More than his new girl from across the pond, Cleopatra was also a powerful ally to Caesar. As Jones points out, the statue was a political move to legitimize her rule over Egypt and her alliance with Rome: "Cleopatra was declared a friend and ally of the Roman people and Egypt was protected from annexation." The choice to associate Cleopatra with Venus was not only an enamored emperor's nod to his lover's beauty, it served that political purpose as well. Just as Caesar claimed to trace his lineage back Rome's mythical founder, Cleopatra similarly linked herself to the Egyptian goddess Isis, whom the Romans associated with Venus.
Funnily enough, this shrewd power move may have been the source of our contemporary notion that Cleopatra was a kohl-eyed smoke show. Her image on coins and a mural from that era make Bob Bianchi of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) doubt her legendary beauty. "The comparison [to Venus] implies Cleopatra VII must have resembled the classical goddesses of love," he writes on the ARCE website. "But unlike the image portrayed most noticeably by actress Elizabeth Taylor ..., I envision Cleopatra VII as a wiry, small-boned woman."
Surprised? So were we. And her possible beak nose was just one of a number of weird things we didn't know about Cleopatra, like the truth about her drinking club with her next Roman boy toy, Mark Antony.
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