Dying in Marc Antony's arms, Cleopatra bewails the ignominious end to her larger-than-life career through the political world of ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Mediterranean. But is this really the true Cleopatra? Through the intervention of Cleopatra's scribe and informer Diomedes, Boullosa creates two previous Cleopatras, and in effect two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch—a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society, fleeing in the back of a horse cart to Ascalon, to disguise herself and take up residence with a band of pirates; and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons.