Aldo Schiavone
Princeton University Press
27 October 2026
232
eBook - PDF
Non-Fiction/History
ARC via Edelweiss
Cleopatra: A Woman of Power is a major new biography of one of history’s most misunderstood figures. Far from the common portrayal of her as seductress and betrayer, Cleopatra emerges as a brilliant strategist and visionary leader determined to reshape the balance of power between Rome and the Hellenistic East.
In a propulsive historical narrative, Aldo Schiavone recovers Cleopatra the woman and queen, a complex individual who was seductive not just for her beauty but for her extraordinary force of personality. Schiavone reconstructs her story through seven pivotal moments in her life: the night before the battle of Actium, which sets the stage; her meeting with Julius Caesar in Alexandria; the day of Caesar’s assassination; her first meeting with Antony on the banks of the Cydnus River; her fateful alliance with him in Antioch; the day of Actium; and her encounter with the victorious Octavian and subsequent suicide in 30 BC. Schiavone reveals a woman willing to put everything on the line to achieve her aims. Had she been successful, she would have turned the political and cultural axis of Rome permanently to the East, placing her at the center of a new nexus of power―and possibly changing the course of history.
Monumental in scope, Cleopatra: A Woman of Power paints a riveting portrait of a daring ruler who adroitly navigated the shifting alliances of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean, and whose ruinous downfall was born of her ambition to remake the world.
Cleopatra: A Woman of Power was a fairly short but fascinating read that focused on the queen more as a political strategist whose liaisons with Rome were about more than mere seduction. Of course, with Rome as the victors, and Roman writings being the principal source material still available, it is hard to weed out truth from convenient fiction, but Schiavone does his best to present a nuanced and neutral portrayal of a woman whom history so often casts in the role of a femme fatale. While I have read about Cleopatra before (in both fiction and non-fiction), there was still some information in this book that was new to me because of the angle of its focus, and if you are looking for a short but detailed introduction to Cleopatra, this would be a good book to pick up. I am giving this one 4 stars. I thought it was a good and balanced biography, but I didn't score it higher because I did also find the narrative style a little dry and scholarly at times, which was okay given its shorter length but it would have started to drain me a bit as a nighttime read had the book been much longer.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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