#cleopatra

[spacenoirdetective]

I'm pretty sure I never got this bedtime story.

[annoyingpartyhumanflap]

i went to the museum and thought this cleopatra sculpture looked beautiful so i wanted to share

[9to5buzzcom]

On Jun 12, 1963, The epic historical drama movie 'Cleopatra' was released.

[thesandbeneathmytoes]

The Death of Cleopatra (1658) by Guido Cagnacci 

[josephbrassey]

I’ve been poking at Roman history and the Roman sources tendency to insist that cleopatra was physically plain is so funny when you know the context.

They were—at that point in history—obsessed with the notion that Roman women were the most beautiful in the world. Caesar was married to a Roman woman of high status.

Therefore, entirely for nationalistic reasons, he had to be attracted to Cleopatra ENTIRELY because of her keen political mind. NOT because she was physically attractive. That was NOT ALLOWED.

Mind you Cleopatra seems to have been the complete package: beautiful and brilliant and cunning, but for the sake of the Roman ego, in their histories she had to be PHYSICALLY UNREMARKABLE.

Reading some of this stuff you can almost hear an indignant Roman historian saying “… and Caesar had a child with Cleopatra, who was nOT PRETTIER THAN HIS NOBLE ROMAN WIFE.”

[shanks]

[aenielle]

📜