Quotes About Cleopatra

In fact Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to obey a wife's authority, for by the time he met her he had already been quite broken in and schooled to accept the way of women.

J.B. Bury once followed Pascal in suggesting that the cause of the foundation of the Roman Empire was the length of Cleopatra's nose: had her features not been perfectly proportioned, Mark Antony would not have been entranced; had he not been entranced he would not have allied himself with Egypt against Octavian; had he not made that alliance, the battle of Actium would not have been fought—and so on.

Hapy, the ancient god of the Nile, depicted at Dendera with Cleopatra, is typically shown with breasts - symbolism that demonstrated how the life-giving gifts of Egypt's river artery come only when the power of both female and male was combined.

The history of representations of Cleopatra provides one of the clearest instances of the conviction that whiteness is the pinnacle of human beauty. Cleopatra became a byword for feminine beauty in European culture, but in the process she had to be represented as white. As

The quick comediansExtemporally will stage us, and presentOur Alexandrian revels. AntonyShall be brought drunken forth, and I shall seeSome squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatnessI' the posture of a whore.

I mean she's Cleopatra... shouldn't she and Antony have known better? They were so different..." "Variety is the spice of life" "And from a thousand miles apart" "Absence makes the heart grow fonder

I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: 'There's no further new material; there are only new questions.'

I watched the proceedings from across the room while Cleopatra babbled at me. She was pretty drunk. Finally, I got what she was burbling: "Wild Party." You know, the thing in verse about a party that's quite a ball itself. She must have spent a lot of lonely nights memorizing that one.

The studio system collapsed only when Elizabeth Taylor charged $1 million for Cleopatra.

Snooki is really beautiful and looks quite like Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cleopatra.' She has the same bone structure. I'm kind of obsessed with 'Jersey Shore.' People don't give them enough credit for how entertaining they are.

You can take the girl out of St. Athanasius, etc. —Who was he, do you happen to know? Not Herr Bratwurst, Saint Whatchamacallit. —Athanasius. No idea. So yes, I'm reasonably certain she had an affair, although I don't think it was the kind that would put Antony and Cleopatra in the shade. But whatever

I mean she's Cleopatra... shouldn't she and Antony have known better? They were so different..." "Variety is the spice of life" "And from a thousand miles apart" "Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word.

From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra's irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages including, as he puts it, the language of flattery and essentially, to be able to turn people to her will - really a great political genius, in that respect.

Her co-monarch, Ptolemy XV Caesar, was the son whom she claimed, almost certainly truthfully, to have had by Julius Caesar.

presently occupied by Cleopatra, who was busy packing her bags for a rapid exit to Egypt.

Messengers had been sent ahead to ask Cleopatra to bring money and clothing for the soldiers.

Antony and Cleopatra renewed their friendship at the respective ages of forty-five and thirty-three.

According to Plutarch, Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their celebrated Society of Inimitable Livers and instituted another, which was at least its equal in elegance, luxury and extravagance, and which they called the Order of the Inseparable in Death. Their friends joined it on the understanding that they would end their lives together, and they set themselves to charm away the days with a succession of exquisite supper parties.

It is possible that Octavian arranged for Cleopatra's murder and put about the fiction that she killed herself.

What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and you ask for a coin to be engraved with your likeness on it, you are probably trying to project a certain air of authority.

I worked at The Old Globe Theater under the great baton of Craig Noel. One of the great theater heroes that we have. He was so great and so inspirational. I think I did 'Antony and Cleopatra' and 'The Taming of the Shrew'. I lived in Ocean Beach, and my rent was $140 a month.

Historians start with Cleopatra and the pharaohs and comb through every year in human history ever since, looking in every corner of the world for evidence of extraordinary wealth, and almost 20 percent of the names they end up with come from a single generation in a single country.

Of the seventy-five names, an astonishing fourteen are Americans born within nine years of one another in the mid-nineteenth century. Think about that for a moment. Historians start with Cleopatra and the