Customer Reviews

Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth

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This book translated from the French is effectively a seventy-odd page thesis claiming to "reduce the person of Cleopatra to the facts, to what the ancient writers reported..."
Before reading a word I found myself asking if laying bare the bones of such a famous historical figure is detrimental to our perception of Cleopatra. Indeed, the profligacy of the myth is precisely why she has endured. We want our image of Burton and Taylor, our Shakespearian heroine. What could be achieved by revealing what is usually a disappointing reality?
The book then disappointed. I was expecting an outline of these myths (other than the well-trodden Boccaccio, Shakespeare and Hollywood) which would then be analysed to provide the facts and what did, indeed, lie beyond the myth.
It just didn't happen.
The first sixty pages are good summation of the period told from the Roman ancient sources but there is more fact about Anthony, Caesar and Octavian than the subject of the book. Even to begin there is a major problem with the sources for Cleopatra. Given there was only one contemporary (Strabo) who mentions Cleopatra once and a couple of stele, the rest of the ancient sources are secondary (1-3 centuries after the events). All Chauveau manages to confirm is that the `myth' of Cleopatra is all we have and the `facts' are either non-existent or simply distorted. He relies heavily on Plutarch (who is the one ancient source who depicts Cleopatra through his life of Anthony and anything he says is deliberately aimed at providing the myth) and intimates several times that we know nothing conclusive, stating that the ancient sources disagree on Cleopatra's origins.
All we have is relayed through her interaction with Rome. This is repeated on page 48 when the author astutely acknowledges that : "Cleopatra practically disappeared from history, according to the principle that Roman affairs were the sole subject of interest to our sources". Given this admission then you question the entire premise of the book, which is to take us beyond the "myth".
The four page conclusion could serve as the conjecture behind the entire thesis, but the preceding seventy pages effectively prove that, even to the ancient sources, the myth of Cleopatra is our reality, for nothing exists to remove us from that image of Burton and Taylor the silver screen. And, perhaps, nothing should exist.

Almost every scientist when writing about famous historical persons sets himself a task of separating reality from the myth.Also Michel Chauveau is trying to do so.Still the myths created during the lives or soon after the death of the heroes of the legends are not very dangerous for the historical truth.They merely exaggerate the deeds these persons had really committed and the qualities of character they had really possessed.The myths created after 2000 years by modern historians endanger reality much more.The book by Michel Chauveau is based on the historical facts.It is a great pity that the author mentions without commentaries a modern myth according to which Octavian had wanted Cleopatras death before the triumph.This myth is absolutely unfounded.The queen could commit suicide only after 2 unsuccessful attempts.Octavian had commanded to do everything in order to save the dying woman.He had threatened to murder her children in case she would try to kill herself. We may read about it in the book by John Whitehorne "Cleopatras." Could Cleopatra have changed the world?The question ought to be raised otherwise:could the military conflict with Rome have been avoided?For even in the case of Mark Antonys military victory Cleopatras situation would have become tragic and hopeless.The Romans would have never accepted the Egyptian queen as their sovereign.

Cleopatra might have changed the world.

Instead, as this rather deficient biography indicates, she did little other than to be remembered in history as one of the world's most intriguing and yet little known women. She became a legend, similar to King Arthur and Camelot, perhaps because history and biography tends to be written about winners rather than losers.

On the first page of the introduction, Chauveau admits "We do not in fact have any ancient account of her reign, not even a simple biographical summary!" It makes a rather difficult to write anything relevant about her, especially "beyond the myth" as this book claims to offer, when so little is known about her actual life.

Unfortunately, it's more of a pedestrian account of a formative stage in the Roman Empire than an analysis of what Cleopatra might have achieved. This is a woman, in the words of the historian Dio Cassius but absent from this book, "captivated the two greatest Romans of her day, and because of the third she destroyed herself."

Chauveau asserts, "From the purely historical point of view, Cleopatra is thus but an empty figure without an existence of her own, the privileged but ever subordinate partner in the lives of her contemporaries."

Okay. At the time of Julius Caesar, Egypt was still independent. Alexandria, the capital, was the largest, richest, and most prestigious city of that time. Suppose Cleopatra had succeeded in shifting the center of Roman power to Alexandria? The result might well have been an eastern-based empire instead of the eventual Euro-centric empire of Rome; think of the impact of Christianity had the Popes been based in Alexandria instead of Rome.

Cleopatra, by herself, almost made it happen. As it was, the Gnostic brand of Christianity flourished briefly in Egypt and the Near East. Had Egypt, or the Near East, been the heart of Christianity there might have been no Islamic religion; instead, a new religion may have arisen in the West.

This is "an empty figure without an existence of her own"?

Cleopatra may well have been the last sigfnificant challenge to the hegemony of Rome. Our history is based on what the Romans allowed to survive, not on the achievements of rivals and rebels such as Cleopatra in Egypt and Boudicca in England. Surely, a biography of Cleopatra should recognize her as a woman who almost changed the world. For some reason, the book doesn't even include her portrait from a bas relief in the Temple of Hathor, Dandarah, Egypt.

Instead, this book stumbles along without seeming to recognize that Cleopatra came as close as anyone in thousands of years in changing the history of the world.

Cleopatra might have changed the world.

Instead, as this rather deficient biography indicates, she did little other than to be remembered in history as one of the world's most intriguing and yet little known women. She became a legend, similar to King Arthur and Camelot, perhaps because history and biography tends to be written about winners rather than losers.

On the first page of the introduction, Chauveau admits "We do not in fact have any ancient account of her reign, not even a simple biographical summary!" It makes a rather difficult to write anything relevant about her, especially "beyond the myth" as this book claims to offer, when so little is known about her actual life.

Unfortunately, it's more of a pedestrian account of a formative stage in the Roman Empire than an analysis of what Cleopatra might have achieved. This is a woman, in the words of the historian Dio Cassius but absent from this book, "captivated the two greatest Romans of her day, and because of the third she destroyed herself."

Chauveau asserts, "From the purely historical point of view, Cleopatra is thus but an empty figure without an existence of her own, the privileged but ever subordinate partner in the lives of her contemporaries."

Okay. At the time of Julius Caesar, Egypt was still independent. Alexandria, the capital, was the largest, richest, and most prestigious city of that time. Suppose Cleopatra had succeeded in shifting the center of Roman power to Alexandria? The result might well have been an eastern-based empire instead of the eventual Euro-centric empire of Rome; think of the impact of Christianity had the Popes been based in Alexandria instead of Rome.

Cleopatra, by herself, almost made it happen. As it was, the Gnostic brand of Christianity flourished briefly in Egypt and the Near East. Had Egypt, or the Near East, been the heart of Christianity there might have been no Islamic religion; instead, a new religion may have arisen in the West.

This is "an empty figure without an existence of her own"?

Cleopatra may well have been the last sigfnificant challenge to the hegemony of Rome. Our history is based on what the Romans allowed to survive, not on the achievements of rivals and rebels such as Cleopatra in Egypt and Boudicca in England. Surely, a biography of Cleopatra should recognize her as a woman who almost changed the world. For some reason, the book doesn't even include her portrait from a bas relief in the Temple of Hathor, Dandarah, Egypt.

Instead, this book stumbles along without seeming to recognize that Cleopatra came as close as anyone in thousands of years in changing the history of the world.

This book purports to bust open the myths that have perpetuated without much evidence. What it does instead is offer its own theories on Cleopatra with just as little, or even less evidence, and those theories show more than a hint of anti-feminist rhetoric.

The information held in the book is interesting, and it certainly did lead me to other sources that I might find helpful, but conclusions are drawn that truly make me roll my eyes. For example, as evidence for the fact that Cleopatra did not die by snakebite, the author asks the rhetorical question summarized here: 'Are we to believe she would choose such a painful way to die just for the sake of preserving her myth for posterity?'

I almost laughed aloud. How anyone studying Cleopatra would think this mistress of self-propaganda would not choose, on the eve of her death, to preserve her memory for history is beyond me. This is a woman who was an ardent worshipper of Isis whose very symbol was a snake, and a woman who always wore a symbolic headdress with a cobra on it. Maybe she didn't die by snakebite, but -if- she could have smuggled a snake in to bite her, there is little doubt that she would have used it.

He then uses her suicide as evidence that Octavian must have wanted her to dead (in spite of historical evidence to the contrary). The author must deny her both the strength of character to die "painfully" (if we accept that snakebite is more painful than other poisons), the intelligence to do so against Octavian's wishes.

Later in the book, he states that Cleopatra's daughter was fortunate to marry Juba of Numidia, making her Queen of Mauretania. Closer examination of the facts would have revealed that it was Juba who was fortunate to have married Cleopatra's daughter (Cleopatra Selene). Cleopatra's daughter held Mauretania as a kingdom in her own right as sole ruler, while Juba's kingdom of Numidia was desolate, and ultimately abandoned by him so that he might become King Consort to Selene.

These kinds of subtle manifestations of the author's urgent need to minimize the worth of these ancient women makes the reader have to second guess everything presented in the book. That's unfortunate, because it's simply written and a nicely condensed commentary on her life.