When I first began learning about Cleopatra, I expected to find the story of an extraordinary beauty. Instead, I found the story of an extraordinary woman. History has never quite known what to do with women like Cleopatra. Women who are intelligent. Women who are ambitious. Women who are charismatic. Women who command attention when they enter a room. Women who are impossible to ignore. For more than two thousand years, people have debated Cleopatra's beauty. Was she breatht