Egypt
Forbes (Review by Hannah Elliott)
Cleopatra: A Biography
By Duane W. Roller (Oxford University Press, $16.47)
- 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...
- 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 - 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...
- Book Review: Biography Of Cleopatra
statesman.com (Roger Gathman) Anachronism is the despair of the historian. Though it is easy to correct the misdating of objects and events, it is a lot harder to root out the intuitively appealing idea that the people in the past were somehow "aiming"...
- Book Review: Cleopatra, Last Queen Of Egypt
STLtoday (Allen Barra) Cleopatra has generated more fame — in the form of poems, paintings, books, plays and films — per known fact than any woman in history. As Joyce Tyldesley phrases it in her fascinating and irresistible biography, "Cleopatra:...
Egypt
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 Taylor circa 1963. And she almost certainly didn't die by the bite of an Egyptian snake.
That's the premise of Duane W. Roller's Cleopatra: A Biography, a bare-bones approach to understanding the last ruler of the 270-year-old Ptolemaic dynasty and the only woman in classical antiquity who ruled with complete autonomy.
If you're looking for romance-novel details of the Mark Anthony-Cleopatra VII affair, keep looking. Roller, a professor emeritus of Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University, makes it abundantly clear that his goal is to create a portrait of the infamous queen that is based "solely on information from the ancient world."
That means forgoing all input from Shakespeare, Massenet and Hollywood. It makes for a somewhat dry read--navigating through Ptolemaic genealogies, recounts of political posturing with obscure satraps and discussions of ancient Roman land disputes won't keep the casual reader engaged.
- 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...
- 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 - 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...
- Book Review: Biography Of Cleopatra
statesman.com (Roger Gathman) Anachronism is the despair of the historian. Though it is easy to correct the misdating of objects and events, it is a lot harder to root out the intuitively appealing idea that the people in the past were somehow "aiming"...
- Book Review: Cleopatra, Last Queen Of Egypt
STLtoday (Allen Barra) Cleopatra has generated more fame — in the form of poems, paintings, books, plays and films — per known fact than any woman in history. As Joyce Tyldesley phrases it in her fascinating and irresistible biography, "Cleopatra:...