Laudator Temporis Acti

Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), page numbers unknown (from Chapter IX):

The poet Lucan is the only ancient author to make any reference at all to the queen's complexion. It comes in a scene emphasising the ambition of the queen, the decadent luxury of her court and overpowering ambition of Julius Caesar. He depicts Cleopatra wearing a dress of silk, the material brought originally from China having been rewoven to make it finer and semi-translucent. Such a filmy garment is reminiscent of Ptolemy Physcon. In this case Lucan talks of it revealing much of Cleopatra's 'white breasts' (candida pectora). Lucan wrote in Rome some ninety years after the queen's death and it is hard to know whether or not he had seen accurate images of her appearance, let alone her colouring. Much of his poem is highly fanciful. In addition, candida normally means white or fair — and in the case of hair can mean blonde — and this begs the question of white or light in comparison to what? Earlier in the same passage he talks of the variety of slaves attending to the guests, contrasting blondes with ruddy complexions (or just possibly red hair) from northern Europe, with dark slaves with curly hair from Africa. This could perhaps imply that Cleopatra was not like either of these in her own appearance, but that is surely pushing the evidence too far. The whole passage is a slender reed on which to rest confident assertions about Cleopatra's appearance.²⁰

Apart from this, there is not a shred of evidence about Cleopatra's complexion or the colour of her eyes or hair. This is worth stating bluntly, because so many people keep trying to deduce these or claim to have discovered evidence. At the time of writing two separate TV documentaries have presented reconstructions presenting her as relatively dark-skinned and with brown eyes and black hair. This is all conjecture. As we have seen, there is uncertainty about the identity of Cleopatra's mother and grandmother (or indeed grandmothers if her parents were not siblings).²¹

The Ptolemies were Macedonians, with an admixture of a little Greek and via marriage with the Seleucids a small element of Syrian blood. (There is no evidence to make us question the paternity of any of the line and suggest that they were the product of an illicit liaison between the queen and a man other than her husband. This remains possible, if not very likely, but an uncertain basis for any argument.) The Macedonians were not an homogenous people and seem to have varied considerably in appearance and colouring. Alexander the Great was fair-haired, although it is always difficult to know precisely what this meant. A Roman copy of an earlier mosaic shows him with medium-brown hair. Fair might simply mean not black or very dark brown. On the other hand, several of the early Ptolemies were blond and comparisons of their hair to gold suggest this was more than simply not black-haired.

For most of the Ptolemies, including Auletes, there is no mention of the shade of their hair or the colour of their eyes. It is unclear how common blond hair was in the family. (If Cleopatra's mother was a mistress then we know nothing at all about her appearance or ethnic background, although the probability would always be that she was from the Greek or Macedonian aristocracy.) A painting from Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples, which shows a woman wearing the headband of a Hellenistic queen, has sometimes been identified as Cleopatra. She has dark, distinctly red hair. This is not impossible, but there is actually no very strong reason to believe that the image is supposed to be Cleopatra.²²

Absolutely nothing is certain. Cleopatra may have had black, brown, blonde, or even red hair, and her eyes could have been brown, grey, green or blue. Almost any combination of these is possible. Similarly, she may have been very light skinned or had a darker more Mediterranean complexion. Fairer skin is probably marginally more likely given her ancestry. Greek art traditionally represented women and goddesses as very pale, and a fair skin seems to have been part of the ideal of beauty. Roman propaganda never suggested that Cleopatra was dark-skinned, although this may simply mean that she was not exceptionally dark or simply that the colour of her skin was not important to her critics.

20 Lucan, Pharsalia 10.127-143; Candida Sidonio perlucent pectora filo, quod Nilotis acus impressum pectine serum, solvit et extenso laxavit stamina velo, 10.140-142.

21 These were Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer (Lion TV) shown on BBC television in the UK, and an episode on Cleopatra from the series Egypt Unwrapped (Atlantic TV) shown on Channel 5 in the UK.

22 See J. Fletcher, Cleopatra the Great: The Woman Behind the Legend (2008), p. 87, and Walker & Higgs (2001), pp. 314-315, n. 325.