Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth

by Michel Chauveau, David Lorton (Translator)

Overview

Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In his new book Michel Chauveau brings us a picture of her firmly based in reality.

Cleopatra VII reigned in Egypt between 51 and 30 B.C.E. Her primary goal as a ruler was to restore over the eastern Mediterranean the supremacy of the Lagides, the dynasty of Macedonian origin of which she herself was a descendant. We know the queen best from Greek and Latin sources, though these must be used with caution because of their bias. Understandably enough, they reflect not only matters of interest to Romans, but also the propaganda that Octavian used against the queen during his struggles with Mark Antony. Chauveau combines his knowledge of Egyptian sources with judicious use of classical materials to produce an authoritative biography of Cleopatra, the woman and queen, seen in the light of the turbulent era in which she lived.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801438677
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2002
Series:	1/21/2008
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	656,258
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michel Chauveau is a former member of the Institut Français d'Archæologie Orientale in Cairo, and is currently director of studies at L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He is the author of Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra: History and Society under the Ptolemies, also from Cornell. David Lorton, an Egyptologist, lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

	Translator's Note	vii
	Introduction: A Personage and Her Myth	1
	"A Queen Issued from So Many Kings"	4
	The Heritage	4
	Alexandria, Rival of Rome	6
	The Early Years	8
	The New Dionysos	10
	A Perilous Succession	14
	The Fratricidal Conflict	18
	Caesar in Egypt	20
	The Alexandrian War	25
	The New Aphrodite	29
	Cleopatra in Rome	29
	Return to the Land of the Nile	32
	Cleopatra and Caesar's Murderers	36
	Mark Antony	38
	The Encounter at Tarsos	41
	The Pleasures of the "Inimitable Life"	44
	Cleopatra in the Shadows	47
	The Resurrection of the Lagide Empire	50
	The Campaign in the East	53
	Antony's Revenge	55
	"Queen of Kings Whose Sons Are Kings"	58
	Cleopatra, Enemy of Rome	62
	Toward the Rupture with Octavian	62
	The War	67
	The Debacle	70
	The End	72
	The Epilogue	75
	Conclusion: The Memory of Cleopatra	77
	Chronology of the Ptolemies	81
	Ancient Texts	83
	Notes	93
	Bibliography	99
	Index	101

What People are Saying About This

John Mosher

Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth might better have been titled Stripped of Myth, for that is what Chauveau attempts in this attractive and useful little book, leading us through the thorny world negotiated by Cleopatra: a distillation of the short life of a very energetic, ambitious, and—staying with fact—seductive woman, who bore children by both Caesar and Antony, and who, in a certain sense, conjured her own empire out of nothing. The empire proved ephemeral, but Cleopatra lives on in myth, and here, in the surviving facts.

Mary Beard

Michel Chauveau... attempts to 'exorcise the myth' and present the 'facts' of Cleopatra's life and death.

From the Publisher

This small book is a good read by a good scholar, and the translation reads so well that one frequently forgets the text was originally French. There is plenty here for the nonspecialist in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Prudence Jones

Cleopatra succeeds in conveying the events of Cleopatra's life as well as the circumstances that surrounded those events.... what a different portrait of Cleopatra emerges when we allow ourselves only the certainties of her life (as far as they can be established and permit ourselves to leave blanks where no evidence exists. What remains is enough, however, to tell us that for the Egyptians, as C. puts it, Cleopatra was 'the last and the greatest of their queens.'.

Editorial Reviews

"Michel Chauveau... attempts to 'exorcise the myth' and present the 'facts' of Cleopatra's life and death."

Mary Beard

"Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth might better have been titled Stripped of Myth, for that is what Chauveau attempts in this attractive and useful little book, leading us through the thorny world negotiated by Cleopatra: a distillation of the short life of a very energetic, ambitious, and—staying with fact—seductive woman, who bore children by both Caesar and Antony, and who, in a certain sense, conjured her own empire out of nothing. The empire proved ephemeral, but Cleopatra lives on in myth, and here, in the surviving facts."

John Mosher

"Cleopatra succeeds in conveying the events of Cleopatra's life as well as the circumstances that surrounded those events.... what a different portrait of Cleopatra emerges when we allow ourselves only the certainties of her life (as far as they can be established and permit ourselves to leave blanks where no evidence exists. What remains is enough, however, to tell us that for the Egyptians, as C. puts it, Cleopatra was 'the last and the greatest of their queens.'."

Prudence Jones

Hoping to rescue the Egyptian queen from "clich s that have been spread by... [a] complaisant literature," not to mention by Elizabeth Taylor vehicles, French Egyptologist Michel Chauveau (Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra) offers Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth. In this concise biography based on the few surviving Greek, Latin and Egyptian texts that mention her, Chauveau, former member of the Institut Fran ais d'Arch ologie Orientale and current director of studies at L' cole Practique des Hautes tudes in Paris, shows how the lack of sources (as well as Cleopatra's own attempts to mythologize her reign) has allowed romantic legends to flourish. He disputes the claims of other biographers on such subjects as the trajectory of her affair with Mark Antony, and points out biases in the accounts of Plutarch and other Roman historians. (Trans. from the French by David Lorton. Cornell Univ., $22.50 128p ISBN 0-8014-3867-5) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Adult/High School-Students who read this brief volume will find little of the movie queen but a great deal of Roman history. Cleopatra's defeat made Octavian emperor of Rome, and he arranged for the spin on history to make his actions look good. The book includes scholarly footnotes, with translated quotations from historical sources such as Cicero, Plutarch, Caesar, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, etc. There are two maps: one of Egypt during this period and one of the eastern Mediterranean. Black-and-white photographs of Ptolomaic and Roman coins and of paintings in the Louvre (probably painted during the Renaissance) are included.-Irene F. Moose, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Students who read this brief volume will find little of the movie queen but a great deal of Roman history. Cleopatra's defeat made Octavian emperor of Rome, and he arranged for the spin on history to make his actions look good.

-- "School Library Journal"

From the Publisher