Free Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

Acknowledgments

    “I HAVE THUS endeavored to sum up the evidence upon the case, as fairly as I can, and the result seems to be that the world must vibrate in a state of uncertainty as to what was the truth,” Boswell concludes of Richard Savage, proffering hope to generations of biographers. A number of scholars substantially reduced the Hellenistic vibrations, fielding questions that ranged from the elementary to the outlandish to the unanswerable. For their time, wisdom, and patient good humor I am grateful to Roger S. Bagnall, Mary Beard, Larissa Bonfante, the late Lionel Casson, Mostafa El-Abbadi, Bruce W. Frier, Norma Goldman, Mona Haggag, O. E. Kaper, Andrew Meadows, William M. Murray, David O’Connor, Sarah B. Pomeroy, John Swanson, Dorothy J. Thompson, and Branko van Oppen. I owe Roger Bagnall additional thanks for his close reading of the manuscript; any remaining inaccuracies are my own.
    For help with and in Alexandria I am indebted to: Terry Garcia, Jean-Claude Golvin, Nimet Habachy, Walla Hafez, Mona Haggag, Zahi Hawass, Kate Hughes, Hisham Hussein, William La Riche, Mohamed Abdel Maksoud, Magda Saleh, and Marion Wood. Jack A. Josephson, Shelby White, and the American Numismatic Society’s Rick Witschonke kindly helped to locate or identify images.
    It is a pleasure finally to acknowledge my admiration for the matchless Michael Pietsch, publisher extraordinaire, and for his colleagues at Little, Brown. At every stage they have set the gold standard. In particular I owe thanks to Mario Pulice, Vanessa Kehren, Liz Garriga, TracyWilliams, Heather Fain, Heather Rizzo, and Betsy Uhrig. Jayne Yaffe Kemp read these pages sensitively and copyedited ruthlessly. It has been a privilege to work with Eric Simonoff, whose enthusiasm for this project has at times exceeded even my own. At William Morris I am grateful as well to Jessica Almon for shepherding book and author along.
    For research and translation assistance I owe debts to Karina Attar, Matthew J. Boylan, Raffaella Cribiore, Kate Daloz, Sebastian Heath, Inger Kuin, the indefatigable Tom Puchniak, and Claudia Rader. At the New York Society Library Brandi Tambasco worked her customary interlibrary loan magic. I am grateful as well to the staff of the University of Alberta’s Rutherford Library and to the New York Public Library, as much a monument to civilization as was the ancient library of Alexandria.
    For sound advice, kind words, and caffeine I have leaned on many indulgent friends but most heavily upon Wendy Belzberg, Lis Bensley, Alex Mayes Birnbaum, Judy Casson, Byron Dobell, Anne Eisenberg, Benita and Colin Eisler, Ellen Feldman, Patti Foster, Harry Frankfurt, Azza Kararah, Mitch Katz, Souad Kriska, Carmen Marino, Mameve and Howard Medwed, Helen Rosenthal, Andrea Versenyi, Meg Wolitzer, and Strauss Zelnick. Elinor Lipman remains the most discerning, generous, and articulate of first readers. On every level she has enhanced these pages and their author’s life. I would be lost without her.
    For miracle-working—a category that includes producing a pencil out of thin air, comparing two-thousand-year-old currencies, scuba diving in the Alexandrian harbor, and equably sharing an address with a writer—I owe an incalculable debt to Marc de La Bruyère. He makes the last line easiest, as none of the preceding ones would have been written without him.

Illustration Credits

Endpapers: Nimatallah / Art Resource, NY
Watercolor of the Canopic Way: Jean-Claude Golvin
Watercolor of Alexandria: Jean-Claude Golvin
The world as Cleopatra knew it: Cram’s 1895 Universal Atlas
Possible Cleopatra, in Parian marble: Sandro Vannini / Corbis
Possible Cleopatra, with tight chignon: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY
Possible Cleopatra, without a diadem: © The Trustees of the British Museum
Possible Cleopatra, with pronounced cheekbones: © Hellenic Republic / Ministry of Culture / Delos Museum
Women playing knucklebones: © The Trustees of the