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How much was true about the proverbial beauty of Cleopatra VII ?

Started by JMP, May 19, 2024, 06:13:03 PM

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JMP

Cleopatra VII should have had a remarkable nose  :) . Ask Asterix!
Historically she secuced Julius Caesar, with whom she had a son and later Mark Antony.
Quite an achievement though . . .
Look how we picture her today in prints and films :o!

But what do our coins tell us about that remarkable woman ?
Well, she seems not to have been a hag, but a beauty ::) . . .
Look at her Ptolemaic Drachm underneath.
But maybe she was old then ? No, she was only 39 years old when she died.
So far so good.

What however to think of the famous Tetradrachm with her on one side and Mark Antony on the other.
About Mark we can be short, he certainly was not an Adonis.
But Cleopatras' portrait on that piece has everything of a travestite, a drag queen and not of the prize-winning kind. Look at those male features and (on some specimens more than on others) that pronounced Adams' apple. Was that really the seducing queen :-* ?

Maybe one can find ancient coins with nicer portraits of Cleopatra but as a real beauty ? I doubt.
Yes I know, there is no discussion about tastes and colours (and beauty). . .

FosseWay

Even when she was older, she was supposed to be a great beauty. As Shakespeare had Antony's friend Enobarbus say, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety; other women cloy the appetite they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies."

Clearly as you say, what constitutes "beauty" in one age doesn't necessarily match another age's definition. But it's clear that at least since Shakespeare's time, it has been an "accepted fact" that Cleopatra was extraordinarily beautiful by the standards of her time. 

It's also an accepted fact, without scare quotes this time, that she was unusual in the Mediterranean world of 2000 years ago for being a ruling queen. Most royal women were the wives of kings and emperors. I suspect that the principal attraction was the power she wielded, which would then at least in part fall into the hands of her husband if she married. Tradition then transformed that prosaic and practical reason for seeking to marry her into a more romantic one.

Compare all the descriptions of Queen Elizabeth I of England - all the Virgin Queen stuff. Elizabeth, possibly unlike Cleopatra, knew perfectly well that if she got married her independence as Queen would be threatened by the authority of her husband, and also knew that theoretically keeping the door open to marriage could keep the right people on side. Cleopatra made the wrong decision on both counts.

Offa

From the available frescos and images cleopatra was not a raging beauty she was quite plain with a hooked nose
Member British numismatic society

Tirant

I've readed often about Cleopatra being "not that beauty".

I agree with the fact that what we consider beautiful today might not be the same than 2000 years ago (it wasn't the same even 100 years ago).

Anyway, watching that ptolemaic drachm, i don't see her that ugly...

krishna

Even before 100 years, a large part of society used to consider fatter people as a benchmark of beauty
the perception (mark the word perception) of beauty solely lies in the eyes of the beholder (who is of course influenced by the marketing agencies of that time)

WillieBoyd2

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