I thought this was an excellent biography, focusing on verifiable facts more than legend. ( )

Cleopatra a Biography, by Duane W. Roller, tells the story of Cleopatra. The book gives background as to the Ptolemy dynasty. It explains her connection to Rome. As well as, chronologging her life: her early education, her dynastic marriage, the civil war with her brother, Cesar, Antonius, war with Rome, her children, her queenship, etc…. I would use excerpts of this book in a world history lesson for performing research and documenting it.
The author is an Historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar, who has written ten books. Also, he is a professor at Ohio State University. Consequently, he is highly qualified. He has many documented sources in his end notes, which take up a considerable amount of the book. All of his pronouncements are backed up by documentation. I would say the book is very accurate. ( )

I have read a number of books about the period in which Cleopatra lived. But most of those books concentrated on the men in her life, or the role of Rome in general, depicting Cleopatra and her country as mere supporting characters. This book gives Cleopatra and her country their due and taught me a great deal about both her and her times that other books did not. To top it off, this book is charmingly and economically written. It is one of the best biographies I have read and I can't recommend it enough. ( )

The Ptolemaic era of Egyptian history is one that usually holds little interest for me, and I've never really had much of an interest at all in Cleopatra, but I am very glad I checked this book out on a whim.

In the authors introduction he describes how hard it is to write about or even really know about Cleopatra since so much that we think if as "facts" about her are based on the writings of her enemies, who of course vilified and marginalized her for their own purposes, and the pop culture legend that has risen about her based on those writings.
Beyond that, very little was ever written about her directly as women were very rarely considered important enough to write about, even if they were influencing and shaping the events around them.

Considering the limited sources available, the author does a very credible job of bringing Cleopatra, the events and the world around her to life, and the author is very upfront and direct about the parts of the book where he has had to make assumptions or inferences about a moment in history based on what is known in other cases to fill in the blanks due to the lack of historical coverage on her life.

I wish more was honestly documented on Cleopatra as she seems like a fascinating and strong leader who did the best for her country (and her own rule) that she could, she just had the misfortune of becoming its leader at the time that Rome was starting to spread its influence and control of the world around it. And it was very interesting to see the ascendancy of Rome from a different perspective, from how it influenced, created and even destroyed other cultures and dynasties based on the needs of whoever was in charge at the time.

As stated above this has been a time period that never really interested me much, but after reading this book I think I will track down other sources, though I think I'll try to stick to the ones that deal with the other cultures of the time, not just Rome. ( )

I recently completed “Cleopatra: A Biography” by Duane W. Roller, a new edition in the Oxford “Women in Antiquity” series. Perhaps only Roller could have succeeded in taking one of the most colorful characters of all of history – Cleopatra of Egypt -- and one of the most dramatic periods of history – the final days of the Roman Republic & the end of the Hellenistic monarchies – and created a dull, uninspiring biography that leaves the reader mostly grateful to complete the last chapter and move on to another more interesting book.

Roller does take a new approach to his subject, leaving aside the hype and focusing a scholarly narrative -- with welcome footnotes – to his treatment of the facts as we know them of Cleopatra’s life and rule. While we might be disappointed at the myth-busting that discredits our popular tale of Cleopatra being smuggled into Caesar’s prescence rolled up in a carpet, we can’t help but be delighted to learn that the myth was not far off after all: it is purported that she was instead presented to Caesar tied up in a bedsack. These delights are altogether rare, however.

One of the big problems is that Roller writes with the assumption that the reader is intimately familiar with Roman politics and personalities during the decline of the Republic, Ptolemaic Egypt, geo-politics of the various Roman provinces and independent states of the time, as well as daily life and customs in the period under discussion. As such, he very much misses an opportunity to animate the first century BCE the way a writer such as Tom Holland or Robin Lane Fox might, and therefore despite his efforts fails to effectively place Cleopatra firmly in the context of the world she lived in.

Another problem is that despite the scholarly approach and the footnotes, as well as the stated intention to run roughshod over myth and focus upon only that with established historicity, he makes a matter-of-fact assertion that Cleopatra’s mother must have been at least part Egyptian. This is especially controversial today because there has been an outcry among some African-American groups that Angelina Jolie has been cast as Cleopatra in an upcoming film contrary to their firm belief that she was a black African. Most historians have scoffed at this claim, rightly pointing out that Cleopatra (a Greek name!) was a Ptolemy, descendant of the Macedonian general who rode with Alexander the Great in his conquests of much of the known world, including Egypt, which Ptolemy subsequent to Alexander’s death took as his own fiefdom. So the idea that she had Egyptian blood adds to, yet does not resolve, this controversy. Roller makes the point that there is strong suspicion that her mother was native Egyptian, but not full-blooded; he claims the mother was likely part-Greek, part-Egyptian: "she probably was a member of the Egyptian priestly family of Ptah, yet also with some Macedonian ancestry herself." (pg.15). The footnote does not clarify what evidence this assertion is based upon, however. There is also an appendix (III) devoted to a discussion of this topic, but again scant evidence is provided in the text or the footnotes. The best Roller can do is play upon the inference that since Cleopatra was the only known Ptolemy to actually speak Egyptian, she must have been from Egyptian native stock. Yet, Roller himself tells us that Cleopatra had an unusual facility for language and spoke many, many of the tongues of her day, including those of the Hebraioi, Arabes, Syrians, Medes and Parthians, as well as Ethiopian, Trogodyte, Greek & Latin. In this context, speaking Egyptian does not seem so singular to me! I would need a lot more evidence before I could be convinced that there is real evidence that Cleopatra was anything but Greek.

Despite the dull tone of the narrative, I did learn a lot from the text. First of all, I never knew that Cleopatra was descended not only from Ptolemaic but also Seleucid stock! And I never knew of Cleopatra’s troubled relationship with Herod of Judea. Yet, this does not come without frustration, as in the latter subject where the author frequently refers to this relationship but fails to fully flesh it out.

If the reader is looking for a brief, straight-forward account of the “real Cleopatra” to juxtapose with the colorful myth we have long been treated to, this book should be consulted. But those looking to see the dramatic period of her reign brought to life will walk away quite disappointed. ( )