Cleopatra: A Life

* Sounding some familiar, inaccurate notes, a historian of Cleopatra’s day credited Isis with Egypt’s upside-down social hierarchy. In deference to her great wisdoms, claimed Diodorus, the Egyptians had ordained that “the queen should have greater power and honor than the king, and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over her husband, the husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives.”