One of history's most iconic figures, Cleopatra is rightly remembered as a clever and charismatic ruler. But few today realize that she was the last in a long line of Egyptian queens who bore that name. In The Cleopatras, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the story of these seven women.
Six further Cleopatras linked to an uninspiring series of Ptolemies could, in other circumstances, challenge the reader’s memory and interest. It is to Mr. Llewellyn-Jones’s credit that each of his subjects stands on her own ... The Cleopatras is original and engaging, even if its sprinkling of phrases such as "patriarchal norms," "gender norms," "lived realities" and "girl power" would, I suspect, have had the seven extraordinary, no-nonsense queens reaching for the nearest asp.
Entertaining ... Llewellyn-Jones has a tabloid journalist’s eye for the juicy anecdote and lurid story, and there are plenty of both in this history ... The caveat to these salacious stories, however entertaining, is that much of what we think we know about the Cleopatras is either supposition or downright fiction, based on the accounts of later, prejudiced, Roman authors. Even when this bias is acknowledged, a heavy reliance on Greek and Latin sources can lead scholars to conclude that the Cleopatras were exceptional.
