Cleopatra: A Life

* The prevailing ethos is preserved in the literature. In the Iliad, women are the most perfect things in creation. They are also, as has been observed, as a general rule “teasing, scolding, thwarting, contradicting, and hoodwinking.” In the Greek plays, women have the key parts. There are few outsize female heroines in Roman literature, in which wives come in two varieties: the tyrannical rich and the spendthrift poor. Roman literature is notably short as well on deceived husbands, a comic staple from Aristophanes to Molière.