Cleopatra and Reputation (Essay Sample)

Cleopatra and reputation
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Reputation is any general opinion held by people concerning someone or something which can be either positive or negative; Reputation can reflect the evaluation by others on one's conducts or standards of operation. An individual may be identified with a particular status which has been socially constructed. Reputation can be built by showing consistently bad or positive behavior in public (Rao 1994, p 28). Good reputation affects social scenes around the individual who may contribute to success or failure. Being objective is putting a point across in unbiased manner by keenly focusing on facts and details about a situation or event; this can be verified by facts or any other arithmetic methods. Historians can avoid being subjective and judgmental by not giving their biased opinion based on their experiences and thoughts but rather to base their arguments on facts that can be measured and verified. Cleopatra is having reputations such as being extravagant, as a beauty icon, loving luxury. Those character traits make her reputation to conflict. We don’t expect women of her class with all the beauty and loving luxurious life to be going out for conquest. She should be peace loving but instead she is out there trying to conquer the whole world.
Plutarch reveals that despite the fact that Cleopatra is beautiful, her real charm came from her personality. "Cleopatra was capable of charming men; she is well held in the Roman writings that she used to attract Antony consistently; they would go hunting together, drink and play dice together and this amazed Antony" (Kleiner 2005, pp 1).  Long before she met Antony, she had measured all his desires and understood clearly the much it would take to satisfy them. The first time they met after long-term arrangements which had seemed not to materialize, her appearance was like that of a goddess of love from her dress code together with her female crew. She looked endorsed with so much wealth and luxury, to ensure Antony did not mistake her real value. Cassius Dio presents Cleopatra as a woman who has drowned Antony using her loving charms to the extent of Antony joining forces with her to fight Rome, his motherland. He has indulged with Cleopatra and has become soft to lose his fighter personality; this shows how Cleopatra disoriented him on his real quest of conquering Rome enemies. Horace is showing how Romans had lost hope due to a battle organized against them by Antony in collaboration with Cleopatra. Then they all over sudden heard of the victory of Rome contrary to their expectation - Antony and Cleopatra kill themselves, and Rome emerged as the winner in the conquest (Kleiner 2005, pp 9). The view that the Romans had towards Cleopatra was based on the fact that she was able to charm any man even by the mere look at her pictures. She had succeeded in convincing Antony to wage war against his country.
A Dendra relief is an ancient religious site whose construction was started by Cleopatra’s father. The construction was finished by Cleopatra, which raises her reputation as the person who accomplished the building of the temple for religious activities. On the sculpture, Cleopatra places her image and that of her son to show how much the son was dignified. In fact, "she set him on the level next to gods and made him a grown adult despite being just a boy and was observed as a full pharaoh" (Kleiner 2009, pp 19).  She considered herself a pharaoh and also a mother of a pharaoh who was partly seen as the integration of Egyptian traditions where females could be Pharaoh on behalf of their male relatives. The coins were minted in the east and probably spread across to reach Antony and Cleopatra’s territory. On the coins, Cleopatra was looking rather older than youthful which was assumed to be the wrong impression of a queen. Her melon hair style and her pearl jewel were an idea of the rich and royal hood; it was meant to reinforce the fact that she was in power. She deserved reverence from Egypt across to the general Mark Antony’s territories as a powerful leader. The Egyptians had this view of Cleopatra about how she had valued herself and exalted herself so much.
Cleopatra is depicted in the Hollywood as the icon of femininity and feminism. The reason behind it is the immense power and wealth that she enjoyed as queen in Egypt. It is clear that she is the most powerful woman ever to have lived. She had affairs with men of her class from Rome like Antony and Julius Caesar though she later faced her downfall from the third Octavian after trying to conquer Rome in collaboration with Antony, her lover (Shaheen 2003, pp 180). The music industry uses Cleopatra as the symbol of beauty and a goddess of love. Documentaries about Cleopatra have been created to show cultures from ancient worlds of Egypt and Rome. Cleopatra is used as a figure to show women leadership and how successful they were and can be. The documentaries show how she was well educated and was intelligent enough to deserve a ruling position. She was a controversial leader; her origin was from Europe but exercised her authority in Africa. Despite being a woman, she is successful in the leadership world equally as ruling men like Antony and Julius.
Historical sources are documents, images, books, video clips or sounds that have been recorded to reveal the past. The source needs to be reliable or authentic it should show a logical and a persuasive element. It has to depict the interpretation that maintains its argument in an objective manner; it has to contain frames and references that can be used to help compare how the ideas and values in the source are different from those of the current age. "Evaluating the truth content where the new information is compared with the existing information may be from the secondary sources" (Rouet 1996, pp 481). For a historian to make a balanced judgement and become objective in his or her analysis, they should focus on available facts and try to prove their point by conducting tests to substantiate their information or argument. When historians use a variety of historical sources, they tend to be more objective, and their judgement is balanced. This is because the different information found has varied content in some segments with limitations as well, and one with less limitation may be settled upon to enhance judgement as compared to when just a single source is used.
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