Wednesday, February 23, Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden
Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way the supple personality has been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Cleopatra: A Life (Little Brown, $29.99) 
is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life. Tickets are $25 for this event and include a wine-and-cheese reception at Fairchild’s Garden House (6:30-7:30pm) along with the lecture and booksigning by Stacy Schiff to begin at 7:30pm. Available at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Miami Beach and Bal Harbour Shops beginning Friday, Feb. 4.