How beautiful was Cleopatra?

Silver coin of Cleopatra VII

When I started to draft this post, I thought that it would end up being topical and historically relevant. Women in power! But then . . . shit. Well, let's talk about Cleopatra, anyway.

Cleopatra VII was the last real pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, the Egyptian kingdom ruled by the successors of Alexander the Great's general, Ptolemy. At least since she began to rule Egypt, she's had a reputation as one of the most beautiful women in history. The fact that she attracted and entered into long-term relationships with two of the most powerful Roman men alive at the time, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, must be one of the reasons people assume she was exceptionally beautiful. But lately, as people delve into the artistic and archaeological record more deeply and identify portraits and possible portraits of Cleopatra, they've tried to argue that, in fact, she wasn't very pretty. Most recently, I've seen Tumblr users celebrating Cleopatra's supposed lack of beauty, saying it's proof that women can be powerful and charismatic even if they don't conform to beauty standards (ah Tumblr, where it is impossible to ever find something again so that I can provide a link).

Of course they're right that a woman can be appealing and intimidating and brilliant without being conventionally beautiful. And that the appearance of a powerful woman (or any woman) is far from the most important thing about her! But this is, after all, a blog about ancient beauty, and I think it's interesting to use Cleopatra as an example to explore ancient beauty standards. Because how exactly are we judging Cleo's looks here?

Silver coins of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony. (Photo by Sailko.)

There are a few different ways for us to try to determine if Cleopatra was really a beautiful as history records. First, we could just look at ancient portraits of her and try to decide. Coins are the most reliable sources of these portraits, because they combine her image with an inscription naming her.  Marble portraits, on the other hand, aren't labeled, and so not everyone agrees that every portrait that's been identified as Cleopatra VII is really her. Basically, you have to compare the coins portraits to the marble heads and see if you think they look like the same person.

It's pretty hard to use coins to tell what someone really looked like, though. Portraits on ancient coins are very simplified--plus, they have to be recognizable at a really small size (much smaller than I've enlarged them here). That means they're kind of like caricatures. Nobody looks particularly great on their coins. But then most people never saw the faces of rulers close up and in person, so the coin designers could deviate from reality a bit to make someone look like, say, a more powerful leader. Or in the case of the coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony above, to make the two of them look more alike and emphasize their unity. So we can't tell a whole lot from Cleopatra's coins, except that maybe she had a prominent nose and that was a feature people associated with her, and that her official hairstyle was included rolls that look something like thick cornrows going back to a bun, with little curls along the hairline, and her diadem on top.

So let's look at a life-size marble head that is probably a portrait of Cleopatra, below.

Possible portrait of Cleopatra VII in Altes Museum Berlin

Possible portrait of Cleopatra VII in Altes Museum Berlin (Photo by Anagoria.)

I chose this one because the nose is intact, which is rare. She has the same hair style as the portrait on the coins, with her hair divided into curly rolls (art historians call this the "melon coiffure"), a diadem over it, and a pretty prominent nose. The problem with this head is that it was probably "cleaned" with some harsh chemicals a long time ago, and they may have dissolved some of the marble, which would make all of her features look softer. Even if we imagine her nose or chin a little pointier--are you telling me this isn't an attractive woman? Or couldn't have been?

But there's a serious problem with looking at portraits of Cleopatra and deciding whether or not they show a beautiful woman. The problem is that beauty ideals vary drastically over time and from one culture to another. So even if we can say unequivocally that we think she is beautiful (or not), judging by our own standards, that tells us next to nothing about what ancient Egyptians and Romans and Greeks would have thought. Beyond that, opinions about beauty differ from one person to the next, so I doubt that we can even come to an agreement amongst ourselves about how good Cleopatra looked. I mean, there are people who will try to tell you that Angelina Jolie or even Beyonce isn't beautiful (they are clearly wrong, but you get my point).

Beyond just looking at portraits and then claiming that Cleopatra wasn't hot, the other piece of evidence people use for that side of the argument is a quotation from Plutarch, who wrote a biography of Mark Antony in Greek a couple of centuries later. He wrote:

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect [of Greek].

(Translation from Perseus Digital Library.)

He does not say that she wasn't beautiful. He says that she wasn't absolutely more beautiful than anyone else ever--and that she had all of these other appealing qualities and talents in addition to her good looks. Like she could speak tons of languages. In fact, Cleopatra was supposedly one of the only pharaohs in the Ptolemaic line of kings who actually bothered to learn the native language of Egypt. She was a savvy politician for sure. In other parts of the book, Plutarch does talk about how beautiful she was, and so do other Roman authors. As far as I know, no one else so much as suggests that she wasn't stunning. So the general consensus of ancient men, at least, is that Cleopatra was super hot.

Cleopatra's appearance is probably of minor importance in judging her political influence. But thinking about this question in the context of ancient beauty is a good reminder that we can't simply judge the attractiveness of ancient people based on our own instincts, on whether an image of someone appeals to us personally, or on whether or not it fits into our own dominant beauty standards. Overall, I think the two best possible answers to the question of how beautiful Cleopatra really was are (a) who cares?; or (b) we can't really judge that for ourselves, but the ancient Romans thought so.

In the future I'll write another post about ancient beauty ideals (spoiler: the Romans found unibrows and small boobs hot). For now, if you want to read more about Cleopatra, the book Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth is particularly good. It's a museum catalogue so it has tons of images, plus chapters about Cleopatra's background, political strategies, image, and legacy. Personally, I prefer books by experts--I'm suspicious of an author who claims to provide a "new perspective" on Cleopatra, but who is unable to read ancient Greek (the language in which the most detailed ancient texts about her were written).

And for more ancient literary sources and portraits, see this excellent essay, as well.