The Armour Archive

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,252020,00.html

LONDON — So maybe Mark Antony loved Cleopatra for her mind.

That is the conclusion being drawn by academics at Britain's University of Newcastle from a Roman denarius coin which depicts the celebrated queen of Egypt as a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin.

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Um, I thought everybody knew that. This isn't the first coin found with her image on it. That she's was beautiful in the eyes of Antony and Julius Ceasar seems evident but she was also known to be extremely charming, witty, well educated and delightful to be with.

Yup.

Hey man, I'm just the messenger.

Witty, intelligent....

Not to mention literally "vast tracts of land"

*Huge* tracts, but yeah. Watched MP&THG the other day in a classic-movies rerelease at the local cheap theater. Remarkably dark print; a good deal of the flick was very dim.

D. Sebastian wrote:Yup.

Hey man, I'm just the messenger.

Whew, I feel better now.

Huge tracts of land never hurt.

I prefer 'moderately sized, and well formed', myself.

I don't think the coin really says much. Some people are drop-dead georgeous, but if you get them at the wrong angle, it doesn't show.

She was Greek, so if you look at what classical Greeks considered 'beautiful', you'd probably have a better idea of what she looked like.

This also depends on the skill of the celator, and the fact that he might not have even see her in person. Depending on one coin for a likeness, even Roman, is probably not a good idea. I don't know when this coin was minted, but it is well known in ancient coin circles, that the first coins of a rulers rein, the portraits look a lot like the earlier ruler. It takes time for the celators to get their bearing and learn the new rulers' features. Here is a case in point between the emperor Nerva and the emperor Trajan. The first image is of Nerva, the second is an early minting from the rein of Trajan. The last is the well known and well done, but later, portrait of Trajan.

And who is going to go home and tell their legion buddies "I slept with the Queen of Egypt, and she is butt ugly!"

Is it not also possible that the standards of what we consider beauty were not the same as what they considered?