![]() ![]() It’s no surprise that the loud, perennially dissatisfied Cicero ends up dead by another man’s hand.Īntony, by contrast, seems to spend little time thinking and a great deal of time feasting and sleeping around. Later, Cicero dislikes both of Caesar’s potential successors: Antony is a villain in search of plunder, Octavian is young and weak. (Cicero “was a great writer,” notes Schiff, “which is to say self-absorbed, with an outsize ego and a fanatical sensitivity to slights real and imagined.”) When Julius Caesar begins to seem too big for his britches, Cicero attacks Caesar in his writing. He wrings his hands, frets, and writes volumes and volumes of scornful commentary on the political scene. ![]() In Schiff’s view, Cicero wants a sturdy Roman Republic governed by wise, skeptical men - a Republic of Ciceros. Schiff adopts several identities–political scientist, critic, comedian–to tell a legendary story in swift, engaging prose. Alexandria and Rome, and she peers into the minds of Cicero, Antony, Octavian, and Cleopatra. Schiff gives us a portrait not only of a fascinating monarch, but also of an era: She dramatizes the turbulent final days of B.C. Like her subject, Schiff is extraordinarily intelligent, forceful, and poised. Stacy Schiff writes that, if ever Cleopatra were troubled by self-doubt, the great queen made every effort to conceal what she was feeling. ![]()
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