David Lorton, an Egyptologist, is the translator of many books, including Erik Hornung's books The Secret Lore of Egypt and Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, both from Cornell.
"Hoping to rescue the Egyptian queen from 'cliches that have been spread by... a complaisant literature,' not to mention by Elizabeth Taylor vehicles, Chauveau offers Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth. In this concise biography based on the few surviving Greek, Latin and Egyptian texts that mention her, Chauveau shows how the lack of sources (as well as Cleopatra's own attempts to mythologize her reign) has allowed romantic legends to flourish."-Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002 "Students who read this brief volume will find little of the movie queen but a great deal of Roman history. Cleopatra's defeat made Octavian emperor of Rome, and he arranged for the spin on history to make his actions look good."-School Library Journal, July 2002 "Michel Chauveau ... attempts to 'exorcise the myth' and present the 'facts' of Cleopatra's life and death."-Mary Beard, London Review of Books, 20 March 2003 "Cleopatra succeeds in conveying the events of Cleopatra's life as well as the circumstances that surrounded those events... what a different portrait of Cleopatra emerges when we allow ourselves only the certainties of her life (as far as they can be established and permit ourselves to leave blanks where no evidence exists. What remains is enough, however, to tell us that for the Egyptians, as C. puts it, Cleopatra was 'the last and the greatest of their queens.'"-Prudence Jones, Rutgers University, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, May 2002 "Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth might better have been titled Stripped of Myth, for that is what Chauveau attempts in this attractive and useful little book, leading us through the thorny world negotiated by Cleopatra: a distillation of the short life of a very energetic, ambitious, and-staying with fact-seductive woman, who bore children by both Caesar and Antony, and who, in a certain sense, conjured her own empire out of nothing. The empire proved ephemeral, but Cleopatra lives on in myth, and here, in the surviving facts."-John Mosher, History: Reviews of New Books "This small book is a good read by a good scholar, and the translation reads so well that one frequently forgets the text was originally French. There is plenty here for the nonspecialist in Graeco-Roman Egypt."-Antiquity 76 (2002)
Adult/High School-Students who read this brief volume will find little of the movie queen but a great deal of Roman history. Cleopatra's defeat made Octavian emperor of Rome, and he arranged for the spin on history to make his actions look good. The book includes scholarly footnotes, with translated quotations from historical sources such as Cicero, Plutarch, Caesar, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, etc. There are two maps: one of Egypt during this period and one of the eastern Mediterranean. Black-and-white photographs of Ptolomaic and Roman coins and of paintings in the Louvre (probably painted during the Renaissance) are included.-Irene F. Moose, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
"Hoping to rescue the Egyptian queen from 'cliches that have been spread by... a complaisant literature,' not to mention by Elizabeth Taylor vehicles, Chauveau offers Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth. In this concise biography based on the few surviving Greek, Latin and Egyptian texts that mention her, Chauveau shows how the lack of sources (as well as Cleopatra's own attempts to mythologize her reign) has allowed romantic legends to flourish."-Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002 "Students who read this brief volume will find little of the movie queen but a great deal of Roman history. Cleopatra's defeat made Octavian emperor of Rome, and he arranged for the spin on history to make his actions look good."-School Library Journal, July 2002 "Michel Chauveau ... attempts to 'exorcise the myth' and present the 'facts' of Cleopatra's life and death."-Mary Beard, London Review of Books, 20 March 2003 "Cleopatra succeeds in conveying the events of Cleopatra's life as well as the circumstances that surrounded those events... what a different portrait of Cleopatra emerges when we allow ourselves only the certainties of her life (as far as they can be established and permit ourselves to leave blanks where no evidence exists. What remains is enough, however, to tell us that for the Egyptians, as C. puts it, Cleopatra was 'the last and the greatest of their queens.'"-Prudence Jones, Rutgers University, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, May 2002 "Cleopatra: Beyond the Myth might better have been titled Stripped of Myth, for that is what Chauveau attempts in this attractive and useful little book, leading us through the thorny world negotiated by Cleopatra: a distillation of the short life of a very energetic, ambitious, and-staying with fact-seductive woman, who bore children by both Caesar and Antony, and who, in a certain sense, conjured her own empire out of nothing. The empire proved ephemeral, but Cleopatra lives on in myth, and here, in the surviving facts."-John Mosher, History: Reviews of New Books "This small book is a good read by a good scholar, and the translation reads so well that one frequently forgets the text was originally French. There is plenty here for the nonspecialist in Graeco-Roman Egypt."-Antiquity 76 (2002)
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