Stacy Schiff on Cleopatra: It's the economy, stupid.

Stacy Schiff at the Ftizgerald Theater in St. Paul on Wednesday.

Cleopatra's enduring reputation is that of a powerful seductress and a legendary beauty who looked just like Liz Taylor and bedded Roman kings and dozens of other suitors. Biographer Stacy Schiff said she thinks the Egyptian queen's greatest impact was in politics and the economy. Schiff, author of the bestseller "Cleopatra: A Life," spoke at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Wednesday, part of the Talking Volumes book club.

"I don't think Cleopatra loved either Caesar or Marc Antony," she said. "She should be remembered for affairs of the state more than affairs of the heart." When a term-paper-writing high-school student asked Schiff what Cleopatra's biggest contribution to Egyptian society was, Schiff said it was her savvy economic reforms, including devaluing the drachma and ordering that coins of similar weight be stamped with different denominations. It worked for her, as she became one of history's wealthiest people and stimulated a flagging economy.

Cleopatra, Schiff noted, had a baby nine months after her first meeting with the Emperor of Rome. The observation caused one of the few men in the audience to shout, "Hail, Caesar!"

Schiff deliberately avoided watching the 1963 movie about Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. She didn't want to cloud her thinking with Hollywood images as she sought to "peel back a veil" and write the most historically accurate portrait she could after sifting the often contradictory evidence.

When confronted with an important dispute, such as the facts of Cleopatra's death, Schiff presents readers with both versions (venomous snake, poison) but also lets them know which one her research led her to believe (poison).

Schiff was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her biography of "The Little Prince" writer Saint-Exupery, but she won it in 2000 for "Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)." The prize is wonderful, she said, but "it doesn't get you a seat at a restaurant." And it appears not to get her proper respect from her three children, either. "My kids'll say, 'Look, she can win a Pulitzer Prize, but she can't find the lid for the Tupperware."

Kerri Miller's interview with Schiff will be rebroadcast at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11 on Minnesota Public Radio.

Coming next to Talking Volumes are Colson Whitehead (Nov. 2) and Chuck Palahniuk (Nov. 17).