You too can have an ass like Cleopatra

Sep 5, 2010 Alun Politics, The Past 9 Comments Ancient History, Cleopatra, Cosmetics, Reception

@Simon_Perry on Twit­ter has poin­ted out a web­site of someone who’s a rather aggress­ive sales­man. I’ve had to hand in my Ped­antry badge that I earned in the cub scouts because my first reac­tion was that the cham­pagne vin­egar in this facecream isn’t likely to be nat­ural. This is miss­ing the point because as far as I can tell noth­ing sold by Totally Nat­ural Skin­care is totally nat­ural. But there is a gem among the junk.

Cleo­pat­ras bath milk
Used by Cleo­patra, except she used asses milk! A beau­ti­ful sooth­ing and relax­ing bath milk which nour­ishes the skin and releases its floral oils and cocoa but­ter in the warmth of the bath leav­ing you smooth as silk. This Bath milk also con­tains our own rose petal soap. thus cleanses as well as moisturising.

As sales pitches go “Used by Cleo­patra, except she used asses milk!” is a clas­sic — and not just because the product includes cocoa (from the Amer­icas). You need to think about what bathing in asses milk means.

To be hon­est, I don’t know where the idea that Cleo­patra bathed in asses’ milk came from. There’s no con­tem­por­ary source that I know of that says it. Pliny the Elder writ­ing around a cen­tury later said that women bathed their cheeks in it seven times a day to remove wrinkles. The key bit is “Pop­paea hoc Ner­onis prin­cipis instituit, bal­nearum quoque solia sic tem­per­ans…” Nat­ural His­tory 28.183. Pliny says that Pop­paea, wife of Nero first did this, and even filled her bath-tubs with the milk.

Nero was not fondly remembered by the Roman élite after he died, and neither was Pop­paea. By say­ing that Pop­paea intro­duced the prac­tice, Pliny is not just say­ing it’s some­thing that extremely vain people would do. Nero and Pop­paea were con­sidered moral dregs. The fact that Pop­paea used whole baths of the stuff high­lights her extra­vag­ant and waste­ful nature. Even though the élites were wealthy, the pur­suit and flaunt­ing of wealth on per­sonal effects was con­sidered effem­in­ate and unRo­man. Instead Romans were sup­posed to flash their cash by put­ting on events for the the people, or build­ing pub­lic works. If as part of those works, they had to have grand vil­las and employ the best sculptors to fur­nish them, then that was the way life went.

Cas­sius Dio (62.28) was scath­ing of Poppaea’s pur­suit of luxury:

The extremes of lux­ury indulged in by this Sabina (Pop­paea) O will indic­ate in the briefest terms. She cause gil­ded shoes to be put on the mules that drew her and caused five hun­dred asses that had recently foaled to be milked daily that she might bathe in their milk. For she bestowed the greatest pains on the beauty and bril­liancy of her per­son, and this is why, when she noticed in a mir­ror one day that her appear­ance was not comely, she prayed that she might die before she passed her prime.

So if Pop­paea inven­ted the milk bath, why is it asso­ci­ated with Cleopatra?

Egypt was wealthy because of its agri­cul­ture. It was pres­ti­gi­ous due to the antiquity of its civil­isa­tion. So the Romans had to find a flaw in Egypt to jus­tify their rule. The flaw was in the moral char­ac­ter of its rulers. By say­ing Cleo­patra bathed in asses milk, the later authors were say­ing some­thing about the cor­rupt nature of the last of the Pharaohs. By asso­ci­ation Mark Anthony’s rela­tion­ship with Cleo­patra sul­lied him. Bathing in asses milk might have said some­thing about Cleopatra’s beauty, but it was some­thing along the lines of “She was beau­ti­ful, just like a pros­ti­tute with plenty of make-up.”

So while Totally Nat­ural Skin­care aren’t say­ing this product isn’t exactly the same as used by Cleo­patra, they’re imply­ing it’ll have the same effect. Buy their products and you too can be just like an ancient whore.

Incid­ent­ally, if you’ve ever thought that bathing in asses’ milk doesn’t sound prac­tical, you’re prob­ably right. Seneca writ­ing in the Con­tro­ver­siae recor­ded that brothels stank. Not just because of the cos­met­ics, but also from the cheap per­fume used to try and hide the smell.