Egypt
New York Times (Tracy Lee Simmons)
CLEOPATRA. A Biography
By Duane W. Roller
Oxford University Press
- Book Review: Antony And Cleopatra
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Lee Fratantuono) Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010. Adrian Goldsworthy is the author of an impressive stream of titles on Roman history that fall into the...
- Cleopatra’s True Racial Background (and Does It Really Matter?)
Oxford University Press blog (Duane W. Roller) Racial profiling and manipulation have been around for a very long time. It has become an issue in contemporary politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was regularly...
- Review: Schiff's Cleopatra
Voice of America (David Byrd) A new biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff tackles the life, death and legacy of Cleopatra. Schiff's work challenges some of the assumptions long held about Egypt's last queen. It has been said...
- Book Review: Cleopatra: A Biography
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Josiah Osgood) Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography. Women in Antiquity. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Cleopatra is a familiar name today for one reason above all: Shakespeare. But so memorable...
- Book Review: Cleopatra
Forbes (Review by Hannah Elliott) Cleopatra: A Biography By Duane W. Roller (Oxford University Press, $16.47) Forget what you think you know about Cleopatra. She wasn't a voracious seductress who led men to their doom. She never wore bangs à la Liz...
Egypt
Book review: Cleopatra - A biography
New York Times (Tracy Lee Simmons)
CLEOPATRA. A Biography
By Duane W. Roller
Oxford University Press
As usual with popular modern book reviews for, part of the review is the summary of the story told by the book's author. But the reviewer also comments on the way in which the book was written:
Roller tells his tale smoothly and accessibly. Scholarly digressions are consigned to helpful appendixes that Roller uses as small seminars for airing points of dispute, as a good many remain. What, for example, were the origins of Cleopatra’s mother? Was Cleopatra — the quintessentially vile foreigner according to Octavian’s propaganda — a Roman citizen? (Roller believes she was.) And he offers a digest of classical literary descriptions of the queen and a discussion of her iconography (including coin portraits, which are the only certain likenesses) to pinpoint those elements of her modern identity that only evidence from the period can prove or support.
The resulting portrait is that of a complex, many-sided figure, a potent Hellenistic ruler who could move the tillers of power as skillfully as any man, and one far and nobly removed from the “constructed icon” of popular imagination.
- Book Review: Antony And Cleopatra
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Lee Fratantuono) Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010. Adrian Goldsworthy is the author of an impressive stream of titles on Roman history that fall into the...
- Cleopatra’s True Racial Background (and Does It Really Matter?)
Oxford University Press blog (Duane W. Roller) Racial profiling and manipulation have been around for a very long time. It has become an issue in contemporary politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was regularly...
- Review: Schiff's Cleopatra
Voice of America (David Byrd) A new biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff tackles the life, death and legacy of Cleopatra. Schiff's work challenges some of the assumptions long held about Egypt's last queen. It has been said...
- Book Review: Cleopatra: A Biography
Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Josiah Osgood) Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography. Women in Antiquity. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Cleopatra is a familiar name today for one reason above all: Shakespeare. But so memorable...
- Book Review: Cleopatra
Forbes (Review by Hannah Elliott) Cleopatra: A Biography By Duane W. Roller (Oxford University Press, $16.47) Forget what you think you know about Cleopatra. She wasn't a voracious seductress who led men to their doom. She never wore bangs à la Liz...