Why Was Cleopatra So Irresistible? Look Beyond Her Face

Ask anybody to name the most beautiful woman of the ancient world and you get the same answer: Cleopatra. The closest source we have says something different.

What Plutarch actually wrote

The Greek writer Plutarch wrote about 130 years after she died. That sounds late, but he used accounts from people who were there, including the grandson of her own doctor.

On her looks, he says her beauty was not in itself incomparable, and not the kind that struck those who saw her.

Her own coins agree. She approved those portraits. They show a hooked nose, a heavy chin, a thin mouth and a strong jaw. That is not the face in the films.

So what was it?

Plutarch finishes the thought. Talking with her had an irresistible charm. Her voice was like an instrument with many strings, and she could turn it to whatever language she wanted. She rarely needed a translator.

Her family had ruled Egypt for 300 years. They were Greek, and almost none of them learned Egyptian. She did. She was the first of her line to speak to her own people in their own language.

She also ran the richest country in the Mediterranean. Egypt fed Rome, and Rome knew it. When Rome met Cleopatra, it was meeting the person who held the grain.

Where the beauty story came from

Mostly from her enemies. The Roman general Mark Antony went to Egypt and did not come back the way Rome wanted. Rome could explain that in two ways: he made his own choice, or a foreign woman bewitched him.

Rome chose the second. She became a temptation instead of a ruler.

The story kept growing for 2,000 years. Shakespeare wrote her that way. Painters painted her that way. Films cast the most beautiful actress available. Each version made the face bigger, and the languages, the fleet and the grain disappeared.

To be fair, we cannot say she was plain either. Coins flatten a face, and Plutarch was not in the room. All we can honestly say is that the closest source says her looks were not the point.

What "beautiful" meant depended on where you stood

Egypt

Beauty was about the eyes: heavy black paint drawn out in a long line, on men and women. Rich women shaved their heads and wore wigs with hundreds of tiny plaits set with beeswax. On top sat a cone of scented fat that melted through the evening. Egyptian art shows everybody slim and young, because the pictures were not portraits. They were how you wanted to exist forever.

Rome

Rome praised skin as white as possible, because pale meant you did not work outside. Some people painted blue veins on their temples to look even paler. Rome also liked a single eyebrow that met in the middle, drawn in with soot if needed. Blonde wigs were made from hair cut in northern Europe.

Greece

Greece praised a straight line from forehead to nose. Greek statues are averages built from rules of proportion. The most famous beautiful faces in the world are not portraits of anybody.

Helen has no face

Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, is a character in a poem, and the poem never describes her. Homer shows the old men of Troy watching her walk past. They have lost sons in a war fought over her, and they quietly say they understand. Every reader supplies the face.

What beauty was for

In most of these places a woman could not hold office or command troops. The routes to power were narrow: marriage, family, and being noticed by the right person. That made beauty a tool. The kohl, the wig and the white lead were hours of daily work, done because it moved people up or kept them where they were.

Cleopatra had routes nobody else had: a throne, a fleet, Rome's grain supply and nine languages. She did not need to be the most beautiful woman alive. She needed to be the most useful one to talk to.

The short answer

Egypt, Rome and Greece each wanted a different face, so beauty was a local rule and not a fact. The woman everybody names was praised for her conversation. Rome wrote that out of the story, and we have repeated Rome's version ever since.