The Art of Seduction

The Art of Seduction

In 41 BC, Mark Antony was the most powerful man in the eastern half of the Roman world. He had been campaigning in Syria, raising armies, settling client kings, behaving in every way like a Roman general at the height of his confidence. He sent a summons to Cleopatra, the young queen of Egypt, ordering her to appear before him at Tarsus to answer questions about her loyalty to Rome. He expected her to arrive nervous, conciliatory, dressed for a courtroom.

She made him wait. When she finally came up the river Cydnus, she came on a gold barge with purple sails. The oars were silver and they struck the water in time with flutes and harps. Boys dressed as Cupids fanned her. Girls dressed as sea nymphs handled the rigging. Cleopatra herself reclined under a canopy of cloth-of-gold, costumed as Venus rising from the sea. The smell of incense drifted off the deck and reached the city before the boat did. The whole town of Tarsus emptied out to watch her dock. Antony was left almost alone in the marketplace where he had planned to receive her, sitting on his judge's chair while the crowd ran to the riverbank. He had to send messengers inviting her to dinner. She invited him instead.

That, in compressed form, is what Robert Greene's The Art of Seduction is about. It is a book about why a hardened Roman general who controlled legions and provinces ends up walking onto a foreign queen's boat, eating her food, drinking her wine, and within a few weeks reorganizing his life around her. It is not a book about pickup. It is a book about how human beings come to surrender their judgment to other human beings, and why some people seem to know exactly how to make that happen.