Cleopatra and Rome

In Cleopatra and Rome, Diana Kleiner describes the unique convergence of individuals and events that shaped the period. She brings the world of the Ptolemies and ancient Rome vividly to life and offers candid sketches of the people involved in Cleopatra's complex story...Whether or not 'one inimitable person can change the world,' she certainly makes for a good story.
-- Christina Riggs Times Higher Education Supplement

Diana E. E. Kleiner presents Cleopatra's story as only an art historian could tell it. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, Cleopatra and Rome unveils Egypt's most famous queen through her portraits, monuments, and spectacles...Some of the book's most fascinating material involves Kleiner's study of imperial women. Focusing in particular on Octavia, Livia, and Augustus's daughter Julia, Kleiner demonstrates the impact Cleopatra had on these elite women's roles in both family and public life. Differences in the ways Augustus and Antony represent women associated with them on coins ingeniously provide indirect evidence of the influence Cleopatra as a female sovereign had on Antony's concept of female power...Cleopatra and Rome will be of interest and value to specialists and non-specialists alike, thanks to its fresh look at a number of well-known monuments and the clarity with which the material is presented.
-- Prudence Jones Bryn Mawr Classical Review

In Cleopatra and Rome, Diana EE Kleiner--a professor of classics and art history at Yale--explains how the image and legend of Egypt's superstar queen lingered in the minds, and shaped the deeds, of Roman rulers...For Kleiner, Cleopatra enjoyed a long, illustrious afterlife in Roman art and culture. Women aped her style; patrons built in the Egyptian manner; poets buffed up her legendary persona. As for the real queen, she depicts not the minx of myth but a serial monogamist, politically astute, intellectually able--and far more loyal to her Roman lovers-turned-allies than they ever were to her.
-- Boyd Tonkin The Independent

Sovereign, siren, and spectacle during her brief lifetime (69-30 B.C.), Cleopatra's relationships to Roman leaders and to Rome itself are seductively and intelligently examined in Diana E. E. Kleiner's beautifully illustrated book...Cleopatra and Rome provides an innovative and fresh perspective on Cleopatra, both as a long-lived myth and as a world force...Kleiner's engaging presentation offers much food for thought, providing ample material for a re-evaluation of the political, social, artistic, and cultural impact of Cleopatra on her protagonists, both male and female, and on Rome.
-- Helena Fracchia Canadian Journal of History

[Kleiner's] Cleopatra and Rome is engaging and provocative. It is beautifully illustrated and is accompanied by an extremely useful bibliography including sections on Cleopatra films and Cleopatra on the internet.
-- Michael Dixon Classical Bulletin

This beautiful work is generously illustrated, with high-quality color throughout.
-- H. J. Kirchhoff Globe and Mail