Damian Whitworth: What on earth did Antony ever see in her?
A silver coin from 32BC that went on display at Newcastle University on Valentine’s Day bears an unflattering image of Antony and Cleopatra. Contrary to popular belief, he had bulging eyes and a hooked nose, and she, as The Sun so pithily put it, was “a minger”.
Cleopatra VII did not look like Elizabeth Taylor. Or rather she did look like Elizabeth Taylor, but as the screen legend is now, rather than as she was when she made eyes at Richard Burton in the 1963 film.
I went to see my colleague Philip Howard, the font of all classical knowledge. “Please Philip, say it ain’t so!” I pleaded. He shook his head sorrowfully and reached for The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilisation, which notes of Cleopatra: “Plutarch reports it was her conversation rather than her looks which formed the secret of her success.”
All the important historical sources I have ever seen have pointed to Cleopatra as one of the great femmes fatales. I remember first coming across her at the age of 8 through the work of the great Goscinny and Uderzo, those unimpeachable authorities on the culture of the ancient world. In Asterix and Cleopatra Albert Uderzo created arguably the sauciest of his female characters; a haughty minx with an hourglass figure poured into shimmering, slinky outfits, a perfect glossy, dark bob and a pointy nose stuck high in the air.
Amanda Barrie in a gold bikini in Carry On Cleo made quite an impression when I was an adolescent. Then at A level I studied Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In the first scene Antony is called a “strumpet’s fool” and to a 17-year-old the Egyptian queen was immediately intriguing. I was in lust with the last of the Ptolemies. ...
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Cleopatra VII did not look like Elizabeth Taylor. Or rather she did look like Elizabeth Taylor, but as the screen legend is now, rather than as she was when she made eyes at Richard Burton in the 1963 film.
I went to see my colleague Philip Howard, the font of all classical knowledge. “Please Philip, say it ain’t so!” I pleaded. He shook his head sorrowfully and reached for The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilisation, which notes of Cleopatra: “Plutarch reports it was her conversation rather than her looks which formed the secret of her success.”
All the important historical sources I have ever seen have pointed to Cleopatra as one of the great femmes fatales. I remember first coming across her at the age of 8 through the work of the great Goscinny and Uderzo, those unimpeachable authorities on the culture of the ancient world. In Asterix and Cleopatra Albert Uderzo created arguably the sauciest of his female characters; a haughty minx with an hourglass figure poured into shimmering, slinky outfits, a perfect glossy, dark bob and a pointy nose stuck high in the air.
Amanda Barrie in a gold bikini in Carry On Cleo made quite an impression when I was an adolescent. Then at A level I studied Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In the first scene Antony is called a “strumpet’s fool” and to a 17-year-old the Egyptian queen was immediately intriguing. I was in lust with the last of the Ptolemies. ...