Her palace was one of gold and ivory. Her beauty treatments were used by anyone in favor of perfect skin. Cleopatra, queen of the Nile, Goddess of Egypt is to this day, a larger than life legend. From her battle of power with her brother, to her many lovers, Cleopatra’s past seems so well documented. It’s hard to believe someone would have trouble writing a book about her. Unfortunately, this is untrue. What is the real truth behind her political power and who was she really?
One of the most well-known Egyptian pharaohs, Cleopatra’s legacy is a true testament of time. However, as historians dig back in to the past of Cleopatra, it becomes evident that her legacy may have very well been filled with the bits and fluff one finds in a story handed …show more content…
None the less, Cleopatra; A life, seems to pick a part these vapid gossip columns and gets down to the true bare bones of the life, the love and the legacy of the Goddess of the Nile. However, despite the authors’ true efforts in trying to unearth the real Queen of Egypt, readers will find a good portion of the book to be rather dry and dull. How one can consume and destroy the exciting life of an Egyptian pharaoh remains to be seen, but Cleopatra; A life, dulls down the story with extraordinarily long explanations of parts of Cleopatra’s life that are seemingly not important. The footnotes gave to the readers are simply a means to put more, rather dry text into the book without making the already seemingly endless paragraphs even longer. Stacey Schiff does will in picking a part the half-truths and buffed up rumors in order to find the true meat of the backstory of Cleopatra, …show more content…
Her ability to dust off the old tombs of Cleopatra’s life and nit-pick out the truly casts a light on her exceptional historian abilities. Schiff’s writing style can, however, be overbearing with facts and historical information. When judging Schiff’s writing style, one must take what she says into two different mindsets. On one hand, she is not an author for the average citizen, however, on the other hand, she is an exceptional historian author and can convey exactly what needs to be said with the exact amount of information. When an average citizen reads the book Cleopatra; A life, it would be easy to become entirely lost in the text. Readers will find themselves hitting a search engine online to fully understand some of the cities, words and cultural terms that she litters the book with. Instead of explaining in a footnote some of the cities or places of region, she drops a name and lets it sit, or will go into a two paragraph description of what is presumably her idea of explaining the place. In actuality, it simply leaves the readers more confused. To put it simply, her writing style is heavy and will weigh the average reader down to the extent they will choose not to finish the book. From a historian perspective, she is an outstanding author that will serve up a rich text filled with her sources and studies. One cannot simply