Cleopatra

[Denec]

Cleopatra

 

I thought I would pass this info along I just ordered this book for $5.39 I think it is a superb deal.

 

I really love Michael Grant's style of writing and trying to find as many as book as I can written by him, since many seem to be out of print.

 

 

 

Has anyone read this? Just curious. I know this is not directly about Roman History but a part of it.

[Primus Pilus]

Cleopatra

 

I thought I would pass this info along I just ordered this book for $5.39 I think it is a superb deal.

 

I really love Michael Grant's style of writing and trying to find as many as book as I can written by him, since many seem to be out of print.

 

 

 

Has anyone read this? Just curious. I know this is not directly about Roman History but a part of it.

 

I've never read this one in particular but have enjoyed several of Grant's works over the years. I've always highly reccomended him, especially to those who may be first entering the field of ancient studies.

 

As for Cleopatra... No worries there, she is very much a piece of Roman history. She had a great deal of influence on key players and various circumstances surrounding the final fall of the Republic, so she is perfectly appropriate to discuss here.

[P.Clodius]

Grant rules! And yes, Cleo is intrinsically part of roman history, probably more so than any other foreigner other than Hannibal.

[frankq]

Grant rules! And yes, Cleo is intrinsically part of roman history, probably more so than any other foreigner other than Hannibal.

 

I just got Grant's book for Xmas and he is right on target in this bio. One of the authors who provides us with a modern and revisionary outlook on a figure much abused by history or, actually, Augustan propaganda. This includes, by default, Antony, too.

 

If you like his book, then you need to read Volkmann's bio on her, too.

 

And she is not off-topic. She is core material in the final days of the Republic.

[phil25]

Michael Grant was (I don't know whether he is still alive) a good writer and a reliable populariser of classical subjects.

 

His Cleopatra I have in a fairly recent UK p/back reprint, but I have a fair amount of his stuff - a "coffee-table" format Nero, and two wonderful tomes on the Roman Forum (my bible on the subject for many years) and on Pompeii and Herculaneum. I think there is also one on the Antonine period and after (The Climax of Rome).

 

He translated my Penguin edition of Tacitus' "Annals" and wrote the introduction to the Penguin Suetonius (translated by Robert Graves).

 

I cannot put my hand on it at this moment, but I think he may also have penned a book on the Roman arena/gladiators.

 

A remarkably productive man to whom I (and I suspect many others) owe a great deal.

 

Phil

[Primus Pilus]

We will unfortunately not be getting any more works from one of the great modern historians.

 

Passing of Michael Grant

[Ursus]

Some of the Amazon.com reviews say Grant is overly sympathetic to Cleopatra in an attempt to reverse Augustan slander.

 

For those who have read it, what are your thoughts on that? I'm considering buying the book, but I do dislike overly-revisionist accounts.

[phil25]

To be honest, I have so much about Cleopatra that I cannot, without taking the book off the shelf again, tell you what Grant's view was.

 

But then it would not bother me if it WAS revisonist. I am strongly in favour of questioning historical conventional wisdoms, both because it can jolt us out of mindless complacency andunquestioning acceptance of outdated thinking, and because it necessarily increases historical understanding, even if we reject the proposed revision. To me questioning is ALWAYS good, even if the conclusions are bad or wrong.

 

Cleopatra has had a wholly misleading press from Actium onwards - depicted as nymphomaniac; oriental; decadent; avaricious... (even African) one could go on. Yet here was a woman, of largely Greek descent, of charm rather than beauty (if her coin portraits and alleged statues are anything to go by (!!); intelligent, far thinking, and politically adroit.

 

She and Caesar, later Antonius, may have perceived a truth 300 years before Constantine - that the empire would be best ruled from the east (perhaps Alexandria) rather than Rome, because that was where the wealth and the food and the intellectual heartland (as well as the major rival - Parthia) were located.

 

Hers was a Hellenistic dream, but who is to say it was not every whit as realistic, practical or potentially enduring as that of Augustus.

 

Octavian had no choice but to cast Cleopatra as the villainess, as the focus of his drive for supremacy. He would have faced opposition on his own side had he sought to defame Antonius, consul and triumvir, in his own right. That view, unjust and unsupported has lasted too long.

 

Long live the revisionists who make us think again,

 

Phil

[Ursus]

The problem is that those doing the revision often have agendas or prejudices themselves. They seek not so much to correct history and offer an objective assessment, but to replace one biased view of history with their own.

 

This is the sin of many a postmodern academic.

[frankq]

Some of the Amazon.com reviews say Grant is overly sympathetic to Cleopatra in an attempt to reverse Augustan slander.

 

For those who have read it, what are your thoughts on that? I'm considering buying the book, but I do dislike overly-revisionist accounts.

 

For starters, Grant didn't get the revisionism going RE Cleo, Hans Volkmann, a German historian did. And the revisionism was long due and much deserved, a counter weight to all the BS postulated ever since Augustus and Bill Shakespeare. To place a well paced and well thought out historian like Grant on some left wing revisionist bandwagon is unfair. One of the things you can always rely on RE Grant is that his research is sound.

 

Cleopatra has for 2000 years been at the brunt of so much nonsense and mischief that she needed vindicating. Where can one even begin? She had but two lovers in her life, Caesar and Antony, but because she used her sex as a tool in her diplomacies she's been labeled a whore for all these years. Augustus was a master at PR. And everyone kissing his fanny added to the lies, prime of which was King Herod, one of Cleo's biggest enemies. (And fairly so.)

 

If you have or can get the book, read it. It's enlightening. And get Volkmann's book too!

[Andrew Dalby]

She had but two lovers in her life, Caesar and Antony

 

How do you know that?

[Andrew Dalby]

a woman, of largely Greek descent ...

 

Now that's a very dubious point! I believe (though I can't now confirm it, and I apologise to his shade if I'm wrong) that Michael Grant once wrote (in a letter to the TLS) that she had 'not a drop of Oriental blood', and many others, like you, have described her as Greek.

 

Setting aside the concept which now sounds rather dubious of 'Oriental blood' and focusing on her parentage: as far as I could work it out, here it is. For Ptolemaic reasons (her parents were brother-sister) she had only one grandmother. Nobody knows who this grandmother was, but since she wasn't recorded as a royal wife, it seems a bit unlikely that she was Macedonian -- much more likely that she was a slave or concubine from Egypt or points south.

 

Her grandfather was indeed in the royal line of descent. Macedonian wasn't the same as Greek, though no doubt fairly close.

 

So if you believe that all the ancestors, male and female, of Cleopatra's grandfather, back to Ptolemy I, were Macedonian, then she was exactly half Macedonian. Otherwise, less than half Macedonian, and probably more than half African (using African to include Egyptian).

 

Does this seem right to others, or have I gone wrong somewhere?

[Primus Pilus]

Does this seem right to others, or have I gone wrong somewhere?

 

No, that about sums it up, but I would tend to think that the Ptolemies may have looked to other eastern royal families (as they had done with the first Arsinoe and Berenice, etc.) rather than slaves to continue the line of heredity.

 

A nice stemmata... Ptolemy Lineage

 

As you can see there seems to be confusion with the lineage of Cleopatra VII's grandfather as well as grandmother. The confusion doesn't necessarily indicate a deviation from Greek/Macedonian heritage.

[frankq]

 

Does this seem right to others, or have I gone wrong somewhere?

 

No, that about sums it up, but I would tend to think that the Ptolemies may have looked to other eastern royal families (as they had done with the first Arsinoe and Berenice, etc.) rather than slaves to continue the line of heredity.

 

A nice stemmata... Ptolemy Lineage

 

As you can see there seems to be confusion with the lineage of Cleopatra VII's grandfather as well as grandmother. The confusion doesn't necessarily indicate a deviation from Greek/Macedonian heritage.

 

Exactly. But the missing link in lineage has opened much to speculation. I agree that it might well have been from another eastern royal family.

 

RE my last post about her having only two lovers, this cannot be proved, and is speculation, but it is a theory postulated by many historians and is used to offset the wicked slander cast against her. Sex for Cleo was a power tool. It was used as a goal and a tool with Caesar and Antony. Not that she did not have true feelings for both men. Once committed, she stayed true.

[Ursus]

If you have or can get the book, read it. It's enlightening.

 

 

Very well. I accept your suggestion. I have read Michael Grant's The Etruscans and found it highly informative, if somewhat bland at times. (Though judging by what Pantagathus has written on Etruscans in the Forum Peregrini, Grant's research on the subject is somewhat out of date.)