A video featuring some ancients from CICF was posted below. http://www.coinweek.com/ancient-coins/cool-ancient-coins-cicf-2014-video-632/ Even shown, on paper, is the Colosseum bronze.
I think there may be more than a few of us that this descriptor could fit. That being said, I've always thought the portrait coins of Cleopatra showed a rather ugly/homely woman.
It is always nice to learn something. Here I learned that the senior numismatist of Heritage Auctions considers Pertinax a usurper. I suppose we each can make up our own definitions of words as suits our fancy. While I enjoy seeing videos like these, I do regret that they leave the impression to those who know nothing about the hobby that ancient coins range from $60k to $140k when was all know that most of them are priceless museum specimens that should never be though of in such vile terms as cash and need to be worshiped for what they are rather than what they will bring at auction. Where is the vid of some kid going through the $5 bin pulling out a Gallienus and explaining how someday he hopes to be chief numismatist of the British Museum? They must have run out of film before they shot that one. I could say nice things about Harlan Berk for hours without mentioning his resemblance to Richard Burton but remind all that we all have our own definitions of beauty as well. I suspect there are some out there who would consider Mother Theresa or the heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune more beautiful than the average glamour model but they would be basing their judgments on different standards. From the standpoint of Caesar and Antony, beauty was defined as owning a country worth a few trillion tons of gold.
In addition to being fluent in seven languages, Cleopatra was apparently extremely good with calculations and mathematics in general. Being one's intellectual equal (or in the case of Marc Antony, his superior) is a far better basis for a relationship than just physical beauty.
Speaking seven languages is a wonderful accomplishment but the real point about Cleopatra was that one of those languages was Egyptian and earlier Ptolemies failed in that regard. Being king over a people and not being able to speak the language of the country is just plain tacky. There have been several examples of this in the course of world history. For that matter, those fans among us might recognize that Game of Thrones applied the attribute to Daenarys along with being pretty and owning dragons. The only question left is whether the producers will realize that killing her off would be bad for ratings.
Harlan's Rhodes was nice, early and big. Those of us on lower rungs of the ladder can look for smaller and/or later but still with a nice 3/4 head. My didrachm (first coin below) is later and half the size but 1/100 the price of the tetradrachms from the finest period. Fractions are even less and much more common.
