Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

[Ludicus]

If we take those coins as our evidence then Antony looked like a literal Popeye the Sailorman. We know this isn't true because we have the existing Hercules/Antony bust.

In fact, the supporters of Anthony would be shocked by what they could regard as a blasphemy. Antony, Popeye the Sailorman.
As we know,Heracles/Hercules was a model of the ideal Olympic hero.Antony himself had coins minted with an image of his ancestor (Anton, son of Heracles) issued by a supporter of Antony during the intense propaganda wars of the triumvirate.There is a gemstone which shows a statue of Hercules with Antony's features - or Antony with Hercules's features.

The supporters of Octavian seems to have countered with a conception of Antony as the hero of a less than flattering Herculean myth; a bowl of Arretine ware, showing Hercules as he reclines in a chariot under a parasol in women's clothes, while a masculine Cleopatra wears the lion skin of Hercules, and reaches for an enormous drinking cup (Edward Champlin,Nero, page 172).

Let's keep in mind that the omnipresent Heracles legitimized the Greek/Roman colonization of Western Europe, the construction of the Roman empire, and even the Augustan roads, renovations of the old Heraclean Way.

Plutarch says,

He had also a very good and noble appearance; his beard was well grown, his forehead large, and his nose aquiline, giving him altogether a bold, masculine look that reminded people of the faces of Hercules in paintings and sculptures. It was, moreover, an ancient tradition, that the Antonys were descended from Hercules, by a son of his called Anton.

---

Isaw a woman today that looked much like Cleopatra based on the 1st pageimagery.

At this time I wonder:
- Why I notice only women looking like Ptolemies.

Well, that's because incest has led to inbreeding, which has led in turn to degeneracy and loss of vigor. In doubt ask Polybius, Diodoros or Plutarch.

Cleopatra...green eyes

Alexander suffered from heterochromia...what's the most common eye colour in Macedonia?

[Aexodus]

Is this argument still being had?

White or not, were the Ptolemies not a Greek dynasty? Does all the ing inbreeding not show they were bloodline weirdos like the Hapsburgs?

[alhoon]

Alexander suffered from heterochromia...what's the most common eye colour in Macedonia?

Now or 2350 years ago? Cause since then there have been ~100-120 generations and several other tribes settling in.

[Kyriakos]

I have dark green eyes, anyway ^_^

Contrary to hair colour (blond is VERY rare here now, but it also was very rare in ancient Greece), eye colour isn't that unusual to be green. I have met many people who have far paler green eye colour than my own. Blue eyes are rarer, though.

[neoptolemos]

Alexander suffered from heterochromia...what's the most common eye colour in Macedonia?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...001810#tbl0005

I suspect the percentages for Epirus, Thessaly, Maxddonia and Thrce would be a bit higher than the average Greek

[Ludicus]

Now or 2350 years ago? Cause since then there have been ~100-120 generations and several other tribes settling in.

Two thousand years ago. The reason I ask is just because you said you saw a "woman that looked much like Cleopatra, with green-blue eyes".

Is this argument still being had?White or not, were the Ptolemies not a Greek dynasty?

White or not? Read the title of the thread...some would say that Cleopatra was a very white woman, with green eyes...
One hundred years after her death Plutarch says "Her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her..."

Does all the ing inbreeding not show they were bloodline weirdos like the Hapsburgs?

It's nothing to be proud of...a deformed dynasty.The Habsburgs were monarchs who were physically deformed

Seriously now, we know that she was not black, and that's it, that's what we know for sure.
Duane Roller,again, Cleopatra on Vimeo

(Black?)...improbable if not impossible. ..Cleopatra's mother had to be a person of status, because Cleopatra wouldn't have got anywhere otherwise. To put it frankly, black people did not have status in the court of Alexandria, The most likely probability is that her mother was Egyptian aristocratic. We know other cases of Egyptian aristocrats marrying in the Ptolemaic royal line, and the fact that Cleopatra was the first person, the first ruler of Egypt to learn Egyptian may tell us something. So, it's still a matter of speculation but the most likely probability is that she had Macedonian Greek and she had Egyptian, but the Ptolemaic line was already corrupted with other ethnic things, and I think in one sense in one sense is a red herring, because ethnicity was not quite the issue than its now, and she was what she was, the Queen of Egypt, and her background is perhaps not all that important.

In fact, he is right. It is obvious today the importance of race ethnicity, in the Age of Trump, particularly in highly racialized countries, like the US. Or look at the Macedonian question, fueling right-wing nationalism in both countries, Greece and Macedonia. Or in white supremacist eastern Europe, just one step ahead of America in its anti-democratic decay.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...001810#tbl0005

I suspect the percentages for Epirus, Thessaly, Maxddonia and Thrce would be a bit higher than the average Greek

Thanks my good friend
I'm white, very white - in dermatology, Fitzpatrick Scale scale I in VI. I also have green eyes, and I was born in Lisbon. What is that supposed to mean?...

[AqD]

A probably unrelated question: Did she make her appearing more Egyptian and less Greek because the Greek soldiers of hers had become utterly useless, sitting in their luxury homes counting coins all day? I read even their cavalry was gone. And so she came to rely on brainwashed natives for protection?

[Ludicus]

And so she came to rely on brainwashed natives for protection?

Define "brainwashed native".

[AqD]

Define "brainwashed native".

Because they saw their royalty as gods? None of the macedonians would believe that.

Funny isn't it? They were just invaders and their rule was based on nothing but military power, but when that was gone the invaded came to believe it's their true kings and queens.

[Ludicus]

Because they saw their royalty as gods? None of the macedonians would believe that

It's not is necessary to read between the lines to understand a blatant racism.It not even hidden or covert. Should I choose between the "brainwashed native Egyptians" and a brainwashed racist post?
The ruler cult of the Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors is well-attested.The Macedonian kings were diogeneis or direct descendent of Zeus, the highest god. In fact, it was probably easier for the Greeks to think of kings as gods than it was to think of god as a spiritual principle ruling everywhere.To Alexander, it was a fact of life that mere mortals could have divine fathers. By the time of Alexander's death in 323 BCE, he was convinced that he was the son of the Zeus, not the son of Philippe.

The "brainwashed" Alexander also believed in both in the labors of his forefather Heracles (a mythological hero) and the exploits of his mothers "ancestor" Achilles. He even made a sacrifice to Apis, the Egyptian god, at Memphis.For Alexander, the son of Zeus,the Gods of Olympus where present anywhere.
Before the battle of Gaugamela, he asked to the Oracle of Zeus-Amun at Siwa/Siwah (between Egypt and Libya) if Philip was his true father or was he the son of Zeus? the oracle confirmed he was truly the son of Zeus. Delegations from Miletus and Erythrae both told him that their city's oracle confirmed him be the son of Zeus. In fact, Alexander changed his ancestry, claiming that Olympias had had intercourse with Zeus/Ammon.
In Athens,an altar was dedicated to "the invincible god". In Priene, a Greek city in western Turkey, the house where Alexander had once spent a couple of nights, became a temple.
--
Learn about the "brainwashed native Greeks",
The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers - Core

When King Demetrios Poliorketes returned to Athens from Kerkyra in 291, the Athenians welcomed him with a processional song, the text of which has long been recognized as one of the most interesting sources for Hellenistic ruler cult:

"How the greatest and dearest of the gods have come to the city! For the hour has brought together Demeter and Demetrios; she comes to celebrate the solemn mysteries of the Kore, while he is here füll of joy, as befits the god, fair and laughing. His appearance is majestic, his friends all around him and he in their midst, as though they were stars and he the sun. Hail son of the most powerful god Poseidon and Aphrodite".

...Long before the beginning of the Hellenistic period the Greeks had been bestowing divine honours upon extraordinary individuals (city-founders, athletes, etc.) after their death, but the first mortal known to have received godlike honours during his own lifetime was the Spartan general Lysandros (Douris FGrH76 F71 and 26): theSamians erected an altar, offered him sacrifices, sang cultic songs and renamed the festival of Hera the Lysandreia.

..., there can be little doubt that the Hellenistic kings exploited their cultin order to underscore the charismatic nature of their rule. But do the results of the royal cult necessarily explain the intentions behind its introduction? How can we explain the fact that to best of our knowledge in the early Hellenistic period the cult of living monarchs was always established at the initiative of poleis and not at the initiative of monarchs?

Edit -The "brainwashed native" Greeks worshipped the Roman emperors as savior gods.

Worshipping the emperor(s): a new temple of the imperial cult at ...Journal of Roman Archaeology Volume 14
2001 , pp. 113-142

In Greece, the ruler-cult was well established during the Hellenistic period...

The imperial cult in the Peloponnese | Francesco Camia - Academia.edu

...it is no surprise that the imperial cult was widely diffused in Greece, as literary sources and inscriptions show. Almost every city must have had one or more places for the worship of the emperors and their families.

The evidence shows the tendency of Peloponnesian cities to integrate the emperors into their religious life. ..Indeed, pre-existing sacred buildings were reconsecrated to the emperors (e.g.the Metroon of Olympia), imperial contests were added to traditional Greek festivals...and the emperors were onomastically and iconographically assimilated to traditional gods in inscriptions, coins and statues

[conon394]

To Alexander, it was a fact of life that mere mortals could have divine fathers. By the time of Alexander's death in 323 BCE, he was convinced that he was the son of the Zeus, not the son of Philippe.

To be fair success and a lot of drink will do that. It fairly clear neither Citus the black nor Athenians nor Spartans for example believed that.

In Athens,an altar was dedicated to "the invincible god"

Which if you bother to read the locals everyone knew was just lib service because nobody though it was time to revolt

When King Demetrios Poliorketes...

Lip service from a broken state. Never hurts. You do realize that kind of thing was substantively different than actual religion. Take Samos. After Lysander expelled the bulk of the people loyal to Athens Demos and restored the bloated ones they did indeed give him dive honors, and even renamed their festival to Hera for him. But even before Athens restored the demos of Samos the oligarchs had dropped Lysander as soon as he fell out of favor. Pro forma state ass kissing, you never find curse tables or offerings in any great amount or at all out side of formal civic offering to deified Hellenist monarchs.

As for the imperial cults well now we are in a different era are we not? In any case civic honers for Octavian were again pro forma nobody prayed to Octavian for salvation nor to Lysander. They were more or less be accorded the honor that mythic hero had.

I'm not backing AqD's post but your looks to be a polemical as well. Alexander could demand to seen as a god all he wanted but his men had enough in India and he turned around.

[AqD]

It's not is necessary to read between the lines to understand a blatant racism.It not even hidden or covert. Should I choose between the "brainwashed native Egyptians" and a brainwashed racist post?

I don't see how it's related to racism or race. It's more of culture. While Alexander convinced himself and some others he's a son of god, his own people didn't treat him or any king that way (and they murdered his wife and child).

He also had no power over the life of common Macedonians and they were not ruled by his will but by the laws of the ruling council. Furthermore, the soldiers of successor kingdoms were mostly attracted to the individual self-proclaimed kings and grants of land, there was no social binding, no tradition or motivation like those of native Egyptian soldiers when their kingdom was alive, or like the city states, or even the Macedonian kingdom itself.

I might have been exaggerating the faith of natives in Ptolemaic kingdom, but tell me - why else would Cleopatra styled herself as an Egyptian royal, if she did not wish so, that is, if she can still rely on Macedonians soldiers? She was no different than a Mongolian general in Persia, a foreign invader; any claim or ancestry she might have simply had nothing to do with Egyptians at all. Her ancestors ruled by military might, nothing else, and if I'm not wrong they were supposed to be racist (as you might call) and xenophobic, and evidently so given their (bad) treatment of native soldiers which caused a serious revolt.

[Roma_Victrix]

It's almost that time of the year, you guys! Halloween, All Hollow's Eve, is upon us. And this time, only white girls are allowed to dress up as Cleopatra. Everyone else is a cultural appropriator who needs to check their privilege.

Nah, just kidding, anyone can dress up as a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh of Greek descent, or anyone else for that matter. Because we live in a society. A free society! Where you can be a slutty Cleopatra or a mummy Cleopatra. Or a businesswoman Cleopatra. Or a transgender Cleopatra. Or a Mormon Cleopatra. Or a half-insect, half-human Cleopatra. Or a Japanese ninja pirate Cleopatra.

And before I forget, I wish everyone a nice preemptive HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

[Ludicus]

I'm not backing AqD's post but your looks to be a polemical as well.

Of course I'm being polemic. I'm annoyed. "Brainwashed natives", the beautiful white pure Macedonian Cleopatra, etc.

It's more of culture

Have you read world-renowned Classics scholar Professor Edith Hall? "It's hardly surprising that the Greeks had believed Alexander when he claimed Dionysus as ancestor"

Because we live in a society. A free society! Where you can be a slutty Cleopatra or a mummy Cleopatra. Or a businesswoman Cleopatra. Or a transgender Cleopatra. Or a Mormon Cleopatra. Or a half-insect, half-human Cleopatra. Or a Japanese ninja pirate Cleopatra.

Nice trolling my dear Roma. To sum up, "injecting modern-day politics into the field of history or archaeology" as you said - and as the "poor" Edith Hall did.

Edith Hall on Twitter: "Whiter-than-white "Great Women of Antiquity" by ...
Whiter-than-white "Great Women of Antiquity" by Londoner Frederick Dudley Walenn (1869-1939). "Miriam, Rebecca, Semiramis, Penelope, Sappho, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Phryne, Aspasia, Helen, Atalanta, and TWO Romano-Britons, Imogen & Boadicea. Ideal mother Cornelia of course in centre"

---

Roma, I'm not " genuinely struck by how much the woman on the left, hailing from the region of Macedonia in northern Greece, looks like Cleopatra", as you said,
So, let's look again to your white-than-white Cleopatra. Isn't she beautiful? https://www.quora.com/Is-Cleopatra-black-in-real-life






Should we believe in Plutarch? “For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her"

I'm a great admirer of Greece and its culture, but that's...a little too much. Even the title of the tread annoys me. (btw, no hard feelings, I love your threads, I'm eagerly waiting for a new thread).

Again and again, as Duane Roller put it,

Racial profiling and manipulation have been around for a very long time. It has become an issue in contemporary politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was regularly turned to political ends. Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt and a woman of great ability, is often a victim of racial profiling, as today people can be more interested in her racial background than her many accomplishments. Such concerns have recently come to the forefront with the announcement that in at least one of the several Cleopatra movies currently planned, a white (instead of black) actress would play the role of the queen. It is hard to imagine that race would be more important than acting ability, but clearly others disagree"

To sum up...The best evidence is that she was three-quarters Macedonian Greek and one-quarter Egyptian. There is no room for anything else, certainly not for any black African blood.
Yet all this argumentation is rather silly. What is important about Cleopatra is that she became one of the most powerful rulers of her era.

Sadly, even in twenty-first century America, this is far from the case. It is unlikely that Cleopatra cared about her racial makeup, but people over 2000 years later still obsess about it, thus trivializing her accomplishments

Post 266, Duane Roller, video,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Cleopatra's mother had to be a person of status, because Cleopatra wouldn't have got anywhere otherwise. To put it frankly, black people did not have status in the court of Alexandria, The most likely probability is that her mother was Egyptian aristocratic. We know other cases of Egyptian aristocrats marrying in the Ptolemaic royal line, and the fact that Cleopatra was the first person, the first ruler of Egypt to learn Egyptian may tell us something. So, it's still a matter of speculation but the most likely probability is that she had Macedonian Greek and she had Egyptian, but the Ptolemaic line was already corrupted with other ethnic things, and I think in one sense in one sense is a red herring, because ethnicity was not quite the issue than its now, and she was what she was, the Queen of Egypt, and her background is perhaps not all that important.

That's what Edith Hall is talking about. I heartily agree with her on this.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

No, we should not take Plutarch at face value. Plutarch makes a lot of mistakes and has a clear political bias in favour of Caesar and Octavian. This is extremely obvious when we look at Plutarch's account of the Battle of Pharsalus in which he makes it seem as though Caesar had no chance of winning (which is false) but he constantly demonizes Antony. Add to that his poor analysis of the Actium campaign it is easy to see that Plutarch is consistently wrong and was probably more concerned with writing Caesarian propaganda. In spite of that he is a major source for ancient history, particularly the end of the Republic.

As for Duane Roller's suggestion that Cleopatra's mother could have been an aristocratic Egyptian... there is absolutely no basis for that. The idea that her maternal grandfather could have been Pasherenptah III, High Priest of Memphis, was thrown around. Why? Because Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII had good relations with the priests of Ptah... The claim that Egyptians married (define marriage?) into the royal line is hard to prove or disprove either way but it is irrelevant since no Ptolemaic king was said to have been the son of a concubine or mistress. This was an insult which was used against previous monarchs to discredit them but is unproven and unlikely (moreover the mistress in all instances was a Greek not an Egyptian). This was never a slander used against Cleopatra VII.

[Ludicus]

No, we should not take Plutarch at face value.

But you see, we shouldn't take also Dio at face value. Dio wrote two centuries after Cleopatra's reign. Plutarch, writing more than a century earlier than Dio, maintains that "her beauty… was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her". Neither are contemporary accounts.
Btw, scholarly opinion of Dio's late Republican narrative has never been high.

As for Duane Roller's suggestion that Cleopatra's mother could have been an aristocratic Egyptian

The historian Chris Bennett - Academia.edu wrote to Duane Roller

...that said, there are a few points in this article which could do with some clarification.
In a couple of places, it uses the phrase “sources suggest” to introduce a theory. This phrase is a little misleading: these sources are modern scholars, not ancient text. No ancient text has anything to say about the identity of either Cleopatra’s mother or her grandmother(s).

Also, Strabo does not say that Cleopatra’s father had multiple wives nor that they were of high status. What he does say is that Cleopatra’s elder sister was their father’s only legitimate daughter — and the accuracy of that statement is disputed.
While it is (most likely) true that Cleopatra spoke Egyptian, it’s a bit of a stretch to infer that this reflects her mother’s influence. She was clearly a skilled linguist, being able to speak 8 or 9 other languages beside (*) — including Hebrew, Troglodytic, and “Ethiopian”. Why is this not evidence that her mother was a Jew? a Troglodyte? Or, indeed, black African?

The theory that Cleopatra’s mother came from the Egyptian religious elite has been used to explain why her legitimacy was not attacked by Roman sources, by scholars who accept the accuracy of Strabo’s statement. But exactly the same theory has been proposed for her father’s mother — to explain why his legitimacy was attacked by Roman sources, even though he was accepted as king in Egypt.

In both cases, it is purely speculative. It rests on an earlier marriage (whose existence is also disputed) between a Ptolemaic princess (whose mother is unknown) and a High Priest of Ptah. It is the father of this High Priest who is the most likely subject of the statue found in Algeria.

Cleopatra’s maternal ancestry, regardless of its ethnic makeup, has some relevance to establishing ancient ideas of what constituted dynastic legitimacy.
But the argument about whether she was black, like the argument about whether Macedonians were Greeks, is about modern politics. It is tiresome and irrelevant.

Duane Roller answered,

I appreciate a scholar of Dr. Bennett’s stature taking the time to make his comments. While I don’t agree with everything he says, he did point out an error of mine in the original entry: it was not Strabo who mentioned the wives of Cleopatra’s father, but an Egyptian priest. Dr. Bennett also points out the confusing nature of the material, and reminded me of another theory, that Cleopatra’s mother was actually the wife of her father, which probably would reduce non-Macedonian ancestry even more.

(*) I say:possible but not probable....in an ancient non-global world. Exactly how literally we should take this (I mean, Plutarch) is hard to assess.

-----

I have already posted this. Roller wrote in 2010 Cleopatra's true racial background (and does it really matter?) | OUPblog
Since then, after all these years, Roller had been regularly insulted by both, the whiter- than- white crowd and the Afrocentrists. Quoting, enjoy, have a good laugh,

Afer7^TH DECEMBER 2010
Cleopatra was olive toned.

duane w roller 8^TH DECEMBER 2010
Afer, I would be curious what the evidence is for this. As far as I know there is no evidence whatsoever for Cleopatra’s skin color.
Duane W. Roller

Jazz25^TH JUNE 2015
Ugh, is this what they are teaching in universities? White people are culture vultures. They have no real culture of their own... In 100 years they’ll claim Martin Luther King Jr. was white and that blacks enslaved them!

James Morris20^TH JULY 2015
This article has so much racist undertone. This is how I know she was a black women.

Watermark0n7^TH AUGUST 2015
Stop getting butthurt over the term “Macedonian Greek”. Ancient Macedonia was located almost purely in the modern Greek province of Macedonia, the people their spoke Greek, and they were ethnically Greek. People from the Republic of “Macedonia” attempted to steal this ethnic heritage themselves, even though they are in fact Slavs with no genetic or ethnic relationship to the ancient Macedonian.

Cleopatra22^ND OCTOBER 2015
Cleopatra WASN’T Hellenic she was MAKEDONIAN so i think you should stop calling her Makedonian Greek because she isn’t gonna be happy and satisfied .

Mb3^RD NOVEMBER 2015
Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek.

Cheryl21^ST NOVEMBER 2015
Roller, you are a fool!! The sooner you leave this earth the better off everyone will be. You are a fake historian getting paid as some kind of scholar.


denis25^TH JUNE 2016
Whoever wrote this haven’t study history that well sorry not sorry. Cleopatras father was ilyrian Albania so called today Macedonia is Albania Greece has nothing to do here. Study Balkans before you talk about this because u sound like somebody who don’t know what u talking about . Lol if u gonna talk at least take a really good look at history facts .

Nick the Greek7^TH AUGUST 2016
Macedon was Greek Kingdom. Macedonians, a Greek-speaking Hellenic-peoples. Cleopatra – Greek names go wherever the Hellenic peoples take them.
Show Respect!

steve1^ST DECEMBER 2016
One can easily see why she was so attractive to Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony if she was a beautiful fair skinned blond.

(My favorite quote. Follow the link ),
Rome: a “white colonial occupation”? – The Winds of War: History, Academia, and Current Affairs21^ST APRIL 2017
[…] progressives and alt-right alike need the Romans to be “white” (or Cleopatra black or white, or the Barbarians to be…barbarians) in order to show some kind of historically continuous […]

Igor Ivanovich17^TH DECEMBER 2017
Macedonians are Southern Slavs, linguistically related to Bulgarian and Great Russian. They are not and never have been Greek.

Guido4^TH FEBRUARY 2018
Cleopatra was a Greek Macedonian pure and simple.

Chloe12^TH FEBRUARY 2018
Cleopatra hadn’t Greek or Macedonian origin. She was Albanian.

Josh30^TH APRIL 2018
Whom ever wrote this article needs a refund of their historical education.

BeautifulOhio21^ST JUNE 2018
I know you want her to be as Nubian as Nefertiti, but she wasn’t.

Jim Litty31^ST JULY 2018
This professor is a clown. I live in Columbus and pray I run into this joker one day to confront him on this idiocy. He is searching for a way to say Cleopatra wasn’t Macedonian.

Charles Martel17^TH SEPTEMBER 2018
Civilization is a manifestation of genetics. History shows us that race matters on a macro level. It is directly correlated to the continued transmission of the civilization by the founding race.

Do you see a pattern here? what is the word that describes a person who only cares about race?

----------
Back to Edith Hall. Edith Hall is an Hellenophile, and her books explain why they (the Greeks) remain the greatest and most influential civilization the world has ever seen. That being said, food for thought,

Inventing the Barbarian - Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy
Preface

Every era finds in the study of the ancient world a context in which to express its own preoccupations. One of the imperatives of the late twentieth century is the destruction of the barriers of misperception which perpetuate conflict between different nations, peoples, and ethnic groups.

This book is confined to the examination of one ancient people’s view of others, but it has been written in the conviction that ethnic stereotypes, ancient and modem, though revealing almost nothing about the groups they are intended to define, say a great deal about the community which produces them.

The title might therefore almost as well have been Inventing the Hellene as Inventing the Barbarian*

* for example, the brainwashed Egyptian.

-------

Some excerpts from the book (I highly recommend this book). It's about the anti-barbaric rhetoric, the preconceptions underlying the Greeks 's constructs and images of foreigners as barbarian "others", to express their cultural superiority and justified their dominance over others (the same applies to the Romans).

Edith pointed out, "Stereotypes project on to target groups characteristics which are the opposite of qualities admired in the group creating the stereotypes"
More,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Danaus warns his daughters against antagonizing their hosts, for ‘the Nile does not nurture the same breed as the Inachus’ (497-8). In these words is foreshadowed the ‘environmental’ explanation of ethnic difference occasionally adopted by Herodotus and expounded by the author o f the Hippocratic deAerihus, generally
believed to be an authentic fifth-century work.

It argues that climate and topography determine not only physiology, but also temperament and political behaviour. The fertility and equable climate of Asia, for example, produce handsome people, who are however deficient in courage and industry, and ruled by pleasure (12. 28-44): this leads to stagnation and is associated with despotic forms of government (16. 3-34). Europeans, on the other hand, on account o f the challenges presented by the harshness and variability of their seasons, are less uniform in physique, braver, and do not tolerate monarchies (23. 13 - 41).

In the most flamboyant passage of anti-barbarian rhetoric in extant tragedy Euripides’ Hermione attributes to the entire barbarian genos various crimes which constituted for the Greeks the breaking of absolute taboos (Andr. 168-78)

Murder within the family (175) was of course by Greek standards a particularly shocking crime. There are, however, few enough family murders committed by foreigners in comparison with the gallery of matricides, parricides, and infanticides produced by the royal houses of mythical Hellas

Edith Hall on Twitter: "To mark anniversary of Battle of Actium 31 BCE.

...here's Cleopatra lighting Mark Antony's cig on set of Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 movie



---

For those interested (not you, Oda) feel free to join the crowd, Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain's ethnic diversity
----
Edit, misquoting Catullus,
Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, Cleopatra, tibi velle placere,
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

-A lot to unpack there. Starting with the easiest one, I am not trying to compare Plutarch to anyone. Just want to say that on his own merits Plutarch is a very troublesome source as a whole. Using the examples of his Life of Sulla which is questionable, his Life of Caesar which is also questionable and his Life of Marcus Antonius which is very questionable (he seems to take all primary sources at face value without any analysis). If Cassius Dio is somehow less credible then we are in a bad spot.

-"But the argument about whether she was black, like the argument about whether Macedonians were Greeks, is about modern politics. It is tiresome and irrelevant."

Can't really agree with this. While the reason this is being debated is due to modern politics the debate in itself is interesting enough. The Macedonian ethnicity debate I mean... there is literally no argument or debate for Black Cleopatra. Where as the Macedonian debate existed even in antiquity.

-I don't doubt that the Ptolemies took "wives" from the Egyptian nobility. What I do doubt is whether any offspring was considered legitimate and able to take the throne. In a previous post I asked to define what this marriage entailed, by Ptolemaic standards (that is legal Greek standards of the kingdom). The Greeks probably regarded marriage with Egyptians as concubinage or ceremonial and it is attested that the Diadochi in the majority of cases took only one wife which was Greek (the exception being Seleukos Nikator who married the Sogdian Apama) and legally divorced their previous wife, and other women were regarded as mistresses. Even the children of a Greek mistress were considered illegitimate and this was the case with Philip and Alexander as well (since they had many wives but only one legal wife).

-Strabo claims that only Berenice IV was legitimate however it is more likely that Cleopatra VII was legitimate and that Ptolemy XIII and Arsinoe IV were not. Supposedly Ptolemy XII fled to Rome because his daughter Cleopatra VI had a strong following but in his absence he was overthrown by Berenice IV. Strabo does not mention Cleopatra VI and so we might assume that either Cleopatra VI and Cleopatra V were the same person and that his wife threatened to overthrow him or that Cleopatra VI was Ptolemy's other wife, which suggests dynastic strife. If indeed Cleopatra VI was Ptolemy's other wife and had the power to shake the kingdom then this suggests she was of the Ptolemaic line. However if she was Ptolemy's daughter then Strabo is already wrong, and if she also could chase her father off the throne then Strabo is wrong yet again, that she was indeed legitimate and not just Berenice IV. Otherwise if Cleopatra VI did not exist as neither a wife or a daughter, nor as Cleopatra V then who chased Ptolemy XII off his throne and why did he flee to Rome? Berenice IV did not try to seize the throne until years after Ptolemy XII had already fled to Rome.

-If Cleopatra VII was illegitimate why was this never used against her? Not even once. In fact there is more likelihood of Ptolemy XII being illegitimate. He and his younger brothers were said to be illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX and when his uncle Ptolemy X took the throne he and his brothers were exiled to Pontus. This may also be propaganda crafted by Ptolemy X so that he could take the throne.

-Not sure what Mary Beard has to do with this but we sort of covered the diversity of Roman Britain in another thread. That whole narrative is so tiresome.

[Ludicus]

Let's change the thread's title: "Cleopatra's heart was Macedonian and I can prove it!"

Was it?
For Mary Beard, Cleopatra's epithet "Philopatris" do not refer to Macedonia.
The cult of Mary Beard | News | The Guardian

...a national treasure, and easily the world’s most famous classicist

Quoting Mary Beard in "Cleopatra the Myth"

"..still interpreting them is essential...we know have a Greek papyrus, dated to 35 that gives the queen the surprising epithet Philopatris, "she who loves her country". Cleopatra tried to express the love she felt for Egypt in a way that none of her predecessors had done.
The declaration of such a relationship between the sovereign and her land, nationalistic before such concept even existed, is an innovation we must attribute to Cleopatra.

With this single word, she erased centuries of foreign occupation: It was no longer a right born of the Macedonian conquest that established her royalty over Egypt, but rather a strong attachment, a quasi-mystical bond with the land of the Nile and all who dwelled in it, whatever their origin, whose languages and beliefs she shared"

----

"...But it is not in the temples, where pharaonic tradition took precedence over transitory political circumstances, that we must seek the true impression that Cleopatra left on her compatriots (1).
A modest stela in the British Museum in London, inscribed in Demotic, is more revealing. On January 19, 30, during the final months of Egypt's autonomy, humble weavers at Koptos were proud to designate their sovereign as "mother the kings, young(est) goddess".
This last epithet, which the artisan confused with the expression "beneficent goddess" - nearly homonymous in the Egyptian language -is the equivalent of the title Thea neotera that was bestowed on Cleopatra on the occasion of her reunion with Anthony in October 37.
Cleopatra-Isis, divine mother of kings, eternally youthful and beneficent: Such was the memory that the Egyptian people, in the twilight of their independence, were piously prepared to preserve of the last and greatest of their queens"

(1) the "brainwashed Egyptians".

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I have no doubt that Philopatris refers to Alexandria. I see no reason why it would refer to Macedonia.
But just because the Egyptians liked Cleopatra doesn't mean they weren't brainwashed. Most of them were dumb illiterate peasants. They probably would have gone with anyone but it takes quite a bit of brainwashing to accept a foreigner who pretends to be Egyptian.

[Ludicus]

In my previous post,I have made a huge, huge, huge mistake (ironically, I read this book...)
The author is Michel Chauveau, not Mary Bird. She reviewed the book, and that's all.

I have no doubt that Philopatris refers to Alexandria

Why not Egypt? Alexandria wasn't an isolated racial island in Egypt.

it takes quite a bit of brainwashing to accept a foreigner who pretends to be Egyptian.

She was not a foreigner, the "Gypsy" Queen.

Most of them were dumb illiterate peasants.

The Egyptian civilization was not born in hellenistic Alexandria (with an ethnically mixed population). One of the difficulties is defining the term "literacy" as it applies to ancient populations: the average roman was a illiterate.

Zinn. 2013. Literacy, Pharaonic Egypt. EAH. | Katharina Zinn ...

... it seems that being illiterate in Ancient Egypt did not mean being uncultured or completely uneducated, as is often the case in modern times.

The best examples are the numerous non-literary papyri. from the Greco-Roman period in which it is routinely specified that at least one party was illiterate and that a trusted person or a professional scribe wrote or checked the agreement, or subscribed (Kraus 2000: 325–7).The ancient Egyptians were aware of the difference between being literate or illiterate..

Ancient Greek and Egyptian interactions | OUPblog

You Greeks are children.” That’s what an Egyptian priest is supposed to have said to a visiting Greek in the 6^th century BC. And in a sense he was right.

We think of Ancient Greece as, well, “ancient”, and it is now known to go back to Mycenaean culture of the second half of the 2^nd millennium BC. But Egyptian civilisation is much earlier than that: in the mid 2^nd millennium BC it was at its height (the “New Kingdom”), but its origins go right into the 3^rd millennium BC or even earlier.

Flash forward to the Hellenistic period (late 4^th– 1^st centuries BC), when, following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Egypt was taken over by a Greco-Macedonian dynasty based in the new city of Alexandria. These Greek pharaohs communicated in Greek and the country itself became increasingly bilingual and bicultural, a process that continued into the Roman period.
The most vivid symbol of the new Greco-Egyptian culture that developed is the popularity of Egyptian religion, particularly the goddess Isis, who had worshippers all over the Mediterranean by the 1^st century BC.
One big thing Egypt and Greece had in common was their passion for literature. Greek literature was comparatively young, attested from about 700BC (Homer, Hesiod), although the Greeks probably had oral literature much earlier than that. Egypt has one of the earliest attested literary
Once Greeks were settled in Egypt, they must have encountered Egyptian literature. There was no shortage of Egyptian literature being written and performed in this period,