|
|
Book Review:
|
|
My first exposure to Cleopatra (that I can recall at least, I may have caught parts of the movie with Elizabeth Taylor) was in high school reading Shakespeare's play. I hadn't really been very interested in that particular part of history but when I saw this book in the bookstore and, after reading Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles I thought I'd give this a try. Oh, and by "not interested" in this part of history that means I've read "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves, watched the mini-series on PBS (and bought it on VHS), watched Rome on HBO, watched the movie Caligula (now there's a graphic movie), and whatever else came my way (OK, maybe I *AM* more interested than I realized :-).
I LOVE history and a good historical fiction has always been my thing (I remember reading Gary Jennings when I was a teenager, probably explains a few things... :-). My mother introduced me to them and my father and I have traded historical fictions over the years as well.
As Margaret George points out in the book, history is written by the victor. Our image of Cleopatra is distorted through the lens of Caesar Augustus (AKA Gaius Octavius, among other things). Throughout her life, Margaret George has done a great deal of research into Cleopatra. The result is a novel that is probably more historically correct than anything most people run into for this time period.
Having been a fan of I, Claudius (both the book and the mini-series ) my view of Caesar Augustus was of him as an old man puttering around his garden. It was his wife, Livia, that was the awful villian. This book has more of Caesar Augustus's early life when he starts out as a relative nobody and works his way up to being absolute dictator of Rome (something that only Julius Caesar--his adopted father--had achieved before; and that didn't last long, as we all know). Caesar Augustus, on the other, hand lived to be 77 (is that right? my math gets messed up when the calendar changes, it's close anyway). My guess is that one doesn't get to live that old and be emperor (he became emperor without rival on the death of Mark Anthony at the age of about 33, again my math could be a tad off, BC is confusing) at the same time without being at least a little bit of a b*stard.
The book has a lot of references in the back for those of us who are interested in that sort of thing, and she even walks through her reasoning and methodology for how she constructed various things.
So, all that said, yes, it's historically pretty accurate, but it's VERY LONG. I did have a bit of a hard time getting through it, but--overall--I'm glad I did. But, I'm glad I don't have to do it again.
If you'd like to buy the book, click here.
I haven't had as much time as I'd like to really go on about this, but if you find this interesting, click here and I'll try and get more information put up.
Coincidentally, I was also watching Rome on HBO at the same time I was reading this book. It was an interesting contrast. I suspect, though, that the book is FAR more accurate, if less captivating.
Some other resources from Wikipedia:
Posted May 27, 2007.
|
|