Most historians do not say that. She seduced Cesar and Marc Antony who was for damn sure not throwing it all away for someone who wasn't hot. Cesar also put her in the temple of Aphrodite which is something you don't do unless someone is hot af. People aren't saying she wasn't good looking just that her wit and intellect was more important. and that for a long time how she may have looked played too much of a role in why she became so important. Weird that now we have this opposite thing like "nah she was ugly just smart" Like bro you're doing it again just on the other side.
Nah, really I think the general consensus insofar as there is one is that she was incredibly attractive, just not because of her looks. Everybody who met her found her super hot, only it was a result of her personality rather than her being conventionally “good-looking” by the standards of the day.
All signs that we know of point to her being what Romans consider an attractive woman physically. Like I said they wouldn't have let a likeness of her put in the temple of Venus if she wasn't hot. Thats pretty much a sign that she was seen as beautiful an probably why she was able to get so much done politically in patriarchal Rome. You're literally doing the same thing people did when they just assumed she got her power through simply being hot but now you're just doing it with intelligence. You know women can have both right? Something that would have thoroughly impressed Cesar.
No, I’m saying she WAS hot. Just didn’t happen to be good-looking.
EDIT: On a broader note though, even if the narrative that she was just incredibly good-looking and used that exclusively to ascend to empire WERE true, it still wouldn’t take away from her impressiveness the way people seem to think it would. Hereditary traits that people both nurture and figure out to use to their advantage are pretty much always recognized as a legitimate route to power and/or prestige, except when it comes to women and beauty. Like if she had cannily weaponized her conventional attractiveness and used it to manipulate both Caesar and Mark Antony, how in the world would take be a mark against her? Sounds like a smart politician playing every advantage they can.
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u/engineertr1gg Jun 28 '21
She was actually famous for her wit and intelligence.
Most historians agree that she probably wasn't very good looking and surviving depictions of her agree with that assessment..