So little is known with any certainty as to Cleopatra’s appearance, that the biographer must feel considerable reluctance in presenting her to his readers in definite guise; yet the duties of an historian do not permit him to deal with ghosts and shadows, or to invoke from the past only the misty semblance of those who once were puissant realities. For him the dead must rise not as phantoms hovering uncertainly at the mouth of their tombs, but as substantial entities observable in every detail to the mental eye; and he must endeavour to convey to others the impression, however faulty, which he himself has received. In the case of Cleopatra the materials necessary for her resuscitation are meagre, and one is forced to call in the partial assistance of the imagination in the effort to rebuild once more that body which has been so long dissolved into Egyptian dust.
A few coins upon which the Queen’s profile is stamped, and a bust of poor workmanship in the British Museum, are the sole[3] sources of information as to her features. The colour of her eyes and of her hair is not known; nor can it be said whether her skin was white as alabaster, like that of many of her Macedonian fellow-countrywomen, or whether it had that olive tone so often observed amongst the Greeks. Even her beauty, or rather the degree of her beauty, is not clearly defined. It must be remembered that, so far as we know, not one drop of Oriental blood flowed in Cleopatra’s veins, and that therefore her type must be considered as Macedonian Greek. The slightly brown skin of the Egyptian, the heavy dark eyes of the East, full, as it were, of sleep, the black hair of silken texture, are not features which are to be assigned to her. On the contrary, many Macedonian women are fair-haired and blue-eyed, and that colouring is frequently to be seen amongst the various peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, it seems most probable, all things considered, that she was a brunette; but in describing her as such it must be borne in mind that there is nothing more than a calculated likelihood to guide us.
The features of her face seem to have been strongly moulded, although the general effect given is that of smallness and delicacy. Her nose was aquiline and prominent, the nostrils being sensitive and having an appearance of good breeding. Her mouth was beautifully formed, the lips appearing to be finely chiselled. Her eyes were large and well placed, her eyebrows delicately pencilled. The contour of her cheek and chin was charmingly rounded, softening, thus, the lines of her clear-cut features. “Her beauty,” says Plutarch, “was not in itself altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her”; and he adds that Octavia, afterwards Antony’s wife, was the more beautiful of the two women. But he admits, and no other man denies, that her personal charm and magnetism were very great. “She was splendid to hear and to see,” says Dion Cassius, “and was capable of conquering the hearts which had resisted most obstinately the influence of love and those which had been frozen by age.”
