West under one imperial mantle. 

The brighter Cleopatra shines, the duller her Roman companions appear. The male characters in Schiff’s masterpiece all fit the same unimpressive mold. They are hypocritical, vain, impulsive, vindictive and licentious. The glorious battles we learn about as children are here depicted as pathetic squabbles between bloated geriatrics. Schiff does as much for challenging our assumptions of Roman men as she does for Egyptian women. Her portrayals of Mark Antony, Cicero, and Octavian are especially well-composed. At times their ridiculous attempts to appear the bigger man are hilarious. For all the effort the Romans expended to enlarge Cleopatra’s animalistic tendencies, they are the ones circling one another and squawking like disgruntled roosters. One gets the feeling that a lot of time and money could have been saved had Mark Antony and Octavian just compared genitalia and put the matter to rest. Ironically, Cleopatra seems to be the only character capable of separating her emotions from matters of government. 

Working with biased accounts and huge gaps in the historical record, Stacy Schiff somehow manages to add nuance to a one-dimensional sex symbol. Cleopatra does not emerge a saint – but neither does she remain a reptilian villain. Schiff's research is sound and impregnable. Cleopatra certainly has some nerve to style herself as a living goddess, but Schiff identifies a motive beyond sexual manipulation. In Schiff's experienced hands, Cleopatra always keeps one eye on the preservation of the waning Egyptian empire. She would do anything for her dynasty. Schiff makes it clear that the only difference between female scheming and male strategizing is a linguistic choice.  

Literary Arts--The Archive Project

Stacy Schiff Discussing the Challenges of Writing About Historical Women