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9.58.1), implying she owed her position of wealth and power because she prostituted herself to Mark Antony (83-30 BC) with her wanton physique.

Cleopatra in Roman literatureįor Pliny the Elder, Cleopatra was no more than a “harlot queen ( regina meretrix)” ( Nat. Michaels, Heritage Auctions) posthumous portrait of Blaise Pascal by François Quesnel II (1637-1699 oil painting, ca. Silver hemiobol struck in Patrae, Achaea (Greece) with the diademed portrait of Queen Cleopatra (Heritage 3015, 7-12 September 2011, lot 23278 photo courtesy of David S. So, was Cleopatra really attractive and why does it matter what she looked like? On the basis of portrait coins struck by Cleopatra, philosophers such as Blaise Pascal assumed that the queen’s prominent nose was an element of the physical attraction with which she seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony – and thus changed the course of world history. Historians do not normally address matters of physical appearance, except to paint a portrait of a biographic subject, not to answers questions about historical significance of political power. This idea pervades our modern perception – in serious scholarship, Asterix comics and Hollywood cinema. While for Pascal this thought illustrated how something small can change the course of history, the statement is also based on the belief that Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) owed her powerful position at that important juncture of history to her physique alone. “The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been a shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) ruminated ( Pensées 162).