Part Two The Whore
“Meretrix regina.” [“The harlot queen.”]
—Propertius, Elegies
“In a single night, after donning a hood, she accepted, in a brothel as a prostitute, the embraces of one hundred and six men.”[*]
—Letters on the Infamous Libido of Cleopatra the Queen
“The prostitute of oriental kings.”
—Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women
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* I have never been prone to hysterics, but how I laughed when I learned of these forged letters.
My eyes turned red from tears, my cheeks aching from the wideness of my jaw.
That many men have never touched my skin, let alone taken pleasure in it!
But I do not resent the scholars who penned these letters; they were resourceful, mining my myth to fill their pockets.
If only I had had the chance to meet them, I would have liked to ask them what experiments they carried out before deciding on the number one hundred and six.