10 Outstanding Cleopatra Books for You Now
Book ListsThe most famous woman from Greco-Roman antiquity? A feminist icon? Check out our curation of 10 of the best books on Cleopatra (VII).
Links to purchase or find a copy in your library are available for each book listing. (Note: books are listed in reverse-chronological order).
For more Greek book lists, check out our book lists on Ancient Greece and Alexander the Great, or our other book lists.
1. Roller, Duane W. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Publisher Description
Few personalities from classical antiquity are more famous–yet more poorly understood–than Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt. In this major biography, Duane Roller reveals that Cleopatra was in fact a learned and visionary leader whose overarching goal was always the preservation of her dynasty and kingdom.
Roller’s authoritative account is the first to be based solely on primary materials from the Greco-Roman period: literary sources, Egyptian documents (Cleopatra’s own writings), and representations in art and coinage produced while she was alive. His compelling portrait of the queen illuminates her prowess as a royal administrator who managed a large and diverse kingdom extending from Asia Minor to the interior of Egypt, as a naval commander who led her own fleet in battle, and as a scholar and supporter of the arts. Even her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius–the source of her reputation as a supreme seductress who drove men to their doom–were carefully crafted state policies: she chose these partners to insure the procreation of successors who would be worthy of her distinguished dynasty. That Cleopatra ultimately lost to her Roman opponents, Roller contends, in no way diminishes her abilities.
Author
Historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar, Duane W. Roller is Professor Emeritus of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. The author of eight books, including Through the Pillars of Herakles and The Building Program of Herod the Great, he has excavated in Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the Levant.
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2. Goldsworthy, Adrian. Antony and Cleopatra. Yale University Press, 2011.
Publisher Description
A masterfully told—and deeply human—story of love, politics, and ambition, Adrian Goldsworthy’s Antony and Cleopatra delivers a compelling reassessment of a major episode in ancient history.
In this remarkable dual biography of the two great lovers of the ancient world, Goldsworthy goes beyond myth and romance to create a nuanced and historically acute portrayal of his subjects, set against the political backdrop of their time. A history of lives lived intensely at a time when the world was changing profoundly, the book takes readers on a journey that crosses cultures and boundaries from ancient Greece and ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire.
Drawing on his prodigious knowledge of the ancient world and his keen sense of the period’s military and political history, Goldsworthy creates a singular portrait of the iconic lovers. “Antony and Cleopatra were first and foremost political animals,” explains Goldsworthy, who places politics and ideology at the heart of their storied romance. Undertaking a close analysis of ancient sources and archaeological evidence, Goldsworthy bridges the gaps of current scholarship and dispels misconceptions that have entered the popular consciousness. He explains why Cleopatra was consistently portrayed by Hollywood as an Egyptian, even though she was really Greek, and argues that Antony had far less military experience than anyone would suspect from reading Shakespeare and other literature. Goldsworthy makes an important case for understanding Antony as a powerful Roman senator and political force in his own right.
Author
Adrian Goldsworthy is a leading historian of the ancient world. The author of many books, including How Rome Fell, Caesar, The Roman Army at War, and In the Name of Rome, he lectures widely and consults on historical documentaries produced by the History Channel, National Geographic, and the BBC. Goldsworthy is also the recipient of numerous prizes. He lives in Wales.
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Miles, Margaret Melanie. Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited. University of California Press, 2011.
Publisher Description
Cleopatra―a brave, astute, and charming woman who spoke many languages, entertained lavishly, hunted, went into battle, eliminated siblings to consolidate her power, and held off the threat of Imperial Rome to protect her country as long as she could―continues to fascinate centuries after she ruled Egypt. These wide-ranging essays explore such topics as Cleopatra’s controversial trip to Rome, her suicide by snake bite, and the afterlife of her love potions. They view Cleopatra from the Egyptian perspective, and examine the reception in Rome of Egyptian culture, especially of its religion and architecture. They discuss films about her, and consider what inspired Egyptomania in early modern art. Together, these essays illuminate Cleopatra’s legacy and illustrate how it has been used and reused through the centuries.
Author
Margaret M. Miles is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of California at Irvine. She is the author most recently of Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property.
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Kleiner, Diana E. E. Cleopatra and Rome. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Publisher Description
With the full panorama of her life forever lost, Cleopatra touches us in a series of sensational images: floating through a perfumed mist down the Nile; dressed as Venus for a tryst at Tarsus; unfurled from a roll of linens before Caesar; couchant, the deadly asp clasped to her breast. Through such images, each immortalizing the Egyptian queen’s encounters with legendary Romans–Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian Augustus–we might also chart her rendezvous with the destiny of Rome. So Diana Kleiner shows us in this provocative book, which opens an entirely new perspective on one of the most intriguing women who ever lived. Cleopatra and Rome reveals how these iconic episodes, absorbed into a larger historical and political narrative, document a momentous cultural shift from the Hellenistic world to the Roman Empire. In this story, Cleopatra’s death was not an end but a beginning–a starting point for a wide variety of appropriations by Augustus and his contemporaries that established a paradigm for cultural conversion.
In this beautifully illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra’s and Rome’s defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture: religious and official architecture, cult statuary, honorary portraiture, villa paintings, tombstones, and coinage, but also the theatrical display of clothing, perfume, and hair styled to perfection for such ephemeral occasions as triumphal processions or barge cruises. It is this visual culture that best chronicles Cleopatra’s legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
Author
Diana E. E. Kleiner is Dunham Professor of the History of Art and Classics at Yale University.
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Tyldesley, Joyce. Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt. Basic Books, 2008.
Publisher Description
The Romans regarded her as fatale monstrum”a fatal omen. Pascal said the shape of her nose changed the history of the world. Shakespeare portrayed her as an icon of tragic love. But who was Cleopatra, really?
Cleopatra was the last ruler of the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies. Highly intelligent, she spoke many languages and was rumored to be the only Ptolemy to read and speak Egyptian. Her famous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony had as much to do with politics as the heart. Ruthless in dealing with her enemies, many within her own family, Cleopatra steered her kingdom through difficult times, and very nearly succeeded in creating an eastern empire to rival the growing might of Rome.
Her story was well documented by her near contemporaries, and the tragic tale of contrasts and oppositionsthe seductive but failing power of ancient Egypt versus the virile strength of modern Romeis so familiar we almost feel that we know Cleopatra. But our picture is highly distorted. Cleopatra is often portrayed as a woman ruled by emotion rather than reason; a queen hurtling towards inevitable self-destruction. But these tales of seduction, intrigue, and suicide by asp have obfuscated Cleopatra’s true political genius.
Stripping away our preconceptions, many of them as old as Egypt’s Roman conquerors, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley offers a magnificent biography of a most extraordinary queen.
Author
Joyce Tyldesley, Ph.D., holds a first class honors degree in archaeology from Liverpool University and a doctorate from Oxford University. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool University, and a tutor at Manchester University. She has acted as consultant on several television projects, and is an experienced broadcaster. Her previous books include a sequence of popular biographies of Egyptian pharaohs, with particular emphasis on the lives of prominent Egyptian women. She lives in Bolton, England.
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Hamer, Mary. Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically. Updated second edition. Liverpool University Press, 2008.
Publisher Description
Cleopatra has been dead for twenty centuries, but her name still resonates in the west. Her story has the status of a foundation myth. As such, artists of all periods have drawn on it in order to raise questions concerned with the world in which they found themselves living.This study chooses a number of key occasions from European history on which writers and painters re-imagined Cleopatra. In doing so Mary Hamer takes the reader on a pleasurable intellectual treasure hunt through the ages. In addition, by restoring these works to their original context – political, philosophical and aesthetic – the author opens up unexpected new readings of images and texts which had previously appeared to be self-explanatory.The purpose of this book is to raise questions about how these images of a dead Egyptian queen were read. Through careful analysis Hamer traces attempts to manipulate attitudes to women and power, women and sexuality and to desire itself. In the case of Tiepolo’s Cleopatra, for example, the Queen embodies the desire for knowledge; in post-Revolutionary France, she symbolises political freedom. In the new introductory essay we discover that Cleopatra’s role as a focus for cultural debate continues, and that, as previously, much is at stake: it is now the question of her race that is highly contested.
Author
Mary Hamer is a Fellow of the DuBois Institute, Harvard. She has published widely on literary and cultural history including work on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Anthony Trollope and Cleopatra. She was involved in curating the British Museum’s exhibition on Cleopatra and has appeared on Woman’s Hour.
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Jones, Prudence J. Cleopatra: A Sourcebook. Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture. University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.
Publisher Description
Who was Cleopatra? Who is Cleopatra? Viewed as both goddess and monster even in her own lifetime, she has become through the ages saint and sinner, heroine and victim, femme fatale and star-crossed lover, black and white. A protean figure, Cleopatra defies categorization.
Cleopatra’s life story, gleaned from contemporary sources, is powerfully intriguing: Married four times, she seduced two of the most powerful men in Rome (Julius Caesar and Marc Antony), became the sole ruler of Egypt, gained legendary status for her lavish banquets, and chose to die rather than endure disgrace as the prisoner of Octavian, Caesar’s heir.
This fascinating sourcebook documents what we know of the historical figure and also shows how she has evolved through the lens of interpretation. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the volume consists of a series of readings about Cleopatra―historical, literary, and documentary―extending from ancient times to the twentieth century, from the European Romantics to the Afro centrists, and from Middle English to modern Arabic.
In her introductions to the readings, Prudence J. Jones provides helpful information about the sources, placing them in historical and cultural context. She includes passages both familiar and unfamiliar, some not easily found in translation. Suitable for classroom use, Cleopatra: A Sourcebook reveals a multitude of Cleopatras, raising as many questions as it answers about one of history’s most captivating figures.
Author
Prudence J. Jones is Assistant Professor of Classics at Montclair State University, New Jersey.
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Chauveau, Michel. Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press, 2004.
Publisher Description
Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In his new book Michel Chauveau brings us a picture of her firmly based in reality.
Cleopatra VII reigned in Egypt between 51 and 30 B.C.E. Her primary goal as a ruler was to restore over the eastern Mediterranean the supremacy of the Lagides, the dynasty of Macedonian origin of which she herself was a descendant. We know the queen best from Greek and Latin sources, though these must be used with caution because of their bias. Understandably enough, they reflect not only matters of interest to Romans, but also the propaganda that Octavian used against the queen during his struggles with Mark Antony. Chauveau combines his knowledge of Egyptian sources with judicious use of classical materials to produce an authoritative biography of Cleopatra, the woman and queen, seen in the light of the turbulent era in which she lived.
Author
Michel Chauveau is a former member of the Institut Français d’Archæologie Orientale in Cairo, and is currently director of studies at L’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He is the author of Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra: History and Society under the Ptolemies, also from Cornell. David Lorton, an Egyptologist, lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Burstein, Stanley Mayer. The Reign of Cleopatra. Greenwood Press, 2004.
Publisher Description
An engaging, accessible biography of the legendary Egyptian queen, with source documents
Ambitious, intelligent, and desired by powerful men, Cleopatra VII came to power at a time when Roman and Egyptian interests increasingly concerned the same object: Egypt itself. Cleopatra lived and reigned at the center of this complex and persistent power struggle. Her legacy has since lost much of its former political significance, as she has come to symbolize instead the potent force of female sexuality and power.
In this engaging and multifaceted account, Stanley M. Burstein displays Cleopatra in the full manifold brilliance of the multiple cultures, countries, and people that surrounded her throughout her compelling life, and in so doing develops a stunning picture of a legendary queen and a deeply historic reign. Designed as an accessible introduction to Cleopatra VII and her time, The Reign of Cleopatra offers readers and researchers an appealing mix of descriptive chapters, biographical sketches, and annotated primary documents. The narrative chapters conclude with a discussion of Cleopatra’s significance as a person, a queen, and a symbol. A glossary and annotated bibliography round out the volume.
Author
Stanley M. Burstein is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Los Angeles, and coauthor of Ancient Greece: A Brief History.
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Walker, Susan, and Peter Higgs, eds. Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. Princeton University Press, 2001.
Publisher Description
Fabled for her sexual allure and cunning intelligence, Cleopatra VII of Egypt has fascinated generations of admirers and detractors since her tumultuous life ended in suicide in 30 B.C. The last of the Ptolemaic monarchs who had ruled Egypt for three centuries, Cleopatra created her own mythology. She became an icon in her own lifetime and a legend after her death.
This lavishly illustrated catalogue coincides with a major international exhibition celebrating images of Cleopatra. It explores how she was depicted during her own era, in works ranging from coins to life-size sculpture. Exciting new discoveries are featured–including seven Egyptian-style statues believed to represent Cleopatra, and two portraits probably commissioned while she was living in Rome with Julius Caesar. The book also examines interpretations of Cleopatra from the Renaissance to modern times, as seen in paintings, ceramics, jewelry, plays, operas, and film. In addition, recent archaeological finds from Alexandria (Cleopatra’s capital) and from Rome illustrate aspects of life in Cleopatra’s day.
Author
Susan Walker is Deputy Keeper in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. She is the author of Roman Art and Greek and Roman Portraits and the coauthor of Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt.
Peter Higgs is Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum.
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