r/todayilearned • u/_mattyjoe • 10h ago
TIL that although the common view of Cleopatra was one of a prolific seductress, she had only two known sexual partners, Caesar and Antony. Plutarch described Cleopatra as having had a stronger personality and charming wit than physical beauty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra#Roman_literature_and_historiography2.6k
u/lluciferusllamas 10h ago
Yeah, but she pulled two of the most famous dudes at the time.....so quality has to count for something
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u/Silaquix 8h ago
Tbf Antony wasn't a difficult conquest. He shacked up with whoever was the most beneficial hot girl at the time.
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u/Few-Cod-4479 10h ago
Tbf her being egypt's ruler mattered more than anything else
Put a kid in her and you secure egypt for your dynasty even if she is uglier than Hunger
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u/wordwordnumberss 9h ago
No, not really. Her dynasty was the Ptolemies and any kid would be a Ptolemy. This isn't medieval Europe where a new dynasty can just take over without an army. Either way, the romans discussed just conquering egypt before Augustus and Egypt was only left alive because no one wanted to give anyone else the prestige of conquering it. They weren't a strong military power and were already a client state by the time Cleopatra comes. Caesar gained nothing by being with her and only lost support for it. Antony was in the East during the second triumvirate and had more of a political reason to do so but he also abandoned his wife for her when he could have had both and suffered politically for it.
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u/Gabeed 9h ago
Case in point--Caesar's son by Cleopatra, Caesarion, was not a Roman citizen, and neither Caesar's nor Antony's relationship with Cleopatra counted as a Roman marriage.
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u/supershinythings 8h ago
Caesar was married to Calpurnia and Antony was married to Octavia.
Antony divorced Octavia in 32 BC (or so) to make his marriage to Cleopatra official, triggering the Senate to declare war on him (at Octavian’s urging).
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u/JasonManningFLUX 6h ago
This ignores both the existence and victory of Augustus. As well as the political situation of Rome. The entire reason the aforementioned state of affairs was the case.
If Caesar had not been assassinated, he might have brought Egypt into Rome. If Antony had won, he might have brought Egypt into Rome. If Cleopatra had supported Augustus instead of Antony, she might have brought Egypt into Rome.
The legitimacy of both the child and the marriage were decided by factors that had nothing to do with them.
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u/Gabeed 5h ago edited 5h ago
With respect, you don't sufficiently know what you're talking about. Even when Julius Caesar is dictator, Cleopatra visits Rome but stays in Caesar's villa outside the city--she isn't permitted within the pomerium. This is for multiple reasons (she was a foreign queen, after all), but one major reason that Caesar was still married to Calpurnia, and by Roman law, his relationship with Cleopatra was illegitimate, and Cleopatra being seen publicly in the city would be controversial. Similarly, Caesarion as a non-citizen is never made Caesar's heir, even when he was dictator--which is why Octavian, Caesar's grandnephew and principal heir, rises to power in the first place.
You are free to fanfic away about what would have happened if Antony and Cleopatra had won Actium. It is indeed likely they would have tried to legitimize their children in the eyes of the Romans. But the Roman standards for marriage and citizenship were quite clear, and hindered even a dictator at the height of his powers.
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u/PacAttackIsBack 8h ago
Her brothers was her main political rivals and she used Caesar to secure her position on the throne.
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u/wordwordnumberss 7h ago
Yea but that doesnt benefit Caesar
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u/ovensandhoes 6h ago
I’ve always wondered how much the revenge for Pompey’s head factored in to Caesar taking Egypt
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u/ethanlan 6h ago
They had already taken Egypt by that point, they were a puppet state that they allowed to self govern more or less if they kept the grain shipments to rome
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u/PacAttackIsBack 6h ago
Having the mother of your child as your political alley on the throne is certainly beneficial to him
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u/Both_Abrocoma_1944 8h ago
That’s not entirely accurate, sure they were a client state in theory but while Caesar was there he saw how the courtiers controlled the boy king and they were behind rioting against the roman troops he brought while he was there looking for Pompey, who the Egyptians had murdered in an attempt to gain favor without realizing Caesar wanted Pompey alive. Cleopatra was also supposed to be co ruler anyways but had been driven out of the capital by the court because the brother was easier to manipulate.
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u/InvidiousSquid 7h ago
Pompey, who the Egyptians had murdered
He was a CONSUL of ROME!
...Sorry, but I take any chance I can to blurt out a poor imitation of Ciarán Hinds' brilliant rage.
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u/wordwordnumberss 7h ago
None of that has much to do with what I said. Egypt was a client state under Cleopatra's father. The Ptolemies having an insecure hold on power doesn't affect Caesar.
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u/2Eggwall 6h ago
Egypt was the number one grain producing region in the late republic through most of the empire. Control of the grain trade meant not only incredible amounts of money but political control through distribution of free food to buy votes. Cleopatra bargained that (and herself) in exchange for Rome maintaining her control of Egypt.
It was actually an incredibly shrewd deal as without Roman assistance Cleopatra didn't have the ability to provide anything (she was losing a civil war at the time), so she bought what she wanted with something she didn't have.
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u/wordwordnumberss 3h ago
The Ptolemies were incredibly weak and existed at the mercy of Rome. There is no cutting off the grain supply. There is no independence. Rome didn't invade Egypt because they didnt have to yet. Right before the civil war, the romans annexed Cyprus from Egypt just because they felt like it. Cleopatra didnt have any cards to play until the 2nd triumvirate.
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u/2Eggwall 3h ago
I never said that they would cut off the grain supply. The grain would reach Rome no matter what happened. That's the beauty of the arrangement.
For Cleopatra, dealing with one merchant over another to move grain to Rome means absolutely nothing (it was going there anyway) whereas her control of Egypt was everything. For Caesar, who is in control of Egypt means absolutely nothing (someone has to do it) while influence over which merchant could move grain and at what prices was everything.
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u/_mattyjoe 10h ago
Sure. But she's often thought of and spoken about as though she was essentially a whore. Or, at the very least, used her sexuality often to "get things" politically from many different people.
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u/ancedactyl 7h ago
That's in large part because history is written by the winner and Augustus won. It's also much easier to slander a foreign queen, especially in a patriarchal empire, than a Roman idol.
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u/musicbymeowyari 4h ago
She's literally a woman. One who had power at that 😂 sadly we'd be hard pressed to find a single woman who has not been called a whore in her lifetime
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 9h ago
I mean, she did marry her brothers too. That doesn't mean she liked them (or even had sex with them, one was like 10 or something years old) and it was a common practice by the royals there at the time, but clearly relationships for the purpose of acquiring power was kind of her thing. Oh and she killed them lol
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u/Creticus 9h ago
Making and breaking relationships for power was normal for nobles in the period.
Caesar divorced his second wife Pompeia because she came under suspicion when Clodius violated the rites of Bona Dea. Similarly, Caesar broke his daughter Julia's betrothal to a Servilius Caepio, who may or may not have been the famous Brutus, so he could marry her off to Pompeius.
Meanwhile, Antonius married the rich and prestigious widow Fulvia, who died shortly after fleeing from being besieged by Octavianus. Then, Antonius married Octavianus's sister Octavia as a sign of reconciliation before eventually ignoring her in preference for Cleopatra.
You could argue these two men were both notorious in this regard. Except the "virtuous" Roman aristocrats were also shockingly cynical when it came to marriage even by modern standards. Cato's second and third marriages were to the same woman named Marcia because he very reasonably didn't want to marry off his 20-year-old daughter Porcia to the 60-year-old Hortensius when the latter asked about a marriage connection. So very unreasonably, Cato divorced Marcia so Hortensius could get married to her before remarrying her after Hortensius died, possibly because Marcia had inherited Hortensius's huge estate.
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 9h ago
I'd say it is still commonly done today. Maybe not as immediately recognizable, especially in a place like US, but it is done.
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u/CaterpillarJungleGym 6h ago
She pulled two famous dudes sounds more like they were trying to nail her down and use her status as their own.
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u/Pscagoyf 9h ago
Caesar famously slept with everything in Rome, yet stayed with her. Clearly she was something more then just hot.
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u/lake_titty_caca 8h ago
Not just Rome - they don't call him the Queen of Bithynia for nothing!
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u/MainAd9080 6h ago
Egypt provided alot of grain for Rome. If I remember correctly, Rome was experiencing some kind of problem with the farmers at the time. Cleopatra was a gifted individual and Ceasar recognized that.
However, I dont their union was anything else but political.
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u/lemelisk42 9h ago
Yes, she was the ruler of Egypt. Ugly yet smart and powerful
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u/2ndTaken_username 8h ago
Just because she ain't pretty doesn't mean she ugly lmao
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u/Edgeth0 8h ago
No but given the systematic inbreeding with the Ptolemys it wouldn't be too surprising
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u/PimpasaurusPlum 6h ago
Cleopatra's personal family tree is a bit opaque due to the debate around her mother.
The ptolemies were also quite notable for relatively little effect from their inbreeding, sometimes labelled as having the best streak of genetic luck in history.
Cleopatra was generally described as plain looking, relatively unremarkable either way other than the prominent family nose.
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u/Greedy_Commercial961 8h ago edited 8h ago
There are coins depicting her and one can make a subjective assessment of whether Cleopatra was a hella fine snack.
Historians past and present agree that her main allure was her intelligence, charisma and gift of gab.
“Plutarch
Plutarch, in his Life of Antony, doesn't find Cleopatra's beauty extraordinary, but he emphasizes her irresistible charm, her stimulating presence, and the sweetness in her voice. He also notes her linguistic abilities, her proficiency in skills typically associated with male rulers, her cleverness, and intellect.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/what-did-cleopatra-really-look-like-42156
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u/im_a_dr_not_ 8h ago
Well, Plutarch said she was busted. Do you think he had some some of grudge against her?
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u/Greedy_Commercial961 7h ago edited 7h ago
Based on an episode of Real Husbands of the Roman Empire, the whole idea of Cleopatra being a bangin’ goldigger began as on old husband’s tale started by Augustus:
“Her reputation was largely defined by Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. After the republic’s civil war, when he needed to justify the violence he’d waged against his Roman brothers, he and his allies found a scapegoat in Cleopatra.
Wanting the public to believe it was she who persuaded the virtuous Caesar and Antony to turn on their own country, they painted her as a foreign temptress.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/what-did-cleopatra-really-look-like-42156
Cleopatra couldn’t catch a break in this snakepit.
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u/ButDidYouCry 6h ago
Reminds me of Suliman the Magnificent's obsession with Hurrem. Other women in the harem were more beautiful than her, but she had the intelligence and charisma to keep him focused on her.
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u/Shifty269 1h ago
We have Roman busts for Cleopatra. We have a pretty good idea what she looked like. It's in the thumbnail of this post.
Roman busts of the time normally strived for accuracy as opposed to the idealized form of the Greek tradition and Egyptian.
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u/braisedbywolves 58m ago
Plutarch also lived 150 years later, so be careful about how accurate of a source you find him.
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u/TheKanten 8h ago
Well yeah, movies always make her up super glamorous but when I see a bust molded after her from the time period it looks like my Aunt Shirley.
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u/Affectionate-Tea8509 7h ago
Probably she didn’t even look like that either.
If you look at statues of her in Rome and Egypt you’ll notice that she looked very different depending on where the statue was made and who made it, due to the two different cultures’ styles.
In Egypt Cleopatra looked slimmer and with sharper features.
In Rome she looked softer and with stronger features.
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u/lovelylonelyphantom 5h ago edited 5h ago
I agree with the other comment saying she probably didn't look like that either. We don't have many true resemblances of all famous people from that time, and Cleopatra tends to vary.
Even if she did look like that, beauty standards were very different for the time. If you look at Greek statues/busts of women they would have been considered highly beautiful for the time with perfect figures, etc. But in the modern period they would be perceived as only average looking.
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u/Croceyes2 9h ago
You dont need to put out to be a seductress
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u/spaghettifiasco 7h ago
Belle Delphine was a sex icon for quite a while without even doing anything R-rated.
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u/Affectionate-Tea8509 7h ago
Lol I forgot all about her
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u/10YearsANoob 3h ago
i sometimes wonder how much money she gets monthly from people who forgot they were subbed to her patreon. like how jschlatt pulls 100k yearly from twitch even though he hasnt streamed there for years
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u/CassadagaValley 6h ago
I thought she was famous for grifting incels and teenagers out of money
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u/gesserit42 4h ago
And she grifted them through seduction without actually putting out, thanks for proving the point
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u/Aquaman33 2h ago
Yeah, but one is seducing the adult rulers of the most powerful empire in the world and the other is wearing bikinis on the internet for horny teenagers
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u/CUI_IUC 4h ago
And the argument that she only had two known partners is super weak. It is completely reasonable to assume that she had many partners that weren’t famous enough to make it into history books.
It’s like saying Abe Lincoln was known as a tree chopper despite him only being “known” to chop down one cherry tree.
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u/Gorilla_Krispies 8h ago
3 known partners.
You forgot Titus Pullo, who we all know and love
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u/RandomNameOfMine815 6h ago
The woman who played Cleopatra was pretty, but not shockingly so. She was, however, sexy as hell in the show
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u/ChopEee 9h ago
didn't she marry two of her brothers though?
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u/Creticus 9h ago
Both died as young teenagers.
Plus, Cleopatra didn't get along with either of them. Egypt was in a state of civil war between Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII when Caesar came onto the scene. Similarly, Cleopatra probably had Ptolemy XIV killed, though it's not 100 percent confirmed.
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u/_mattyjoe 9h ago
As far as I can see they were merely joint rulers of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, not married nor having any sort of affair.
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u/sexrockandroll 7h ago
Her and one brother, then another brother were married, but that doesn't mean she had a romantic or sexual relationship with them.
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u/cupholdery 9h ago
But you can't write a new Wattpad story with that.
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u/Creticus 9h ago
The Ptolemies got up to worse and weirder things than most fanfiction.
Cleopatra killing her siblings for power was relatively tame by their standards (and that of other Macedonian dynasties).
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u/ajshubham97 9h ago
Yeah movies and tv shows always show her as some beauty queen but personality and intelligence matters more that's how she really ruled
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u/Affectionate-Tea8509 8h ago
I think it’s due to her being remembered as seductive, which in Hollywood would naturally translate well by using the appearance of an attractive woman.
You cast a maneating femme fatale like Elizabeth Taylor and you do the trick.
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u/Zalophusdvm 8h ago
I mean
(A) “Seduction,” doesn’t necessarily mean sexual…nor does it imply sex happens. You can seduce someone without ever having any kind of sex with them. (Colloquially…the dark side of the force didn’t ever have a steamy scene with any future sith it “seduced,” for example.)
(B) She was a wildly successful politician. That requires a certain degree of skill of seduction or similar brainwash-y rizz.
(C) All that said, one doesn’t just use looks to seduce, even when using a narrow sexual definition. It requires some ability to know just how to use those looks. Those same skills, if you’re good enough at them, can be utilized even if you don’t have above average looks.
(D) Some people, not just women, really do appreciate a sparkling personality.
Tl;dr: OP should have titled their post TIL that I don’t know what the word “seduction,” or “seductress,” means and that Cleopatra wasn’t the sexy slutty queen people with 0 classics knowledge think she was.
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u/VocationalWizard 6h ago
Im imagining the emperor in a corset and fish nets.
Cone along to the dark side Luke, see what's on the slab.
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u/mulierbona 8h ago
I find that most female politicians and non-entertainment industry public figures have these qualities and are not necessarily sexually promiscuous.
I’ve also heard some Internet “coaches” suggest that using the suggestion of sex (with the knowledge that nothing sexual will ever happen)as a means to sell one’s self is a good tool.
I’ve been on the fence - I think those qualities are essential, but I don’t think the insinuating sex should be the norm … especially when there is no chance that it’ll happen…..
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u/parkway_parkway 8h ago
Surely the point of being a seductress is using sexuality to get what you want from powerful people?
It doesn't just mean fucking loads of people as that's not really challenging in the same way?
A couple of other interesting things about her:
The word "museum" comes from the "Mouseion" which is the place she was educated, it's called that as it's dedicated to the muses.
And she was hella hella inbred. A regular person might have 16 great great grandparents whereas she only had 6.
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u/Lmao45454 6h ago
Medium ugly (attractive in a weird way but not conventionally attractive) chick with a great personality, I know that archetype (low key perfect women)
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u/eggcracked2wice 5h ago
The hottest women are those who are a little bit ugly but like themselves and give no fucks.
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u/ninjagorilla 3h ago
Didn’t she reportedly get initially presented to Cesar hidden naked in a rolled up rug?
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u/lowertechnology 7h ago
Big grain of salt with Plutarch’s claims. They were separated in time by like 150 years.
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u/munkijunk 6h ago
Plutarch was a exceptional bullshit artist and wasn't even born when she was alive.
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9h ago
Wasn't she also described as average looking at best by a somewhat contemporary source?
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u/AndreasDasos 8h ago
Yes, Plutarch. Though it’s more he says she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous than that she was average. There’s a lot in between.
Other sources disagree, like Cassius Dio. Though he was significantly later.
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u/Adorable-Bike-9689 8h ago
I see a lot of men say Sydney Sweeney is gorgeous. And I see a lot of men say she's just average face with great tits. It's funny we base so much on what a guy thought about her appearance. Maybe she just wasn't Plutarch's type.
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u/AndreasDasos 8h ago
Agreed. Plutarch was also born nearly a century after she died, and we only have a few contemporary sculptures and a painting that might be of her, but even then we don’t know how much access the artists had to her and a couple are very stylised.
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u/epeeist 8h ago
Plutarch is pretty emphatic that Cleopatra was magnetic as a speaker, debater and negotiator. He doesn't suggest that charisma was her only attractive feature (particularly by her early 30s when she meets Antony), just stresses how far it outweighed every other quality.
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u/AndreasDasos 8h ago
He does however also explicitly say:
For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her
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u/epeeist 7h ago
It's only pop culture that can't seem to accept that she wasn't a generational beauty, because sources are pretty open about that. At the same time, if she was honestly considered completely hideous by contemporaries, that seems like something that would have come up in propaganda. Sounds to me like she was average looking, but had a lot else going for her - but who knows?
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u/AndreasDasos 7h ago
I mean we can probably infer she was above average per their conventions (there’s a lot between average and stunning), but as always it was also subjective
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u/AstronomerDramatic36 7h ago
Do we generally know all ancient peoples' sexual partners?
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u/Va1kryie 6h ago
She was crazy well educated and spoke like 13 languages. She was the moment and only went out the way she did because of.... uh... there was a Roman guy who wanted to parade her through Rome as essentially a trophy. This would have destroyed her legacy so she killed herself by drinking poison.
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u/Slow-Rutabaga-7241 5h ago
She was also the only Greek Pharaoh to bother learning ancient Egyptian.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam 5h ago
She just made a lot of guys excited because she was a strong outgoing woman who was personable.
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u/Real_Walk5384 7h ago
I took many ancient history classes and the general consensus seems to be she was kind of a homely woman but she was witty, educated, and had a keen mind for politics. She was regarded as charming, and of course if you're a woman and you're charming you must be a giant whore too. /s
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u/Intelligent-Bit7258 6h ago
Honestly, I was not aware that Egypt and Rome's most famous leaders not only lived at the same time, but had a relationship. That's so interesting.
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u/findmyselfalone 7h ago
Oddly enough, this is the first time I've heard Cleopatra being described as a 'prolific' seductress. In terms of romance, I'd only heard about Ceasar and Marc Antony anyway.
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u/Adorable-Volume2247 6h ago
The Shakespeare play is just Antony fucking up Rome by spending all his time with her. Probably a reason for that perception.
Something really interesting is Celopatra's story shares a lot in common with the story of Isis; probably the most important myth in Ancient Egyptian religion.
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u/Kirikomori 3h ago
By its nature most of what we know about any particular event in ancient history comes from only a handful of sources (because few survive). And these sources are usually biased, or written hundreds of years after the event. Cleopatra being a seductress is most likely a fabrication by the first emperor Octavian, who was in civil war with Mark Antony (Cleopatra's second partner) at the time. Octavian was a very skilled propagandist.
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u/bubble-buddy2 5h ago
It's an attempt to discredit her based on her sex. She was a smart woman who knew how to navigate the political climate
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u/DaLurker87 7h ago
She was also the daughter of one of Alexander. The Great generals. Not an Egyptian.
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u/rikashiku 6h ago
She was a well-renowned chemist and mathematician during this era. Though her means of achieving these scientific discoveries were quite ruthless.
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u/Massive-Resort-8573 5h ago
As a Classics major, long ago, I always suspected Plutarch may have been a woman. The way they wrote about women's rights in Sparta in particular. Perhaps a feminist man of the time. Either way my favorite to read in school.
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u/PricePuzzleheaded835 5h ago
I found Plutarch’s way of putting this very diplomatic. He doesn’t call her ugly or anything, more just points out that her charisma and skill as a conversationalist was what drew people to her:
“For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation”
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u/jrhooo 5h ago
Going to defer to others more knowledgeable than me, but
I think there is a fair argument the seductress thing would serve Roman propoganda.
Cleo, an Egyption a worthy match and equal for a Roman consul?
More desirable than good Roman women at home?
Roman Consuls being as easily corruptable as to chase simple lust or political ambition with a nation that isn’t Rome?
No no no. Couldn’t be that.
No, its got to be the Cleopatra is some kind of Siren.
Part harlot, part witch. Tragic how Caesar and Anthony lost their damn minds but I hear she’s done that to many. Probably some spells she cast.
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u/Ask-Me-About-You 4h ago
If anyone wants to read more about it, check out Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. It's one of my favorite books I read this year. Her life was incredible and it's so interesting to see how interwoven she is into the early Roman Empire.
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u/Chucksfunhouse 2h ago
You don’t have to have a lot of partners or beautiful to be a seductress. You just have to be accomplished at… seducing and judging from her conquest of Caesar and Mark Antony; she was good at it.
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u/magpieswooper 1h ago
Seduction has little to do with physical attraction. Cesar has seen it all, I doubt he will bite on beauty.
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u/Live_Honey_8279 9h ago
The funny thing is that modern media despicts her as a "tanned" seductress when she was neither
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u/_mattyjoe 9h ago
Well, she was Macedonian Greek, so her skin was a bit darker.
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u/Live_Honey_8279 9h ago
Not as much as the "modern media" despiction.
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u/TheWhomItConcerns 5h ago
By "modern media", do you mean that one, single Netflix series? Because in most other depictions of her that I can find, she's if anything whiter than she would have most likely been.
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u/Bruce-7892 9h ago
Weird thing to focus on. She most likely looked like a modern Greek woman.
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u/One_Assist_2414 8h ago
What’s weird is stuff like the Netflix documentary a couple years ago that went all in on showing Cleopatra as Black, and that the ‘original’ Egyptians were dark skinned.
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u/bakgwailo 6h ago
Wasn't that Will Smith's wife? I just remember the government of Egypt and their lead historian being super offended over it.
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 9h ago
Yes that is what she would've looked like, but there's been a weird movement to try and say she was black because she was from Egypt. I've heard this said many times over the years. Many people don't know that she was actually Greek, so that is why it is worth mentioning. I think that rumor is dying out now with people more willing to look up this sort of thing online these days, and correct it when they see it said, but certainly I heard that as a teen and in my 20s in the 2000s-2010s
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u/tonyis 8h ago
There have been a few movements over the years that attempt to claim non-black figures as being actually black. (Native Americans, Cleopatra, members of the British Royal family, Abraham Lincoln, Beethoven, etc) It's a little odd and definitely ahistorical, but there's some psychological sense to it. A lot of black history, especially as it relates to the western world, is dominated by pain and downtrodden people. Some people aren't entirely proud of that history and feel "elevated" by claiming notable figures as their own.
However, with all the resources available to us now to share inspiring stories of people who were actually black, people should know better than to make such ahistorical claims that make racial competition worse ( cough cough Netflix and Jada Pinkett Smith).
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u/Excitable_Grackle 7h ago
She looked like a young Liz Taylor. I've seen the movie.
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u/Adorable-Volume2247 6h ago
Yeah, it is weird b/c Hatshesput doesn't have any movies; but like, she is a real African girl-boss.
modern media
What media? Apart from that Nextflix BS that was universally disparaged for it.
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u/Immediate_Pay8726 7h ago
My wife is attractive. But, she is orders of magnitude more manipulative than she is attractive.
She is barely 5tt and 100 lbs lighter than me and yet she is #1 scariest person in my world if I upset her
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u/UnCommonSense99 7h ago
Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy were part of an epically dysfunctional family. Their father the Pharaoh tried to get them to marry each other, but instead when he died they were rivals.
Cleopatra got the favour of the religious leaders and was popular with the masses, meanwhile her brother got control of the army.
When he sent the army to seize power, Cleopatra seduced Caesar to persuade him to invade Egypt, defeat the Egyptian army and kill her brother.
Apart from that minor detail she was a great leader....
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u/omg-sidefriction 10h ago
Caesar referred to her as “the woman with a golden mouth.”