Table Of ContentCLEOPATRAS
CLEOPATRAS
John Whitehorne
London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001
© 1994 John Whitehorne
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Whitehorne, J.E.G. (John Edwin George)
Cleopatras/John Whitehorne.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Queens—Middle East—Biography. 2. Queens—
Macedonia— Biography. 3. Middle East—History—To
622. 4. Macedonia— History—To 168 BC I. Title
DS62.23.W47 1994
939′.4–dc20 93–5583
ISBN 0-415-05806-6 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-03608-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-20250-3 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgements x
1 FROM MYTH TO LEGEND 1
The Earliest Cleopatras
2 CLEOPATRA, PERDICCAS II, AND ARCHELAUS 14
3 PHILIP II’S LAST WIFE 30
4 A DOUBLE MYSTERY 43
5 ALEXANDER’S SISTER 57
6 FROM AEGAE TO ALEXANDRIA 70
7 THE SELEUCID CONNECTION (1) 80
Cleopatra I
8 CLEOPATRA II AND PTOLEMY VI 89
9 CLEOPATRA II AND PTOLEMY VIII 103
10 CLEOPATRA II, CLEOPATRA III, AND
PTOLEMY VIII 121
11 CLEOPATRA III AND HER CHILDREN 132
12 THE SELEUCID CONNECTION (2) 149
Cleopatra Thea and her Husbands
13 THE SELEUCID CONNECTION (3) 164
Cleopatra Selene and the Last of the Seleucids
14 THE TWILIGHT OF THE PTOLEMIES 174
Cleopatra Berenice III, Cleopatra V Tryphaena
CONTENTS
15 CLEOPATRA VII’S SUICIDE 186
16 THE END OF THE LINE 197
Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania
APPENDIX 1: WHO’S WHO AMONG THE
PTOLEMIES 203
APPENDIX 2: GENEALOGICAL TABLES 211
Notes 215
Select bibliography 227
Index 233
vi
ILLUSTRATIONS
between pages 102 and 103
1 Antiochus III
2 Ptolemy V Epiphanes
3 Cleopatra I
4 Ptolemy VI Philometor
5 Cleopatra II or III
6 Cleopatra Thea and Alexander Balas
7 Demetrius II Nicator, first reign
8 Demetrius II Nicator, second reign
9 Antiochus VII Euergetes (Sidetes)
10 Cleopatra Thea as sole ruler
11 Cleopatra Thea as sole ruler, reverse
12 Cleopatra Thea and Antiochus VIII Grypus
13 Antiochus IX Cyzicenus
14 Antiochus X Eusebes
15 Ptolemy XII Auletes
16 Cleopatra VII
17 Mark Antony
18 Cleopatra VII and Caesarion
19 Juba II of Mauretania
20 Cleopatra Selene
21 Ptolemy of Mauretania
All are reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
vii
PREFACE
‘Guaranteed 100 per cent true.’ That is what a learned Oxford don
is said to have written jokingly (one hopes) on an offprint of a
scholarly article which he was sending to an equally erudite
colleague.
No such guarantee is offered or implied for what follows.
Ancient history is somewhat like theoretical physics in as much as
the evidence is never complete and never can be, and consequently
the full truth is ultimately unknowable. The best we can do is to
observe and record the evidence as accurately and fully as possible
and make our hypotheses fit as closely as we can. That is what I
have tried to do here.
In a general work like this one relies very heavily upon the more
scholarly labours of many others. Even so, because this book was
written with the general reader in mind rather than the specialist, I
have resisted the temptation to append a vast bibliography and have
confined myself to citing only what I thought was most important,
up-to-date, or convincing. No doubt therefore I have cited
references which I ought not to have cited and left uncited those
which I ought to have cited.
This book had its origins in an invitation to write the article on
Cleopatra for the Anchor Bible Dictionary. At that stage, like most
classical scholars I knew that the famous Cleopatra was Cleopatra
VII and I had enough maths to work out that there must therefore
have been at least six others. But I never expected to find so
many, or that their lives would turn out to be so varied and
complex. Later, when I began to write, I naively expected to find
a theme common to all of them, which could be used to draw
their lives together. But despite my best efforts a common theme
has obstinately refused to emerge. If there is one, it is only that
viii
PREFACE
power corrupts women as surely and nastily as it does men. I am
sorry that this is not very profound or original. None the less I
hope you will enjoy finding out about these Cleopatras as much as
I did.
ix
