No One In The Modern World Controls

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.

No One In The Modern World Controls The Wealth Or Territory That Cleopatra Did.

A Rich, Multi-dimensional Tour Of Naples, Most Brilliant, Battered, And Bewildering Of Cities, Here Fixed To The Page With Wit And élan. Splendid.

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.

Cleopatra Stood At One Of The Most Dangerous Intersections In History; That Of Women And Power. Clever Women, Euripides Had Warned Hundreds Of Years Earlier, Were Dangerous.