Kitty

“The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty. She remains on the map for having seduced two of the greatest men of her time, while her crime was to have entered into those same "wily and suspicious" marital partnerships that every man in power enjoyed. She did so in reverse and in her own name; this made her a deviant, socially disruptive, an unnatural woman. To these she added a few other offenses. She made Rome feel uncouth, insecure, and poor, sufficient cause for anxiety without adding sexuality into the mix.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

“I pull on his fingers softly, tired of this talk. “I have something to tell you…”

He tightens his grip on my fingers in excitement as I whisper that I’m carrying his child.

Tutankhamun gives a cry of proud joy. He lifts me in his arms and spins me until I shriek and demand that he stops.

“Think of the baby!” I admonish, laughing. “The baby,” he repeats, trying the words out on his lips. “Our baby.”

“If the gods will it,” I say soberly, resting my face against his.

“They will,” he breathes, “I swear it.”
― Stephanie Liaci

“To the punishing study of Egyptian, however, Cleopatra applied herself. She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra

“The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra