Customer Reviews

Antony and Cleopatra

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Antony and Cleopatra.The story of Antony's bewitchment by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt; of their tragic downfall and Octavian's triumph; of Antony and Octavian's struggle for power; and of the rise of Rome as the world's unrivalled power. McCullough writes clearly, keeping the action going. Anthony's shoulders and thighs are so muscled that he can hardly move. Cleopatra, on the other hand, is thin as a stick. Octavian is the only beautiful one.

The time span of this book, is from 41 to 27 B.C. It covers a lot of famous events nicely, such as Antony's unsuccessful war against the Parthians; the famous naval battle of Actium and the double suicides of the main characters. Octavian's killing Caesor and Cleopatra's son Caesarion. All because of the power struggle. One of the good things I found is the usage of a glossary.

In the ending chapters, I did feel sorry for Marcus Antonius though. The effect of dialogues and the way events were told had a strong effect.

Quite some scenes can be forgotten. Battles, for example, have a lot of strategy before and after and less of the actual war.

There is one more thing though. Reading this book made me search some more information about the main characters of this book. I searched the Internet about Caesor and Cleopatra's son - Caesarian. And one of the Websites quotes,

"Following Cleopatra's death, Caesar's son, Caesarian, was strangled, and the two sons of Mark Anthony mysteriously disappeared in strange circumstances. Selene was taken to Rome to be raised by Octavia."

The book, however, has the opposite to say. Octavian kills Caesarian first. When this news is broken to Cleopatra, does her desire to live die and then she gets bitten by a cobra.

Nice read if you are interested in history.