Milk bath Milk bath A milk bath is a bath taken in milk instead of water. Often other scents such as honey, rose, lavender and essential oils are added. Milk baths use lactic acid, an alpha hydroxy acid, to dissolve the proteins which hold together dead skin cells. There are legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk daily for her complexion. These legends have not been confirmed and some historians believe that Roman Empress Poppaea set this bathing fashion after Cleopatra's death. Queens Catherine Parr and later Elizabeth I of England used milk baths to make their skin appear more youthful and
Reign of Cleopatra golden age led by the queen. In an account of Lucius Munatius Plancus, preserved in Horace's "Satires", Cleopatra was said to have made a bet that she could spend 2.5 million drachmas in a single evening. She proved it by removing a pearl, one of the most expensive known, from one of her earrings and dissolving it in vinegar at her dinner party. The accusation that Antony had stolen the books of the Library of Pergamon to restock the Library of Alexandria, however, was an admitted fabrication by Gaius Calvisius Sabinus. He may have been the source of many other