Urban Encapsulation
	Imagine walking into a city, and on either side of you, looming above your head, are colossal, guided statues, fountains, buildings, and sculptures.  The air reeks of perfume, and your mind is being carried away by an amazing musical sensation that compliments the chaos of the people wandering throughout the city.  This is the reality that existed some two thousand years ago, in the city of Alexandria, under the power of Cleopatra.  The city was so humungous, so exotic, so extraordinary; one could not help but be encapsulated by its wonders.  Putting an amazing achievement such as Alexandria into words is no easy task, but Stacy Schiff is able to convey the city and its sensations to the reader throughout the course of her nonfiction book, Cleopatra.  Schiff utilizes sensational imagery and concrete details, as well as connotative language to establish the reader’s perception on the great city of Alexandria.
	Focusing on the city as a whole, the immediate effect the reader receives is just how vast and immense the city is.  “Looking into the city, I doubted whether any race of men could ever fill it; looking at the inhabitants, I wondered whether any city could be found large enough to hold them all.  The balance seemed exactly even.”  This quote by one of the Alexandrian natives paradoxically gives the readers a brief vision of the size and population of the city.  “Forty-foot-tall rose granite sculptures of Cleopatra…greeted new arrivals in the Alexandrian harbor.  Glossy thirty-foot-long sphinxes guarded the city’s temples.”  The concrete details, “forty-foot-tall” and “rose granite” clearly paint an image into the readers mind; the colossal size of the statues are not left open for interpretation, but instead Schiff tells the reader exactly how they are and how they are to be perceived.  Notice even the composition of the sculptures is not left out, Schiff does not fail to explain that the sculptures are not just sculptures, but “rose granite sculptures.”  The big things about the city, the things that make the overall city what is it, are very intricately explained with literally no absence of detail, thus creating a crystal clear picture in the readers head.
	While Schiff does an outstanding job visualizing the city as a whole for us using concrete details and sensory imagery at its macro level, she also manages to convey the city at its micro level.  Exempting every nook and cranny that heads no importance to the analysis, almost every other sensory aspect is taken into account.  “During the day Alexandria echoed with the sounds of horses’ hooves…Fragrance rippled not only from the table but from jewelry, perfumed lamps, soles of shoes…Tables glistened with silver basins, pitchers, hundreds of candelabra.”  Using this approach, all of our five senses are targeted and stimulated while reading.  The concrete details that explain the city at its micro level proceed to be just as vast and potent as those encompassing the city as a whole.  Readers can therefore conclude that even at its deepest, smallest level the city is alive and well.
	In an attempt to broaden the readers understanding, even after using such explicit details to convey the city as a whole and its micro level, the authors use of connotative language gives us even more of an understanding of ones perspective of the city.  While on the outside, the city is nothing less than magnificent, it is when we hone in on the accounts that we begin to see the extent at which the project lies.  “’The general rule,’ gushed one chronicler, ‘is that no flower, including roses, snowdrops, or anything else, ever completely stops blooming.”  Only in hindsight will one notice the author’s use of the word “gushed” instead of another word carrying less of a negative connotation.  “Gushed” as one knows, may imply the over-praise and over-achievement of the city – it is simply “too much” of what is happening.  “Her elaborate gold and silver place setting became her ‘ordinary ware.’”  This understatement again carries a connotation that leads the reader to create a second understanding of the city; that instead the city is just too much to even handle and comprehend.  
	Ultimately, the images of Alexandria that Schiff embeds into our minds indeed leave a lasting impression.  Alexandria was by no means any ordinary city: it was gargantuan, both in its construction and its inhabitants.  Expressing such an immense idea is no easy task, but by selective use of concrete details the author was able to effectively communicate her point about the city.  Seemingly subliminal, she also put forth her own views of the city, giving us readers the understanding of just how overly immense and how overly luxurious the city was.  The extremity of the city has been conveyed, and readers are left with a lasting impression of what they may regard as the greatest city of all time or a superficial, guided piece of trivial history.