Cleopatra: A Life

This biography reconstructs Cleopatra VII from the hostile Roman sources and the thinner Egyptian record. Schiff follows her youth in the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, the civil war with her brother, the liaison with Caesar and the birth of Caesarion, her years with Antony, the eastern settlements, Actium, and the end of the dynasty. She emphasises administration, display, and diplomacy over the later femme-fatale story. The book is a modern narrative life of a Hellenistic queen, written against the grain of Augustan propaganda, and it stays with what can be inferred about her politics and household rather than inventing private scenes.

Bound in blocked metallic cloth.