max theodore’s Reviews > Cleopatra: A Life > Status Update

“It would be difficult to say whom Cleopatra was more vital in 32: the man to whom she was the partner, or the man to whom she was the pretext. Antony could not win a war without her. Octavian could not wage one.” frothing at the mouth

“In a military cloak he personally launched a spear drenched in pig blood toward the East, from a ritual patch of ‘hostile soil’ in Rome. (There is speculation that he invented this ancient rite for the occasion, that Octavian was making up the history as he went along. He was very good at restoring traditions, including those that had never existed.)”

i love learning abt him. worst guy ever invented

“A man of disorderly passions, Antony seemed to count on chiding, to which he gamely responded. He was a happy subordinate, arguably at his best in that role. Plutarch has him taking more pleasure in the rebukes than he did in any commendations” mark antony sub real in real life

on Mark Antony:

"politically astute only on alternate days of the week, in equal measure ingenious and foolhardy, audacious and reckless"

"wherever Mark Antony went, sexual charm inevitably followed. His tunic tucked high on his rolling hips, he had slept his way across Asia at least once"

i respect schiff's dedication to dragging cicero within an inch of his life at every opportunity

"For a woman who was to be celebrated for her masterly manipulation of Rome, Cleopatra's story would be entrusted primarily to that city's historians; she effectively ceases to exist without a Roman in the room." ough

“Cicero, the greatest of Roman killjoys,”