Ancient History Is Oddly Short On Incorrect

As Always, An Educated Woman Was A Dangerous Woman.

The Vanity Extended Most Of All To His Library, Arguably The Real Love Of Cicero's Life. It Is Difficult To Name Anything In Which He Took More Pleasure, Aside Possibly Evasion Of The Sumptuary Laws. Cicero Liked To Believe Himself Wealthy. He Prided Himself On His Books. He Needed No Further Reason To Dislike Cleopatra: Intelligent Women Who Had Better Libraries Than He Did Offended Him On Three Counts.

I Checked To See If There’d Been A Really Good Book Published In The Last Few Decades. Then I Started With What Cleopatra Would Have Read, Asking Myself, “what Can We Know About Her Education?” It Turns Out To Be A Very Great Deal, And Bizarrely, No One Had Written About That Before.

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.