Cleopatra's Nose, Blaise Pascal

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by Branko van Oppen
published on 20 January 2020

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Cleopatra's Nose, Blaise Pascal — “The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed” ~ Blaise Pascal, *Pensées* 162.

On the basis of portrait coins struck by Cleopatra, philosophers such as Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 CE) assumed that the queen’s prominent nose was an element of the physical attraction with which she seduced Julius Caesar and Marc Antony – and thus changed the course of world history.

Silver hemiobol struck in Patrae, Achaea (Greece) with the diademed portrait of Queen Cleopatra (Heritage 3015, 7-12 September 2011 CE, lot 23278; photo courtesy of David S. Michaels, Heritage Auctions); posthumous portrait of Blaise Pascal by François Quesnel II (1637-1699 CE; oil painting, ca. 1662 CE coll. Musée d’Art Roger-Quilliot). The latter is believed to be in the public domain.

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About the Author

Branko van Oppen

Branko van Oppen is an exhibition curator and independent scholar specialized in Ptolemaic queenship as well as Hellenistic art and ideology.

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Uploaded by Branko van Oppen, published on 20 January 2020 under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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Cite This Work

APA Style

Oppen, B. V. (2020, January 20). Cleopatra's Nose, Blaise Pascal. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/image/11728/

Chicago Style

Oppen, Branko V. "Cleopatra's Nose, Blaise Pascal." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified January 20, 2020. https://www.ancient.eu/image/11728/.

MLA Style

Oppen, Branko V. "Cleopatra's Nose, Blaise Pascal." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 20 Jan 2020. Web. 22 Sep 2020.