EGYPTIAN
not forgetting the much lauded biography from the Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff. Indeed, even a partial discussion of recent volumes on the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty would take up the rest of this review. This present volume, however, endeavours to take a somewhat different tack in that the authors concentrate less on the ‘enigma’ of Cleopatra and seek, instead, to re-imbed the events more fully within the broader context of the diplomatic and political milieu of the Mediterranean in the first century BC.
ARCHAEOLOGY
In so doing, the authors marshal their material in a manner which leads inexorably towards Antony’s fateful defeat and Cleopatra’s suicide. It is, effectively, the recitation of a chronologically ordered series of actions and events with a definite and stated outcome; consequently, unlike history, but in common with all good tales, this book has an identifiable beginning, middle and end. The book is certainly immensely readable and at times has the flavour of the treatment for a film script: characters are introduced, their personal histories sketched in, allowing them to play their parts before retiring from the action and, crucially, each chapter is given a sub-heading indicating the passage of time and the changing locations. It is not only in these respects, however, that the text appears determinedly cinematic. There is also an amusing literary conceit: each of the chapter titles takes its name from a film featuring the American actor Humphrey Bogart. This is evidently more than mere coincidence, as the chapter titles range from the obvious African Queen directed by John Huston in 1951 to the rather more obscure Big City Blues directed by Meryn LeRoy in 1932, in which the actor has only a brief, un-credited role. One can only assume that the authors are aficionados of Bogart’s work; certainly Stuttard, as a founder member and former director of the theatre company Actors of Dionysus, has a clear and active interest in the performing arts. However, any specific connection between Bogart and the material
at hand is lost on this reviewer. Given the aforementioned chapter subheadings, it seems faintly redundant to record the contents of each chapter in this review; suffice to say that events move much as one would expect for this oft-told tale, with the first chapter being set aside to provide a description of Alexandria in ‘mid-September 31 BC’, setting out the geography of the portcity and its significance, cultural and historical, within the ancient Mediterranean. The book serves as a useful introductory volume to the material and it draws heavily upon quotations from classical sources. However, these are presented as straightforward evidence with no real discussion of any bias or, indeed, of the fact that so many of the authors quoted, such as Plutarch (AD 46-119) and Cassius Dio (AD 150-235) were writing some considerable time after the events they describe. Whilst the substantial use of classical sources is to be applauded, this particular reviewer would have preferred more userfriendly endnotes, which are presented in the tiniest of fonts. If there is a problem with the wealth of colour illustrations, it is only due to the size of the book, 210mm x 148mm, and the fact that many of the largely well-chosen images would have benefited from being printed on a larger scale. The map of the ‘Roman Empire during the late Republican Period c.50-31 BC’ on pp.6-7 suffers particularly in this regard, with most of mainland Greece disappearing into the gutter fold.
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