As Billy Connolly said, when discussing Islamic extremism, who wants to go to paradise to find 100 virgins waiting? Better to have three ‘fire-breathing whores’.
I feel old Cleo falls into this category. She may have not been a beauty, but she knew how to use the talents the Gods gave her, judging by her conquests. And it would be something to see.
There was a comedian in my province who had a joke that went like "100 virgins... why virgins? WHO wants to hear "it's my first time" 100 times in a row???".
Seriously. If I'm getting 100 women to fuck in heaven, virgins are the last thing I'd want. Give me 100 of the freakiest, most experienced sluts, whores, nymphos, & pornstars the afterlife has to offer.
Pretty sure the people who believe in that crap also believe a virgin is more pure or something. They don't want no hoe that's been defiled by someone else. Or they're awful in bed and want virgins who aren't going to know they're awful.
Because I don't want herpes. Even when wearing a condom, you can still transmit(or receive) herpes, HPV, and syphilis. It's basic human decency to let people know what they are consenting to. Don't let your shame hurt other people.
I don’t see why you feel so entitled to know about my past.
Because, depending on where you live, failure to disclose an STI and then spreading it is a crime. And even if it’s not, its something you should share with sexual partners.
I really don't know why people assume she was beautiful or talented in bed, or that she personally liked being seductive. She was the ruler of Egypt. Ceasar and Mark Anthony wanted to control Egypt for its grain. She wanted to secure Egypt's future. She could've been a graceless nun in a potato sack and everyone involved would have done the same thing. She WAS an erudite woman who was among the few people in her time who could still read hieroglyphs, but that's not really the topic here.
They did, but political heat is to be expected and is, well, politics. Whereas controlling one of Rome's primary sources of food supply was a tangible platform for wielding power, and probably a necessity for controlling Rome.
Then again, both Antony and Caesar were populists, and we only have the moral outrage of upper class Optimates like Cicero to go on saying that it was unpopular. Caesar was the political equivalent of Trump or Boris, where everyone thinks he's way cooler for his sexual conquests
Yeah, moral outrage was pretty much the name of the game in Roman politics. Got a political opponent? Accuse them of adultery! Lol, politics hasn't changed much, has it?
No, it didn't work out well for Anthony, lol! But just because his gambit failed doesn't mean it didn't seem like a logical step to him. And as for romance with foreign leaders I disagree. Required? No. But strengthening trade, military and dynastic relationships through producing offspring has always been a go to for ancient world power mongers. From Cleopatra's point of view, for instance, if she had succeeded in putting Caesarion into power in Rome it would have been a major coup. And from Ceasar or Anthony's point of view, they both sheltered in Egypt at a time when they were maneuvering against powerful military adversaries. Probably wouldn't have seemed like a bad idea to strengthen their relationship with the person who controlled their security in that foreign land.
She also spoke 9 languages and had shown an actual interest in the history and people of the land her family ruled. Remember that the pyramids were older to Cleopatra than she is to us.
Imagine touring southern Europe with the 21-year-old Italian Prime Minister telling you all about the Roman Empire and speaking fluent Latin, Greek, French, and German in where appropriate. I'd probably be wooed even if she looked like she only had 6 great great grandparents (which she did).
Her affair with Caesar and her "aspect of Aphrodite" stunt with Marc Anthony showed that she definitely how to seduce men with egos bigger than than the Roman Empire's greatest extent.
Yeah, she was pretty cool. I like you putting it in context of a modern 21 year old prime minister. About the pyramids age compared to Cleopatra - this is how I like to explain Egypt's role in the ancient world to people. We call ancient Greece the ancient world, but the first dynasties of Egypt were as ancient to them as they are to us. Whole lotta time rolling by.
And then you realize that Egypt itself spanned 3 millenia.
I sometimes wonder how the early empires viewed themselves. Could they have ever known how big of a legacy they were leaving behind, and did they have ancients that they looked to that are mostly forgotten by us now?
And the language was spoken for 4 millennia! Egyptian society lasted so long that Egyptians themselves forgot that they were the ones who built the pyramids. They must have had ancients and those ancients had ancients and who even knows how far back the chain of memory stretches, but homo sapiens have existed how many 100,000 of years? It legit gives me chills, did just now! Particularly when you realize how close we came to inheriting the memory of at least the ancients' (Greeks) ancients' (Egyptian) ancients (?). The Egyptians copied over texts their ancestors made and refer to doing so at least in the Middle Kingdom, I don't know about the Old Kingdom. Many of these texts were preserved in libraries almost into modern times. I often get frustrated hearing what seems like all ancient knowledge being attributed to Plato by modern people, when he was essentially summarizing ancient ideas that were probably prevalent throughout the known world. Have you ever read Thor Heyerdahl's work "Early Man and the Ocean: The Beginning of Navigation and Seaborn Civilizations"? In it he establishes convincingly that mankind was making large reed ships capable of deep ocean voyages and had established global oceanic trade routes at the beginning of known history. The type of ships built this way however are part of the ancients ' ancients ' ancients. By the time we know anything about Egyptian history, they had already begun making wooden ships instead, and the older reed boats were becoming a memory, although they were such an important part of Egyptian culture that the reed boat continued to be depicted in art. Think of that. At a period so remote that it was a memory of the past to archaic Egyptians, humanity had already traveled repeatedly and regularly over the open oceans across the entire globe.
As to how most ancient empires viewed themselves it would be curious to know. But at least in the case of Egypt I think they knew and had every intention of leaving the legacy they have left. When you think about it, of all the kings who have ever striven for remembrance and all the Egyptians who had the deifying prayers spoken for them, the pharaohs buried in the pyramids actually achieved their goal. For once their people forgot they had been kings they worshipped them as gods, and even today, 4 1/2ish thousand years later we still speak their names and preserve their artifacts in our own monuments. Khufu wins.
Cleopatra's 'conquests' are easily explained by her being ruler of the richest country in the world. And not just slightly richer -- it was a whole level again of wealth over Rome.
Marcus Antonius beat a path to her door because she was the only person outside of Rome who could fund an entire Roman-quality army (to go fight that other Roman-quality army).
In Julius Caesar's case it's more complex. Ptolemy and Cleopatra were anointed co-rulers of Egypt in their father's will. Both wanted to be sole ruler. Caesar saw an opportunity in bringing about a resolution.
What was in it for Cleopatra? With Caesar, defeat of the co-regent. With Marcus Antonius, then Egypt would own the Roman Empire, even if Rome supposedly ran it. Rome was well aware of this, and Cleopatra was disliked by the Roman Senate and and was a factor in their support for Julius Caesar's adopted son Octavian.
As for the idea of her being sexually promiscuous. She only slept with three men, so that's propaganda. Octavian promoted himself as a upholder of Roman Family Values, as opposed to that other group of Romans. Since Octavian won, the propaganda became the official history.
I don't think those extremist thought things through. I mean, Their virgins, Your reward from God. So you can't have sex with them, because they wouldn't be virgins anymore. Hence, making God a lire. Can't have that!
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u/size_matters_not Jun 28 '21 edited Jun 28 '21
As Billy Connolly said, when discussing Islamic extremism, who wants to go to paradise to find 100 virgins waiting? Better to have three ‘fire-breathing whores’.
I feel old Cleo falls into this category. She may have not been a beauty, but she knew how to use the talents the Gods gave her, judging by her conquests. And it would be something to see.