But the classics have their share to offer as well: Pascal (he of the wager in Chapter 7) said that if Cleopatra’s nose had been slightly shorter, the world’s fate would have changed. Cleopatra had comely features dominated by a thin and elongated nose that made Julius Caesar and his successor, Marc Antony, fall for her (here the intellectual snob in me cannot resist dissenting against conventional wisdom; Plutarch claimed that it was Cleopatra’s skills in conversation, rather than her good looks, that caused the maddening infatuation of the shakers and movers of her day; I truly believe it).
