Cleopatra

First published in 1971, this is Jack Lindsay's historical study of Cleopatra VII, not a retelling of Shakespeare's play. Lindsay follows her Ptolemaic inheritance, the struggle with her brother-husband, her alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and the war with Octavian that ends in the fall of Egypt as an independent kingdom. He reads the propaganda that surrounded her in Rome and Alexandria, and the religious and political ideas used by all sides. The book treats Cleopatra as a Hellenistic ruler managing a dynasty between Rome and the East, and as a figure buried under later erotic legend.

Bound in dark blue buckram with copper foil portrait cover. Dark blue slipcase.