Product Description

For two thousand years, writers and artists have fastened stories to each of Cleopatra's features: descriptions of her eyes, mouth, nose and hair have become accounts of her compelling personality, explanations of her fascination, morality tales, poems. This well-researched anthology follows her face to trace the secrets of her soul. The book consists of illustrated quotations, both ancient and modern, about the fatal beauty of this most fatale of femmes, the Queen of Egypt, literature, stage and screen. The way we look at Cleopatra tells us about ourselves. We see how each generation has adopted Cleopatra and in turn fastened its own values to her image. Like Casanova, like Valentino, Cleopatra has beome a cultural icon, a symbol for a certain louche behaviour and luscious style. We want her, and we fear her, but we are always fascinated.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2310732 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

Review
"'The most complete woman ever to have existed, the most womanly woman and the most queenly queen, a person to be wondered at, to whom the poets have been able to add nothing, and whom dreamers always find at the end of their dreams' Theophile Gautier, 1845; 'Though she pretended to tear her hair in grief, it was not sufficiently disarranged to lose its attraction' Lucan, Pharsalia, book 10; 'Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the face of the world would have changed' Blaise Pascal, Pensees, p.50; 'We have kissed away Kingdoms and provinces' William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. III viii, 17; 'I imagine Cleopatra very cosmopolitan. She lived in Rome like an American in Paris' Anatole France, 1914"

About the Author
Michelle Lovric is the author/compiler of a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Love Letters: An Anthology of Passion, The Sweetness of Honey and the Sting of Bees: Words of Love from the Ancient Mediterranean and How to Insult, Abuse and Insinuate in Classical Latin.