10 Little-Known Facts About Cleopatra
While Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she traced her family origins to Macedonian Greece and Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Ptolemy reigned Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., and he launched a dynasty of Greek-speaking rulers that lasted for nearly three centuries. Despite not being ethnically Egyptian, Cleopatra embraced many of her country’s ancient customs and was the first member of the Ptolemaic line to learn the Egyptian language.
Like many royal houses, members of the Ptolemaic dynasty often married within the family to preserve the purity of their bloodline. More than a dozen of Cleopatra’s ancestors tied the knot with cousins or siblings, and it’s likely that her own parents were brother and sister. In keeping with this custom, Cleopatra eventually married both of her adolescent brothers, each of whom served as her ceremonial spouse and co-regent at different times during her reign.
Roman propaganda painted Cleopatra as a debauched temptress who used her sex appeal as a political weapon, but she may have been more renowned for her intellect than her appearance. She spoke as many as a dozen languages and was educated in mathematics, philosophy, oratory and astronomy, and Egyptian sources later described her as a ruler “who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company.” There’s also evidence that Cleopatra wasn’t as physically striking as once believed. Coins with her portrait show her with manly features and a large, hooked nose, though some historians contend that she intentionally portrayed herself as masculine as a display of strength. For his part, the ancient writer Plutarch claimed that Cleopatra’s beauty was “not altogether incomparable,” and that it was instead her mellifluous speaking voice and “irresistible charm” that made her so desirable.
Power grabs and murder plots were as much a Ptolemaic tradition as family marriage, and Cleopatra and her brothers and sisters were no different. Her first sibling-husband, Ptolemy XIII, ran her out of Egypt after she tried to take sole possession of the throne, and the pair later faced off in a civil war. Cleopatra regained the upper hand by teaming with Julius Caesar, and Ptolemy drowned in the Nile River after being defeated in battle. Following the war, Cleopatra remarried to her younger brother Ptolemy XIV, but she is believed to have had him murdered in a bid to make her son her co-ruler. In 41 B.C., she also engineered the execution of her sister, Arsinoe, who she considered a rival to the throne.
Cleopatra believed herself to be a living goddess, and she often used clever stagecraft to woo potential allies and reinforce her divine status. A famous example of her flair for the dramatic came in 48 B.C., when Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria during her feud with her brother Ptolemy XIII. Knowing Ptolemy’s forces would thwart her attempts to meet with the Roman general, Cleopatra had herself wrapped in a carpet—some sources say it was a linen sack—and smuggled into his personal quarters. Caesar was dazzled by the sight of the young queen in her royal garb, and the two soon became allies and lovers.
Cleopatra later employed a similar bit of theater in her 41 B.C. encounter with Mark Antony. When summoned to meet the Roman Triumvir in Tarsus, she is said to have arrived on a golden barge adorned with purple sails and rowed by oars made of silver. Cleopatra had been made up to look like the goddess Aphrodite, and she sat beneath a gilded canopy while attendants dressed as cupids fanned her and burned sweet-smelling incense. Antony—who considered himself the embodiment of the Greek god Dionysus—was instantly enchanted.
Cleopatra joined Julius Caesar in Rome beginning in 46 B.C., and her presence seems to have caused quite a stir. Caesar didn’t hide that she was his mistress—she even came to the city with their lovechild, Caesarion, in tow—and many Romans were scandalized when he erected a gilded statue of her in the temple of Venus Genetrix. Cleopatra was forced to flee Rome after Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman senate in 44 B.C., but by then she had made her mark on the city. Her exotic hairstyle and pearl jewelry became a fashion trend, and according to the historian Joann Fletcher, “so many Roman women adopted the ‘Cleopatra look’ that their statuary has often been mistaken for Cleopatra herself.”
Cleopatra first began her legendary love affair with the Roman general Mark Antony in 41 B.C. Their relationship had a political component—Cleopatra needed Antony to protect her crown and maintain Egypt’s independence, while Antony needed access to Egypt’s riches and resources—but they were also famously fond of each other’s company. According to ancient sources, they spent the winter of 41-40 B.C. living a life of leisure and excess in Egypt, and even formed their own drinking society known as the “Inimitable Livers.” The group engaged in nightly feasts and wine binges, and its members occasionally took part in elaborate games and contests. One of Antony and Cleopatra’s favorite activities supposedly involved wandering the streets of Alexandria in disguise and playing pranks on its residents.
Cleopatra eventually married Mark Antony and had three children with him, but their relationship also spawned a massive scandal in Rome. Antony’s rival Octavian used propaganda to portray him as a traitor under the sway of a scheming seductress, and in 32 B.C., the Roman Senate declared war on Cleopatra. The conflict reached its climax the following year in a famous naval battle at Actium. Cleopatra personally led several dozen Egyptian warships into the fray alongside Antony’s fleet, but they were no match for Octavian’s navy. The battle soon devolved into a rout, and Cleopatra and Antony were forced to break through the Roman line and flee to Egypt.
Cleopatra and Antony famously took their own lives in 30 B.C., after Octavian’s forces pursued them to Alexandria. While Antony is said to have fatally stabbed himself in the stomach, Cleopatra’s method of suicide is less certain. Legend has it that she died by enticing an “asp”—most likely a viper or Egyptian cobra—to bite her arm, but the ancient chronicler Plutarch admits that “what really took place is known to no one.” He says Cleopatra was also known to conceal a deadly poison in one of her hair combs, and the historian Strabo notes that she may have applied a fatal “ointment.” With this in mind, many scholars now suspect she used a pin dipped in some form of potent toxin—snake venom or otherwise.
The Queen of the Nile has been portrayed on the silver screen by the likes of Claudette Colbert and Sophia Loren, but she was most famously played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 sword-and-sandal epic “Cleopatra.” The film was plagued by production problems and script issues, and its budget eventually soared from $2 million to $44 million—including some $200,000 just to cover the cost of Taylor’s costumes. It was the most expensive movie ever made at the time of its release, and nearly bankrupted its studio despite raking in a fortune at the box office. If inflation is taken into account, “Cleopatra” remains one of the priciest movies in history even today.
Source ~ https://www.history.com/news/10-little-known-facts-about-cleopatra
@MissAdventurous , that’s so crazy, I just read about cleopatra not being Egyptian this morning!
'The Most Beautiful Woman of the German Middle Ages'
Uta of Naumburg was probably born around the turn of the 10th century, she was the daughter of Count Adalbert of Ballenstedt and his wife Hidda, daughter of Hodo I. She was a member of the House of Ascanisan, whose lands covered what today is Saxony and Brandenburg. Her ancestors, the Ascanians, name derives from a medieval Latin variant of the name Castle Aschersleben, which was a hilltop castle in Wolfsberg Germany. Uta had married Ekkehard II of Messen, a nobleman in the court of Henry III the Holy Roman Emperor who reigned from 1046 to 1056. Ekkehard was responsible for securing the German boarder against attacks from Poland andBohemia. Uta's marriage was childless, on their deaths the couple left their estates to Henry III and their great wealth to Naumburg Cathedral in order to help with the construction of a chapel. Uta and her husband are two of twelve nobles who were the founders of the cathedral and in the 13th century, twelve life sized 'donor portraits' were placed on pillars at one end of the cathedral in their honour.
Uta died sometime before 1046.
Many people over the centuries have noticed Uta's beauty, the late Umberto Eco was asked what woman from European art he would most like to spend the evening, he answered:
“In first place, ahead of all others, with Uta von Naumburg.”
Walt Disney also was taken with her beauty, look closely at this image of Uta, look first at her face and her clothing see how her collar is raised, and how one hand is supporting a fold in her cloak. Doe's she remind you of any one?
Disney used Uta's face in his 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he took her face, her crown and cloak and used them to create two characters. He changed Uta's face slightly to give us the evil, yet stunning medieval enchantresses, that is the wicked stepmother, and he used her sweet innocent look to create Snow White herself.
Uta is said to be the 'most beautiful woman of the German Middle Ages'
Eight centuries ago a stone mason captured Uta's beauty and carved it in limestone for all to see, today there have been numerous photographs taken of her, her image appears in art books and magazines, on postcards and calendars.
Work in silence, let the success make the noise!!
moving this to the main quote thread, wonderful quote though ^.^ [Shake49]
Brevity is the sister of talent.
Anton Chekhov
Imagine if you lived a life where every day was Saturday.
"The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere."
-Terrence McKenna
Wow... I did not know this....🫡 “Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered the theory of evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.” — Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery.
OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE. Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge. Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because at that time there's not much exposure for woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.
Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish). Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates).
Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work. Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science. Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.
[Photograph: Schlesinger Library]