Plutarch Life of Antony

In Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was able to learn a lot about the history of Cleopatra and Antony.  While watching Cleopatra there where times where I would wonder of Cleopatra really did manipulate Antony the way she did in the movie.  When I read Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was surprised to learn that it was much worst.  It was also nice to know what facts were right and which ones were kept out of the movie.  After reading Life of Antony I came to the conclusion that Elizabeth Taylor had done a good job playing Cleopatra.  The way that she was able to manipulate both Caesar and Antony in the movie I thought was amazing and it was pretty evident that the romans blamed her for the fall of both of these men.  I was able to notice this because in Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Plutarch describes Antony as being a simplistic man that has a sense of justice, and that is also portrayed in the movie, while Cleopatra was described as a “Crowning Evil” and by the end of the movie you can not help but blame Cleopatra for everything that happened to Antony and Caesar.  Through Life of Antony we also get a better description of how the real Cleopatra looked like and she did not look anything like Elizabeth Taylor, but the main thing that they did have in common was the characteristics of Cleopatra.  Elizabeth Taylor did an amazing job at portraying all of the charm and spectacle that Cleopatra was known for.  It was also interesting to read more about Octavia because in the movie she is hardly mentioned and it was interesting to read about the main differences between Cleopatra and Octavia, even in the movie you could tell that Octavia was the woman that everyone should be like but Cleopatra was the woman that every female secretly wanted to be. Over all there were a lot more differences that I would have thought were but a lot of the differences were things that were not really necessary to the film.  Overall I liked Plutarch’s Life of Antony more than the movie.