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History wants so badly for Cleopatra to be beautiful. Like they can’t conceive of Rome being intimidated by anything less

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Roman Emperors: Augustus – Gordian I

27 BC – 238 AD

Excited to be working on these again! The series is nearing completion! Pride edition will follow shortly…

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Progress on my Cleopatra & Livia painting :D

I’m shockingly happy with how this is progressing. When I finish it, I’ll write an extended analysis about the parallels in their lives to go along with it

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“Over the fall a flurry of envoys travelled back and forth, with bribes and proposals from one side, threats and promises from the other. Initially Cleopatra pleaded for the only thing that mattered to her: Could she pass down her kingdom to her children? To lose her life was one thing; to sacrifice her children - and with them her kingdom - was unthinkable. They were now between the ages of seven and seventeen; she pinned her hopes on Caesarion, whom she had already promoted to rule in her absence.”

— Cleopatra: A Life - Stacy Schiff

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“Though Cleopatra was born—and apparently thought of herself as—a Macedonia Greek, all that mattered to her Roman contemporaries was that she was not a Roman and, more important, that her existence, her influence, and her power constituted an obstacle to Roman expansion. She was a force to be destroyed or encouraged to destroy herself so that the empire could prevail. Her gender, her exoticized “Easternness,” and her determination to protect her country’s autonomy helped explain why Egypt was thought to need the moral, political and practical guidance of Rome—and why Cleopatra did in fact need the support and allegiance of Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. It is hard not to notice how profoundly her gender determined the way in which her story has been told. Despite the evidence of her achievements—the kingdom she ruled, the city she helped build, the seeming ease with which she navigated between the two worlds of Rome and Egypt—she is generally better known for seducing, managing, and manipulating her Roman lovers, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. The Romans were the first of many to depict Cleopatra as a cruel Asiatic queen, all greedy ambition and no moral conscience. Alexandre Cabanel’s 1887 orientalist painting, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners, shows the queen lounging on her sofa as prisoners—guinea pigs for her testing of deadly toxins—die in agony around her. The story of a woman who recklessly destroys men, or who is responsible for our eternal exile from the Garden of Eden, or who incites a ruthless murder or a catastrophic war has never gone out of fashion.”

— Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose, from the Yale University Press Ancient Lives series

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“For Rome, who had never condescended to fear any nation or people, did in her time fear two human beings; one was Hannibal, and the other was a woman.”

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Of all the lost things in the world, the things we will never know, this lost son of Caesar and Cleopatra’s must stand as the most tantalizing. What would he have been, what would he have grown into, with the gifts he had from both his remarkable parents? Octavian did not wish to find out – and so we never shall, either.

Only one small glint of mercy here: Cleopatra never knew of his fate; she closed her eyes and went into the dark believing that he was safe. Isis had protected her to the last from that which would hinder her passage into the other world by grieving her spirit.

The Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George

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Among the most famous women to have lived, Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt for twenty-two years. She lost a kingdom once, regained it, nearly lost it again, amassed an empire, lost it all. A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen, a celebrity soon thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, of gossip and legend, even in her own time. At the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire Eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment, she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. She had a child with a married man, three more with another. She died at thirty-nine, a generation before the birth of Christ. Catastrophe reliably cements a reputation, and Cleopatra’s end was sudden and sensational.  She has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since. Many people have spoken for her, including the greatest playwrights and poets; we have been putting words in her mouth for two thousand years. In one of the busiest afterlives in history she has gone on to become an asteroid, a video game, a cliche, a cigarette, a slot machine, a strip club, a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor. Shakespeare attested to Cleopatra’s infinite variety. He had no idea.

Cleopatra, A Life - Stacy Schiff

Art Source

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Of all the lost things in the world, the things we will never know, this lost son of Caesar and Cleopatra’s must stand as the most tantalizing. What would he have been, what would he have grown into, with the gifts he had from both his remarkable parents? Octavian did not wish to find out – and so we never shall, either.

The Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George

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super graphic ultra antique girls

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“the habsburgs weren’t even that inbred” uh yes they were, why is this discourse it’s just a scientific fact

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The King and Queen of Sweden celebrating Armand Duplantis' gold medal is the cutest thing:

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PARIS OLYMPICS ◯‍◯‍◯‍◯‍◯ 2024

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NEWS: Princess Elisabeth will be attending Harvard University in Boston starting this Fall, where she will be getting a Masters in Public Policy. She was also selected for an Honorary Award from the Fulbright Program, the international educational exchange program of the US Department of State. This two-year master's degree will complete her university education.

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Today marks what would have been Queen Elizabeth II's 98th birthday, and to mark the occasion, a new statue of her surrounded by her beloved corgis has been unveiled in Rutland's county town of Oakham.

The statue is the first to be commissioned since her death in September 2022, and is set to be a permanent fixture paying tribute to England's longest reigning monarch. The 7ft (2.1m) bronze statue features a somewhat younger Queen Elizabeth II in her crown and what appears to be robes of the Order of the Thistle, surrounded by four adoring corgis.

On display outside Oakham Library, the artwork was commissioned by the Lord-Lieutenant of Rutland, Dr. Sarah Furness, told Oakham Nub News it was in response to the "depth of loss felt in Rutland on the late Queen's death".

Source

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EUROPEAN HEIRS COMING OF AGE —25 October 2019: Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant – 1st in line of succession to the Belgian throne – speaks at a ceremony at the Royal Palace in Brussels in honour of her 18th birthday —8 December 2021: Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange – 1st in line of succession to the Dutch throne – speaks at her first Council of State at Kneuterdijk Palace in The Hague the day after turning 18 —17 June 2022: Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway – 2nd in line of succession to the Norwegian throne – speaks at the gala dinner at the Royal Palace in Oslo in honour of her 18th birthday that she celebrated in January 2022 —15 October 2023: Prince Christian of Denmark – 2nd in line of succession to the Danish throne – speaks at the gala dinner at Christiansborg Palace in honour of his 18th birthday —31 October 2023: Leonor, Princess of Asturias – 1st in line of succession to the Spanish throne – speaks at a ceremony at the Royal Palace in Madrid in honour of her 18th birthday