Beauties
Who Changed the Course of History
by
Thomas J. Fleming
Cosmpolitan,
June 1956
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
Esther
Thanks to her
beauty and some clever palace politicking by her cousin, Mardochai, Esther
became the bride of the Persian King Assuerus, who reigned from India to
Ethiopia, and who was famed for his good looks as well as for his cruelty.
Assuerus did
not know that Esther was a Jewess: Mardochai had advised her to keep the fact a
secret.
Not long
after Esther was crowned, Mardochai clashed with the King's Prime Minister,
Aman the Agagite. The Jews and the Agagites were traditional enemies, and when
Mardochai refused to kneel before the Minister and worship him, Aman wangled
the King’s official permission to slaughter all the Jews in the kingdom on the
thirteenth day of the twelfth month.
Mardochai,
hearing of the plot, beseeched Esther’s help. But according to law if she (or
anyone else) approached the King in his inner court unsummoned, and the King
did not hold out his golden scepter to her as a token of clemency, she would be
immediately put to death.
Nevertheless,
after fasting and prayer, Esther took the risk. Her beauty dazzled Assuerus,
and he readily agreed to come to a banquet she had prepared, and to bring Aman
along. At the banquet, when the King was “warm with wine,” Esther begged him to
spare the lives of her people. “We have an enemy,” she cried, “whose cruelty
redoundeth on the King.” And she pointed dramatically to Aman.
Assuerus. in
a passion of remorse, hanged Aman and his ten sons. He also gave the Jews
permission to slaughter their enemies on the day Aman had selected, and they
killed seventy-five thousand. The event is still commemorated in the feast of
Purim.
Helen
Sifting the
mist of myths in which Helen's beauty is enshrouded, historians now agree that
she did indeed exist, about the twelfth century B.C., when history was recorded
by poets.
The daughter
of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, she was a "goddess woman" at sixteen.
Menelaus, prince of nearby Mycenae, won an Olympic contest for her hand, and
for nine years they lived together in bliss.
Then came
Paris, handsome prince of Troy. This great city was Greece's principal rival in
a longstanding struggle for commercial supremacy. When Helen and Paris,
mutually impassioned, fled to the Trojan royal palace, indignation swept
Greece.
Mustering a
hundred thousand men and a vast armada, the Greeks laid siege to Troy. For ten
years the struggle raged bloodily on the plains before the city. Paris was
killed, and Helen, though saddened, promptly married his brother Deiphobus.
Finally the
Greeks, with the aid of the famous wooden horse, broke into Troy and burned it
to the ground.
Menelaus, who
had sworn he would kill Helen, melted at the sight of her beauty, and took her
back. But the Greeks were almost as decimated by the long struggle as were the
Trojans. Not long after they straggled home, barbarians from the north broke
through their weakened defenses, plunging the peninsula into a bloodbath which
lasted for centuries.
As for Helen,
she remarked that when Troy fell she was glad; she was tired of the city
anyway.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra
became Queen of Egypt in 51 B.C., at seventeen. Two years later her brother
exiled her to Syria. In 49 B.C. she met Julius Caesar, then fifty one. Though
he was engaged in a vast war for control of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra
persuaded him to do battle with, and kill, her brother.
She then went
to Rome with Caesar, and was his mistress until his assassination. Aware of her
unpopularity, she quickly returned to Egypt.
There,
several years later, she met Mark Antony, who with Caesar's nephew, Octavian,
was engaged in wiping out Caesar's assassins.
Antony fell
passionately in love and called off soldiering to spend the winter at
Alexandria with her. War at home finally aroused him, and he promised his
allies to see no more of Cleopatra. For four years he kept his word. But when
he returned to Syria on a campaign, he promptly sent for her, and as a final
gesture of defiance had his stewards throw his wife, Octavian's sister, out of
their house in Rome.
Octavian
declared war. After two years of jockeying, the forces met in the decisive sea
battle of Actium. At the height of the struggle, Cleopatra impulsively decided
Antony was losing, and fled toward Alexandria with sixty ships, sealing
Antony's defeat.
Eleven months
later, Octavian landed in Egypt and routed Antony's army. Antony was told
Cleopatra was dead. In despair, he killed himself. Cleopatra tried to negotiate
with Octavian but he would have none of her charms, and she, too, committed
suicide. Thus the control of the Roman Empire passed to Octavian, who became
the first of the Roman emperors.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor was
the only woman in history to reign as queen of both France and England. Married
to Louis VII of France when she was sixteen, she promptly brought poets and
musicians under her protection and created, in a Europe just emerging from the
Dark Ages, the tradition of chivalry and romance which is still alive today.
After fifteen
years, when Louis’ youthful passion for her had cooled, their marriage was
annulled by mutual consent.
A month later
Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, eleven years her junior and heir to the
English throne. Henry married Eleanor in order to get control of her Duchy of
Aquitaine.
Not long
afterwards, having succeeded to the English crown, Henry found himself in a
position to dominate both countries. Thus began the long strife between France
and England which continued intermittently for over two centuries.
Meanwhile,
the marriage of Henry and Eleanor passed from indifference to hatred. (She
nevertheless gave him five sons and three daughters.)
In the great
rebellion of 1173 she supported her sons against Henry and for the next sixteen
years was a key figure in the wars and feuds which harassed the King.
Under the
rule of her two sons, Richard the Lionhearted and John, Eleanor became a
political personage of the highest order. She maintained an uneasy peace
between Richard and the treacherous John, and her popularity in Aquitaine
remained the balance of power between France and England.
The shrewd
political marriages she made for her children and grandchildren influenced the
history of Europe for the next two hundred years.
Isabella of Spain
Isabella’s
marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon united the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon
and laid the foundation for modern Spain.
Extremely
beautiful, Isabella exercised great influence over her royal husband. She was
acutely conscious of the fact that she brought to their union a kingdom as
large and powerful as his own, and she was always present at state councils and
insisted on using her name with his on all public documents.
Her influence
on the Castilian court was equally profound. The morals of the preceding reign
had been debased and degraded, but she transformed the court into a “nursery of
virtue and generous ambition” and also did much for letters by founding a
palace school.
Other aspects
of her reign are not so praiseworthy. She introduced the Inquisition into Spain
and persecuted the Jews relentlessly.
Her chief
title to fame, however, rests upon the well-known part she played in promoting
the great project of Columbus. When all others had listened to the navigator’s
scheme with incredulity she recalled him to her presence with the words: “I
will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castile and am ready to pawn my
jewels to defray the expenses of it, if the funds in the treasury should be
found inadequate.” Ferdinand was thus shamed into outfitting Columbus’ tiny
fleet, and a new era dawned.
( εδώ τμήμα του
δημοσιεύματος και όχι ολόκληρο το δημοσίευμα το οποίο εκτείνεται στις σελ.
22-25. )
Thomas
J. Fleming, “Beauties Who changed the Course of History”, Cosmpolitan, June 1956,
pp. 22-23.
( από την ύλη
περιεχομένων του τεύχους)
/ - το εξώφυλλο του
τεύχους
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 28 Απριλίου 2024 :
Beauties Who Changed the Course of History
by Thomas J. Fleming
Cosmpolitan, June 1956
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου