Cleopatra was minging then? As Queen of Egypt and seducer of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony Cleopatra has always been down as one of history’s great stunnas, but was she? A newly discovered Roman Denarius shows the “Queen of Kings” as a hook nosed, thin lipped witchy - looking bird bearing not the slightest resemblance to the young Elizabeth Taylor, star of the film Cleopatra or the young Amanda Barrie who played the role in the vastly superior movie “Carry on Cleo.”
Historians have not always conformed to the idea that all Queens and Princesses must by definition be beautiful. Blaise Pascal wrote: Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter the whole face of the world might have changed. Could he perhaps have been suggesting that her lovers might each have thought “oh no, I can’t bear waking up next to hatchet face again, I’m off to conquer the Parthians.
So had Cleo been enough of a looker to keep the boys at home, or even shared Posh Spice’s alleged proclivities there might not have been a Roman Empire.
But if she was such a grot what inspired a writer like Shakespeare to pen these lines:
“Age cannot wither her nor custom stale
her infinite variety, other women
cloy the appetites they feed but she
makes hungry where most she satisfies”
Well from that I reckon she was giving her blokes drugs.