HISTORY remembers Cleopatra as the last Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled by her seductiveness and mothered the children of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. However, if you have ever felt dissatisfied by the monolithic projection of Cleopatra as a wanton seductress by literary giants such as Shakespeare and Shaw, or found the image of raw sexuality perpetuated by Elizabeth Taylor as too naive to encompass the complete spectrum of Cleopatra’s character, you can finally delve into a historical narrative that will not disappoint.

Cleopatra: A Life, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff, is the latest biography of the famous queen Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE). Schiff endeavours to break free of the judgmental rhetoric and bring to life a woman who made history. The sexual adventures of Caesar and Antony are very well-known but historians never reduced them to mere womanisers — a fate sadly inflicted upon many women through the ages.

Schiff sidesteps the tradition of focusing on the “whore queen” image that has become a norm in the historical cannon and popular culture. Labelled by the Great Bard as a “whore,” Cleopatra is daringly venerated by Schiff for her superlative intellect and personality that was “refined, generous, [and] charismatic”. “Citing her sexual prowess,” says Schiff “was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts.”

Schiff opens the book with the many enigmatic qualities of this great ruler of ancient time and adds: “She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one.” Schiff also gives us an account of the first encounter between Cleopatra and Caesar. However, she gives us a very different version of this famous meeting: “It is unlikely that Cleopatra appeared ‘majestic’ or laden with gems and gold or even marginally well-coiffed. In defiance of the male imagination, five centuries of art history, and two of the greatest plays in English literature, she would have been fully clothed.”

Although it is almost impossible to provide historical evidence for every tiny detail of Cleopatra’s life, Schiff’s knowledge of the era helps her build up her case powerfully. She vividly writes about Cleopatra’s familial legacy and explores the social conditions of Egyptian women in general. However, instead of painting a picture of Egypt as culturally inferior to the Great Roman civilisation, Schiff recreates a society that provided women with greater freedom and economic independence than the western cultures.

Schiff’s refreshing comparison between Cleopatra and Caesar provides insight into the general theme of the book: she does not reduce Cleopatra to a mere temptress but rather seeks to show the true grandeur of her character by pitting her against the great Caesar.

Both, according to her, were highly educated and had grand tastes. While Cleopatra was born a goddess, Caesar was deified by the end of his life. Overambitious as both were, they ruled over large empires and lost them. Even in their tragic deaths they are immortal to the world. Cleopatra, claims Sciff, “exercised a decisive, corrupting influence on the Roman leader, to the extent that a new Caesar was born in Egypt — and to the extent that Cleopatra properly qualified as the founder of the Roman Empire.”

Caesar’s death was no doubt “a catastrophic political blow” to her ambitions but she returned to Alexandria which “enjoyed a robust intellectual revival” during her rule. Her administrative skills are praised by the writer who not only gives us a detailed picture of Cleopatra’s reign but also provides us with a comparison of Alexandria and Rome. Schiff acknowledges that “Cleopatra’s abilities were great, but the fertile male fancy incontestably greater.”

Schiff talks in detail about the other important figures of Cleopatra’s time, including Antony and Octavian, and brings ancient history to life. Moreover, she makes a rigorous analysis of the historical accounts of Plutarch, Cicero, Lucan, Suetonius among others to corroborate her point and shows how biased most of these male historians and writers were.

History has been narrated by men who conveniently package women in neat dichotomies of temptress/angel, the former demonised for their potential threat to male hegemony and the latter insignificant to historical narratives. Schiff disrupts this tradition by choosing to write about a woman widely misunderstood. Her work can be related to the feminist tradition of challenging and dismantling the monolithic version of history. There are countless women silenced in the pages of history waiting to be heard again.

In eloquent prose Schiff portrays a vibrant picture of a queen who deserves to be placed in the gallery of the most enigmatic female rulers of antiquity.

The reviewer is lecturer of English at GC University, Lahore

Cleopatra: A Life (BIOGRAPHY) By Stacy Schiff Little Brown & Co, US ISBN 0316120448 640pp. Rs2,250