And In The Absence Of Facts, Myth

No One Sits On The Stoop When She's A Kid And Thinks, 'i Want To Be A Biographer When I Grow Up,'

Power Has For So Long Been A Male Construct That It Distorted The Shape Of The First Women Who Tried It On, Only To Find Themselves In A Sort Of Straitjacket.

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.

It Has Always Been Preferable To Attribute A Woman's Success To Her Beauty Rather Than To Her Brains, To Reduce Her To The Sum Of Her Sex Life.