Questions From My Wife IX: Ancient Beauty Secrets

Were classic ancient beauties (Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, etc.) really all that hot or did they just have good PR?

Ideals of beauty change over generations, so who's to say if the ancients would find today's supermodels attractive at all. But, in her day, Cleopatra was the rage around the Mediterranean. Cassius Dio, a second century Greek historian, refers to her as "a woman of surpassing beauty, and at that time, when she was in the prime of her youth, she was most striking; she also possessed a most charming voice and a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to every one." But was she reliant on her looks alone as she sought to diplomatically link to Greece through seducing Julius Caesar and Marc Antony? Plutarch says "[f]or her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm..." So, maybe she wasn't all that hot. Recently, Roman coins of her likeness have been found, revealing (if this likeness is at all accurate) that she had a small forehead, hooked nose, and a pointed chin. A marble bust possibly sculpted upon her arrival in Rome reveals more soft and rounded features.

Helen of Troy is probably based more in mythology to be considered "accurately beautiful as stated." Though I find it kinda funny that Isaac Asimov defined a measurement of beauty as the ability to launch one ship -- the millihelen.

Why is prostitution called the oldest profession? What were they being paid with? Meat? Fire? Stone wheels? Pterodactyl record player / woolly mammoth shower (think Flintstones)?

Uh, yeah...this one's a doozy. Prostitution, as loosely defined as providing sexual intercourse for some compensation, has probably been around as long as there has been sex and/or compensation. While I couldn't find a good answer to when it was deemed as such, there were brothels in ancient Greek, Aztec, Roman, and Jewish societies. Some theories suggest that prostitution (and adultery) came from the establishment of monogamy as a social norm in humans. Or rather, the conflict between monogamy and the male need to inseminate whatever is possible to pass along the genes. It seems unlikely to me that this would be the "oldest" of all professions. Wasn't Adam a nomenclature zoologist?