The food however – was fun: A sampling of appetizers! Fig Newtons because Cleopatra called for sweet figs on the day she committed suicide and also Greek yogurt because that is just fun. Overall with 8 Bookies in attendance, the book rating was way below average. However I was also told it is not as long as it looks. Most of the girls did not finish it, finding it hard to get into. She was charming and even (look at the pictures in the book) kind of ugly. She was very rich and slightly manipulative. While we still do not know a lot about Cleopatra even after reading the book, what we did learn was fascinating. One of the questions in the discussion guide asked if women could ever go backward in rights again and all of us believed it would not happen to us again. We wondered what created the shift in our culture to relegate women as so far beneath men that we had to struggle in the last century to get some of our rights back. They were able to own land and many riches and sometimes the husbands were the ones left at home weaving by the loom. They had so many rights and were held in such high esteem. We were all surprised by the role of women in Egypt during this time. Upon my return from Honduras I connected with a couple of the girls in the group and they shared not only their thoughts… but also pictures!!! I had the best of intentions to read it before I left, but life happenings, a very sick dog, and hard decisions made that… ummm… not happen. This was our book club read while I was in Honduras. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and–after his murder–three more with his protégé. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Cleopatra appears to have had been with only two men. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well assassination was a family specialty. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She was married twice, each time to a brother. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. Publisher: Little, Brown and Company 1 edition (November 1, 2010).

Cleopatra book stacy schiff