Ancient History Is Oddly Short On Incorrect

Motherhood Is Always An Act Of Courage.

For A Few Thousand Years, Women Had No History. Marriage Was Our Calling, And Meekness Our Virtue. Over The Last Century, In Stuttering Succession, We Have Gained A Voice, A Vote, A Room, A Playing Field Of Our Own. Decorously Or Defiantly, We Now Approach What Surely Qualifies As The Final Frontier.

Here You Have An Incredibly Ambitious, Accomplished Woman Who Comes Up Against Some Of The Same Problems That Women In Power Come Up Against Today. Cleopatra Plays An Oddly Pivotal Role In World History As Well; In Her Lifetime, Alexandria Is The Center Of The Universe, Rome Is Still A Backwater.

And In The Absence Of Facts, Myth Rushes In, The Kudzu Of History.

We Don't Know How Cleopatra Spent Her Days, But We Do Know How Other Hellenistic Monarchs Spent Their Days. There Has Been A Great Amount Of Scholarship In The Last 30 Years About Education In The Hellenistic World And Women In The Hellenistic World. We Now Know How An Upper-class Woman Was Educated In Her Day.