Historical Lives

I inherited a bankrupt kingdom at eighteen and held it open against Rome for twenty-two years. I made Caesar my lover and Antony my husband, and bore them four children to seat on thrones from the Nile to the Euphrates. When the world I built collapsed, I chose my own death rather than walk in another man's parade.

I was a peasant girl who heard saints in my father's garden and turned that voice into an army. I crowned a king at seventeen and burned at the stake at nineteen. I would not deny what I heard, not for a dress, not for my life.