The life of one of history’s most powerful women, retold through seven crucial episodes that shook the ancient world

Cleopatra: A Woman of Power is a major new biography of one of history’s most misunderstood figures. Far from the common portrayal of her as seductress and betrayer, Cleopatra emerges as a brilliant strategist and visionary leader determined to reshape the balance of power between Rome and the Hellenistic East.

In a propulsive historical narrative, Aldo Schiavone recovers Cleopatra the woman and queen, a complex individual who was seductive not just for her beauty but for her extraordinary force of personality. Schiavone reconstructs her story through seven pivotal moments in her life: the night before the battle of Actium, which sets the stage; her meeting with Julius Caesar in Alexandria; the day of Caesar’s assassination; her first meeting with Antony on the banks of the Cydnus River; her fateful alliance with him in Antioch; the day of Actium; and her encounter with the victorious Octavian and subsequent suicide in 30 BC. Schiavone reveals a woman willing to put everything on the line to achieve her aims. Had she been successful, she would have turned the political and cultural axis of Rome permanently to the East, placing her at the center of a new nexus of power—and possibly changing the course of history.

Monumental in scope, Cleopatra: A Woman of Power paints a riveting portrait of a daring ruler who adroitly navigated the shifting alliances of Rome and the ancient Mediterranean, and whose ruinous downfall was born of her ambition to remake the world.