The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World 9781138358843

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T H E R O U T L E D G E C O M PA N I O N T O WO M E N A N D M O NA R C H Y I N T H E A N C I E N T M E D I T E R R A N E A N   WO R L D

This volume offers the first comprehensive look at the role of women in the monarchies of the ancient Mediterranean. It consistently addresses certain issues across all dynasties: title; role in succession; the situation of mothers, wives, and daughters of kings; regnant and co-​regnant women; and role in cult and in dynastic image, and examines a sampling of the careers of individual women while placing them within broader contexts. Written by an international group of experts, this collection is based on the assumption that women played a fundamental role in ancient monarchy, that they were part of, not apart from it, and that it is necessary to understand their role to understand ancient monarchies. This is a crucial resource for anyone interested in the role of women in antiquity. Elizabeth D. Carney is Professor of History and Carol K. Brown Scholar in the Humanities, Emerita, at Clemson University, USA. Her focus has been on Macedonian and Hellenistic monarchy and the role of royal women in monarchy, most recently in Molossia. She has written Women and Monarchy in Ancient Macedonia (2000), Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great (2006), Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life (2013), and Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power (2019). Some of her articles dealing with monarchy, with new afterwords, are collected in King and Court in Ancient Macedonia: Rivalry,Treason and Conspiracy (2015). Sabine Müller is Professor of Ancient History at Marburg University, Germany. Her research focuses on the Persian empire, Argead Macedonia, the Hellenistic empires, Macedonian royal women, Lukian, and reception studies. Her publications include the monographs Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoë II. (2009), Perdikkas II. –​Retter Makedoniens (2017), and Alexander der Große. Eroberung –​Politik –​Rezeption (2019).

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“Whilst biographies of individual queens and treatments of their various dynastic families have at last come more into vogue in the new millennium, this is the first book to establish a comprehensive and fully comparative perspective on the royal women of the ancient east Mediterranean as a larger phenomenon. Elizabeth D.  Carney and Sabine Müller have assembled an international team of contributors from leading scholars in their sundry fields. These now supply authoritative accounts of the different dynasties and of the more prominent individual figures amongst them, whilst adopting an admirably diverse series of intellectual approaches.… The volume is presented in an open and engaging style that renders it not only useful for specialists but also accessible and interesting for undergraduates and general readers.” Daniel Ogden, University of Exeter, UK “The work will be the first comprehensive treatment of ancient royal women and their role in the ancient Mediterranean. Especially welcome is the inclusion of such states as Caria, Kush, Palmyra, and the Parthians, which are often ignored in such works. Second, and equally important, the analysis of royal women is firmly located in the context of the institution of monarchy with a clear recognition of the varied forms monarchy took in the ancient Mediterranean world. The editors have assembled an excellent team of authors, which ensures that the chapters will be of high quality.… This is an excellent project, and the resulting volume will be a valuable contribution to scholarship on ancient Mediterranean monarchy.” Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles, USA

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THE ROUTLEDGE C O M PA N I O N T O WO M E N A N D M O NA R C H Y IN THE ANCIENT M E D I T E R R A N E A N WO R L D

Edited by Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller

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First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised 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. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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 Names: Carney, Elizabeth Donnelly, 1947– editor. | Müller, Sabine, 1972– editor. Title: The Routledge companion to women and monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean world / edited by Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller. Identifiers: LCCN 2020019166 (print) | LCCN 2020019167 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138358843 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429434105 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Queens–Mediterranean Region–History–To 1500. | Women–Political activity–Mediterranean Region–History–To 1500. | Women in public life–Mediterranean Region–History–To 1500. | Nobility–Mediterranean Region–History–To 1500. | Mediterranean Region–History–To 476. Classification: LCC DE86 .R68 2021 (print) | LCC DE86 (ebook) | DDC 929.7082/0937–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019166 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019167 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​35884-​3  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​43410-​5  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

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CONTENTS

List of figures  List of table  Notes on contributors 

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PART I

Women and monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean 

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1 Introduction to thinking about women and monarchy in the ancient world  3 Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller PART II

Egypt and the Nile Valley 

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2 The king’s mother in the Old and Middle Kingdoms  Lisa Sabbahy

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3 Regnant women in Egypt  Martina Minas-​Nerpel

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4 The image of Nefertiti  Athena Van der Perre

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5 The God’s Wife of Amun: origins and rise to power  Mariam F. Ayad

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6 The role and status of royal women in Kush  Angelika Lohwasser

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7 Ptolemaic royal women  Anne Bielman Sánchez and Giuseppina Lenzo

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8 Berenike II  Sabine Müller

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9 Royal women and Ptolemaic cults  Stefan Pfeiffer

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10 Ptolemaic women’s patronage of the arts  Silvia Barbantani

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11 The Kleopatra problem: Roman sources and a female Ptolemaic ruler  Christoph Schäfer

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PART III

The ancient Near East 

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12 Invisible Mesopotamian royal women?  Sebastian Fink

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13 Achaimenid women  Maria Brosius

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14 Karian royal women and the creation of a royal identity  Stephen Ruzicka

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15 Seleukid women  Marek Jan Olbrycht

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16 Apama and Stratonike: the first Seleukid basilissai  Gillian Ramsey

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17 Seleukid marriage alliances  Monica D’Agostini

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18 Royal mothers and dynastic power in Attalid Pergamon  Dolores Mirón

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19 Hasmonean women  Julia Wilker

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20 Women at the Arsakid court  Irene Madreiter and Udo Hartmann

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21 Women of the Sassanid dynasty (224–​651 CE)  Josef Wiesehöfer

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22 Zenobia of Palmyra  Lucinda Dirven

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PART IV

Greece and Macedonia 

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23 “Royal” women in the Homeric epics  Johannes Heinrichs

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24 Royal women in Greek tragedy  Hanna M. Roisman

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25 Argead women  Sabine Müller

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26 Women in Antigonid monarchy  Elizabeth D. Carney

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PART V

Commonalities 

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27 Transitional royal women: Kleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, Adea Eurydike, and Phila  Elizabeth D. Carney

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28 Women and dynasty at the Hellenistic imperial courts  Rolf Strootman

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29 Royal brother–​sister marriage, Ptolemaic and otherwise  Sheila L. Ager

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30 Jugate images in Ptolemaic and Julio-​Claudian monarchy  Dimitris Plantzos

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PART VI

Rome: late republic through empire 

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31 Octavia Minor and patronage  Katrina Moore

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32 Livia and the principate of Augustus and Tiberius  Christiane Kunst

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33 Julio-​Claudian imperial women  Francesca Cenerini

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34 The imperial women from the Flavians to the Severi  Kordula Schnegg

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35 Portraiture of Flavian imperial women  Annetta Alexandridis

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36 The Faustinas  Stefan Priwitzer

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37 Women in the Severan dynasty  Riccardo Bertolazzi

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38 Women in the family of Constantine  Michaela Dirschlmayer

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PART VII

Reception from antiquity to present times 

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39 Semiramis: perception and presentation of female power in an Oriental garb  Brigitte Truschnegg

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40 Tanaquil and Tullia in Livy as Roman caricatures of Greek mythic and historic Hellenistic queens  Judith P. Hallett and Karen Klaiber Hersch

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41 Roman empresses on screen: an epic failure?  Anja Wieber

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Index 

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FIGURES

4.1 Limestone house altar depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three of their daughters, found at Amarna  38 5.1 Mut embracing Amun. Karnak Hypostyle Hall, east wall, south half  51 5.2a Shepenwepet II performing the ritual Driving the four Calves (hout behesou) for Osiris, Horus, and deified Amenirdis I. Courtyard, Funerary Chapel of Amenirdis I, Medinet Habu  52 5.2b Shepenwepet II offering to Ra-​Horakhty, Isis, and deified Amenirdis I. Courtyard, Funerary Chapel of Amenirdis I, Medinet Habu  52 6.1 Lunette of the coronation stele of king Aspelta  63 6.2 Pylon of the pyramid chapel of Amanishakheto  67 20.1 Silver coin of Phraates V Phraatakes and Mousa  239 30.1 Gold octodrachm (obverse); Jugate busts of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II  360 30.2 Gold octodrachm (reverse); Jugate busts of Ptolemy I and Berenike I  361 30.3 Clay seal-​impression from Edfu; Ptolemaic couple, late second /​early first century BCE  365 30.4 Clay seal-​impression from Edfu; Ptolemaic couple, late second /​early first century BCE  365 30.5 Cornelian intaglio. Imperial couple, c. 62–​65 CE  367 35.1 Aureus of Domitian, depicting Divus Vespasianus on the obverse (a) and Diva Flavia Domitilla with stola on the reverse (b)  430 35.2 Colossal marble head of Flavia Domitilla  430 35.3 Denarius of Titus with Julia Titi on the obverse and Venus with helmet and scepter on the reverse  431 35.4 Dupondius of Titus with Julia Titi on the obverse (a) and Ceres with torch and ears of wheat on the reverse (b)  431 35.5 Portrait of Julia Titi, head on modern bust, marble  432 35.6 Sestertius of Domitian, with Domitia on obverse (a) and Domitia seated with child as mother of the divine Caesar on reverse (b)  432 ix

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Figures

35.7 Aureus of Domitian, with Domitia on obverse (a) and her son as Divus Caesar on reverse (b)  35.8 Cameo bust of Julia Titi/​Domitia (?) in apotheosis  38.1 Genealogical chart of the family of Constantine  41.1 Livia in front of the Ara Pacis: Flora Robson in I, Claudius  41.2 Poppaea plotting: Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross 

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433 433 471 506 511

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TABLE

36.1 Proportion of coins representing women in relation to all coins of the reigns in the era of the Faustinas 

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CONTRIBUTORS

Sheila L. Ager is Professor of Classical Studies and currently Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 337–​90 BC (1996), co-​editor (with Riemer Faber) of Belonging and Isolation in the Hellenistic World (2013), and editor of A Cultural History of Peace in Antiquity (2020). Much of her research has focused on international relations in antiquity, in particular peaceful conflict resolution. She is also the author of several papers on Hellenistic monarchy, especially the Hellenistic queens of the Ptolemaic and Seleukid houses. Annetta Alexandridis is Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology at Cornell University. Her research interests include Roman portraiture, the iconography of Greek myth, gender and the body, animals, and archaeology and its media. She is the author of Die Frauen des Römischen Kaiserhauses. Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna (2004) and several articles on the iconography of women and of the Roman empresses. Mariam F. Ayad is an Associate Professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo and the author of God’s Wife, God’s Servant: The God’s Wife of Amun (c. 740–​525 BC) (2009). She obtained her PhD in Egyptology at Brown University in 2003, where her dissertation dealt with the “Funerary Texts of Amenirdis I: Analysis of their Layout and Purpose.” A specialist in the history of Egypt during the first millennium BCE, her research interests focus on the intersection of ritual, gender, and the selection and transmission of religious texts. Silvia Barbantani is Associate Professor of Classical Philology and Papyrology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. She studied in Milan, Urbino, and Venice (VIU), and was a visiting student in Oxford and Cambridge. She is Associate Member of the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies, University of Waterloo, Canada. She has published extensively on Hellenistic history and literature, focusing mainly on epigram, encomiastic poetry, and lyric poetry; she is a contributor to Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Continued. She is currently working on a corpus of Hellenistic epigrams related to military men and collaborating with a team of scholars on an update of the Supplementum Hellenisticum.

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Notes on contributors

Riccardo Bertolazzi obtained a PhD in Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary in 2017 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto between 2017 and 2019. He has published numerous articles on social and military matters related to Roman imperial history, with particular focus on epigraphic texts from Italy, North Africa, and the Danubian provinces. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Verona, he is now in the process of publishing a book on the relationship between emperor Septimius Severus and the cities of the empire. Anne Bielman Sánchez is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Since 1998, she has worked on social issues in ancient contexts, especially on female public activities in the Greek Hellenistic world: queens, priestesses, female magistrates, and benefactors. Her studies have frequently focused on ancient inscriptions, for instance her monograph Femmes en public dans le monde hellénistique (2002). She co-​authored, with Giuseppina Lenzo, Inventer le pouvoir féminin: Cléopâtre I et Cléopâtre II, reines d’Egypte au IIe s. av. J.-​C. (2015). She recently edited Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives (2019). Maria Brosius’ research focuses on the history of pre-​ Islamic Persia, especially on the Achaimenid period, as well as on the cultural, intellectual, and religious connections between Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Her publications include Women in Ancient Persia (559–​ 331 BC) (1996) and The Persians: An Introduction (2006). She recently completed the monograph A History of the Achaemenid Empire as part of the series History of the Ancient World. Among her articles related to Achaimenid history are “Persian Diplomacy between ‘Pax Persica’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’ ” (2012), and “Some Remarks on the Channels of the Transmission of Knowledge in the Ancient Mediterranean World” (2014). Elizabeth D. Carney is Professor of History and Carol K. Brown Scholar in the Humanities, Emerita, at Clemson University. Her focus has been on Macedonian and Hellenistic monarchy and the role of royal women in monarchy, most recently in Molossia. She has written Women and Monarchy in Ancient Macedonia (2000), Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great (2006), Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life (2013), and Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power (2019). Some of her articles dealing with monarchy, with new afterwords, are collected in King and Court in Ancient Macedonia: Rivalry,Treason and Conspiracy (2015). Francesca Cenerini is Full Professor of Roman History at the University of Bologna (Italy). Her research interests are primarily focused on the representation of the female condition in the Roman period through the analysis of epigraphic documentation and literary sources. This research has produced numerous scholarly articles and two monographs: La donna romana. Modelli e realtà (trans. The Roman Woman: Models and realities) (2002), and Dive e donne. Mogli, madri, figlie e sorelle degli imperatori romani da Augusto a Commodo (trans. Divas and Women:  Wives, Mothers, Daughters and Sisters of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Commodus) (2009). She continues to participate in projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness dealing with female marginalization in the Roman imperial age and on motherhood and feelings in Greek and Roman society. Monica D’Agostini, who holds doctorates from the Università Cattolica di Milano and the Università di Bologna, focuses her research on politics, diplomacy, dynastic relations, the exertion and expression of power, and the construction of political and military authority in Macedonia and Hellenistic antiquity, with forays into the history of modern political thought. Her xiii

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Notes on contributors

publications include Gaetano Filangieri and Benjamin Franklin: Between the Italian Enlightenment and the US Constitution (2011) and The Rise of Philip V: Kingship and Rule in the Hellenistic World (2019). She is currently affiliated with the Department of Archaeology, Ancient History, and History of Art at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. Michaela Dirschlmayer is Lecturer in Ancient History at Goethe-​ University, Frankfurt (Germany) and copy-​editor of the Historische Zeitschrift, a leading historical journal in Germany. After her studies in the Archaeology of the Roman and Greek period, the Near East and Ancient History in Mainz and Frankfurt am Main, from 2008 until 2012 she worked as a research associate in the research project “Normative Orders” at Goethe-​University. In 2013 she finished her PhD about church foundations of Roman empresses, which was published in 2015. Lucinda Dirven is attached as researcher to the History department of the University of Amsterdam. She was trained as an art historian and historian of religion and combines written and material sources in her research, which focuses on the cultural history of Syria and Mesopotamia during the first three centuries CE, as well as on early Christian and so-​called “Oriental” cults in the Roman west. After her PhD, which was published as The Palmyrenes of Dura-​Europos: A Case Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria (1999), she published extensively on various sites in the Roman Near East and edited Hatra: Politics, Culture and Religion between Parthia and Rome (2013). She is currently finishing a catalog, The Sculptures of Hatra, a volume cataloging and analyzing all sculptures from this little-​known Parthian site. Sebastian Fink is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence–​ Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions at the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD in 2010 from the University of Innsbruck. His research interests include Ancient Near-​Eastern history, Near-​Eastern political and philosophical thought, Sumerian language, and Mesopotamian literature. Currently he is working on a history of the continuities and changes in the Emesal lamentations. Judith P. Hallett is Professor of Classics and Distinguished Scholar–​Teacher Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her BA degree in Latin from Wellesley College, and her MA and PhD degrees in Classical Philology from Harvard University. She has published widely in the areas of Latin language and literature; women, sexuality and the family in ancient Greek and Roman societies; classical reception; and the history of classical studies in the nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century Anglophone world. The 19 essays in a 2013 Festschrift, Domina Illustris:  Roman Literature, Gender, and Reception, published by Routledge, honor her work. Udo Hartmann has a PhD in Ancient History from the Freie Universität Berlin (2000) and has taught at the Humboldt-​Universität in Berlin, in Dresden, Kiel, and Bochum. Since 2012, he has been Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Jena where he completed his Habilitation in 2018. His main areas of research are the crisis of the Roman Empire in the third century CE, the Roman Near East and Palmyra, Parthian and Sassanian history, and philosophers in late antiquity. Johannes Heinrichs is apl. Professor in Ancient History at the University of Cologne (Germany), currently a collaborator in the project CIIP (Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae), and one of the editors of the Lexicon of Argead Macedonia. He has publications in the fields of xiv

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Achaimenid, Greek, and Latin epigraphy, numismatics, and history, Roman imperial prosopography (PIR, vols VIII.1 and 2), in addition to articles on Celtic and Germanic groups in Western Europe. His recent papers include discussions of a new bronze tablet from the Lykaion in archaic Arcadia, on Greek wars from Mycenaean through Hellenistic times, and juristic aspects of the Hefzibah inscription that contains letters by the Seleukid king Antiochus III. Karen Klaiber Hersch is Associate Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple University. Her research interests include all aspects of Roman religion, history, women, and imperial literature. She is the author of The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (2010) and is the editor of a volume on marriage in Greek and Roman antiquity A Cultural History of Marriage: Antiquity (2020). She is currently at work on new monograph on Tanaquil. Christiane Kunst is full Professor in Ancient History at the University of Osnabrück. She has published monographs on the history of historiography, Roman housing, and the Roman family. She has long written on aspects of gender. She is co-​editor of Grenzen der Macht: Zur Rolle der römischen Kaiserfrauen (2000), author of Livia: Macht und Intrigen am Hof des Augustus (2008), and editor of Matronage: Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke antiker Herrscherfrauen (2013). More recently she has been working on conflict landscapes and geographical mobility. Giuseppina Lenzo is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). She is an Egyptologist specializing in the history and religion of the first millennium BCE in ancient Egypt. The Ptolemaic queens are a particular focus of her research. She published the book Inventer le pourvoir féminin: Cléopâtre I et Cléopâtre, reines d’Egypte au IIe s. av. J.-​C. (2015) with Anne Bielman Sánchez, as well as many articles on this and other topics. She is currently editing Cultes aux rois et aux héros dans l’Antiquité: continuités et changements à l’époque hellénistique with Christophe Nihan and Matthieu Pellet. Angelika Lohwasser studied Egyptology, the Archaeology of Sudan, and Arabic Language at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her thesis discussed the queens of Kush and her habilitation focused on the cemetery of Sanam, a Napatan non-​royal burial ground.This study was honored with the Heinz Maier-​Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation. Since 2009 she has been full Professor for Egyptology at the University of Münster and director of archaeological fieldwork in the Bayuda desert in Sudan. Her publications deal with various culture-​historical, historical, and archaeological aspects of the cultures of ancient Sudan and late-​period Egypt. Irene Madreiter is Assistant Professor of Ancient History in the department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her research focuses on cultural contacts in the Mediterranean, gender in the Achaimenid, Arsakid and Sassanian era, and Greek perceptions of the “Orient.” Martina Minas-​Nerpel is Professor of Egyptology at Trier University (Germany) and Director of the Zentrum der Altertumswissenschaften Trier. Her research interests concentrate on the religious and cultural history of Egypt, with a focus on the royal ideology of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. She co-​directs the Belgian-​German epigraphic mission to Karnak and serves as the principal investigator of an international team researching the Egyptian temple of Isis at Shanhur (near Luxor), built and decorated in the first two centuries CE. xv

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Notes on contributors

Dolores Mirón is Permanent Professor in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, and member of the Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Granada (Spain). Her research and publications have been developed within the field of women’s history in classical antiquity and have focused especially on topics concerning women’s public agency and power, from her first works on Roman imperial cult to her studies on conflict management in Greece and on Hellenistic royal women. Her current research is focused on women’s agency and memory in Hellenistic architecture. Katrina Moore is currently pursuing her PhD in Classics at the City University of New York (CUNY). She earned her MA at Clemson University where she wrote her thesis on Octavia Minor. Her research interests include the intersection of women and gender in the late Roman republic, the portrayal of women in Roman art, and, more generally, women and power in the ancient Mediterranean. Sabine Müller is Professor of Ancient History at Marburg University. Her research focuses on the Persian empire, Argead Macedonia, the Hellenistic empires, Macedonian royal women, Lukian, and reception studies. Her publications include the monographs Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoë II. (2009), Perdikkas II. –​Retter Makedoniens (2017) and Alexander der Große. Eroberung –​Politik –​Rezeption (2019). Marek Jan Olbrycht is Professor of History and Ancient Oriental Studies at Rzeszów University, Poland, and Member of the Oriental Commission of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków. Formerly he was a member at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, and Humboldt Visiting Professor at the University of Münster (Germany). His focus has been the history of ancient Iran and Central Asia, Alexander the Great, and ancient warfare. He has published more than 100 articles and several books (including Parthia et Ulteriores gentes, 1998, and Alexander the Great and the Iranian World, 2004). In 2010, he established the journal Anabasis. Studia Classica et Orientalia. Stefan Pfeiffer has been Chair of Ancient History at Martin-​ Luther-​ Universität Halle-​ Wittenberg since 2013. Previously he was Full Professor for “Ancient World and Europe” at Technische Universität Chemnitz (2010–​13). His areas of specialization are the history of Greco-​Roman Egypt, ruler cult in antiquity, and Judaism in Alexandria. In addition to other projects, he has published books on multilingual texts from Egypt (the Decree of Canopus and the victory stele of C.  Cornelius Gallus) and has written a book on emperor cult in Egypt (2010). In addition, he has published a textbook on Greek and Latin epigraphical records from Egypt (2015) and also a general overview of the Ptolemaic Empire (2017). Dimitris Plantzos is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. A specialist in Greek gem engraving, painting, and classical reception, he has edited (with T.J. Smith) A Companion to Greek Art (2018), and is the author of Greek Art and Archaeology, 1200–​30 BC (2016) and The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece (2018). His current research focuses on modern uses of the classical past, political or other. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Greek Media and Culture and co-​director with D. Damaskos of the Argos Orestikon Excavation Project. Stefan Priwitzer has been a Senior Lecturer at the University of Tübingen since 2010. He studied Ancient and Medieval History, and Classical Archaeology at the Universities of Tübingen xvi

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and Bologna (1994–​2000). His PhD dissertation was on the dynastic importance of Faustina Minor and her literary tradition, supervised by Hildegard Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum and M. Meier (2006, published 2009). His current research interests include the Roman republic, early and high empire, and women of the leading class in the Roman republic and empire. Gillian Ramsey is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Campion College at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada). She has previously worked at the Universities of Toronto and Leicester and received her PhD in Classics from the University of Exeter. She has published research on Hellenistic women’s history and the Seleukid dynasty, including imperial administration and queens. Hanna M.  Roisman is Arnold Bernhard Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Emerita, Colby College, and Junior Fellow at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. She specializes in Homer, Hesiod, Greek and Roman Tragedy, and in Classics and Film. In addition to articles and book chapters, she has published Loyalty in Early Greek Epic and Tragedy (1984), Nothing Is as It Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides’ Hippolytus (1999), Sophocles: Philoctetes (2005), Sophocles: Electra. A Commentary (forthcoming), and Ancient Greek Tragic Heroines (under contract). She is co-​author of The Odyssey–​Re-​Formed (1996), Euripides:  Alcestis (2003), and Euripides: Electra (2010); and editor of Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy (2014) and Sophocles’ Electra (Oxford Greek and Latin College Commentaries) (2020). Stephen Ruzicka is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He specializes in Persian, Aegean, and eastern Mediterranean affairs in the period of the Achaimenid Empire. His publications include Politics of a Persian Dynasty: The Hecatomnids in the Fourth Century B.C. and Trouble in the West: Egypt and the Persian Empire, 525–​332 BCE., as well as articles on fourth-​century BCE Athenian imperialism and Philip and Alexander’s political and military activities. Lisa Sabbahy is Assistant Professor of Egyptology and Director of the MA Program in Egyptology and Coptology at the American University in Cairo. She earned a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Toronto. She is particularly interested in ancient Egyptian royal female titles and iconography of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Other areas of interest in which she has presented papers and published extensively are disease in ancient Egypt, anthropoid clay coffins, and chariots. Sabbahy was editor and co-​author of All Things Ancient Egyptian: An Encyclopedia of the Ancient Egyptian World (2019). She is currently completing the manuscript of a book entitled Kingship and Power: A History of the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom. Christoph Schäfer is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Trier (Germany). He studied Ancient, Medieval and Modern History and Bibliology at Mainz and Dijon. His major fields of research are the Hellenistic empires, Roman economic and social history, and experimental archaeology, in particular the construction of ancient ships. He is the author of monographs on Eumenes of Kardia (2002) and on Kleopatra VII (2006). Kordula Schnegg is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient history and Near Eastern Studies and Head of the Research Platform Center for Gender Studies Innsbruck, University of Innsbruck (Austria). She teaches courses in Greek and Roman History and Gender Studies. Her research interests are social relationships in antiquity (in particular gender relationships), ancient historiography, the Roman republic and Roman empire. xvii

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Rolf Strootman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands). He studies court culture, imperialism and cultural encounters in the Near East, Iran and Central Asia during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. His most recent publications include Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires (2014), Persianism in Antiquity (2017), and Maritime Empires in World History (2019). Brigitte Truschnegg is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient History and Near Eastern Studies, University of Innsbruck (Austria). She studies the perception and description of cities in Greek and Latin literature (with a focus on sources dealing with Alexander III) and her research includes gender in ancient historiography as well as the history and archaeology of the Alpine regions in Roman times. Athena Van der Perre obtained a PhD in Egyptology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), with a dissertation on Amarna Period limestone quarries in the greater Dayr al-​ Barsha region (Middle Egypt). Between 2015 and 2017, she was involved in the Egyptian Execration Statuettes project at the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. In collaboration with the KU Leuven and the RMAH, she worked on the development and implementation of the multispectral Portable Light Dome for ancient Egyptian heritage. Currently she works as a postdoctoral researcher for the EOS project “Pyramids & Progress,” and as a teaching assistant at the KU Leuven. Anja Wieber, formerly Lecturer in Ancient History at the Universities of Bochum and Essen, is now an independent scholar and a member of IMAGINES, an international network focusing on modern receptions of antiquity in the visual and performing arts. Her research interests are women’s history and gender studies in antiquity, ancient slavery, the history of education, and reception studies. In the last field she has specialized in the representation of antiquity in different cinematic genres.With Filippo Carlà-​Uhink she has recently co-​edited Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World (2020). Josef Wiesehöfer studied History, Indo-​European Linguistics, and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Münster, where he took his PhD in 1977, with a thesis on the early years of Darius I (sixth century BCE). In 1988, he was awarded the habilitation at the University of Heidelberg (with a work on Southwestern Iran in Early Hellenistic times). From 1989 to 2016 he was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Kiel and Director of its “Institute of Classics.” His main scholarly interests lie in the history of the ancient Near East (especially Pre-​ Islamic Iran) and in the history of scholarship. Julia Wilker is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her main research interests include the history of Hellenistic–​Roman Judea and inter-​state relations in late classical and Hellenistic times. She is particularly interested in forms of dynastic rule, concepts of normativity, and transcultural contexts in the ancient world. Her publications include studies of the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties, the role of dynastic women in Hellenistic and Roman Judea, Flavius Josephus, and Roman–​Jewish relations. She has also published several articles on concepts of inter-​state relations in classical Greece and (co-​)edited volumes on strategies of peace-​keeping in archaic and classical Greece, Roman client-​kingship, and classical reception.

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PART I

Women and monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean

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1 INTRODUCTION TO THINKING ABOUT WOMEN AND MONARCHY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller This companion brings together chapters about the role of women in monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean world. Many more topics, periods, and cultures could have been included, but the current collection introduces the reader to some of the vast number of approaches possible. In the last 20 years, scholarship in this area has dramatically increased, particularly in the field of reception of ancient royal women, as well as studies of their spheres of action and roles in the political structures of their time. However, until now, no one work has attempted to bring together research on royal women from such a wide span of time and so many ancient cultures. Only some of the papers in this volume are overtly comparative, but the collection itself is inherently so. When chapters overlap in coverage, readers will note considerable variation in interpretation of extant evidence. We hope that reading about a topic or issue in terms of one monarchy may stimulate consideration of that topic for other periods and cultures. “Monarchy” (Greek:  monarchia), refers to governments in which one person rules (Greek: monos and archein); it usually signifies hereditary rule by one person. In practice, however, monarchy necessarily involves/​requires a royal family, sometimes quite an extended royal clan. The royal family typically plays a vital role at moments of transition from one ruler to another and obviously provides additional rulers upon the disappearance or ineligibility of the current ruler, but it also extends and publicizes rule and helps those ruled to understand and connect to the ruler. Whereas sole women rulers were rare and even women who co-​ruled comparatively so, women of ruling families in ancient monarchies played many parts, large and small, in the administration, self-​representation, and continuation of the rule of families. Granted that this is a book about the functions and activities of women in ancient monarchies, one might wonder why so many of the chapters discuss the situation of women in the context of dynasties defined by descent (not infrequently fictional) from a male ancestor, though sometimes from a male and a female progenitor. Dynastic labels are arbitrary, but they often color and organize scholarship. They can be useful, so long as one does not assume that female descent is irrelevant or even automatically less important. Historians are both limited and inspired by their sources. At many periods and in many situations, the role of women in events in our sources is muted and we are further distanced from understanding their role by the dominance of narrative sources written many centuries and cultures removed from the persons and events they describe, sources making judgments 3

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Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller

on the basis of values and expectations alien to those of the place and period they portray. Such narratives may personalize a royal woman’s motivation and focus on women’s sexuality. Also, works of literature, ones not based in a specific historic period or situation (e.g. tragedy or epic), nonetheless shape beliefs about historic women and monarchy. Documentary sources have assumptions of their own, but they are, at least, based in the period and culture these women inhabited. Literary sources, nonetheless, have tended to prevail in terms of the reception of the role of women in ancient monarchies. Orientalism often colors reception of these women, not just those connected to cultures Europeans might categorize as “Eastern,” but even those they would see as “Western.” Just as in the case of the pejorative depictions of “tyrants” as “bad” (or “wrong”) rulers, when elements of Greek stock images of eastern (particularly Persian) kings perceived as tyrants and adopted by Roman authors were applied to individual Greek, Macedonian or Roman political actors, such stereotypical topoi about decadent and sinister behavior could be applied to literary portraits of Greek, Macedonian, or Roman women. Significantly, many of these stereotypical elements (such as bloodthirstiness, cruelty, insatiable greed for power, immoderation, etc.) come from the reservoir of Greek topoi of the “tyrant” as a negative political role model. Popular culture and scholarship long reflected this hostile and stereotypical literary treatment of royal women. More recent theoretical approaches (feminist theory and Gender Studies, but also court studies, post-​colonial studies, and others) help us to recognize these biases generated in ancient times, but perhaps the most insidious problem lies in our unconscious assumptions that more recent monarchies familiar to us (medieval, early modern, and particularly recent British monarchy) are both normative and natural. In addition, we are also influenced by the norms and values of what we call the “collective memory” or “cultural memory” inevitably colored by earlier stereotypical perceptions of royal women. Employing terms like “queen” or “princess” (and their equivalents in other languages) without explaining how they apply in a given culture can be deceptive, particularly since these terms are often applied both to women who were married to kings and to women who ruled, to women who had titles (not necessarily ones with straightforward equivalents in modern languages) and to those who had none. A Google search for “queen” will produce a number of sites devoted to the old rock group and many pictures of Elizabeth II of Britain, whereas looking for “princess” will yield Disney images and some pictures from fairy tales (these are, admittedly, not mutually exclusive categories). Indeed, as this might suggest, “princess” often has an almost diminutive force, whereas being a king’s daughter (or sister) was in many ancient circumstances a powerful and empowering rank. Women participated in ancient monarchy in various ways. One of them was certainly through their marriages. Although, more often than not, someone else chose whom a woman would marry (this tended to be less true of widows), it would be a mistake to assume that royal women always functioned merely as tokens in an alliance, whether foreign or domestic. Many women did, so far as we can tell, prove to be little more than tokens (though the simple scarcity of sources may leave us with a misleading picture), but many others did not. Women could and did function as diplomats, perpetuating and sometimes altering the nature of the original alliance. Consanguineous marriages reinforced familial ties and limited the development of rival branches of royal families. Close-​kin marriages, particularly sibling marriages, did not necessarily, especially in the short term, empower the women in such couples, but typically they generated a kind of parallelism that, however superficial initially, worked to empower women long-​term, primarily by incorporating them into the articulation of royal power in that particular culture. In some monarchies and/​or dynasties, women played an important role in the presentation of the dynastic or monarchic image, often in the context of evolving traditions, political 4

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Introduction

structures, and institutions. Their images and actions could contribute to public understanding and allegiance to a ruling family; honors allotted them could symbolize continuity with the past and act to stabilize dynastic power. Women could be understood to embody the entire dynasty or some part of its immediate or distant past and to generate a picture of the strength and unity of the dynasty. Women’s participation in public ceremony could enlarge or nuance the dynastic footprint. Though very few women actually led military forces, their appearance in company with an army, perhaps because they would not (ordinarily) themselves engage in combat, could be a powerful force binding an army to the dynasty. As this might suggest, royal women often functioned to legitimate a dynasty or an individual ruler or policy. Naturally, a variety of understandings of legitimacy developed over time and in differing cultures. Sometimes a woman’s ability to legitimate depended on her line of descent, particularly if the direct male line had died out, but also if her family was understood as more impressive and prestigious or ancient than that of her husband. Occasionally the woman’s personal prestige could serve to legitimate those she supported. Royal widows, somehow subsuming their husbands’ prestige and authority, could legitimate subsequent rulers. Royal women’s religious role often played an important role in the dynastic image and the legitimation of a dynasty. Some women were religious patrons, whereas others themselves received cult whether individually or as part of a dynastic cult. Royal women were sometimes understood to embody a divinity, even believed to be impregnated by one; their divine attributes could align with the interests of the dynasty. Parallelism of male and female roles in terms of divinization advanced a wider understanding of dynastic rule. A king’s mother not only often functioned as a protector during a period of transition from the rule of her husband to that of her son, but could also play a religious role in terms of patronage and cult that tended to institutionalize and perpetuate that role. Even dead members of a dynasty could continue to serve their house as ideological symbols and figureheads when they were posthumously venerated as now omnipresent deities caring for the welfare of their dynasty and its realm. Generally, we should assume the possibility of royal women’s agency, rather than assume the opposite (as has been done in the past). Too often the absence of evidence about women has been understood as proof that they did not act, rather than as proof that we do not know if they did or not. Lack of evidence should not drive assumptions about royal norms, though its absence should be noted, particularly if this absence happens over a long period of time. On the other hand, we should also be aware of our own preconceptions: doubtless some women did indeed exercise little or no agency. Many variables shaped an individual woman’s ability to act on the dynastic and public stage. Many royal women could own property, giving them the ability to have employees (civil and military) independently of their fathers or husbands, enabling them to create a policy different or at least distinct from their male kin, and to act diplomatically (gift-​g iving was important), in person or via correspondence. Royal women sometimes served as patrons of shrines, festivals, and cults; such patronage suggests that they served as employers of architects, artists, and performers. Whether or not individual petitioners had direct access to women or whether they petitioned through correspondence or a woman’s agents, royal women were often an important point of access to rulers and were sometimes delegated to deal with certain tasks, especially in monarchies covering great distances. Because of their personal access to the ruler, they could function as intercessors. Court studies, even in the absence of specific evidence, have enabled us to picture some of the complexity of court functioning and women’s actions and duties at court. Significantly, many narrative sources, though grounded in stereotypical expectations about female behavior 5

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(seduction, poisoning, plotting), simply assume that royal women regularly employed the court circumstance (proximity to the king and other members of the royal family and court officials) to their own ends. It will also have been in the interest of the ruler to have them present in order to share the task of dynastic representation. Many women could be present at a ruler’s court, including the mother of the king, his sisters, and daughters. Rulers often had multiple wives and concubines. Sometimes formal titles effectively ranked these women, whereas in other cases ranking was situational and ephemeral; in either case, a level of negotiation was basic to the situation of each woman. Rival factions at court might favor different royal women (not simply one wife over another but also, for example, a royal mother over a royal wife). Many ancient courts were itinerant, a fact that tended to increase the intensity of dealings within the court, and also increased the access of petitioners. Royal women had their own supporters/​courtiers and factions. Male and female courtiers intrigued and often conspired against rulers and/​or each other. Our sources often attribute such actions solely or primarily to women and their conspiring was often supposed to relate to their sexuality. Focus on a woman’s sexuality, however, was not always destructive or dangerous for a royal woman’s career. A  royal woman’s sexuality could play a part in her role in cult, especially if that cult associated her with a goddess connected to erotic power. A woman’s fertility, the consequence of her sexual relationship with a husband, often played a critical part in her image and that of the dynasty; if she did not bear children, she was vulnerable. Bearing many children not only provided many potential heirs and actors in alliances but also contributed to a dynastic image, perhaps demonstrating divine favor. Our sources frequently assert that a royal woman, most often a royal mother, played an important, even decisive role in the succession. Experience, in women’s natal courts (to which they sometimes returned) and in the ones they came to by marriage, provided expertise and confidence that enabled them to rule if necessary, or to act in support of the rule of sons or other male kin. In many cases, we see that being the mother of a king brought a woman more power and influence than being the wife of a king, thus incentivizing a royal mother’s advocacy of her son’s succession. In other cases, mothers and sons, rather than collaborating to ensure the son’s succession, worked against each other, either because the mother hoped to rule longer herself or because she favored another son. In some cases, a royal woman was able to serve formally as her son or sons’ guardian and/​or regent, but even when we have no evidence that she did, her advocacy could still have been crucial. As we have noted, women rarely ruled, especially on their own. Granted that so many monarchs were also war leaders, at least symbolically, the fact that women were generally excluded from direct participation in warfare is certainly an important reason why they rarely ruled. Several circumstances increased the likelihood that a woman would rule or co-​rule: the absence of male heirs, the fact that the obvious heir to the throne was a minor, or a pre-​existing tradition of co-​rule. An understanding of female members of a royal family as co-​rulers with husbands or male kin often began as a means to legitimize a new dynasty, but once initiated, such a practice sometimes led to the growth of actual power for royal women, sometimes including independent rule. A word about the organizing practices of this volume. Each chapter has a bibliography of its own. Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary. You can get to the list of abbreviations online at https://​oxfordre. com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​. Readers should note that numbers associated with royal women apply only to the dynasty/ ​monarchy under discussion and are sometimes different in different chapters. There were, for instance, many women named “Stratonike” in a number of different kingdoms; the same woman, 6

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Introduction

moving from the kingdom of her birth to that of her marriage might, in different chapters, have different numbers. The index will refer to individual women by parentage (most often patronymic but sometimes a matronymic as well), or failing that, by a woman’s relationship to a ruler (e.g. mother of a named ruler). The spelling of Greek names is not anglicized unless the individual is famous under the anglicized version (e.g. Alexander the Great, not Alexandros). The volume spans from the ancient eastern civilizations to late antiquity and ends with an examination of some aspects of the reception of royal women in ancient and modern times. It tries to provide overviews of current scholarship about the spheres of action of royal women in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as some chapters discussing specific issues. The focus is on an historical approach, but the volume also includes archaeological, art historical, and philological studies. Putting this volume together has been a fascinating but demanding task.Various life events, sad and happy, prevented some of our intended contributors from participating, but what is presented here suggests some of the wide variety of existing approaches to the role of women in ancient monarchies and, we hope, inspires others to develop new ones.

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PART II

Egypt and the Nile Valley

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2 THE KING’S MOTHER IN THE OLD AND MIDDLE KINGDOMS Lisa Sabbahy

This study presents and discusses the king’s mother in the periods of the Old and Middle Kingdoms in ancient Egypt. The Old Kingdom covers the Third to the Eighth Dynasties, but for the period of the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties there is little evidence and none relevant to this discussion. For the Old Kingdom, the time covered here is roughly 2686 BCE to 2181 BCE, or a period of just over five hundred years.1 The Middle Kingdom covers the period of the early Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty.There is little evidence for the history of the Thirteenth Dynasty, and none for kings’ mothers, so this discussion will stop with the end of the Twelfth Dynasty. The time covered is roughly from 2055 BCE to 1777 BCE, a period of about 275 years. The importance of the king’s mother in ancient Egypt began as soon as its history did. In the Palermo Stone, a damaged recording of the reigns of the kings of Egypt from the First Dynasty down to the middle of the Fifth Dynasty, when the inscription stops, the names of three kings’ mothers of the First Dynasty (3000–​2890 BCE) are written after that of their sons. Manetho states in his Aegyptiaka, a history of Egypt written much later, in the reign of Ptolemy II, that in the Second Dynasty (2890–​2686 BCE), women were allowed to rule.2 Egyptologists have evidence from the First Dynasty that a king’s mother named Meretneith seems to have ruled for her young son, Den, as her name was included with her title of king’s mother in a list of kings’ names that was found at Abydos.3 Meretneith also had a tomb at Um el-​Ga’ab, the cemetery of the First and Second Dynasty kings at Abydos, next to that of Djet, her husband, and near the tomb of her son, Den.4 She also has a funerary “fort” or enclosure used for rituals, like every king.5 Meretneith’s ruling for her son is probably the type of situation to which Manetho was referring, when he said women were allowed to rule.6 There are instances of the king’s mother acting as a regent in later dynasties, such as the mother of Pepy II, of the Sixth Dynasty (2345–​2181 BCE), who will be discussed in detail below (see p. 14), that show that the king’s mother ruled if the king was a child and too young. The king’s mother never had a title that reflected the status of regent, probably because anything that compromised the position of the king was unthinkable. Scholars must determine a regency based on archaeological evidence or depictions that reflect this type of status for a king’s mother, rather than written evidence.

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The prominent position of the king’s mother comes from her role of passing on the divine birthright to her son, so that he is legitimate as king. Otto studied the legitimacy of kingly rule in ancient Egypt, and concluded that it was based on three things: the king’s birthright, the king’s effectiveness, and the myths that support the power and position of the king.7 It is in birthright that the king’s mother played such a prominent role.There are no depictions of the divine birth of a king from the Old or Middle Kingdoms, but there are two temple scenes showing this known from the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–​1295 BCE) of the New Kingdom. One is at the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-​Bahari on the West Bank at Luxor, and the other, slightly later, is at Luxor Temple, on the West Bank, which depicts the divine birth of Amenhotep III. Both are very similar. In Hatshepsut’s divine birth, her mother Ahmose is sitting on a bed, supported by the goddesses Neith and Selket, with the god Amen-​Ra, who has appeared to her in the guise of her husband, Tuthmose I. Amen holds “the breath of life,” an ankh symbol, up to Ahmose’s nose as well as putting one in her hand.8 After that, other scenes show the god Khnum forming Hatshepsut and her ka or soul on the potter’s wheel, Ahmose being led in to give birth, and the baby and her ka being presented to her father Amen-​Ra and the assembled gods and goddesses.9 There is a rock-​cut scene from the early Middle Kingdom reign of Mentuhotep II (2055–​ 2004 BCE) that reflects the fact that he has legitimacy based on a divine birth. At Schatt er-​ Rigal, in Upper Egypt north of Gebel el-​Silsila on the West Bank, a large figure of Mentuhotep II stands facing his father, Intef III, and the high official Khety, both depicted on a much smaller scale than the king. Behind the king stands “the king’s mother whom he loves, I’h,” on a scale smaller than all the other figures.10 The king wears a double crown and holds the staff and mace. His father wears a nemes head cloth, worn only by kings, with a uraeus, a rearing cobra worn over the king’s forehead. His mother holds a staff with a lotus bud in one hand, and a lotus flower in the other. The lotus is a symbol of birth and rebirth, because it is connected to the birth of the young sun god who came forth from a lotus.11 In the inscription above Intef III, he is given the title “god’s father,” and this is what matters.12 This title means that his son is divine, having been produced by a sacred marriage between his wife and the sun god.13 The lotus flower held by his mother symbolizes the birth of the young son of the sun. The earliest evidence for the title “king’s mother” is in the titles given to Nymaathap, the wife of King Khasekhemwy in the Second Dynasty, where it appears on a granite bowl and a clay sealing.14 This title occurs on the sealing with another title, one always belonging to a king’s mother, “anything she says is done for her.”This title makes a clear statement of her status and power. By the Old Kingdom there is a set of titles for the king’s mother: “king’s mother,” “god’s daughter,” “anything she says is done for her,” and sometimes “follower of Horus.”15 In the title “god’s daughter,” “god” refers to her father, the deceased king. This title is important as it indicates that she belongs in the line of royal descent. In the Middle Kingdom, the title “king’s mother” is still used, but it is not used in association with the titles “god’s daughter” and “Follower of Horus;” they cease with the Old Kingdom, and the title “anything she says is done for her” becomes rare.16 Along with titles, the king’s mother in the Old Kingdom also had a set iconographic feature: she wore a vulture headdress, something like a cap, on her head. The head of the vulture is over her forehead, like the uraeus on the king, and when it is depicted in relief, protrudes out horizontally. The wings of the vulture spread down the side of her head, and the talons of the vulture hold shen signs, which have the meaning “to surround” in a protective way.The vulture’s tail goes down her back but when shown in relief, it protrudes horizontally, like the vulture’s head at the front. The earliest evidence for this headdress comes from statue fragments found in the Fourth Dynasty pyramid complex of King Khafra (2558–​2532 BCE) at Giza and they may well have 12

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The king’s mother

come from a statue of his wife, Khamerernebty I, who was mother of his son and successor, King Menkaura.17 Perhaps the best example of a vulture headdress is the one on the alabaster statuette of Queen Ankhenespepy II with her son, King Pepy II (2278–​2184), sitting on her lap (Brooklyn Museum 39.119).18 There is a hole in her forehead where the vulture head would have been added, probably in gold. The provenance of the piece is not known. Goddesses are often shown with vulture headdresses in the Old Kingdom, so the king’s mother might have taken on this symbol because of its connection with divinity; the title “god’s daughter” might make the king’s mother entitled to this headdress. Another reason for the king’s mother to take on the vulture headdress is that the ancient Egyptian word for mother was mwt, and it is written with the hieroglyphic sign of a vulture, as the word for vulture is also mwt. Probably for that reason the vulture was considered a symbol of maternity.19 In the Middle Kingdom, all royal women and goddesses can be found wearing the vulture headdress, so its use is no longer restricted to the king’s mother. Particularly in the later Old Kingdom, kings set up ka-​chapels, or soul chapels for themselves at different temple locations not only to spread their cult, and as a statement of their power throughout the provinces, but also to make a royal investment that helped these temples become economic centers, with ties to the royal house.20 Land, such as an estate or farm, was granted to the ka-​chapel with workers and animals to produce the foodstuffs for the offerings to the king’s ka as well as for the provincial temple and its priests. King Pepy I (2321–​2287 BCE) set up a number of ka-​chapels for himself, as well as one at the temple of the god Min at Coptos for his mother, Iput. He also issued a decree protecting the land he granted to his mother’s ka-​chapel, the workers and the animals, from ever being used by anyone for any purpose other than to supply his mother’s cult, and the temple of Min.21 There is also evidence for a statue cult of two sisters who were kings’ mothers. Pepy I married two sisters from an elite family from Abydos in Upper Egypt; they may well have been royal relatives. Both of the sisters carried the name Ankhenespepy, and so Egyptologists refer to them as Ankhenespepy I  and II. Ankhenespepy I  gave birth to Merenra (2287–​2278 BCE), who followed his father Pepy I on the throne, and when he died after a somewhat short reign, Pepy I’s son by the second sister, Ankhenespepy II, Pepy II (2278–​2184 BCE), took the throne. Scholars know about a statue cult Pepy II established at Abydos, associated with the temple of the god Khentymentiu, because he issued a decree to protect the land and workers belonging to the cult. The decree states that the cult chapel has a statue of him, his mother, his aunt, and his uncle, who was vizier at that time. Until fairly recently there was only the decree inscription to prove the existence of this statue cult chapel, but now fragments from the lintel of the chapel have been identified and published.22 Somewhat earlier in the Fifth Dynasty, the king’s mother Khentkaues II had perhaps as many as 16 statues of herself, and also goddesses, in decorated naoi, or shrines, in the mortuary temple of her small pyramid complex at Abusir.23 This display of statues is unusual for a royal female and comparable to a statue cult for a king. The statues are not preserved, but fragments of the naoi were found, as well as fragments of a papyrus, which had drawings of the statues with instructions for the rituals to be carried out on them. It would appear that they were not daily rituals, but done on festival days. Khentkaues was the mother of King Raneferef, who only ruled for a couple of years, and King Nyuserra (2445–​2421 BCE), his brother, who succeeded him on the throne. Nyuserra was responsible for finishing the last phase of the construction on his mother’s pyramid complex, and probably responsible also for the statuary and naoi, inset with faience and painted to resemble lapis lazuli and gold, as he had the same work with wood and faience done in his brother’s mortuary temple. In inscriptional evidence from her pyramid complex, Khentkaues II 13

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had the title “king’s mother” in inscriptions dating to the second building phase of her pyramid, which was done by her son Raneferef, and “mother of the two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt,” indicating that two of her sons ruled, in the documents from the third building phase under Nyuserra.24 Brother to brother succession was not unknown, and had happened before in the Fourth Dynasty when Khafra followed his brother Djedefra as king. Another woman with the title “mother of the two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt” lived at the end of the Fourth Dynasty/​beginning of the Fifth Dynasty. She was Khentkaues I. Her tomb is at Giza near the valley temple of the pyramid of King Menkaura. On the granite door jambs of her chapel, her titulary is more complete. She is: “mother of two Kings of Upper and Lower Egypt,” “god’s daughter,” and “anything that she orders is done for her.”25 A fragment in the chapel of her pyramid preserves the title “king’s daughter.”26 There is no evidence for who her father was, or her husband, and scholars disagree on the identity of her two sons. Lehner and Hawass suggest that Khentkaues could have been the mother of Khafra and Menkaura, or else Menkaura and Shepseskaf.27 Verner suggests that she is the sister of Menkaura, and the mother of Shepseskaf and Userkaf.28 This last option seems the more logical. The beginning of the Fifth Dynasty has traditionally been tied to one of the stories of the Westcar Papyrus, in which the wife of a priest of the sun god gives birth to triplets fathered by Ra. Since the children had a divine father, goddesses came to help with the birth, and as each male child was born, one of the goddesses announced that he would be king over the land.29 Since 1890, when the Westcar papyrus was first published, many histories of ancient Egypt have interpreted this story quite literally, stating that the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahura, and Neferirkara, were brothers who were born as triplets.30 This situation is no longer accepted as historical since there is evidence now to show that these three kings were not brothers. It is possible, however, that the Westcar Papyrus story reflects the situation of Khentkaues I, who does appear to have been the mother of two kings at the approximate time that the Fourth Dynasty came to an end and the Fifth Dynasty began. Ankhenespepy II is a king’s mother for whom a fair amount of evidence, comparatively speaking, is preserved. Sometimes, not often, she is given the name, Ankhenesmeryra, using the crown name instead of the birth name of her husband as part of her name, but it is not yet understood why.31 When all the material from her pyramid complex is published, this might become clear. She was the daughter of Khui and Nebet, an elite couple living in Abydos. She and her sister both became wives of King Pepy I, perhaps at the same time, or close to the same time.32 Her sister gave birth to a son who became King Merenra, the successor to Pepy I, although he seems to have ruled for at most ten years; Ankhenespepy II gave birth to Pepy II, who became king after the death of Merenra. There are still a number of questions about the royal succession at this time, concerned with whether or not Merenra had a co-​regency with his father, and how old he might have been when he ruled. Merenra is known to have had two wives, his sister Neith, and his aunt, Ankhenespepy II, which means, of course, that Pepy I must have died by then. When Merenra dies, Ankhenespepy II’s son, Pepy II, takes the throne. Based on Manetho, according to Eusebius, Pepy II was supposed to have been only 6 years old when he took the throne33 and so, because of his young age, his mother ruled as regent. This might mean that Pepy I died when Ankhenespepy II was pregnant with or had just given birth to Pepy II. Evidence for her marrying Merenra is on a block from her pyramid complex that gives her the title “king’s wife” along with the name of Merenra.34 Sibling marriages are fairly common in the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom and in the Middle Kingdom, but this may be the only aunt–​nephew marriage for which we have evidence.35 A visual statement of Ankhenespepy II’s position as regent can be seen in the alabaster statuette in the Brooklyn Museum (39.119), discussed on p.  13 in connection with the vulture 14

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headdress. The statuette portrays the queen sitting on a throne with her young son, the king, sitting across on her lap with his feet on a second throne perpendicular to hers. The throne block on which the king has his feet carries a vertical inscription with his crown name, followed by the phrase “beloved of Khnum,” which is also placed right before the name of his mother.36 The reference to the god Khnum would seem to suggest that the piece came from a temple or chapel at Elephantine where this god’s cult was based. Other evidence for Pepy II’s mother as regent comes from a rock inscription at Maghara in the Sinai, dating to the second year of the count (the biennial cattle count that was used for purposes of taxation), which should be the fourth regnal year of the king.37 The complete titulary of the king is given, along with the titles of his mother, who is named as both a “king’s mother” and a “king’s wife.” Her name uses the form of Ankhenesmeryra here, not Ankhenespepy, and is followed by a small depiction of the queen standing with what seems like a lotus in one hand, and an ankh-​symbol in the other. The pyramid complex of Ankhenespepy II was discovered in the southwest corner of a complex of seven queens’ pyramids located at King Pepy’s pyramid complex. Ankhenespepy II’s pyramid is by far the largest. A massive, red granite lintel from the doorway into the pillared court of her mortuary temple was found, and it gives her name and the title “king’s mother” on the left side, and the name of Pepy II is on the right.38 In her pyramid complex are architectural details and relief decoration that are not usually found in the tomb complex of a royal woman. Like the pyramid complexes of kings and of the wife of King Djedkara of the end of the Fifth Dynasty, Ankhenespepy II’s complex has an antichambre carrée, normally a space found only in kings’ complexes.39 This is a square chamber with one central pillar, seemingly always decorated with wall relief scenes of divinities, or divine processions greeting the king. Damaged blocks from Ankhenespepy’s mortuary temple have been able to be reassembled enough to show that there was a scene of Ankhenespepy II, standing in a papyrus skiff, pulling on papyrus stalks in a ritual known as sesh wadj, which is done for the goddess Hathor who liked the calming sound of rustling papyri. This ritual also had symbolic meaning associated with being reborn in the afterlife.40 An interesting detail in the scene is that Ankhenespepy II stands in the skiff, not with her legs together, the way a woman does in ancient Egyptian art, but with them separated, as if she is taking a step; this is typical of males in ancient Egyptian art. In the Fourth Dynasty, in the mastaba of Meresankh, a king’s wife and her mother, also a king’s wife, are standing in a skiff, pulling on papyrus stalks in the same ritual; both of them have their legs together.41 Ankhenespepy II’s stance seems to make a statement of masculinity, in that she fulfilled a “male” role when she functioned as king. When the remaining structure of Ankhenespepy’s pyramid was uncovered, the burial chamber was a cavity with its walls destroyed.42 The burial chamber had been partially decorated with a serekh-​façade motif (the crenelated design of the wall of the royal palace) and also with Pyramid Texts, written with hieroglyphs retaining traces of green color. Quite a number of fragments were found, and parts of walls with texts reconstructed.43 A dark stone sarcophagus was also found in the burial chamber with skeletal remains of a mature adult female.44 A line of inscription incised on the top of Ankhenespepy II’s sarcophagus gives her the titles “Daughter of Geb” and “Daughter of Nut.” Titles of divine filiation, that is, naming someone the son or daughter of a god or goddess are known from ancient Egypt, and they seem to indicate a position of rank or importance, although in this case, the titles might have a purely funerary meaning, as at the beginning of King Pepy’s Pyramid Texts, where somewhat similar statements are made.45 Ankhenespepy II appears to be the first royal woman to have Pyramid Texts in her pyramid. Pyramid Texts were found for the first time in the Pyramid of King Unas (2375–​2345 BCE) 15

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at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The purpose of the spells in these texts were to “enable the deceased to become an akh,” which literally means an “effective” being who could have eternal life.46 The fact that Ankhenespepy II was given these texts is a reflection of the status and importance she had attained as regent. Clearly her pyramid complex was completed in the reign of her son, since she would only get the title “king’s mother” once her son was crowned, and he must have had a role in deciding the details of his mother’s burial, including the use of Pyramid Texts. Much less evidence on the king’s mother is preserved from the Middle Kingdom than is known from the Old Kingdom. In the early Middle Kingdom, the Eleventh Dynasty (2125–​2055 BCE), we have the names of each of the three kings’ mothers, but for one of them, the mother of Mentuhotep IV, all we know is that she was named Imi.47 The mother of Mentuhotep II, I’h, was discussed on p. 12 in relation to the Schatt er-​Rigal rock-​cut scene showing Mentuhotep II’s divine birth. I’h’s name was also found on two shabti-​figures in the tomb of Mentuhotep II’s wife, Neferu. “Neferu born of I’h” was written on them in hieratic.48 That means that Mentuhotep II married his sister, a practice that was common in the Fourth Dynasty, but not later in the Old Kingdom. Neferu seems to have been the most important wife of Mentuhotep II, based on her titles and her very large and beautifully decorated tomb, but the king also had another wife, Tem, and she was the mother of his son, Mentuhotep III. Tem’s tomb was at the end of a passageway (parallel to the passageway to her husband’s tomb), that had been cut down into the rock at the back of the sanctuary of the temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-​Bahari. Her titles were found on her sarcophagus and on a fragment of a limestone offering table, discovered in the rubble of the hypostyle hall.49 Her titles are “king’s mother,” “king’s wife whom he loves,” “great of praise,” and “great of affection,” a mixture of titles for a king’s wife and king’s mother, typical of the Old Kingdom. At the end of the Eleventh Dynasty, the vizier Amenemhat seems to have seized the throne from Mentuhotep IV, and begun a new dynasty’s rule, the Twelfth Dynasty. Little is known about him or the actual events of this transition, but a later literary text, The Prophecy of Neferti, written in the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom, but set in the Fourth Dynasty at the time of King Sneferu, describes a future in which Egypt will have a time of civil strife, disorder, and foreign invasion. “Then a king will come from the South, Ameny, the justified, by name, son of a woman of Ta-​seti, child of Upper Egypt.”50 Ameny is the short name for Amenemhat, and Ta-​seti refers to Nubia. The only other evidence we have for Amenemhat I’s mother is a limestone offering table (Metropolitan Museum of Art 22.1.21) which was reused at a later settlement at Lisht, the site of Amenemhat’s pyramid complex.51 The inscription, which is the same on each side of the offering table, gives the offering formula for the “hereditary noblewoman” (a title used by royal women in the Middle Kingdom), “king’s mother,” Nefert. Amenemhat was assassinated in year 30 of his reign, and succeeded by his son, Senusret I (1956–​1911 BCE). The wife of Amenemhat I, and mother of Senusret I, is only known from an inscription on a statuette in the Louvre, copied by Champollion before it disappeared in 1830; it gave her name, and the titles “king’s wife” and “king’s mother.”52 The evidence for Neferu, sister and wife of Senusret I, being the mother of his successor, Amenemhat II, is just as slight. Some fragments of a black granite seated statue of Neferu, found near her pyramid located on the southeast corner of her husband’s pyramid at Lisht, gives her titles of “king’s daughter,” “king’s wife,” and “king’s mother.”53 There does not seem to be any evidence for the mother of Amenemhat II’s successor, Senusret II, or any evidence about how they were related. The mother of his successor, Senusret III (1870–​1831 BCE), is known, however, from fragments of a quartzite triad found at Ahnas el-​Medineh, a papyrus, and a small subsidiary pyramid at Dahshur, the site of her son’s pyramid complex. The king’s mother, Weret I, is named in a 16

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papyrus from Lahun, dating from regnal year 9 of Senusret III, listing the members of the family of Senusret II and their cult statues.54 Egyptologists name her Weret I to distinguish her from the wife of Senusret III, who has the same name, and is referred to as Weret II. Three different times in the document, Weret I has the titles: “king’s wife,” “king’s mother,” and “khenmet-​nefer-​hedjet.”This last title is known first in the reign of Amenemhat II, and is probably best translated as “She who is joined to the White Crown.”55 The title is used by various royal women in the later Twelfth Dynasty, and so can be found with the name of a princess, king’s wife, or king’s mother. Some Egyptologists interpret this title as a female name, not a title, but this author disagrees. The exact same titles of Weret I, as on the papyrus document, were found on the fragments of the statue base of King Senusret III from Ahnas el-​Medineh, with his mother standing on one side of him, and his wife on the other.56 The pyramid complex of Senusret III is located at Dahshur, just northeast from the northern pyramid of King Sneferu. In an enclosed area around the pyramid of the king on the north and south sides are smaller subsidiary pyramids; four small ones on the north side, and three slightly larger on the south. Not all of these small pyramids have been identified, but that of the king’s mother Weret I, is P8 on the south side.57 It does not seem to have been used for a burial, however, as De Morgan found only canopic equipment in it, but does not mention if anything was found in the canopic jars.58 Canopic jars were used to hold the embalmed lung, liver, stomach, and intestines, which were removed from the body during mummification. Stünkel has suggested this canopic burial was a cenotaph, as King Senusret III was not buried in this pyramid, but in Abydos, and it is more likely that Weret I would have been buried by her husband’s pyramid at Lahun.59 Arnold brings up the point that in the later Twelfth Dynasty it is typical to have “separation of the canopic deposit and the sarcophagus,” and although excavation has not yet uncovered a shaft leading to a burial chamber for Weret I, it does not mean that one does not exist.60 The pyramid of Senusret II at Lahun has a subsidiary pyramid, with a chapel at its northeast corner, which Petrie assumed was for a queen. There were also eight rock-​cut mastabas along the north side of the pyramid, which are assumed to have been for the royal family, but no evidence supports this assumption. There were also four shaft tombs on the south side of the pyramid, one of which, Tomb 8, belonged to Princess Sit-​Hathor-​Iunut, and held a beautiful cache of jewelry. Just outside the enclosure on the north side, a tomb (Tomb 621) was found, which the excavator, Brunton, called a “Royal Tomb.”61 The entrance leads into a long passageway that places the burial chambers back under the brick wall that ran around the pyramid complex. The passageway led to a chamber, with a burial chamber and canopic niche on one side and an offering chapel on the other. Although damaged, a red granite sarcophagus and canopic chest were found. Everything in the structure had been badly damaged by robbers, but clearly the quality of the stones used in the construction, and the plan of the tomb, shows that it was made for an important royal person, probably one of Senusret II’s wives. Either this tomb, or the subsidiary tomb, could have belonged to Weret I. Weret I’s pyramid 8 at the Dahshur pyramid of Senusret III, her son, had a chapel built on the east side, which apparently also had a pair of small obelisks at its entrance, as the limestone tip of one obelisk was found; such obelisks were typical of earlier, Sixth Dynasty queens’ chapels, but little documented in the Twelfth Dynasty.62 Another chapel, in the shape of a niche, was built into the pyramid on the north side.The chapels were completely destroyed, but the decoration from the north chapel, which was “deliberately hacked off by ancient stone robbers” was still present in large quantities, although in fragments.63 Fragments from the lintel of the north chapel door showed that there was a winged sun disk with epithets for Horus of Edfu, and the following titles for Weret I: “hereditary noblewoman, great of praise, king’s wife, king’s mother, 17

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she who is joined to the White Crown.”The fragments show that there was a scene of the king’s mother sitting before a table of offerings, an offering list, and offering bearers.64 She is wearing a vulture headdress, which royal women in general can wear in the Middle Kingdom. In an inscription on the west wall, she is given the Old Kingdom title “anything she says is done for her,” which is not a title commonly used in the Middle Kingdom, but this author has noticed that in terms of titles of royal women in the Middle Kingdom, the use of titles from the Old Kingdom seems to express a particular importance or status for that woman. Determining family relationships for the rest of the Twelfth Dynasty is difficult. The relationship of Senusret III with Amenemhat III, who follows him on the throne, is not clear, nor is the relationship of any member of the royal family to Amenemhat IV who then follows Amenemhat III. 65 More importantly during this period, the evidence of women with the title “king’s mother” is lacking, and so ending this discussion with Weret I is appropriate.

Conclusion From the beginning of dynastic Egypt there is evidence for the noticeable importance of the mother of the king. She can actually rule in his name, if he inherits the throne when he is too young to make decisions as a king. Egyptologists do not know at what age a boy could rule without his mother as regent, but assume perhaps the age of 10 or 12.The king’s mother has no title to mark this position as regent, but is simply “king’s mother.” Other evidence can be used to show a regency, such as the alabaster statuette of the king’s mother Ankhenespepy II, with the king Pepy II on her lap. The importance of the king’s mother to the king is that she passes the legitimacy to rule on to him. The king holds a divine position as the agent and offspring of the sun god on earth, and his mother was believed to have been impregnated by the god. This divine birth can be expressed symbolically, as in Mentuhotep II’s rock-​cut scene at Schatt er-​Rigal, or quite literally as in the later New Kingdom divine birth scenes. In the Old Kingdom, the mother of the king could hold several other titles unique to the king’s mother, along with her main title, “king’s mother.” She wore the vulture headdress to state her position; no other royal woman in the Old Kingdom had a symbol of her status. The king’s mother could also have a ka-​chapel or a statue in a statue cult chapel, where she could be offered to and memorialized. In the Middle Kingdom, there is unfortunately much less information about mothers of the kings. There is no clear evidence that there has been any change in their status or position, but their titles, other than “king’s mother,” are titles used by other queens, and any royal woman could wear the vulture headdress. A great part of the problem of understanding more about the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom is that there has been such extensive damage, quarrying, and reuse at the royal pyramid complexes. Although Old Kingdom sites suffered from this as well, there is more evidence with which to work, as the span of Old Kingdom history covered twice as much time as the Middle Kingdom. Continued excavation and re-​excavation at Middle Kingdom sites will help remedy this lack of evidence.

Notes 1 Dates follow Shaw 2000: 482–​83. 2 Waddell 1971: 37. 3 Dreyer 1987: 36, fig. 3. 4 Engel 2008: 38 and fig. 12.

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The king’s mother 5 Bestock 2008: 53–​4 and fig. 7. 6 See p. 11, n. 2. 7 Otto 1969: 400–​2. 8 Naville 1896: pl. 47. 9 Naville 1896: pls. 48–​55. 10 Roth 2001: 568, fig. 90. 11 Robins 1993: 188. 12 Habachi 1958: 189–​90. 13 Berlev 1981: 363. 14 Sabbahy 1982: 29. 15 Sabbahy 1998: 305. 16 Sabbahy 1982: 358. 17 Hölscher 1912: 102–​3, figs. 140–​4. 18 Roehrig 1999: 437–​9 19 Posener 1959: 236. 20 Papazian 2008: 79–​80. 21 Goedicke 1967: 41–​54. 22 Bussmann 2010. 23 Vymazalová and Coppens 2011: 792. 24 Verner 2015: 89. 25 Hassan 1943: 17. 26 Hassan 1943: 22. 27 Lehner and Hawass 2017: 268. 28 Verner 2015: 87. 29 Lichtheim 1973: 220. 30 Verner 2015: 87. 31 Labrousse 2010: 301. 32 Gourdon 2016: 79–​80; Labrousse 2010: 301–​2, 304–​5. 33 Waddell 1971: 53. 34 Labrousse 2000: 486, fig. 1. 35 Sabbahy 2021. 36 James 1974: pl. 25. 37 Gardiner and Peet 1955: 64 and pl. 9. 38 Leclant and Clerc 1998: pl. 28. 39 Labrousse 2010: 301. 40 Altenmüller 2002: 14–​16; Bleeker 1973: 88. 41 Dunham and Simpson 1974: fig. 4. 42 Labrousse 1998: 10. 43 Mathieu, Bène, and Spahr 2005. 44 Dobrev et al. 2000: 278 and 283. 45 Allen 2005: 13, ft. 3. 46 Allen 2005: 7. 47 Roth 2001: 570, fig. 93. 48 Sabbahy 1982: 178–​79, n. 25. 49 Arnold 1974: pl. 25b. 50 Lichtheim 1973: 143. 51 Mace 1922: 12, fig. 11. 52 Roth 2001: 221, ft. 1251. 53 Hayes 1953: 194. 54 Borchardt 1899: 91, 96. 55 Sabbahy 1996: 351. 56 Naville 1894: pl. 4, C5. 57 Arnold 2002. 58 De Morgan 1895: 75–​6. 59 Stünkel 2006: 149, ft. 9. 60 Arnold 2002: 83. 61 Petrie, Brunton, and Murray 1923: 16–​8.

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Lisa Sabbahy 62 Arnold 2002: 82–​3. 63 Stünkel 2006: 150. 64 Stünkel 2006: figs. 5–​11. 65 Pignattari 2018: 5.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

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The king’s mother Mathieu, B., Bène, É., and Spahr,A. 2005.“Recherches sur les textes de la pyramide de la reine Ankhenespépy II. 1. Le register supérieur de la paroi est de la chamber funéraire (AII/​F/​E sup).” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 105: 129–​38. Naville, E. 1894. Ahnas El Medineh. London. Naville, E. 1896. The Temple of Deir el-​Bahari, Part 2. London. Otto, E. 1969. “Legitimation des Herrschens im Pharaonischen Ägypten.” Saeculum 20: 385–​407. Papazian, H. 2008. “Perspectives of the Cult of Pharaoh During the Third Millennium B.C.:  A Chronological Overview.” In H.Vymazalová and M. Barta (eds.), Chronology and Archaeology in Ancient Egypt (The Third Millennium B.C.). Prague, 61–​80. Petrie, F., Brunton, G., and Murray, M. 1923. Lahun II. London. Pignattari, S. 2018. Amenemhat IV and the End of the Twelfth Dynasty, Between the End and the Beginning. Oxford. Posener, G. 1959. Dictionnaire de la civilisation égyptienne. Paris. Robins, G. 1993. Women in Ancient Egypt. London. Roehrig, C. 1999. “172. Pair Statue of Queen Ankh-​nes-​meryre II and her Son Pepi II Seated.” In Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids. New York, 437–​39. Roth, S. 2001. Die Königsmütter des Alten Ägypten von der Frühzeit bis zum Ende der 12. Dynastie. Wiesbaden. Sabbahy, L. 1982.The Development of the Titulary and Iconography of the Ancient Egyptian Queen from Dynasty One to Early Dynasty Eighteen. PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto. Sabbahy, L. 1996. “Comments on the Title hnmt-​nfr-​hdt.” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 23: 349–​52. Sabbahy, L. 1998. “The King’s Mother in the Old Kingdom with Special Reference to the Title st-​ntr.” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 25: 305–​10. Sabbahy, L. 2021. Kingship, Power and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt:  From the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge. Shaw, I. 2000. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford. Stünkel, I. 2006. “The Relief Decoration of the Cult Chapels of Royal Women in the Pyramid Complex of Senusret III at Dahshur.” In M. Bárta, F. Coppens, and J. Krejčí (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2005. Prague, 147–​66. Stünkel, I. 2015.“Notes on Khenemet-​nefer-​hedjet Weret II.” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 19: 631–​40. Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Myth and History. Uppsala. Verner, M. 2011. “The ‘Khentkaues –​Problem’ Reconsidered.” In M. Bárta, F. Coppens, and J. Krejčí (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010, vol. II. Prague, 778–​84. Verner, M. 2015. “The Miraculous Rise of the Fifth Dynasty: The Story of Papyrus Westcar and Historical Evidence.” Prague Egyptological Studies 15: 86–​92. Vymazalová, H. and Coppens, F. 2011. “Statues and Rituals for Khentkaues II: A Reconsideration of Some Papyrus Fragments from the Queen’s Funerary Complex.” In M. Bárta, F. Coppens, and J. Krejčí (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010/​2. Prague, 785–​99. Waddell, W.G. 1971. Manetho. Cambridge, MA.

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3 REGNANT WOMEN IN EGYPT 1 Martina Minas-​Nerpel

Cultural context and sources The institution of ancient Egyptian kingship, so central to Egyptian culture, was long-​lived, from the foundation of the “nation state” until the Roman period. It dominated Egyptian society for more than 3,000 years and survived numerous foreign conquests, in part because of the divine status with which the king was credited. In all periods the pharaoh, the living manifestation of Horus, depended on the gods. The kingship, a demonstration of the power of the creator god, was assumed by a mortal ruler who needed divine legitimation. According the Myth of the Divine Birth,2 the pharaoh was the bodily offspring of the gods and thus their deputy. Such myths were mobilized politically and used to establish and reinforce the king’s and the dynasty’s claim to the throne.3 The ruler was responsible for maintaining Maat, the ideal state of the cosmos, but chaos threatened this order, especially after a king’s death and during the transition of power. The pharaoh’s religious role was crucial. Exchanges between king and deities are at the core of the temple decoration that creates a fictional and ideal world in which he and they interact.The king was shown performing rituals before the gods,4 supported by his wife or mother, who were also depicted in specific circumstances as ritualists. In this chapter I seek to clarify how royal women, regnant or co-​regnant, fit into this conception of order. Pharaohs could not rule alone:  “They rule through other people, through rituals, through institutions, and especially through expectations that are set up and manipulated by those factors.”5 The numerous women surrounding the king, whose role was defined by their relationship to him, were intended to support him, while he relied on them, notably for the transmission of the office from father to son. Ancient Egyptian kingship continually needed to reaffirm its right to exist, and to this end the female element was essential in both ideology and mythology. Divine kingship required divine male and female counterparts, with female power complementing legitimate male leadership. This balance of male and female roles evokes the relationship of Shu and Tefnut, the first progeny of the creator god Atum, with whom duality and opposition emerged and the female and male principles were manifested in their differentiation.6 The king’s wife was considered to be a manifestation of Hathor, the female prototype of creation. The king’s mother was the protector of this transition, as in the divine world was Isis, who conceived Horus, the son of Osiris. A feminine element is necessary in all creative and generative acts, ensuring renewal and continuity.7 In theory, female power did not compete with 22

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kingship, which was predominantly male, but women with political power were not isolated cases, and some rulers had a female identity. For the purpose of this chapter, royal women are designated as regnant or co-​regnant if they exercised political and ideological power, as a king’s mother, a king’s wife, or a pharaoh. Egypt’s political and ideological system was flexible to some extent and allowed women to step in and rule, mainly—​but not only—​on behalf of male relatives, most often their sons. In times of crisis, the leadership of a woman was repeatedly preferred over power struggles within the dynasty between males, which could lead to the extinction of a dynasty. Regnant and co-​regnant women are attested in visual and textual sources throughout the history of Egypt, from the dawn of the “nation state”8 until Egypt ceased to exist as an independent state and was incorporated into the vast Roman empire.9 The degree to which these women are documented differs widely; often their presence has to be identified in sources that are diverse in range and purpose. An assembly of deceased Egyptian rulers was displayed in several King-​Lists engraved on the walls of the New Kingdom temples of Sety I and Ramesses II at Abydos and in the tomb of the priest Tjuloy at Saqqara.10 These lists were not intended as objective records, and their main concern was cultic, not chronological. In contrast, the purpose of the “Royal Canon of Turin,” also dating to Dynasty 19, was to include a record of every single king, with his exact position in sequence since creation.11 From roughly a millennium later, Manetho’s Aigyptiaka, which displays a significant similarity to the Turin King-​List, was drawn up to explain the Egyptian past to the new foreign kings of Egypt and their contemporaries.12 Several female rulers are known from ancient Egypt, and some, like Hatshepsut, exercised powerful kingship, but not all their names are preserved, or they were suppressed in an effort to erase their legacy. Secondary wives are rarely attested on royal monuments or elsewhere. In contrast, the king’s mother and King’s Great Wife—​conventionally called queens in modern scholarship—​were shown on both royal and non-​royal monuments. They shared insignia and titles and seem to have had similar ritual roles, with one being able to substitute for the other in scenes where they were shown accompanying the king in temple ritual.13

The terminology and scope of this chapter The aim of this chapter is to look at some of the (co-​)regnant women in chronological order, followed in each case by a brief reflection on their individual circumstances and, where they can be reconstructed, their strategies. The treatment is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather centers around some highly influential royal women. Since the God’s Wives of Amun of the Libyan and the Late Periods and the Ptolemaic royal women are presented in separate chapters of this book, they are only mentioned in the conclusion. The terminology used to designate a (co-​)regnant woman needs careful consideration. The modern term “queen” carries connotations that might be misleading in an analysis of ancient Egyptian material. The Egyptians usually defined royal women according to their relationship to the pharaoh: the King’s Great Wife was called ḥm.t nsw wr.t, his daughter sꜣ.t nsw, his sister sn.t nsw. At least some royal women who became (co-​)regents were referred to with the feminine equivalents of masculine nouns: nsw.t, bjtj.t, or ḥr.t, “female Horus,” as discussed below in more detail (see p. 26).14 In Egyptological publications, kings’ mothers or wives are referred to as ‘queens’ (German and French “Königin” and “reine”).15 For example, Silke Roth uses ‘queen’ to refer “to a wife and/​or mother of an Egyptian king,” the highest-​ranking female member of the royal court and household.16 The so-​called ‘harem’ included the secondary wives and royal children and was a powerful force in itself.17 The term ‘queen’ is not wrong, but in most cases too general, because it does not distinguish the queens’ diverse positions and instead subsumes 23

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them in a single category. In recent years a more detailed differentiation has become normal, taking account of whether a queen was a king’s consort with (almost) no political power, a (co-​)regnant woman, or a female pharaoh. I use the term ‘ruler’ or ‘female king’ when a woman assumed the role of pharaoh and became a ruler in her own right. Occasionally, I use the term ‘queen’ in a more general sense, mostly when the exact status of an evidently powerful royal woman is not clear.

Current state of research “Queens” have been researched as the essential feminine element of kingship, with studies centered on their titles and iconography, or their relationships to the pharaohs. In his Le livre des rois d’Egypte (1907–​1917), Henri Gauthier recorded all known names and titles of the members of the royal families and laid the foundation for all subsequent studies. His work was expanded by Jürgen von Beckerath’s Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen (1999), which includes regnant women but not other female members of royal families. A number of publications analyze queenship in ancient Egypt, and they cannot all be mentioned here. Lana Troy’s Patterns of Queenship (1986) studies the conceptual framework for royal female elements from Early Dynastic times to the Ptolemaic period. In 2002 she added her seminal article “The Ancient Egyptian Queenship as an Icon of the State.” Wilfried Seipel (1980) researched the “queens” of early dynastic Egypt and the Old Kingdom. More than 30 years later,Vivienne G. Callender presented in her In Hathor’s Image I (2011a) a study of the wives and mothers of kings from Dynasties 1 to 6. Silke Roth’s Königsmütter des alten Ägypten (2001) concentrates on the period from Early Dynastic times to the end of Dynasty 12. Gay Robins wrote her (unpublished) 1981 dissertation on Egyptian queens in Dynasty 18 and subsequently published various articles on royal women and families.18 Joyce Tyldesley’s Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt (2006) is aimed at the general public. In 2014, Kara Cooney published her book, The Woman Who Would Be King, in which she gives a narrative biography of Hatshepsut, comparable to Stacy Schiff ’s book on Kleopatra (2010). In 2018, Cooney published, again for a general audience, her When Women Ruled the World, which reviews Egyptian female leadership in a male-​dominated society.

Examples of (co-​)regnant women in ancient Egypt Dynasty 1: Neithhotep and Meretneith Manetho recorded that in reign of Binothris (Biophis), a king of Dynasty 2, it was decided that women might hold the kingly office.19 But already for Dynasty 1, powerful women are attested. Even if the evidence is rather limited for the early dynasties, the monumental tombs and the first written testimonies provide information on the royal women. The palace façade (Egyptian serekh), which is part of the composition of the king’s name, is also attested for some royal women of Dynasty 1.20 It is given a specifically feminine form by combining it with the name of the goddess Neith, who takes the role of the falcon god Horus on the façade.21 The earliest royal woman so far attested in this way is Neithhotep of the beginning of Dynasty 1, who was associated with Narmer, Aha, and Djer.22 Her position in the family and status are not clear, but we can assume that she was a royal wife.23 The first clearly attested regnant woman in Egyptian history was Meretneith, whose name is also found in a serekh.24 Her name occurs on a dynastic seal of king Den of Dynasty 1, discovered at Abydos in 1985.25 It lists his direct predecessors, including the king’s mother 24

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Meretneith. Even if she might not have taken on the formal position as king, she ruled on behalf of her son and was mentioned as his mother in the royal annals of Memphis, the so-​called Palermo Stone.26 She is unique in having a major tomb at Abydos, located among the burial of kings at the royal necropolis, including a tomb stele, which has the same form as a stele for a king, bearing her name.27 Since she appears on the dynastic seal we can view the listing as not only dynastic but also genealogical.28

Dynasties 4–5: the king’s mother Khentkaus and an unknown king’s wife The king’s mother Khentkaus (or Khentkaues) I seems to have formed a link between Dynasties 4 and 5.29 She is regarded as the mother of triplets, whose birth is predicted in a prophecy told at Khufu’s court (Dynasty 4), as attested in P. Westcar.30 They were to be the first three kings of the next dynasty. P. Westcar, which probably dates to the Second Intermediate Period,31 was not meant as a record of an historical event, and the true identity of her sons is difficult to determine, but Khentkaus’ special status, perhaps that of a regent, is reflected in her huge and unusual tomb (LG 100), the so-​called “Fourth Pyramid” at Giza.32 A badly destroyed pyramid at South Saqqara, adjacent to that of king Djedkare-​Isesi’s of Dynasty 5, is unusually large and has a complex plan. It once belonged to his principal wife, whose name is not preserved. Texts and scenes were secondarily altered and replaced by royal insignia.33 These emblems and the intensity with which her monuments were attacked might suggest that this royal woman ruled as a female king and thus, according to Ann Macy Roth, would be Hatshepsut’s earliest predecessor.34

Dynasty 6: Nitokris Herodotos (2.100) referred to Nitokris as the only female king of Egypt. Manetho listed her for the end of Dynasty 6, ruling for 12 years.35 The earliest source to mention a ruler by this name, in Egyptian Neit-​jqrty, is the Turin King-​List: Kim Ryholt’s reconstruction of section IV.7 leads him to the conclusion that this ruler must be regarded as a man rather than a woman, whose prenomen Netjerikare was followed by the nomen Siptah, “Son of Ptah,” a masculine name.36 This view is contested by Vivienne G.  Callender37 and Marc Brose,38 since a female ruler’s name was copied through later times in Egypt and transmitted to Herodotos and Manetho. One should keep in mind, however, that Nitokris was also a name held by two God’s Wives of Amun in Dynasty 26,39 just a century or two before Herodotos, which might have influenced the tradition, so it seems rather likely that Netjerikare Siptah of Dynasty 6 was a male ruler. Whether male or female, Nitokris is the Greek rendering of both relevant names, Neit-​jqrty or Netjerikare, as Brose demonstrates.40

Dynasty 12: Neferusobek (or Sobeknofru, Skemiophris) In contrast to the earlier royal women, Neferusobek is clearly documented.There is no question that Neferusobek was a female pharaoh, who held power briefly at the end of Dynasty 12 as the successor of Amenemhat IV, reigning for 3 years, 10 months and 24 days according to the Turin King-​List.41 Her highest date documented in an inscription is regnal year 3 in a Nile level at Kumma in Sudan.42 The reasons behind Neferusobek’s ascent to the throne are lost. Manetho reported her as the last ruler of Dynasty 12, the sister of Amenemhat IV, who had no male heir.43 It seems that 25

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she was the daughter of Amenemhat III, but from a different mother than Amenemhat IV.44 She was associated with Amenemhat III on her monuments, but the presentation of her reign as a co-​regency is commemorative rather than actual.45 Besides being the first female Egyptian ruler attested with a full five-​fold titulary,46 Neferusobek is also the earliest royal woman designated as female Horus: on a small fragment of a papyrus-​bud column from Qantir, originally circa 7m high, two Horus falcons face each other, the male one of Amenemhat III and the female one of Neferusobek, at first sight combining complementarity and equivalency, yet the female Horus receives the signs of life and stability from her father.47 Various of Neferusobek’s statues survive and preserve her royal titles.48 A torso of unknown provenance now in the Louvre (E 27135),49 identified as Neferusobek by an inscription, shows a woman wearing a kingly nemes headdress and a sheath dress underneath a shendyt kilt, another element of kingly iconography. Thus, male regalia are used on a female body, showing that the designers struggled to show a woman in the otherwise male role of a king.

Dynasties 17–​18: Tetisheri and Ahmes-​Nefertari At the end of the Second Intermediate Period, the royal consorts and mothers of the Theban rulers of the late Dynasty 17, who started the difficult process of reuniting Egypt, supported the kings during their absences on campaign.50 Surviving inscriptions place great emphasis on the individual royal women of this dynasty and their divinity, probably displaying their political and ideological influence. King Taa I’s great wife Tetisheri was considered so important that her grandson Ahmose established a cenotaph for her at Abydos. A stele, now on display in the Cairo Museum (CG 34002), commemorates this decision and shows the king venerating the deified queen. His own great wife was his sister Ahmes-​Nefertari, who became a dominant figure during the reign of her son, Amenhotep I of Dynasty 18; the latter dedicated two cult structures for her on the Theban West Bank.51 She is also the earliest royal woman to be associated with the title of God’s Wife of Amun,52 giving her a key role in Amun’s cult in connection with royal ideology.The title of this priestess, who was always a royal woman, emphasized the creator god’s symbolic union with his ‘wife’ in order to guarantee the world’s continuance. The institution of the God’s Wife of Amun lasted for roughly a millennium until the Persian conquest (see Chapter 5).

Dynasty 18: Hatshepsut Thutmose II married his half-​sister Hatshepsut, who bore the king a daughter, Neferure. The pharaoh seems to have died unexpectedly, leaving the throne to Thutmose III, a small boy by a secondary wife, Iset. Hatshepsut, as her deceased brother’s principal wife and God’s Wife of Amun, controlled the government.53 Hatshepsut further legitimized her claim to power through her role as Amun’s daughter,54 and her prenomen was devised as an ideological expression: Maatkara, “the True One of the ka of Ra.” Originally, Hatshepsut was portrayed in female attire and royal regalia, but from the seventh regnal year of Thutmose III, her representations assumed a male form.55 Hatshepsut now ruled as pharaoh, as the senior partner of her nephew, Thutmose III. An elaborate mythology of her predestination was developed, which was indicated by an oracle during the reign of her father Thutmose I, which is represented in the “Red Chapel,” a barque shrine at Karnak, and by her divine birth, which is depicted in a relief cycle in her temple at Deir el-​Bahari.56

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Hatshepsut did not usurp royal power, but rather asserted her kingship through a process, with her combined regency and co-​regency lasting for almost 22  years. She achieved “her power without bloodshed or social trauma,”57 and her prosperous reign stimulated a period of creativity and artistic innovation. One reason might be that, of the early kings of Dynasty 18, probably only Hatshepsut’s father, Thutmose I, ascended the throne as an adult. Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Thutmose II seemed to have been young at accession, perhaps only 5 years old on average. Thus, their mothers or other royal women ruled for a number of years before each of them came of age. According to Ann Macy Roth’s calculation, women effectively ruled Egypt for almost half of the approximately 70 years preceding Hatshepsut’s accession.58 Courtiers were thus accustomed to the powerful role of royal women.

Late Dynasty 18: Tiy and Nefertiti Amenhotep III married a non-​royal woman, Tiy, who became his great principal wife; she is known from multiple monuments. Christian Bayer calls her a “Königin der Superlative” (“queen of superlatives”),59 also because no other royal woman of the New Kingdom—​ except for Nefertiti—​is as well attested as Tiy. He concludes that she was rooted in the tradition of her female predecessors, since iconographic and ideological innovations had been introduced for other queens of the early New Kingdom such as Ahmes-​Nefertari and Hatshepsut. Tiy was part of a sacral monumentalization of kingship under Amenhotep III that is attested, for example, in his mortuary temple at Kom el-​Heitan, in his palace in Malqata, and in the transformation of the sacred landscape of Thebes and Memphis. As Barry Kemp points out, “ideology needs architecture for its fullest expression.”60 The monuments of Amenhotep III and Tiy demonstrate an enormous increase in the public display and importance of the royal couple;61 no previous queen figured so prominently in her husband’s lifetime.62 Two Nubian temples further substantiate Tiy’s importance: at Soleb, near the Third Nile Cataract in modern Sudan, a large temple was dedicated to Amun-​Ra and Nebmaatra, a deified form of Amenhotep III. The king, who was given the status of a moon god complementary to his solar aspects, built a temple to his wife as a pendant to his own, a few kilometers to the north at Sedeinga.63 At Sedeinga, the focus was on the King’s Great Wife, presumably as the deified solar eye of Ra, Hathor, or Tefnut. The rituals at Sedeinga turned the angry eye of Ra that had fled from the violent leonine nature of Tefnut into the appeased and loving form of Hathor and thus re-​established world order. The deified Tiy became Hathor, the perfect consort of the king, who was at once sun god and his son. In the colonial land of Nubia, which was potentially violent, the temples of Tiy and Amenhotep III enacted cosmic order.64 Tiy’s new status culminated in her association with cosmic–​solar goddesses as part of the solarization of the kingship, which was perfected under her son, Amenhotep IV, and his great wife, Nefertiti, who is famous because of her many surviving images, especially the bust in Berlin.65 On a gateway associated with the temple of Benben in Amenhotep IV’s gm-​p˒˒-​ỉtn at Karnak, Nefertiti is also represented as sole participant in the cult of the Aten, followed only by her daughter(s).66 That she offers to the Aten as sole ritualist without the king reflects her exceptional status. Amenhotep IV substantially altered Egypt’s religion, changed his name to Akhenaton, and moved the capital to Akhetaton, the “Horizon of the Aton,” modern Amarna. In the solarized religion and cults, his principal wife was allocated a prominent role that was to some extent an evolution of the outstanding position commanded by Tiy, who survived for more than half

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the reign of Amenhotep IV. This role was expressed in innovative iconographic details, some of which are shared only by Tiy and Nefertiti, for example the tall blue “platform crown” and the khat-​headdress.67 Like Neferusobek, both Tiy and Nefertiti were depicted as sphinxes, a form of representation that again linked them with the solar goddesses Hathor and Tefnut.68 Both are shown smiting female enemies, which Uroš Matić explains as a “feminized version of the king trampling or smiting,” showing the domination of the ruling couple over both men and women, though ultimately giving “legitimacy to gender relations in which the masculine has the dominant and prevailing role.”69 Both Tiy and Nefertiti had a lasting influence on the status of a King’s Great Wife and were depicted in new iconographies that displayed their extraordinary status. The crown comprising two straight feathers, identified as two uraei or as Eyes of the God,70 had entered the iconography of royal women no later than Dynasty 13. Together with the vulture headdress, it is one of the primary symbols of royal women from Dynasty 18 onwards. Its solar connection made it common during the Amarna Period; a sun disk added between the two tall feathers had been introduced for Tiy, who was also the first royal woman to include the cow horns and sun disk of Hathor in her crown. Among conventional crowns, this one was also common for Nefertiti, even if her most famous one is the flat blue crown, presumably a new creation for her.71 The combination of the tall feathers, the cow horns, and the sun disk was so satisfying that it became normative until the Roman period, not only for royal women but also for major female deities such as Isis and Hathor.72

Dynasty 19: Nefertari and Tawosret Like Tiy and Nefertiti, Ramesses II’s first consort, Nefertari, can be counted as a key figure among the King’s Great Wives. All three have a prominence in their husbands’ monuments that is unequaled at other times.73 The construction of two Nubian temples for the king and his Great Wife at Soleb and Sedeinga for Amenhotep III and Tiy was followed a century later by Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, below the Second Nile Cataract, where the larger, southern temple was dedicated to the king and the smaller, northern one to Nefertari as Hathor. In this temple, Nefertari conducts rituals jointly with her husband, but also alone, offering to forms of Hathor and to other gods. According to Rolf Gundlach, Nefertari’s role in her temple at Abu Simbel and her status as the king’s partner are salient in the decoration, where she acts as Hathor, who is also the protectress of the newborn king, as depicted in the birth chamber (the southern chapel).74 Nefertari probably died soon after the inauguration of her temple in Ramesses II’s year 2475 and was buried in Tomb 66 of the Valley of the Queens in Thebes, where her solar connection is displayed in a different form, in the solar mode of regeneration.76 Tawosret was probably born near the end of the reign of Ramesses II; she may have been his granddaughter.77 Like Neferusobek and Hatshepsut, she was first a principal wife of a king. Sety II, the eldest son of Merenptah and a grandson of Ramesses II, was succeeded by Siptah, who was young and therefore put in the care of a regent, Tawosret. After his death, it seems that no suitable male descendant of Ramesses II was available, so Tawosret assumed the position of pharaoh and received a full five-​fold titulary,78 while counting her regnal years as sole ruler as a continuation of the deceased Siptah’s reign.79 Although Tawosret had been Sety’s principal wife, she had no tomb in the Valley of the Queens. Instead, her tomb was constructed in the Valley of the Kings (KV 14), where she was the only female monarch to be buried.80 It was completed during her reign, but later altered by Ramesses III for the burial of his father Sethnakht. 28

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Powerful royal women after the late New Kingdom The political and ideological systems began to deteriorate after the death of Ramesses III, and the king’s religious authority started to decline. Respect for the rulers was essential “if they were to hold the edifice of state together,”81 requiring the support of myth and the reinforcement of ceremony. The ideological assimilation of the king and Amun, mentioned above in the Myth of the Divine Birth (see p. 22), attests to a huge effort by thinkers of Dynasties 18 and 19. This process took new directions toward the end of the New Kingdom. At the beginning of Dynasty 21, Egypt split in two parts, with two centers of power. Upper Egypt, with important centers in the region of Herakleopolis and Thebes, was ruled by a military commander who was at the same time the High Priest of Amun. Lower Egypt was ruled by kings with residences in Memphis and Tanis. Egypt was unified again in Dynasty 25, when it was conquered by Nubian forces.82 During the Nubian conquest, Shepenwepet I, daughter of Osorkon III of Dynasty 23, was a powerful royal woman in Thebes. After a long hiatus in the office, she had been appointed as God’s Wife of Amun; her elevated status was emphasized in the location selected for her funerary chapel, which was located within the enclosure of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.83 The rulers of Dynasty 25 recognized the importance of the office of God’s Wife, whose incumbent also exercised power over Thebes, and the custom of appointing a royal daughter to this position continued. From 754 to 525 BC, five daughters of kings from Libyan, Nubian, and Saite backgrounds held the title of God’s Wife of Amun. Like a king, each assumed features of royal iconography and titulary upon accession and adopted feminine versions of royal titles, among which was “female Horus.”84 The office disappeared in its powerful form for good shortly after the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525.85 After Alexander’s conquest of Egypt, the wives, sisters, and daughters of several Ptolemaic kings were extremely active politically. For example, Arsinoë II and Berenike II became very powerful, while Kleopatra II and Kleopatra III contested the authority of the males of the dynasty. At times these women dominated political and religious developments to an almost unprecedented degree, but they did not surpass female rulers such as Hatshepsut.

Conclusion The status of royal women incorporates Egyptian perceptions of a specifically female area of authority. The active inclusion of royal women into kingship ideology made this authority part of the king’s office, so that a composite of both male and female elements was created. In times of crisis, royal wives and mothers as (co-​)regnant women secured the throne for their sons, often young boys, and thus forestalled the decline of a dynasty. In exceptional cases, royal women could become monarchs in their own right. The leadership of regnant women in ancient Egypt replicated to some extent the myth of Isis’ protection of her son Horus, who was threatened by his uncle Seth as competitor for rule. During Egypt’s Graeco-​Roman period, the cult of Isis spread through the Mediterranean world, often connected with the cult of the Ptolemaic queens.86 The status of Arsinoë II and Berenike II was elevated not only by the divine standing accorded to them, but also by their role as ritualists who theoretically had access to secret knowledge. This is documented in the case of Arsinoë as the priestess of the Ram in Mendes or as “God’s Wife” in Thebes.87 These roles were largely based on those of ancient Egyptian royal women. Knowledge acquired through the role of priestesses set these royal women apart and marked them as active participants in the cult. They thus acquired prestige. They could also become pharaohs, as in the cases of Neferusobek in Dynasty 12, Hatshepsut in Dynasty 18, or—​if she was a woman—​Nitokris in Dynasty 6. 29

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Notes 1 I am very grateful to John Baines for reading a draft of this chapter, his valuable critical remarks, and for sending me his articles before publication (Baines in press and 2020). 2 The divine birth is attested from the Old Kingdom onwards: Megahed and Vymazalová 2011: 155–​ 64; Oppenheim 2011: 171–​88. A full version of the myth is known from the reign of Hatshepsut in Dynasty 18; see Brunner 1991. 3 For the context, see Goebs and Baines 2018: 653–​7. 4 See Baines in press for a discussion of the question of whether the king was the sole qualified priest of the gods. On p. 17, he argues that the king performing rituals thematized himself as the prime earthly being who was symbolically qualified to engage with the gods, being functionally present while physically absent and not envisaged as participating. 5 Baines 2020: 1. 6 Troy 1986: 139. 7 Troy 2002: 1–​24. 8 By c. 3000 BCE, the early dynastic state had emerged, ruled by the dual king of Upper and Lower Egypt. Baines 2020: 23 argues that kingship was present in what later came to be Egypt by the pre-​ dynastic Naqada II period that saw extravagant display around large tomb complexes at Hierakonpolis. Although kingship went through transformations, there was some continuity from that time to the late Old Kingdom. 9 For the attestations of queens in Egyptian sources of the Roman period, see Hoffmann 2015: 139–​56. 10 Redford 1986: 18–​24. 11 P. Turin inv. 1874; Gardiner 1959; Ryholt 2004: 137–​8. 12 Redford 1986: xv. 13 Robins 2002: 25. 14 Leitz 2002:  LGG IV 347a, translates nsw.t-​bity.t, when used as a designation for a goddess, as “Die (regierende) Königin. Oder:  ‘Der weibliche König von Ober-​und Unterägypten,’ ” thus drawing attention to the inadequacy of the word “queen.” For h. r.t, “female Horus,” see Leitz 2002: LGG V 297c. 15 See, for example, the exhibition Reines d’Egypte: d’Hétephérès à Cléopâtre (Ziegler 2008). 16 Roth 2009: 1. For this definition, see also Robins 2002: 25. 17 Roth 2009: 6. 18 Robins 2001 and 2002. 19 Manetho, Aigyptiaka, fr. 8–​10 (Waddell 1940: 34–​9). See also Adler and Tuffin 2002: 78–​9. 20 Callender 2011a: 10–​14. 21 Troy 1986: 119, 133. 22 Troy 1986: 152, l.3; Seipel 1980: 8–​22 (Hetepneith). 23 Callender 2011a: 9–​10. 24 Callender 2011a: 30. 25 Dreyer 1987: 33–​43; Dreyer 1996: 72–​3. Almansa-​Villatoro 2019, 35–​51, suggests reading the queen’s name as Merhemsit instead of Meretneith. 26 Redford 1986: 213, n. 44. Wilkinson 2000: 103–​5. 27 Petrie 1900: frontispiece; Seipel 1980: 23–​45; Callender 2011a: 30–​37. 28 Bierbrier 2006: 39. 29 Altenmüller 1970:  223–​35; Callender 2011a:  147–​53. Khentkaus I  should not be confused with Khentkaus II of Dynasty 5, the wife of king Neferirkare and mother of his eldest son and later king, Raneferef (Callender 2011a: 171–​79). 30 P. Westcar: 9,21–​11,6 (Lepper 2008: 48–​51). 31 Lepper 2008: 21, 317–​20. 32 Hassan 1943: 1–​67; Callender 2011a: 136–​47. 33 Baer 1960: 298–​9, states that King Unis, her successor, incorporated blocks from her building in his own. For Klaus Baer, the unusual position of this unidentified female ruler, who probably had no young son for whom she might have ruled as King’s Mother, recalled that of Khentkaus. 34 Roth 2005: 12. 35 Waddell 1940: 54–​7. 36 Ryholt 2000: 92–​3; Brovarski 2007: 167–​71, even suggests a king nṯr-​k˒-​r˓ s​ ˒-​ptḥ. 37 Callender 2011a: 306–​17; 2011b: 246–​60.

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Regnant women in Egypt 38 Brose 2018: 37–​52. 39 Ayad 2009: 23–​27. 40 Brose 2018: 43–​45. 41 Roth 2001: 242–​45; Ryholt 1997: 15. For her attestation in King-​Lists, see Redford 1986: 19, 23, 34. 42 Schneider 2006: 173. 43 Manetho, Aigyptiaka, fr. 34 (Waddell 1940: 68–​9). 44 Roth 2001: 242–​5. 45 Troy 1986: 140; Murnane 1977: 20–​3, 229. 46 Von Beckerath 1999: 86–​7. 47 Habachi 1954: 464–​7, pl. 15A; Troy 1986: 139–​42. 48 Habachi 2001: 33, 168–​9, cats. 9–​11, pls. 13, 14A, 15B. 49 See Delange 1987: 30–​1. 50 Grimm 1999: 35–​47. 51 Uphill 1992: 613–​14 (with references). 52 Graefe 1981, vol. 2: 101–​5. Ahmes-​Nefertari’s mother Ahhotep was given the title of God’s Wife of Amun, probably posthumously. 53 Dorman 2005: 87. 54 For the evidence and an analysis, see Schulz 2015: 18–​23. 55 Schulz 2015: 11–​18 (with references). 56 Dorman 2005: 88 (with references). 57 Cooney 2014: 1. 58 Roth 2005: 11. 59 Bayer 2014: 423. 60 Kemp 2006: 248. 61 Zinn 2015: 28. 62 Berman 1992: 42–​3. 63 Bryan 1992: 106–​10. 64 Bryan 1992: 110. 65 Seyfried 2012: 170–​87. 66 Williamson 2015: 179–​92. 67 Roth 2009: 3. 68 Bryan 1992: 110. 69 Matić 2017: 117–​18. 70 Already attested in the Coffin Texts, see Troy 2002: 20, n. 50 (with references). 71 Althoff 2009: 13, 21, 24; Troy 1986: 126. 72 Troy 2002: 20–​1. 73 Dodson 2002: 58. 74 Gundlach 1995: 57–​60, 68–​9, figs. 7–​8. 75 Dodson and Hilton 2004: 172. 76 McCarthy 2002: 173–​95; Schmidt 1995: 237–​70. 77 Callender 2012: 26, 28. 78 Von Beckerath 1999²: 162–​3. 79 Callender 2012: 36–​7. 80 Hornung 2006: 213. 81 Kemp 2006: 261. 82 Jansen-​Winkeln 2006: 218–​33 (Dynasty 21); Zibelius-​Chen 2006: 284–​92. 83 Koch 2012: 20–​22; Ayad 2009: 15–​6. 84 Eldamaty 2011: 24. 85 For the God’s wives of Amun, see Eldamaty 2015: 67–​85; Koch 2012: 19–​59; Ayad 2009: 1–​2, 15–​28. 86 Minas-​Nerpel 2011; 2013; 2019. 87 Minas-​Nerpel  2019.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

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Martina Minas-Nerpel LGG Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, vols. I –​VII, see Leitz 2002. P.Westcar Papyrus Westcar (= P. Berlin 3033), see Lepper 2008.

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Regnant women in Egypt Eldamaty, M. 2015. “Die Gottesgemahlin des Amun.” In M. Eldamaty et al. (eds.), Ägyptische Königinnen vom Neuen Reich bis in die islamische Zeit.Vaterstetten,  67–​85. Galán, J.M. et  al. (eds.) 2014. Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut:  Papers from the Theban Workshop 2010. Chicago. Gardiner, A.H. 1959. The Royal Canon of Turin. Oxford. Gauthier, H. 1907–​17. Le livre des rois d’Egypte: recueil de titres et protocoles royaux, noms propres de rois, reines, princes et princesses, noms des pyramides et de temples solaires, suivi d’un index alphabétique I-​V. Cairo. Goebs, K. and Baines, J. 2018. “Functions and Uses of Egyptian Myth.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 235, 4: 645–​81. Graefe, E. 1981. Untersuchungen zur Verwaltung und Geschichte der Institution der Gottesgemahlin des Amun vom Beginn des Neuen Reiches bis zur Spätzeit. Wiesbaden. Grimm, A. 1999. “Im Zeichen des Mondes.” In S. Schoske and A. Grimm (eds.), Im Zeichen des Mondes. Ägypten zu Beginn des Neuen Reiches. Munich. Gundlach, R. 1995. “Das Dekorationsprogramm der Tempel von Abu Simbel und ihre kultische und königsideologische Funktion.” In D. Kurth (ed.), 3. Ägyptologische Tempeltagung, Hamburg, 1.-​5. Juni 1994: Systeme und Programme der ägyptischen Tempeldekoration. Wiesbaden,  47–​71. Habachi, L. 1954. “Khatâʿ na-​Qantîr: importance.” Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 52: 443–​562. Habachi, L. 2001. Tell el-​Dabʿa and Qantir: The Site and its Connection with Avaris and Piramesse. Tell el-​Dabʿa I. Edited by E.-​M. Engel et al.Vienna. Hassan, S. 1943. Excavations at Gîza IV, 1932–​1933. Cairo. Hoffmann, F. 2015. “Königinnen in ägyptischen Quellen der römischen Zeit.” In M. Eldamaty et al. (eds.), Ägyptische Königinnen vom Neuen Reich bis in die islamische Zeit.Vaterstetten, 139–​56. Hornung, E. 2006. “The New Kingdom.” In E. Hornung et  al. (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbook of Oriental Studies I 83. Leiden and Boston, 197–​217. Jansen-​Winkeln, K. 2006. “Relative Chronology of Dyn. 21.” In E. Hornung et al. (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbook of Oriental Studies I.83. Leiden and Boston, 218–​33. Kemp, B. 2006. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London and New York. Koch, C. 2012. Die den Amun mit ihrer Stimme zufriedenstellen. Gottesgemahlinnen und Musikerinnen im Thebanischen Amunstaat von der 22. bis zur 26. Dynastie. Dettelbach. Kuchman Sabbahy, L. 1982. The Development of the Titulary and Iconography of the Ancient Egyptian Queen from Dynasty One to the early Dynasty Eighteen. PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto. Leitz, C. et al. 2002. Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, vols. I–​VII. Leuven. Lepper, V.M. 2008. Untersuchungen zu P.Westcar: eine philologische und literaturwissenschaftliche (Neu-​)Analyse. Wiesbaden. Matić, U. 2017. “ ‘Her Striking but Cold Beauty’: Gender and Violence in Depictions of Queen Nefertiti Smiting the Enemies.” In U. Matić and B. Jensen (eds.), Archaeologies of Gender and Violence. Oxford, 103–​21. McCarthy, H.L. 2002. “The Osiris Nefertari:  A Case Study of Decorum, Gender, and Regeneration.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 39: 173–​95. Megahed, M. and Vymazalová, H. 2011. “Ancient Egyptian Royal Circumcision from the Pyramid Complex of Djedkare?” Anthropologie 49: 155–​64. Minas-​Nerpel, M. 2011. “Cleopatra II and III:  The Queens of Ptolemy VI and VIII as Guarantor of Kingship and Rivals for Power.” In A. Jördens and J.F. Quack (eds.), Ägypten zwischen innerem Zwist und äußerem Druck. Die Zeit Ptolemaios’VI. bis VIII. Wiesbaden,  58–​76. Minas-​Nerpel, M. 2013. “Koregentschaft und Thronfolge: Legitimation ptolemäischer Machtstrukturen in den ägyptischen Tempeln der Ptolemäerzeit.” In F. Hoffmann and K.S. Schmidt (eds.), Orient und Okzident in hellenistischer Zeit. Beiträge zur Tagung “Orient und Okzident –​Antagonismus oder Konstrukt? Machtstrukturen, Ideologien und Kulturtransfer in hellenistischer Zeit.Vaterstetten, 143–​66. Minas-​Nerpel, M. 2019. “Ptolemaic Queens as Ritualists and Recipients of Cults: The Cases of Arsinoe II and Berenike II.” Ancient Society 49: 141–​83. Murnane, W.J. 1977. Ancient Egyptian Coregencies. Chicago. Oppenheim, A. 2011. “The Early Life of Pharaoh: Divine Birth and Adolescence Scenes in the Causeway of Senwosret III at Dahshur.” In M. Bárta et al. (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010/​1. Prague, 171–​88. Petrie, W.M.F. 1900. The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, vol. I. London. Redford, D.B. 1986. Pharaonic King Lists, Annals, and Day-​books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History. Mississauga, Ontario.

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Martina Minas-Nerpel Robins, G. 1981. Egyptian Queens in the 18th Dynasty up to the Reign of Amenhotep III. PhD Dissertation, Oxford University. Robins, G. 2001. “Queens.” In D. Redford (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. III. Oxford and New York, 105–​09. Robins, G. 2002. “Problems Concerning Queens and Queenship in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt.” NIN: Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity 3: 25–​31. Roehrig, C. et al. (eds.), 2005. Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. New York. Roth, A.M. 2005. “Models of Authority: Hatshepsut’s Predecessors in Power.” In C. Roehrig et al. (eds.), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. New York. Roth, S. 2001. Die Königsmütter des Alten Ägypten von der Frühzeit bis zum Ende der 12. Dynastie. Wiesbaden. Roth, S. 2009. “Queen.” In E. Frood and W.Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Los Angeles, 1–​12 (http://​escholarship.org/​uc/​item/​3416c82m). Ryholt, K. 1997. The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period c. 1800–​1550 B.C. Copenhagen. Ryholt, K. 2000. “The Late Old Kingdom in the Turin King-​List and the Identity of Nitocris.” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 127, 87–​100. Ryholt, K. 2004. “The Turin King-​List.” Ägypten und Levante 14: 135–​55. Ryholt, K. 2006. “The Royal Canon of Turin.” In E. Hornung et al. (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbook of Oriental Studies I 83. Leiden and Boston, 26–​32. Schiff, S. 2010. Cleopatra, a Life. New York. Schmidt, H.C. 1995.“Szenarium der Transfiguration –​Kulisse des Mythos: das Grab der Nefertari.” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 22: 237–​70. Schneider, T. 2006. “Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period.” In E. Hornung et al. (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbook of Oriental Studies I 83. Leiden and Boston, 168–​196. Schulz, R. 2015.“Hatschepsut: von der Gottesgemahlin zum Pharao.” In M. Eldamaty at al. (eds.), Ägyptische Königinnen vom Neuen Reich bis in die islamische Zeit.Vaterstetten,  7–​24. Seipel, W. 1980. Untersuchungen zu den ägyptischen Königinnen der Frühzeit und des Alten Reiches: Quellen und historische Einordnung. PhD Dissertation, Universität Hamburg. Seyfried, F. (ed.) 2012. Im Licht von Amarna –​100 Jahre Fund der Nofretete. Berlin. Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History. Uppsala. Troy, L. 2002. “The Ancient Egyptian Queenship as an Icon of the State.” NIN. Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity 3: 1–​24. Tyldesley, J. 2006. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt, from Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. London. Tyldesley, J. 2012. “Foremost of Women: The Female Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.” In R.H.Wilkinson (ed.), Tausret: Forgotten Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt. Oxford, 5–​24. Uphill, E. 1992. “Where Were the Funerary Temples of the New Kingdom Queens?” In Sesto Congresso internazionale di egittologia: atti 1. Turin, 613–​18. Von Beckerath, J. 1999. Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen. Mainz. Waddell, W.G. 1940. Manetho. Cambridge, MA and London. Wilkinson, R.H. 2012. Tausret. Forgotten Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt. Oxford. Wilkinson,T.A.H. 2000. Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its Associated Fragments. London. Williamson, J. 2015. “Alone Before the God: Gender, Status, and Nefertiti’s Image.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 51: 179–​92. Zibelius-​Chen, K. 2006. “The Chronology of Nubian Kingdoms.” In E. Hornung et  al. (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbook of Oriental Studies I 83. Leiden and Boston, 285–​303. Ziegler, C. 2008. Reines d’Egypte: d’Hétephérès à Cléopâtre. Paris. Zinn, K. 2015. “Nofretete –​eine Königin ihrer Zeit?” In M. Eldamaty at al. (eds.), Ägyptische Königinnen vom Neuen Reich bis in die islamische Zeit.Vaterstetten,  25–​66.

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4 THE IMAGE OF NEFERTITI Athena Van der Perre

Introduction to the image of Nefertiti Ancient Egypt, despite being a society generally ruled by men, has a tradition of strong, royal women who played an important role at the court. While some of them, such as Hatshepsut and Kleopatra, were known to have reigned over the country, this is not so widely known for others, e.g. Tawosret, the last pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty.1 One of the most discussed royal women of ancient Egypt is without a doubt Nefertiti, “the beautiful one has come,” who lived c. 1370–​1330 BCE. Today, she is best known for her colorful bust, discovered in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmoses at Amarna, and currently on display in the Neues Museum, Berlin.2 The bust was found on December 6, 1912, by the Deutsche Orient-​Gesellschaft under the direction of the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. At the end of the excavation, all finds were divided between the German excavator and the Egyptian Museum. During the division of finds, all objects from the workshop complex of Thutmoses (labeled building P 47.1–​3) were granted to Berlin, including the wonderful bust of Nefertiti. Borchardt kept the bust hidden for a couple of years after the discovery, so she was not displayed for the first time until 1924. At some point, the rumor was spread that the Germans had covered the bust with mud before the official division of finds, in order to hide its beauty and to ensure that the bust would come to Berlin.3 In the following years, several claims were filed from the Service des Antiquités and the Egyptians in order to get the bust back to Egypt, but none were successful.4 Nefertiti spent most of her life during a rather turbulent period, today known as the Amarna Period. This period marks the transition from the 18th to the 19th Dynasty, when the Egyptian empire was at the height of his power. She and her family could not escape from the damnatio memoriae inflicted by their immediate successors, so her fate remains a mystery, and yet she is still one of the most popular research topics in Egyptology. Several facts are widely known and accepted: she was married to Akhenaten, related to the boy-​king Tutankhamun, lived in the newly created capital of Amarna, and was a true worshipper of the solar disk Aten. But there was more. While taking a closer look at the available evidence, the preserved facts appear to point in the same direction, namely that Nefertiti had reached the highest position of the Egyptian empire by the end of her life, that is, the position of (co-​)regent of the empire itself. 35

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Thebes, the early years During the 18th Dynasty, the Egyptian empire blossomed. Egypt reached the peak of its international power, while creating a safe and prosperous environment for its inhabitants. The Thutmosid family had ruled Egypt for almost 150 years, when pharaoh Amenhotep III (c. 1400–​1351 BCE) ascended the throne. Several large construction projects, such as the Luxor temple and an enormous mortuary temple at Thebes, were started by the king who is known for having the most surviving statues of all Egyptian pharaohs. Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye (Tiy) had seven children: two sons and five daughters. After the unexpected death of the eldest son Thutmoses, their youngest son Amenhotep IV was appointed as the formal successor to the throne.5 The reign of Amenhotep IV was characterized by numerous innovations in art and religion.These innovations were all closely connected to the worship of the sun disk Aten, who became the chief deity of the Egyptian pantheon.This cult is often said to be monotheistic, and the sun disk officially became the only state god. The unconventional art, as seen in temples, monuments, and tombs, differed significantly from previous periods. It is characterized by very lively and dynamic scenes, often involving large crowds.While some portraits and statues clearly show a more naturalistic representation, the most typical statues are characterized by their exaggerated body parts; broad hips, prominent breasts and elongated heads. This typical style is now referred to as the Amarna style.6 Amenhotep IV started his reign in Thebes, where the first references to his wife Nefertiti are found. Even though Nefertiti’s name, representations, and sculptures are plentiful, little is known of her ancestry. For a long time, she was said to be a foreign princess, often identified with the Mitannian princess Tadukhipa.7 This was partly based on her name, suggesting that the “beautiful one” came from abroad. The name Nefertiti, however, was a rather common Egyptian name during the 18th Dynasty.8 While the lineage of royal persons is often very well described, mainly to claim their legitimacy, the references to the relatives of Nefertiti are scarce. Nefertiti was clearly not from royal lineage, since she never used the title “king’s daughter.” Where she was born is not known, but it is highly likely that she belonged to the Egyptian upper class.9 The name of her parents is not attested; the only female related to her appears to be her sister Mutnedjmet.10 It is also known that Nefertiti had an Egyptian nurse, Teye, the second wife of the later pharaoh Ay.11 Ay held the title “god’s father,” but given the fact that he was clearly not the father of Akhenaten, this title was interpreted as “father-​in-​law.” Therefore, Nefertiti might have been his daughter,12 presumably born to his first (currently unknown) wife.13 One of the first depictions of Nefertiti in her role of Akhenaten’s wife is found in the Theban Tomb of the royal butler Parennefer (TT188),14 who is also the owner of rock tomb 7 at Amarna.15 His tomb is badly damaged, and the king’s consort is hardly identifiable, nor is her name preserved. In TT55, however, Nefertiti is depicted behind her husband Amenhotep IV, while rewarding the tomb owner Ramose with gold,16 a scene that would become part of the standard decoration in the later rock tombs at Amarna. Nefertiti’s earliest representations already refer to her with the title “great king’s wife” (ḥm.t nsw.t wr.t), a title reserved for the chief queen. Secondary wives of the pharaoh received the minor title “king’s wife.”The exact time of the marriage is still under discussion, as is the age of the couple at the time. Either they married right before or right after Akhenaten’s ascension on the throne, or the marriage only took place in his third or fourth regnal year.17 Their two oldest daughters, Meritaten and Meketaten, were born at the residence in Thebes. The couple started a large building campaign in the entire country, to introduce new cult places for their chief deity.The use of the newly developed talatat blocks facilitated the construction of large buildings.18 Already in their first construction projects at Thebes, the extraordinary 36

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position held by Nefertiti at the court is shown. In Karnak, a whole temple was erected for their chief god, the Aten.While there was only one official state god, in practice the royal couple formed a divine triad with their god, Akhenaten serving as the son of the Aten, Nefertiti as his female counterpart. Therefore, they were all to be worshiped by the people. While the pharaoh is generally the protagonist in the temple scenes, it is striking that the images in the courtyard of the temple only depict Nefertiti, sometimes accompanied by her daughters, worshiping the Aten. She acts as a high priest, offering to the god, a privilege generally reserved for the king. Her name also appears twice as much as that of her husband on the talatat from the Mansion of the Benben.19 These elements prove that her status at the court was almost that of an equal to the king, a fact that was also emphasized by her crowns and regalia.20 Numerous scenes are preserved where Nefertiti is wearing a crown that is normally strictly reserved for the king, e.g. the Atef crown,21 a crown with ram’s horns,22 or the so-​called Khepresh crown.23 One of Amenhotep IV’s major alterations during the early years of his reign, was changing his name into Akhenaten (“effective for the Aten”).24 His wife would follow his lead by extending her own name to Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (“Beautiful are the beauties of the Aten. The Beautiful one has come”). Nefertiti’s name, now written in two adjacent cartouches, resembles the double cartouches of the king and the Aten. Again, the very important status of Nefertiti is emphasized, this time in the writing of the first element of her name.While the god Aten is written first for reasons of honor, his name is often written backward in her cartouche, so it faces the figure of the Great King’s Wife. The reversed writing was so unusual that it must have had the same effect as writing in capitalized letters in modern texts. Even more striking is that her husband, who was seen as the direct descendant from the Aten, did not receive this honor in his own cartouche.25 An important event took place around Akhenaten’s fifth year on the throne. The King decided it was time to move his capital to a newly built city, since neither the administrative center at Memphis nor the religious capital at Thebes was found suitable for his chief god. A new capital was built on the east bank of the Nile, some 400km north of Thebes.26 According to the so-​called Boundary Stelai, marking the boundaries of the city on both the east and the west banks, Aten himself advised the king on the choice of the location.27 The text also states that this was the place where Aten created the world, a place where he might set within every single day. It is said that the King was inspired to create his new capital at this particular place during a boat trip on the Nile, when seeing the sun rise between the desert mountains. The scene resembled the hieroglyph for Horizon (Ꜣḫ.t), which probably led to the name of the new city Akhetaten (“the horizon of the Aten”). Thousands of Egyptians followed their king to this empty piece of desert, not contaminated by previous owners or cults.28

The queen in the new capital Nefertiti’s position was not only consolidated in their new capital, it was even strengthened. During the first years in the new capital, Nefertiti bore four more daughters; Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure, and Setepenre.29 She was represented as a strong woman. Her fertility was emphasized in the way she was portrayed, with very prominent hips, but also by stressing the fact that she had (at least) six children. Her daughters are depicted in numerous scenes, including scenes of official events, such as rewarding high courtiers.30 Apart from being the king’s wife and a mother, Nefertiti’s most important role was probably that of Akhenaten’s female counterpart in the divine Triad with the Aten. The multiple images of Nefertiti in the tombs show that she played an active role in state rituals. Nefertiti is acting on the same level as her husband; she sits parallel with him on thrones, walks besides him in 37

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processions, and she drives her own chariot.31 The royal couple is portrayed as having an equal relationship with the god Aten as both receive the same praise and worship directly of the Aten himself. Talatat blocks recovered at Hermopolis even depict Nefertiti in the traditional pose of the pharaoh, slaying the enemies of Egypt. The scene shows several royal boats, with Nefertiti standing in a cabin on her boat, wearing her idiosyncratic blue crown. She is raising her right arm, while holding a kneeling female enemy with her left arm.32 These scenes do not depict actual events and it is highly unlikely that Nefertiti ever led the troops into battle.33 They must be regarded as symbolic representations of the ever-​triumphing pharaoh, whose role it was to establish and maintain Maat (“order”) in the world. The fact that it is not the pharaoh himself, but his chief queen who defeats the chaos, is again an example of Nefertiti’s very unusual position at the court. Images of the royal couple slightly changed as the Amarna style evolved. Nefertiti is always shown in normal proportions next to her husband, never knee-​high, like royal wives in other periods. Several images of the earlier phase, however, do depict Nefertiti as considerably smaller than her husband, standing behind him in a more traditional pose.34 In the later phase the equality of the couple becomes more prominent. It must be stressed that at Amarna, the representations of the daily life of the royal family must have been regarded as equally important to the more traditional scenes, presenting the royal couple during official occasions. Several scenes and stelai depict the couple and their children as a loving family, kissing and cuddling. Probably the best-​ known example is stele ÄM 14145 from the Neues Museum, Berlin (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1  Limestone house altar depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three of their daughters, found at Amarna. Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin, ÄM 14145 Source: © bpk /​Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB. Photo: Margarethe Büsing

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Here, the couple is depicted together with three of their daughters. Akhenaten is holding Meritaten in his arms and kisses her, while Meketaten is sitting on her mother’s lap and Ankhesenpaaten is climbing on her mother’s shoulder, grasping for an ornament hanging from her crown. What looks like a simple, intimate family portrait at first sight, does raise some questions. Akhenaten is clearly the taller person in the scene, but his seat is simple and plain. His wife on the other hand, is sitting on a decorated seat, covered in regal motifs.35 It appears that even these scenes of daily life had the intention to stress the importance of the king’s great wife. In the tomb of Meryre II, a well-​known scene shows the royal couple during the so-​ called Durbar (or foreign tribute) ceremony, sitting on a throne next to each other and holding hands. Despite the fact that three hands are clearly visible, two of which are holding each other, the rest of the figure of Nefertiti is hardly visible. She is only represented as an outline, mimicking Akhenaten’s contours.36 This scene, dated to Akhenaten’s year 12, presents the last event where all daughters of Nefertiti were still depicted, and therefore alive. Shortly after the Durbar, Meketaten passed away.This was clearly an unforeseen event. In the Boundary Stelai, Akhenaten had declared that a tomb must be constructed for him, his wife and his daughter Meritaten, in the Royal Wadi east of the city. The Royal Tomb (nr. 26) contains three separate burial places, of which the third one was never finished. The quality of the local limestone was very poor, causing a lot of problems during the application of the decoration. Layers of gypsum were necessary to fill in all voids and holes, but this makes the decoration very fragile. Due to the untimely death of Meketaten, the original plans were changed, and a burial place for the young princess was prepared in the Royal Tomb. Three rooms were hastily prepared and decorated for her burial,37 but much of the decoration is now lost. In the years following its rediscovery, the Royal Tomb was severely plundered and damaged.38 The remaining scenes show the burial of the young princess, the strong and fierce queen portrayed as a grieving mother.39 Textual information on the life at the city is scarce, and even though references to the daily life can be found in the rock tombs, there are hardly any images of the royal family postdating the burial of their daughter in the Royal Tomb. Nefertiti was obviously not the only important woman at Amarna, as kings tended to have multiple wives in those days. Even though the number of secondary wives of Akhenaten is not known, several references to a king’s wife, Kiya, were found throughout the city.40 At some point, probably around the 13th year of Akhenaten, she also disappears from the records.41 Her name was replaced by that of Meritaten on several buildings such as the North Palace and the Maru-​Aten.42 Meritaten herself had a special position in the city. She was the eldest of the King’s daughters, but she also gained the title of Great King’s Wife, after her marriage with Semenkhkare, the co-​regent of Akhenaten. Even though the reign of Semenkhkare probably only lasted a year,43 Meritaten’s position at the court did not significantly alter, since she kept her title after the death of her husband. The presence of other King’s Wives did not influence Nefertiti’s exceptional position. The ultimate example can be found on the corners of Akhenaten’s (badly damaged) sarcophagus.44 It was a tradition of the 18th Dynasty to place the corners of royal sarcophagi under the protection of the goddesses Isis, Nephtys, Neith, and Selkis, illustrated by representations of these goddesses on the corners embracing the sarcophagus. On Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, these goddesses were replaced by four figures of Nefertiti,45 placing her in the role of protection goddess.46

The aftermath The years after Akhenaten’s death must have been extremely turbulent. The reformations of the couple appeared to have an expiration date once Akhenaten’s direct influence was gone. 39

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It is generally known that the first steps toward the rehabilitation of the Amon cult were taken before the start of Tutankhamun’s reign, almost immediately after Akhenaten’s death.47 Tutankhamun’s successors Ay and Horemheb played a major part in the restoration of the ancient gods. The priests of Amon regained their status, temples all over the country were reopened, and last but not least, all references to the Aten-​cult were removed. This was done very thoroughly: the Amarna temples and their contents were destroyed and the stones reused as filling for other building projects. Ramses (I), the general of Horemheb, would usurp the throne after Horemheb’s death, officially starting the 19th Dynasty.The pharaohs of this dynasty would actively continue the damnatio memoriae of the Amarna protagonists; for example, Ramses II also reused an enormous amount of talatat blocks from Amarna in his constructions at Hermopolis. Their main goal was to erase the Amarna Period and everyone connected to it from the annals, and for some time, they appeared to have succeeded. The reuse of the blocks as filling, however, preserved their decoration and inscriptions for eternity. A vast amount of information has inevitably been lost, while other pieces might still be discovered. Apart from Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, only two statues of Nefertiti are known that might date to the later phases of the Amarna Period. First of all, two pieces of a shabti belonging to Nefertiti were discovered in the Royal Tomb at Amarna.48 Nefertiti still carries the title Great King’s wife on these figurines. According to Loeben, this proved that Nefertiti was buried while she was still the wife of Akhenaten, and therefore that she must have died before her husband.49 Since then it has been proven that the two pieces do not belong to the same shabti, and that they likely served as votive offerings during the burial of Akhenaten.50 This suggests that Akhenaten predeceased his wife, a statement further confirmed by the second statue, the so-​called Elder Nefertiti, discovered in the workshop of Thutmoses at Amarna and currently in Berlin.51 This Amarna-​style statue clearly shows Nefertiti as a mature woman with crow’s feet around her eyes and deep lines around the corners of her mouth. She is depicted here considerably older than in her other well-​known statues, suggesting that it was made near the end of her life. As is proven by her sagging breasts and rounded abdominal region, this statue is not only a very naturalistic representation of an aging woman, but also the portrait of a mother of several children. At this moment, the final resting place of Nefertiti is not known. According to the Boundary Stelai, Nefertiti was supposed to be buried with her husband in the Royal Tomb at Amarna. However, since she survived her husband and no traces of her burial were found in Amarna,52 it is likely that she was buried elsewhere. Given the restoration politics of Tutankhamun and the fact that other members of the Amarna court, e.g. Akhenaten’s mother Tiye,53 were reburied in the Valley of the Kings, it might have served as the final resting place for Nefertiti as well. The mummy of the Younger Lady (discovered in KV35) is often identified as Nefertiti, but this hypothesis is still under discussion.54 According to Reeves, she was actually buried inside the tomb of Tutankhamun, but so far his investigations have not delivered the desired results.55

An alternative ending? Many questions about the fate of Nefertiti remain unanswered, and yet several facts and possibilities can be combined to create an alternative ending. When it comes to establishing the last years of Nefertiti, the evidence becomes scarce and contradictory. For a long time, the death of Nefertiti was placed in the 13th or 14th regnal year of Akhenaten. As we have seen, she was still present during the Durbar in Year 1256 and she was depicted in the burial scenes of her daughter, which presumably took place during Akhenaten’s 13th or 14th year.57 Since no conclusive evidence was found to confirm that she was still (physically) present at the site afterwards, the most likely conclusion appeared to be the untimely death of the Great King’s wife. The major 40

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problem with this hypothesis was that the burial scenes of her daughter were not dated, so they offered the possibility for a considerable amount of speculations and wild theories. To name but a few: Nefertiti died in a chariot accident in Akhenaten’s 14th year,58 was banished to the North City,59 replaced as chief queen by Akhenaten’s concubine Kiya,60 or replaced by her own daughter Meritaten.61 Apart from these—​rather gloomy—​theories, the possibility was also raised that Nefertiti was still present in Amarna, but that she had changed her name and became the co-​regent of her husband.62 Recently, in the limestone quarries of Dayr Abu Hinnis, some 15 km north of Amarna, evidence was found that disproves the majority of these highly speculative theories. A quarry inscription about the construction of the Small Aten Temple mentions the names and titles of the royal couple, and was dated in Year 16 of Akhenaten.63 This inscription not only proves that Nefertiti was still alive in Akhenaten’s 16th year, but also shows that she still carried the title of “Great King’s Wife.” Therefore, her position in the royal household had not changed. The quarries did not deliver any information on the successors or co-​regents of Akhenaten. Apart from Tutankhamun, two other king’s names were attested in Amarna. The first name was Ankh-​ kheperu-​ re Semenkhkare, the second Ankh-​ kheperu-​ re Neferneferuaten. Little information is known on these shadowy characters. Both seemed to have been co-​regents of Akhenaten, and both have been identified as an alias of Nefertiti at some point.64 The evidence in the city of Amarna clearly shows that Semenkhkare was male, and married to Nefertiti’s eldest daughter Meritaten. The information on Neferneferuaten is somewhat more ambiguous. Publications before 1980 often considered these two persons to be one and the same, therefore complicating the research. Dodson has proven that there is a clear difference between these two, and this is particularly visible in their use of epithets. While Semenkhkare never used an epithet, the praenomen of Neferneferuaten is always followed by one.65 Some of the epithets of Neferneferuaten not only confirm a close connection to Akhenaten, they also show that Neferneferuaten was female. Not only is she called “the beloved of Akhenaten,” but also one “who is effective for her husband.” Additionally, several ring bezels have been found in Amarna, where the praenomen is written “Ankhet-​kheperu-​re,” including a female “t” ending in Ankhet.66 Given the fact that Nefertiti had already added Neferneferuaten to her own name, she is the most likely candidate.67 Around the 17th year of Akhenaten, things were changing in Amarna. Akhenaten felt the need to appoint a co-​regent; whether he sensed that his end was near or other political events were at stake is not known. The husband of Meritaten, Semenkhkare, had probably died after a very short reign. Tutankhaten, born around Akhenaten’s 13th regnal year, was presumably his only living male heir.68 It is likely that he was considered to be too young to rule, and therefore Akhenaten appointed his chief queen Nefertiti as co-​regent. She changed her name to Ankh-​kheperu-​re Neferneferuaten. Her daughter Meritaten still had the title of Great King’s Wife and now formed a new royal triad together with her parents.69 Not long after these measures, which were probably all arranged in his 17th regnal year, Akhenaten died.70 Nefertiti/​Neferneferuaten would start her own reign. Any references to Meritaten postdating the death of Akhenaten are absent, suggesting that she too had died. Since no references to other princesses have been found, Ankhesenpaaten might have been the only living daughter of Nefertiti left at the court. The last documented regnal year of King Neferneferuaten, year 3, is found in a graffito in Thebes.71 According to Reeves, several images of king Neferneferuaten are known, but they have never been identified as such, since they were modified and added to the tomb equipment of Tutankhamun. Several objects, statues, and even the famous golden mask were adapted for the burial of Tutankhamun, even though they were initially made for Neferneferuaten.72 41

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After Neferneferuaten’s death, the boy Tutankhaten ascended the throne. He was married to Ankhesenpaaten, so once again, the title of Great King’s Wife would go to a daughter of Nefertiti.The royal couple changed their names to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, removing all references to the Aten. With the death of Tutankhamun, the curtain falls over the Amarna Period and the monotheistic cult of the Aten. For a long time, the mystery surrounding the Amarna Period severely influenced the research, resulting in biased views and numerous hypotheses built on mere speculations. In recent years, new interpretations of the available archaeological and textual information were combined with newly discovered elements. The evidence discussed above proves that Nefertiti was not merely a beautiful concubine, but that she held a very high position at the court. The first glimpses of her status were already visible during the early years at Thebes, where Nefertiti is depicted in scenes that are normally preserved for the king. Her position at the court did not alter during Akhenaten’s reign; she kept using crowns and scepters normally associated with the king, suggesting that she was officially acting on the same level as the king. Eventually Nefertiti, now operating under the alias Neferneferuaten, would reach the highest possible position, that of (co-​)regent of the Egyptian empire.

Notes 1 Tyldesley 2006; Creasman et al. 2014: 275–​6. 2 Inventory Number ÄM 21300. 3 Voss 2012: 463–​64. 4 Even an exceptional exchange with unique objects from the Cairo museum was proposed, but after long negotiations, it would be Adolf Hitler himself who rejected the final offer. For more information on the discovery of the bust and its aftermath, see Jung 2012: 421–​6; Matthes 2012: 427–​37;Voss 2012: 460–​68. 5 Reeves 2005: 61–​62; Huber 2016: 12–​13. 6 Laboury states that, due to the very close connection between the artistic and religious revolution, the style should be called “Atenist art.” Laboury 2011: 1. 7 Tyldesley 2005: 42–​3. 8 Ranke 1935: 201, no. 12. 9 Seyfied 2012: 189. 10 There is still some discussion on her name, since it can also be transcribed as Mutbenret. She is depicted in several tombs at Amarna, often in the presence of the princesses and generally accompanied by her two dwarfs. Examples can be found in the rock tombs of Parennefer (RT 7), Tutu (RT 8), May (RT 14), and Ay (RT 25); see Davies 1905 and 1908. 11 Teye is also depicted in Ay’s rock tomb at Amarna (RT 25); see Davies 1908: 16–​24. For the text, see Murnane 1995: n° 58B.1F. 12 Borchardt 1905: 256–​70; Reeves 2005: 88–​9. 13 Ridley 2018: 950. 14 Davies 1923, 136f. In publications, the tombs of large cemeteries are generally referred to with a specific code (usually an abbreviation of the name of the cemetery) followed by a number. For the Theban Tombs, the non-​royal cemeteries in Western Thebes, TT + number is used. For the royal tombs located at the Valley of the Kings, the abbreviation KV is used, followed by a number. The rock tombs at Amarna, including both the north and south tombs, are referred to as RT + number. 15 Published in Davies 1908. 16 Reeves 2005: 99. 17 The latter date is often based on the attestation of Meritaten as a toddler on the Boundary stele, dated in the fifth year of the king. Therefore, she must have been born in the fourth year, immediately after their marriage. See Gabolde 1998: xx. 18 Talatat blocks are blocks with a standard dimension of 1 cubit x ½ cubit x ½ cubit. Instead of using the colossal blocks to construct massive walls, the masons worked with mud brick covered with a casing of

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The image of Nefertiti these smaller stones. The main advantage of building with these blocks is that a block can be handled by a single person. 19 Redford 1984: 78–​82 and figs. 6–​7. 20 Samson 1977: 90–​3; Tyldesley 2018: 89–​91. 21 Davies 1905: pl. VIII. 22 As seen on the column drum found by Petrie, currently in the Ashmolean Museum (inv. Nr. 1893.1.41). 23 The Khepresh, also known as the blue crown, is a headdress often worn by New Kingdom pharaohs in battle or during royal ceremonies. Nefertiti is depicted wearing this particular crown on the stele of Pasi (currently in Berlin, ÄM 17813). 24 This change was already noticed by Petrie during his excavations in 1891. Petrie 1894: 39. 25 Wilson 1973: 238. 26 Today known as Amarna, or Tell el-​Amarna. For a detailed description of the town, see Kemp 2012. 27 Kemp 2012: 34–​5. 28 Kemp 2012: 32 ff. 29 Seyfried 2012b: 190. 30 E.g. Davies 1905: pl. X. 31 E.g. Davies 1905: pl. XVI; Samson 1977: 88–​9. 32 The blocks were discovered by Roeder during his excavations at Hermopolis, see Roeder 1969: Tafel 191, PC 67.They are currently stored in the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, accession number 64.521. 33 According to the known evidence, neither Amenhotep III nor Akhenaten ever went to battle.Tyldesley 2005: 62–​63. 34 E.g. Davies 1906, pl. XV. 35 Tyldesley 2005: 140. 36 Davies 1905: pls. XXXVII-​XXXVIII. 37 Two rooms (known as Rooms Alpha and Gamma) were decorated, Room Beta remained unfinished. 38 Part of the damage to the tomb, e.g. the mutilation of cartouches and depictions of the king and the complete destruction of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus and other grave goods, must have taken place shortly after the abandonment of the city. A detailed description of the tomb and its equipment can be found in Martin 1974 and 1989. 39 Martin 1989: pls. 63, 68. 40 Harris 1974a: 25–​30. 41 The last datable reference to her is on a wine docket from Year 11.Van Dijk 1997: 36. 42 Reeves 2005: 120, 127. 43 For an overview of the known evidence on his reign, see Van der Perre 2014: 83–​96. 44 The sarcophagus was deliberately taken to pieces, probably in the turbulent aftermath of the Amarna Period. It was reconstructed for the first time in the 1930s, and again around 1970. The coffin is currently standing in the garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Eaton-​Krauss 2016: 90. 45 Wilson 1973: 239; Gabolde 1998: 129–​32, pl. XIV. 46 Eaton-​Krauss suggests that the base of Tutankhamun’s coffin was originally made for his predecessor Neferneferuaten, based on the resemblance of this base to that of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus. Eaton-​ Krauss 2016: 90–​92. 47 Eaton-Krauss 2016: 33. 48 A shabti, also known as ushabti or shawabti, is a servant figurine that was a part of the funerary equipment from the First Intermediate Period onwards. The figurine was supposed to carry out tasks for the deceased in the afterworld. They are generally inscribed with the name of the deceased; see Schneider 1977. 49 Loeben 1986: 99–​107. 50 Reeves 2005: 170. 51 Inventory number ÄM 21263, discovered by Borchardt in 1912. 52 She was not buried in the Royal Tomb. Tomb T29 in the Royal Wadi at Amarna might have been intended as Nefertiti’s personal tomb, but was never finished. For a detailed description of the Royal Wadi and its tombs, see Kemp 2016. 53 Tiye was reburied during the reign of Tutankhamun, either in KV55 (the tomb of Queen Tiye, Davis 1910) or in KV 22 (the tomb of Amenhotep III). Eaton-​Krauss 2016: 97. At some point, her mummy was transferred to KV35, where it became known as “the Elder Lady.” 54 Even the DNA analyses did not solve the riddle, see Hawass et al. 2010. 55 Reeves 2015: 1–​16.

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Athena Van der Perre 56 Davies 1905: pl. XXXVIII. 57 Martin 1989: pls. 63, 68. 58 Schlögl 2012: 90. 59 Hayes 1959: 296. 60 Woolley 1922: 81–​82. 61 Redford 1967: 175. 62 See Harris 1973a, 1973b, and 1974; Samson 1977. For an overview of these theories, see Van der Perre 2014: 67–​108. 63 Van der Perre 2014: 67–​108. 64 Allen 1991: 74–​85. 65 Dodson 2009b: 31–​2. 66 Petrie 1894: pl. XV, N°94. 67 Gabolde strongly rejects this theory. According to him, Meritaten is the only person who fits this description. See Gabolde 1998: 174–​8; 2001: 28. 68 The parentage of Tutankhaten is still under discussion. For a (somewhat biased) overview of all known facts, see Huber 2016. 69 They are mentioned together on the lid of a box from the tomb of Tutankhamun (Carter N° 1K/​ Cairo JE61500a). 70 This date is based on a wine jar label, mentioning the 17th regnal year of an anonymous king. Since Akhenaten was the only king living in Amarna with such a long reign, this label has generally been accepted as belonging to his reign. For the label, see Pendlebury and Černý 1951: 152, 159. 71 Gardiner 1928: 10–​11. 72 Reeves 2015b.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Allen, J.P. 1991. “Akhenaten’s ‘Mystery’ Coregent and Successor.” Amarna Letters 1: 74–​85. Borchardt, L. 1905. “Der ägyptische Titel ‘Vater des Gottes’.” Berichte über die Verhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 57: 256–​70. Creasman, P.P. Johnson, W.R., McClain, J.B., and R.H. Wilkinson. 2014. “Foundation or Completion? The Status of Pharaoh-​Queen Tausret’s Temple of Millions of Years.” Near Eastern Archaeology 77, 4: 274–​83. Davies, N.  de G. 1905. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna. Part II:  The Tombs of Panehesy and Meryra II. Archaeological Survey of Egypt 14. London. Davies, N.  de G. 1906. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna. Part IV:  The Tombs of Penthu, Mahu, and others. Archaeological Survey of Egypt 16. London. Davies, N.  de G. 1908. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna. Part VI:  The Tombs of Parennefer, Tutu, and Ay. Archaeological Survey of Egypt 18. London. Davies, N. de G. 1923. “Akhenaten at Thebes.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 9, 3–​4: 132–​52. Davis, T.M. 1910. The Tomb of Queen Tîyi. London. Dodson, A. 2009a. Amarna Sunset:  Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-​Reformation. Cairo. Dodson, A. 2009b. “Amarna Sunset: The Late-​Amarna Succession Revisited.” In S. Ikram and A. Dodson (eds.), Beyond the Horizon: Studies in Egyptian Art, Archaeology and History in Honour of Barry J. Kemp. Cairo,  29–​43. Eaton-​Krauss, M. 2016. The Unknown Tutankhamun. London. Gabolde, M. 1998. D’Akhenaton à Toutânkhamon, vol. III. Collection de l’Institut d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Antiquité Université Lumière-​Lyon 2. Paris. Gabolde, M. 2001. “Das Ende der Amarna Zeit.” In A. Grimm (ed.), Das Geheimnis des goldenen Sarges: Echnaton und das Ende der Amarnazeit. Munich, 9–​41. Gardiner, A.H. 1928. “The Graffito from the Tomb of Père.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 14, 1–​2: 10–​11.

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The image of Nefertiti Harris, J.R. 1973a. “Neferneferuaten.” Göttinger Miszellen 4: 15–​17. Harris, J.R. 1973b. “Nefertiti Rediviva.” Acta Orientalia 35: 5–​13. Harris, J.R. 1974a. “Kiya.” Chronique d’Égypte 49: 25–​30. Harris, J.R. 1974b. “Neferneferuaten Regnans.” Acta Orientalia 36: 11–​21. Hawass, Z., Gad, Y.Z., Ismail, S., Khairat, R., Fathalla, D., Hasan, N., Ahmed, A., Elleithy, H., Ball, M., Gaballah, F., Wasef, S., Fateen, M., Amer, H., Gostner, P., Selim, A., Zink, A., and Pusch, C.M. 2010. “Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun’s Family.” Journal of the American Medical Association 303, 7: 638–​47. Hayes,W.C. 1959. The Scepter of Egypt: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Part 2: The Hyksos Period and the New Kingdom (1675–​1080 B.C.). Cambridge. Hoffmeier, J.K. and Van Dijk, J. 2010. “New Light on the Amarna Period from North Sinai.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 96: 191–​205. Huber, M.T. 2016. Who was the Father of Tutankhamun? Norderstedt. Jung, M. 2012. “100 Years of the Discovery of Nefertiti.” In F. Seyfried (ed.), In The Light of Amarna. 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Berlin, 421–​6. Kemp, B.J. 2012. The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People. London. Kemp, B. 2016. The Amarna Royal Tombs at Amarna [online]. www.amarnaproject.com/​documents/​pdf/​ Amarna-​Royal-​Tombs.pdf (accessed July 1, 2019). Laboury, D. 2011.“Amarna Art.” In K.M. Cooney and W.Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Los Angeles,  1–​18. Loeben, C.E. 1986. “Eine Bestattung der groβen königlichen Gemachlin Nofretete in Amarna? Die Totenfigur der Nofretete.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 42: 99–​107. Martin, G.T. 1974. The Rock Tombs of El-​’Amarna. Part VII: The Royal Tomb of El-​’Amarna. 1: The Objects. Archaeological Survey of Egypt 35. London. Martin, G.T. 1989. The Rock Tombs of El-​’Amarna. Part VII: The Royal Tomb of El-​’Amarna. 2: The Reliefs, Inscriptions, and Architecture. Archaeological Survey of Egypt 39. London. Matthes, O. 2012. “Ludwig Borchardt, James Simon and the colourful Nefertiti bust in the first year after her discovery.” In F. Seyfried (ed.), In The Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Berlin, 427–​37. Murnane, W.J. 1995. Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. SBL Writings from the Ancient World Series 5. Atlanta. Pendlebury, J.D.S. and Černý, J. 1951. The City of Akhenaten 3: The Central City and the Official Quarters: The Excavations at Tell El-​Amarna during the Seasons 1926–​1927 and 1931–​1936. The Egypt Exploration Society Memoirs 44. London. Petrie, W.M.F. 1894. Tell El Amarna. London. Ranke, H. 1935. Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Bd. 1: Verzeichnis der Namen. Glückstadt. Redford, D.B. 1967. History and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt:  Seven Studies. Near and Middle East Series 3. Toronto. Redford, D.B. 1984. Akhenaten.The Heretic King. Princeton. Reeves, N. 2005. Akhenaten. Egypt’s False Prophet. London. Reeves, N. 2015a. “The Burial of Nefertiti?” Amarna Royal Tombs Project. Valley of the Kings. Occasional Paper No. 1. Tucson. Reeves, N. 2015b. “Tutankhamun’s Mask Reconsidered.” In A. Oppenheim and O. Goelet (eds.), The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold. Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 19. New York, 511–​26. Ridley, R.T. 2018. “Where Archaeology Meets History:  The Enigma of Nefertiti.” In A. Batmaz, G. Bedianashvili, A. Michalewicz, and A. Robinson (eds.), Context and Connection: Essays on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of Antonio Sagona. Orientalia Lovaniensia Annalecta 268. Leuven, 945–​58. Roeder, G. 1969. Amarna-​ Reliefs aus Hermopolis:  Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Hermopolis-​ Expedition in Hermopolis 1929–​1939. Hildesheim. Samson, J. 1977. “Nefertiti’s Regality.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 63 : 88–​97. Schlögl, H.A. 2012. Nofretete. Die Wahrheit Über Die Schöne Königin. Munich. Schneider, H.A. 1977. Shabtis: An Introduction to the History of Ancient Egyptian Funerary Statuettes. Collections of the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden 2. Leiden.

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Athena Van der Perre Seyfried, F. 2012a. “The Workshop Complex of Thutmosis.” In F. Seyfried (ed.), In The Light of Amarna. 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Berlin, 170–​87. Seyfried, F. 2012b. “Nefertiti: What remains but beauty?” In F. Seyfried (ed.), In The Light of Amarna. 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Berlin, 189–​94. Tyldesley, J. 2005. Nefertiti:  Unlocking the Mystery Surrounding Egypt’s Most Famous and Beautiful Queen. London. Tyldesley, J. 2006. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt:  From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. Chronicles Series. London. Tyldesley, J. 2018. Nefertiti’s Face: The Creation of an Icon. Cambridge. Van der Perre, A. 2014. “The Year 16 Graffito of Akhenaten in Dayr Abū Ḥinnis: A Contribution to the Study of the Later Years of Nefertiti.” Journal of Egyptian History 7: 67–​108. Van Dijk, J. 1997. “The Noble Lady of Mitanni and Other Royal Favourites of the Eighteenth Dynasty.” In J. van Dijk (Ed.), Essays on Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde. Groningen, 33–​46. Voss, S. 2012. “The 1925 Demand for the Return of the Nefertiti Bust, a German Perspective.” In F. Seyfried (ed.), In The Light of Amarna. 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Berlin, 460–​68. Wilson, J.A. 1973. “Akh-​en-​Aton and Nefert-​iti.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 32, 1/​2: 235–​41. Woolley, C.L. 1922. “Excavations at Tell el-​Amarna.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 8, 1/​2: 48–​82.

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5 THE GOD’S WIFE OF AMUN Origins and rise to power Mariam F. Ayad

The earliest occurrence of the title “God’s Wife” dates to the Middle Kingdom, when a “God’s Wife of Min” is attested near Akhmim.1 This rather obscure instance of the title seems to have been associated with a non-​royal woman, and may have spurred the later formulation of the title “God’s Wife of Amun,” which occurs in this fuller form only at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty when King Ahmose bestows it on his Chief Royal Wife, Ahmose-​Nefertari.2 Ahmose had just succeeded in expelling the Hyksos from Egypt and embarked on a series of measures meant to consolidate his power over a newly-​reunited Egypt. Only trusted members of the royal family could now be given positions of importance: a crown prince was put in charge of the army; another royal son was put in charge of Nubia.3 It is in this context that we must see his appointment of the Chief Royal Wife as a God’s Wife of Amun.4 He also established an irrevocable endowment for the God’s Wife that no future king would be able to challenge.5 Associated with this estate was an extensive staff of scribes and administrators.6 Throughout the early 18th Dynasty, powerful women continued to hold the title of God’s Wife of Amun.7 Hatshepsut may even have used her position as God’s Wife of Amun to shore up support for her claim to the Egyptian throne.8 That this title remained Hatshepsut’s favorite even as a queen regnant is clear from her frequent use of it as her sole title before her cartouche.9 In what may be viewed as a backlash to her reign and her power as a God’s Wife and a queen regnant, the office falls into oblivion after the reign of Hatshepsut.10 At the beginning of the 19th Dynasty, when once more the kings of the new dynasty needed to consolidate their power, the title was bestowed on the Chief Royal Wives of the first two kings of the 19th Dynasty: Sat-​re, wife of Ramses I, and Tuy, wife of Seti I.11 Tausert, wife of Siptah, and later queen regnant in her own right, also held the title of God’s Wife of Amun.12 Later in the New Kingdom, a daughter of Ramses VI, Isis, is given the title dwꜢn nṯr, or “Divine Adorer.”13 While this title was closely associated with the title of God’s Wife, the two titles were not interchangeable, even though occasionally the same royal woman (e.g. Ahmose-​ Nefertari) could claim both titles.14 With the decline of royal authority at the end of the New Kingdom, the High Priests of Amun at Karnak (Thebes) claimed ever increasing powers. For example, the High Priest of Amun, Herihor, was also in charge of the military as “overseer of the army” (ἰmy-​r mšʿ). At the temple of Khonsu at Karnak, in complete disregard of royal authority, Herihor claims the title

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of king of Upper and Lower Egypt (nsw bity), encloses his name and titles in the royal double cartouche, and uses his own “renaissance” (wḥm mswt) dating system to date newly-​constructed monuments.15 Rulers of Dynasties 21 through 24 were of Libyan origin, as probably also were the High Priests of Amun (HPA) of that period.16 The increasing fragmentation characteristic of this era may have been precipitated by the feudal nature of Egypt’s Libyan overlords.17 Rival dynasts would set up courts in various Delta towns, each claiming to be the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, while in reality probably controlling only a few miles beyond their residence. There was some fluidity in the dynamics governing the relationships between the HPA and the various Delta dynasts. While Herihor’s successors as High Priests of Amun continued to challenge the king’s authority, a series of marriage alliances were forged between the HPA at Thebes on the one hand and the Libyan dynasts residing in the Delta on the other. Such alliances were often used to shore up the royal claims of one over the other. A HPA, such as Psusennes of Dynasty 21, could become king and move to the Delta, while a Delta/​Libyan prince could be appointed as HPA at Karnak.18 Occasionally these tenuous alliances fell apart or were not enough to ward off the prospect of civil war, as recounted, for example, in the Chronicle of Prince Osorkon.19 Possibly because of their role in their fathers’ marriage alliances, several women who rose to prominence at this time were the wives of the High Priests of Amun, and also royal princesses.20 Koromama and Maatkare in particular seem to have been quite influential, as both women held the title “Divine Adorer.”21 It is within this turbulent milieu that the office of the God’s Wife of Amun was restored and bestowed upon Shepenwepet I, daughter of Osorkon III of the 23rd Dynasty. The exact date and circumstances surrounding her installation are not quite clear. But it seems that her installation as God’s Wife coincided with the elevation of her brother,Takeloth—​then the High Priest of Amun at Karnak—​to the position of co-​regent.22 At her appointment, Shepenwepet I acquired the throne/​official name, Khenemetamun, and enclosed her names in the royal double cartouche.23 Her choice of official name may have been inspired by Hatshepsut’s epithet, Khenemetibamun, which she enclosed in the royal cartouche, alongside her given name.24 The royal practice of adapting a forebear’s name using a similar, but not identical variant, to forge a connection with a predecessor has been well-​documented for Egyptian kings.25 Shepenwepet’s rise to prominence is chronicled in iconographic scenes decorating the walls of a small chapel in East Karnak.26 The chapel’s decoration features kings Osorkon III and Takeloth III of the late Libyan 23rd Dynasty, often depicted in symmetrically opposed scenes, as they are shown entering the chapel and officiating before various gods.27 But whereas each of the two co-​regents is depicted 12 times in the chapel’s decorative scheme, Shepenwepet I is shown 15 separate times, prompting Redford to suggest that the chapel was built to commemorate her installation as a God’s Wife of Amun.28 In fact, Shepenwepet I is depicted five times on the chapel’s original façade. There, she is shown in symmetrically opposed scenes that frame the doorway into the chapel, being suckled by a goddess and crowned by Amun.29 Being suckled by a goddess was a privilege not previously granted a woman. Indeed, only the king could be depicted in this manner. The milk of a goddess is thought to have imbued the king with his divinity.30 Scenes showing the king being suckled by a goddess are typically found on occasions where he needed to assert his divinity and/​or his legitimacy: at his coronation and while celebrating the exclusively royal sed-​festival. 31 Often referred to as a “royal jubilee,” the sed-​festival may also be understood as a confirmation of the king’s priestly role as the sole mediator between the human and divine realms.32 On the façade, Shepenwepet I plays the sistrum before Egypt’s three national deities as her father, Osorkon III, depicted behind her, consecrates offerings.33 An Egyptian approaching the chapel would have been struck by the frequency and 48

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the manner in which Shepenwepet is represented, and would have understood these scenes as affirming her legitimacy. In c.728 BCE, the Nubians led by Piye managed to advance to Thebes. He may have arranged to have his sister Amenirdis I appointed as God’s Wife of Amun then.34 Amenirdis I seems to have been able to forge alliances with the Theban elite so that, when Piye came to Thebes a few years later, he met with no resistance.35 Amenirdis and/​or her advisors must have immediately recognized the legitimating value of the scenes depicting Shepenwepet I described above (see p. 48). Using bigger, better-​hewn blocks of stone, the Nubians added a third room of slightly bigger dimensions to the chapel.36 The original façade of the Libyan chapel was incorporated, unaltered, into the Nubian addition, as its southern wall. Shepenwepet I’s scenes were not appropriated. Likewise, her name was not erased nor replaced by Amenirdis. Instead, new scenes depicting Shepenwepet I were commissioned and integrated into the decorative scheme of the Nubian addition. On the eastern wall, Shepenwepet I  is depicted on the upper register offering Maat37to Amun and receiving a multi-​layered, beaded necklace used in temple ritual known as the menat-​necklace from Isis,38 while, on the lower register of the same wall, Amenirdis I is shown receiving life from Amun and sed-​festival symbols from Mut, his divine consort.39 Scenes depicted on this wall had until then been uniquely the prerogative of the king. Typically, a king would receive life in the same scene where he offers Maat to the gods.40 But here, the quid pro quo transaction is divided between the two God’s Wives, so that one offers and the other receives.41 On the façade of the Nubian addition to the chapel, Shepenwepet I and Amenirdis I appear offering to the gods in eight vignettes framing the doorway to the chapel.42 In these symmetrically opposed complementary scenes, Amenirdis is consistently oriented toward the right, while Shepenwepet I  faces left. Amenirdis’ rightward orientation in these scenes asserts her higher status as a member of the new ruling dynasty.43 Likewise, Amenirdis’ chosen official name, Khanefererumut, further affirms her links to the new ruling family. The verb “ḫʿἰ,” constituting the first element of her name, means to “appear in glory,” and was often used in conjunction with the rising sun or the glorious appearance of the king before his subjects.44 The verb “ḫʿἰ” was an element favored by other members of the Nubian dynasty, as seen particularly in the royal names acquired by kings Piye, Shebitko, and Taharqa at their enthronement.45 Thus, while Amenirdis built on the legitimacy already gained by Shepenwepet I in the inner decoration of chapel, on the Nubian façade, she—​very subtly—​ asserted her dominance over her predecessor.46 Amenirdis also claims sole credit for the construction of this chapel, whose name, Osiris-​ ḥḳꜢ-​ḏt (or “Osiris, Ruler of Eternity”) derives from three dedicatory inscriptions in which Amenirdis declares that she “built this monument for her father Osiris, Ruler of Eternity.”47 Notably, Amenirdis was the first woman since Ahmes-​Nefertari to combine the titles of “God’s Wife,” “Divine Worshipper,” and “God’s Hand.” A  small statue of queen Ahmes-​Nefertari discovered while clearing the floor of the Nubian addition to the chapel seems to point to the source of inspiration for Amenirdis’ titles.48 Amenirdis I  was succeeded in office by her niece, Shepenwepet II, daughter of Piye. Shepenwepet II quickly implemented several measures to establish her legitimacy. At Medinet Habu, she demolished an earlier mud-​brick funerary chapel constructed for Amenirdis and erected in its place a “monument for eternity” made of stone.49 There, she is repeatedly shown performing funerary rites for Amenirdis I. The establishment of the funerary cult for her predecessor legitimated her claim to office just as it had, centuries earlier, when King Ay, at the end of the 18th Dynasty, performed the Opening of the Mouth Ritual for King Tut-​ankh-​Amun to legitimate his claim to the Egyptian throne.50 49

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Possibly to further shore up her position, Shepenwepet II included representations of Amenirdis I on several of her own monuments. On a lintel in the chapel of Osiris, Lord of Life (“nb ʿnḫ”), the central Osirian cartouche giving this chapel its name is flanked by symmetrically opposed scenes showing king Taharqa and the God’s Wife offering round-​shaped containers known as nou-​jars, and being embraced by various gods.51 But whereas Taharqa is shown twice on the left side, offering to Osiris and Isis and being embraced by Horus, on the right side Shepenwepet II offers nou-​jars to Ptah and Hathor, but it is Amenirdis I who is embraced by the goddess Hathor. In this scene, Amenirdis was already deceased as indicated by the epithet “mꜢʿ ḫrw” (or “justified”) inscribed after her cartouche. Similarly, on the right jamb, a goddess embraces Shepenwepet II, who is identified by her titles and name. But instead of including her double cartouche, the second cartouche is preceded by the words “mwt.s ḏrt nṯr,” or “her mother, the god’s hand” and encircles the name of Amenirdis, also deceased (“mꜢʿ ḫrw”).52 Likewise, Amenirdis, deceased (“mꜢʽ ḫrw”), is included in the decorative scheme of the façade of the chapel of Osiris-​Wennofer-​who-​is-​in-​the-​midst-​of-​the-​Persea-​tree (“ḥry-​ἰb pꜢ išd”). On the doorjambs of that chapel, both Amenirdis I and Shepenwepet II are represented in symmetrically opposed scenes clingingly embracing the god Amun-​Re.53 Here also, the phrase “her mother” precedes Amenirdis’ cartouche. In what could be viewed as an act of deference, Shepenwepet II cedes the rightward orientation to her predecessor, electing to be depicted facing left. But in choosing that orientation, Shepenwepet II mimicked both the posture and orientation of the goddess Mut who is similarly represented on the southern half of the east wall of the Karnak hypostyle hall.54 There, the scene depicts the conjugal union of Amun and Mut in the heavenly realm, while king Seti I offers incense before the divine couple’s icon (see Figure 5.1).55 Shepenwepet II also commissioned at least two statues showing her as a female sphinx.While a few female sphinxes are known from the Old Kingdom onwards, these strictly belonged to royal wives. However, Shepenwepet II’s sphinxes stand out in terms of their size and may have been commissioned to commemorate her participation in the New Year’s renewal rites and to “regenerate her own—​sacral—​rulership parallel to the kingship of Taharqa.”56 Indeed, a God’s Wife, probably Shepenwepet II,57 appears on par with king Taharqa in scenes inscribed on the walls of his edifice by the Sacred Lake at Karnak. On a lintel in subterranean room E in that structure, a God’s Wife wearing a tight sheath dress draws an arrow through a double-​arched bow as she aims at the uppermost of four round-​shaped targets. On the other side of the central depiction of the cenotaph of Osiris, king Taharqa strides to the right as he uses a bat to strike four balls that are shown in the exact moment they are released from his hand as he aims at four targets.58 Captions under each of the targets indicate that they represent the four cardinal points.The outward orientation of the figures of both the king and the God’s Wife reinforces the protective nature of their gestures as they partner in warding off the forces of evil threatening the cenotaph of Osiris. The active stance taken by the God’s Wife is unique. Also unparalleled are the rites of the elevation of the ṯst-​column, depicted on an adjacent wall in the same room. While in this instance, the God’s Wife partners with four different priests, the four deities represented on each of the four ṯst-​columns may be understood as local manifestations of the god Amun, each associated with a geographic locality.59 Goyon has suggested that these scenes represented rites asserting divine—​and by extension royal—​dominion over the extremities of the earth.60

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Figure 5.1  Mut embracing Amun. Karnak Hypostyle Hall, east wall, south half Source: Photograph by Mariam F. Ayad

Similar rites aiming at protection of the nation, and featuring a similarly attired God’s Wife, appear on the walls of the newly-​restored Chapelle Rouge erected by Hatshepsut at Karnak. There, on the north wall of the sanctuary, in a voodoo-​like ritual, the God’s Wife partners with a high-​ranking priest (whose title was “God’s Father”) in the act of burning fans bearing the images of Egypt’s enemies.61 Here, too, the God’s Wife is unnamed, possibly because naming a specific woman would have jeopardized the efficacy of her acts of ritual protection. In the rites of elevating the ṯst-​columns, she is labeled as a “God’s Wife of This God,” possibly in a direct allusion to the protective powers of a (divine?) wife.62 In the courtyard of the funerary chapel of Amenirdis I at Medinet Habu, Shepenwepet II performs the ritual of “Driving the Four Calves” (“ḥwt bḥsw”) for the benefit of the divine triad: Osiris, Horus, and deified Amenirdis (who appears here in Isis’ stead) (see Figures 5.2a and b).63 The rite, which is typically performed for the benefit of a temple’s resident deity, has agrarian and Osirian connotations.64 As such, it was an exclusively royal ritual. The only female ruler to perform it, Hatshepsut, is shown in male costume and regalia when depicted enacting the ritual.65 But not once does Shepenwepet II disguise her femininity.

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Figure 5.2a  Shepenwepet II performing the ritual Driving the four Calves (hout behesou) for Osiris, Horus, and deified Amenirdis I. Courtyard, Funerary Chapel of Amenirdis I, Medinet Habu Source: Photograph by Mariam F. Ayad

Figure 5.2b  Shepenwepet II offering to Ra-​ Horakhty, Isis, and deified Amenirdis I. Courtyard, Funerary Chapel of Amenirdis I, Medinet Habu Source: Photograph by Mariam F. Ayad

Finally, clinching her priestly role, Shepenwepet II is unprecedentedly depicted celebrating the sed-​festival. Scenes of her sed-​festival decorated a chapel that once stood in North Karnak.66 While Amenirdis received sed-​festival symbols from Mut in the chapel of Osiris, Ruler of Eternity, as discussed above (see p. 49), Shepenwepet II was the first women shown celebrating it, as a king would, enthroned (on a special seat associated only with sed-​ festival celebrations known as the sepa-​seat), while masked men representing the souls Pe and Nekhen kneel before her pounding their chests in celebration.67 Whether considered a “royal jubilee” or a confirmation of the king’s priestly role, the sed-​festival was the royal rite par excellence. No one but the king had previously been shown celebrating it. Possibly because of the sheer effrontery of Shepenwepet II’s celebratory scenes, the chapel was dismantled in antiquity, its blocks used as fill blocks in the ramp leading into the temple of Monthu in North Karnak.68 In Thebes, both Amenirdis I  and Shepenwepet II are featured more prominently than a Nubian King’s Wife.69 They are shown offering Maat to the gods, who embrace them, crown them, and give them life in return.70 While it may be tempting to see a Nubian connection to the prominent priestly role played by both women, a recent study demonstrated the Egyptian nature of the way in which they are represented on these Theban chapels.71 Five blocks recovered from the temple of Mut at Karnak, and currently in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 31886), show a God’s Wife arriving by boat at a Theban quay.72 There, she is greeted by the incumbent God’s Wife of Amun, Shepenwepet, and other Theban dignitaries, including the mayor of Thebes, Mentuemhat.73 While it is possible that this scene represents the arrival of Amenirdis at Thebes,74 the blocks seem to give visual expression to events described in the “Nitocris Adoption Stele.” That granite stele commemorates the Saite King Psametik’s decision to appoint his daughter, Nitocris, as God’s Wife of Amun at Thebes.75 Adopting a royal perspective, the stele details all aspects of that appointment, from the moment the king calls in his courtiers for advice, to the dates of Nitocris’ departure from court and arrival at Thebes, to the extensive list of provisions

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given Nitocris, not only by her father, but also by temples in Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt.76 It also lists the daily and monthly gifts made by Theban dignitaries and members of their families, and is thus useful in understanding wealth distribution and power structures at the onset of the Saite dominion.77 It is on this stele that we see, for the first time, a codification of the idea that succession to office occurred through adoption. Psametik declares (line 4): “I will give her to her to be her eldest daughter, just as she was made over to the sister of her father.”78 While the probably intentionally ambiguous use of pronouns has led to some debate regarding the identity of the adoptive mother (whether it was Shepenwepet II or her heiress apparent, Amenirdis II),79 it is instructive to consider the nature and use of adoption in ancient Egyptian legal documents. In ancient Egypt, adoption was often used as a means of transferring property to someone other than the rightful heir.80 Viewed as a “transfer of title” deed, the Nitocris Adoption Stele not only commemorated the installation of a new God’s Wife, but also served as a legal document sealing the transfer of the entirety of the estate of the God’s Wife of Amun to the new incumbent.81 Once in office, Nitocris continues the tradition of dedicating Osirian chapels at Karnak.82 At Medinet Habu, she modified the original plan of Shepenwepet II’s funerary chapel to accommodate a cella for herself and another for her mother on either side of Shepenwepet’s central cella.83 Recently, inscribed blocks recovered from Naga Malgata, the North Karnak area to the west of the enclosure of the god Monthu, have been identified as belonging to the residence of the God’s Wife of Amun.84 Biographical inscriptions preserved on a statue of the Chief Steward of Nitocris, Ibi (Cairo JE 36158), detail the specifications of a residence that Ibi constructed for his mistress.85 The description mentioned there (stone jambs; columned room) seems to match the archaeological remains found at Naga Malgata, making the identification of those archaeological remains found there with the residence of the God’s Wife plausible.86 In due course, Nitocris adopted a successor, Ankhnesneferibre, daughter of Psametik II. The accession to office is recorded in the Ankhnesneferibre Adoption Stele.87 Unlike the Nitocris Adoption Stele, which narrates the events of her installation from a royal perspective, this stele has a distinctly Theban outlook.88 There, for the first time, we read about initiation rites associated with the installation of a God’s Wife into office. Although not specified in great detail, these rites seem to include the tying of a special ribbon.89 Decorated blocks that once stood in the residence of the God’s Wives of Amun in North Karnak depict the induction rites of the God’s Wife, albeit those performed for Nitocris.90 There, she is shown being led by the god Monthu to Amun, kneeling to Amun as he crowns her, and standing before Amun who embraces her.91 To further establish her legitimacy, the text of the stele calls Ankhnesneferibre Nitocris’ daughter and narrates how “her daughter, the first prophet Ankhnesneferibre, did for her everything which is done for every beneficent king.” 92 Thus, just as Shepenwepet II had provided for the funerary cult of her predecessor, so also did Ankhnesneferibre. That on her adoption stele, Ankhnesneferibre is officially identified as the “first prophet of Amun,” or “high priestess of Amun” (“ḥm nṯr tpy”)—​a title that she holds even as “heiress apparent” to the God’s Wife—​may be seen as the culmination of a long process toward the priesthood that started with Shepenwepet I and gained momentum under the Nubian God’s Wives, particularly under Shepenwepet II.93 On her adoption stele, Ankhnesneferibre assumes her official name, Heqatneferoumut. Whereas her two immediate predecessors had chosen similar

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names, which can both be translated as “Mistress of Beauty is Mut,” the inclusion of the element ḥḳꜢ is intriguing.94 Written using the shepherd’s crook (Gardiner sign list # S38),95 the Egyptian word ḥḳꜢ, or “ruler,” visually stresses the king’s role as the ultimate shepherd of his people. Ankhnesneferibre’s deliberate use of that element is evident on her siltstone sarcophagus (British Museum EA32). On the lid of her sarcophagus, Ankhnesneferibre is depicted clutching the royal insignia of a crook and a flair across her chest.96 Yet her own biographical texts, preserved on one of her statues (Cairo CG 42205) emphasize the feminine themes of personal charm, musical ability, and physical beauty.97 Ankhnesneferibre’s self-​presentation on that statue is in marked contrast with both her chosen throne name and the manner in which she is represented on her sarcophagus. Likewise, this text contrasts sharply with the assertiveness found in Amenirdis’ biographical texts inscribed on two of her statues (Cairo CG 565 and 42198).98 There, Amenirdis emphasizes her moral character and ability to help her townsfolk. Amenirdis’ use of phrases typically found in the ideal (male) official biography may be related to the political instability of the early Nubian period, while Ankhnesneferibre’s docile self-​presentation can be linked to the political stability achieved after several decades of Saite rule. Women’s ability to express—​and exercise—​agency thus seems to have been inversely proportional to political stability.99 Nonetheless, Ankhnesneferibre constructed or enlarged several Osirian chapels at Karnak,100 and built a funerary chapel for herself in the vicinity of the funerary temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu.101 Indeed, the piety of all five women is evident in their active construction of numerous Osirian chapels at Karnak and enactment of recitation-​based rituals.102 The Saite God’s Wives’ concern for legitimacy is also evident in their inclusion of their (Nubian) predecessors in the decorative programs of the buildings they constructed. This apparent continuity suggests that the God’s Wives of Amun’s residence in Naga Malgata functioned as a “dynastic palace” that was used by “successive God’s Wives” and their staff.103 Lastly, all God’s Wives of Amun of Dynasties 23–​26 appear without a spouse in the decorative schemes preserved on their monuments. While this may be construed as an indicator of their unmarried state, it should be noted that there were certain restrictions on the depictions of husbands on funerary monuments belonging to their wives.104 The issue of the celibacy of God’s Wives of Amun has been the subject of some debate, but their long tenures in office do imply that they were spared the dangers of childbearing and childbirth.105 Politically as well, it was expedient that these five women remain single so as not to use their enormous religious, political, and economic powers to generate dynastic lines that would rival the king.106

Conclusion It does seem that since its full formulation at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the office of God’s Wife of Amun was politically manipulated to shore up the king’s power and consolidate his authority. During the turbulent years of the Third Intermediate Period, the political potential of the office was fully exploited when rival dynasts used it, and the women who held it, to achieve a smooth transition of power in the Theban region. Shortly after the Persian conquest of Egypt in the spring of 525 BCE, the office of the God’s Wife of Amun disappeared. The Persians’ military superiority ensured that they did not need to break their own social norms by installing a royal daughter in such a position of supreme political, economic, and religious power. Once the (political) need for the office disappeared, so did the office itself.107 54

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Notes 1 Gitton 1984: 5. 2 Gitton 1975; Gitton 1984: 39–​42. 3 O’Connor 1983: 207–​9. 4 Ayad 2001: 9. 5 Harari 1959: 139–​201; Gitton 1984: 28–​31; contra, Logan 2000: 63–​64; Bryan 2005: 4. 6 Graefe 1981. 7 Sander-​Hansen 1940: 6–​7, 13; Gitton 1984: 44–​93; Robins 1983: 65–​78. 8 Robins 1983: 73–​4. 9 Robins 1983: 73. See also Roehrig 2005: 216–​7, for Hatshepsut’s kohl jar (MMA 26.7.1437) now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Taking the shape of an oval, a cartouche enclosed two of the king’s names: his given name and his throne name. A queen’s names could also sometimes be enclosed in the royal cartouche. 10 Robins 1983: 76–​7. 11 Sander-​Hansen 1940: 7, 13–​14; Gosselin 2007: 26–​97. 12 Sander-​Hansen 1940: 7, 13–​14; Gosselin 2007: 120–​8. 13 Bács 1995: 7–​11;Traunecker 2010b: 23–​32; Gosselin 2007: 193–​208. For Isis’ pyramidion in the British Museum (no. 1742), see Bierbrier 1982: 17 and pls. 30–​1. 14 Ayad 2009a: 3–​4. 15 PM II: 229–​34; Epigraphic Survey 1979; Kitchen 1995: 3–​6, 248–​54. 16 Becker 2016: 41. For the Libyan ancestry of Herihor, see Ritner 2009a: 83–​7. 17 Ritner 2009b: 327–​40. 18 Kitchen 1995: 28–​30,  262–​3. 19 Caminos 1958; Ritner 2009a: 348–​77; Kitchen 1995: 329–​33. See also Kitchen 1995: 347 for the “War of the High Priest.” 20 Becker 2016; Kitchen 1995: 52–​68. 21 Lefèvre 2010: 33–​42; Gosselin 2007: 214–​38; Kitchen 1995: 58–​61. 22 Ayad 2009a: 16; Kitchen 1995: 201, 356. 23 No royal prince or princess had previously acquired the privilege of a cartouche. 24 Ayad 2009a: 29–​31. 25 Leprohon 1996: 171; Kitchen 1987: 131–​41. 26 PM II, 204–​6; Legrain 1900: 125–​36, 146–​9. 27 Redford 1973: 20–​1. 28 Redford 1973: 21. 29 PM II: 205 (11); Schwaller de Lubicz 1999: pl. 237; Ayad 2009a: 124–​7 and fig. 3.4; Ayad 2009b: 34–​6. 30 See bibliography in Ayad 2009a: 127 and Ayad 2009b: 36. 31 Leclant 1965: 91–​3 and pl. LVIII; Ayad 2009a: 110–​15 and fig. 2.28. 32 Bleeker 1967: 113–​23. 33 PM II: 205 (9); Redford 1973: 21 and pls. XX-​XXI; Ayad 2009a: 124; Ayad 2009b: 32–​4 and fig. 3. 34 Ayad 2003: 33; Ayad 2009a: 16; Kitchen 1995: 151. 35 Kitchen 1995: 150, 363–​5, 370. 36 Redford 1973: 19; Ayad 2009a: 18. 37 In Egyptian mythology, Maat, represented as a seated woman with a feather on her head, was the personification of “Order,” “Harmony,” and “Truth.” Often, it is said that Maat is the food that the gods craved. It was the king’s sole duty to maintain Maat, both by doing good, but also by driving away the forces of evil. Iconographically, the king’s fulfilment of his duty is expressed in scenes showing the king presenting a statuette of Maat to the gods. 38 PM II: 205 (6); Schwaller de Lubicz 1999: pl. 234; Ayad 2009b: 41–​2 and fig. 9. 39 Ayad 2009a: 114–​5. 40 Teeter 1997: 3. 41 Ayad 2009b: 46–​9. 42 PM II: 205 (4); Leclant 1965: pl. XXIV; Ayad 2009b: 38–​9 and figs. 6–​7. 43 Ayad 2009b: 46–​7 and fig. 12; Robins 1994: 33–​40. 44 Schunk 1985. 45 Von Beckerath 1984: 269–​71; Ayad 2009a: 29, 31–​2. 46 Ayad 2009b: 46–​7.

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Mariam F. Ayad 47 Ayad 2009b: 40; Legrain 1900: 126–​7. 48 Legrain 1900: 135; Ayad 2003: 20. 49 PM II: 476–​8; Hölscher: 20–​3, fig. 24, pl. 2; Ayad 2003: 55. 50 Ayad 2009a: 133–​4.This is the only known instance where a king performs this ritual for a predecessor. 51 PM II: 194 (2); Leclant 1965: fig. 3 on p. 28; Ayad 2009a: 75–​8; Legrain 1902: 208–​14. 52 Leclant 1965: 28 (fig. 3); Ayad 2009a: 133–​4. 53 PM II: 202 (1); Leclant 1965, pls. XVIII-​XIX; Schwaller de Lubicz 1999: pl. 239; Ayad 2009a: 134–​7; Coulon, Hallmann, and Payraudeau 2018: 286 (Fig. 8). 54 Nelson 1981: pls. 107, 260; Ayad 2009a: 135–​6. 55 Handoussa 2003: 107–​10; Ayad 2009a: 137 and figs. 3.11 and 3.12 on p. 138. 56 Aufderhaar 2016: 137, 145. 57 For the rationale for that identification, see Ayad 2007: 6–​7. 58 Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979: pl. 25; Ayad 2009a: 87–​9. 59 Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979: 65–​9 and pl. 26; Ayad 2007: 4–​6. 60 Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979: 63–​4, 69, and 83–​4. 61 Burgos and Larché 2006: 213 (bloc 37); Ritner 1993: 118; Ayad 2009a: 90–​3. 62 Ayad 2007: 7–​8; Ayad 2009a: 96–​9. 63 Ayad 2009a: 103–​6. 64 Ayad 2009a: 106–​7. See also Egberts 1995: 335–​74. The ritual itself is what’s special, as is the number 4. Although the color and arrangement of the calves have been studied extensively by Egberts, no further explanation of their existence has been suggested. 65 Ayad 2009a: 107. See for example, Naville 1908: 7 and pl. CLXI. 66 For blocks constituting this chapel, see Barguet et al. 1954: 109–​27, figs. 117–​25, and pls. XCVI-​CXII, particularly pp. 121–​3 and pl. CIV. 67 Leclant 1965: 91–​3 and pl. LVIII; Ayad 2009a: 110–​15 and fig. 2.28. 68 The building was dismantled.The ramp itself dates to the Ptolemaic period, several hundred years later. The Ptolemies could have used the already dismantled and scattered blocks for their purposes. 69 Lohwasser 2001: 61–​76. 70 Ayad 2009a: 61–​9,  82–​6. 71 Lohwasser 2016: 132. 72 PM II: 257–​8 (9). 73 Daressy 1919: 31–​2; Foucart 1924: 118–​20 and pl. 9B; Leclant 1965: 114–​5; Kitchen 1995: 236–​9, 403–​4; Broekman 2009: 101; Leahy 2011: 210–​11; Perdu 2011: 225–​40. 74 Broekman 2009: 101; Perdu 2011: 238–​9. 75 Caminos 1964: 71–​101; Kitchen 1995: 403–​4. 76 Caminos 1964: 75–​6 and pls. IX-​X (lines 17–​30); Bryan 2005: 10; Charron 2010. 77 Blöbaum 2016: 198. 78 Caminos 1964: 74 and pl.VIII (line 4). 79 Caminos 1964: 97–​8. 80 Gardiner 1940: 23–​9; Allam 1990: 189–​91. 81 Bryan 2005: 11–​12; Ayad 2009a: 139–​40. 82 PM II: 192–​3; Christophe 1951: 29–​48, 113–​28 and pls. xlv-​xlvi; Coulon and Laisney 2015: 81–​171; Coulon, Hallmann, and Payraudeau 2018: 278–​80. 83 PM II: 479–​80; Hölscher 1954, 23–​8 and figs 28–​9; Christophe 1951: 129–​31. 84 Coulon and Laisney 2015: 81–​171; Coulon 2014a: 565–​85. 85 Graefe 1994; Ritner 2009a: 591–​2. 86 Coulon 2014a: 566. 87 Legrain 1905: 81–​2; Maspero 1905: 84–​93; Leahy 1996: 145–​65. 88 Leahy 1996: 154–​5. 89 Leahy 1996: 148, lines 11–​12 of her stele shown as fig. 1 on p. 146. 90 Christophe 1951: pl. xlv (37); Coulon 2014a: 566; Charron 2010: 43–​52. 91 Coulon and Laisney 2015, 136 and figs. 59–​62 on pp. 147–​9. 92 Leahy 1996: 148, lines 8–​9 on fig. 1 on p. 146. 93 Leahy 1996: lines 5 and 10–​9 on fig. 1 on pp. 146, 148, 158; Ayad 2009a: 116–​24. 94 Leahy 1996: 146, 149; Ayad 2009a: 29. 95 Gardiner 1957: 508. 96 Wagner 2016.

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The God’s Wife of Amun 97 Jansen-​Winkeln 2004: 364, 367; Ayad 2019: 236. 98 Legrain 1914: 6–​8 and pl.VI; Jansen-​Winkeln 2004: 365–​6; Ayad 2019: 234. 99 Ayad 2019: 236–​8. 100 PM II: 192–​4; Coulon and Defernez 2004, 135–​90; Traunecker 2010a, 155–​94; Coulon and Laisney 2015: 81–​171; Coulon, Hallmann, and Payraudeau 2018: 281–​2. 101 Hölscher 1954: 28–​9. 102 Traunecker 2010c: 79. 103 Coulon 2014a: 582. 104 Roth 1999: 37–​53. 105 Bibliography and arguments summarized in Ayad 2009a: 142–​52. 106 Ayad 2001: 9. 107 Ayad 2001.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). PM II Porter, B. and Moss, R.L.B. 1972. Topographic Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, vol. III: Egyptian Temples. Oxford.

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The God’s Wife of Amun Leclant, J. 1965. Recherches sur les monuments thébains de la XXVe dynastie dite éthiopienne. Cairo. Lefèvre, D. 2010. “Karomama et les divines adoratrices de la troisième période intermédiaire.” Égypte Afrique & Orient 56: 33–​42. Legrain, G. 1900. “Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak:  Le temple d’ Osiris-​ Hiq-​ Djeto .” Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes 22: 125–​36,  146–​9. Legrain, G. 1902. “Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak III: La chapelle d’ Osiris-​Maître de la Vie .” Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes 24: 208–​14. Legrain, G. 1905. “Renseignements sur les dernières découvertes faites à Karnak III.” Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes 27: 61–​82. Legrain, G. 1914. Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers, III. Cairo. Leprohon, R.J. 1996. “The Propagandistic Use of the Royal Titulary in the Twelfth Dynasty.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 33: 165–​71. Logan,T. 2000. “The Jmyt-​pr Document: Form, Function, and Significance.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 37: 49–​73. Lohwasser, A. 2001. “Queenship in Kush:  Status, Role, and Ideology of Royal Women.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 38: 61–​76. Lohwasser, A. 2016. “‘Nubianness’ and the God’s Wives of the 25th Dynasty:  Office Holders, the Institution, Reception, and Reaction.” In M. Becker, A.I. Blöbaum, and A. Lohwasser (eds.), “Prayer and Power”: Proceedings of the Conference on the God’s Wives of Amun in Egypt during the First Millennium BC. Münster, 121–​37. Maspero, G. 1905. “Deux monuments de la princesse Ankhnesnofiribrî.” Annales du Service des antiquités de l’égypte 5, 84–​93. Naville, E. 1908. The Temple of Deir el Bahari,VI: Lower Terrace. London. Nelson, H.H. 1981.The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, I.1: The Wall Reliefs. Chicago. O’Connor, D. 1983. “The New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 1552–​664 BC.” In B.G. Trigger et al. (eds.), Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge. Parker, R.A., Leclant, J., and Goyon, J.C. 1979. The Edifice of Taharqa by the Sacred Lake of Karnak. Providence. Perdu, O. 2010. “La chapelle ‘osirienne’ J de Karnak: sa moitié occidentale et la situation à Thèbes à la fin du règne d’Osorkon II.” In L. Coulon (ed.), Le culte d’Osiris au Ier millénaire a.v. J.C. Cairo, 101–​122. Perdu, O. 2011. “Les «blocs de Piânkhi » après un siècle de discussions.” In: D. Devauchelle (ed.), La XXVIe dynastie continuités et ruptures. Paris, 225–​240. Porter, B. and Moss, R. 1972. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, II: Theban Temples. Oxford. Redford, D.B. 1973. “An Interim Report on the Second Season of Work at the Temple of Osiris, Ruler of Eternity, Karnak.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 59: 16–​30. Ritner, R K. 1993. The Mechanics of Magic in Ancient Egypt. SAOC 54. Chicago. Ritner, R.K. 2009a. The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Atlanta. Ritner, R.K. 2009b. “Fragmentation and Re-​integration in the Third Intermediate Period.” In G.P.F. Broekman, R. J. Demarée, and O. Kaper (eds.), The Libyan Period in Egypt: Historical and Chronological Problems of the Third Intermediate Period. Leiden, 327–​340. Robins, G. 1983. “The God’s Wife of Amun in the 18th Dynasty in Egypt.” In A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity. London, 65–​78. Robins, G. 1994. “Some Principles of Compositional Dominance and Gender Hierarchy in Egyptian Art.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 31: 33–​40. Roehrig, C.H. 2005. Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. New York. Roth, A.-​M. 1999. “The Absent Spouse: Patterns and Taboos in Egyptian Tomb Decoration.” Journal of the American Research in Egypt 36: 37–​53. Sander-​Hansen, C.E. 1940. Das Gottesweib des Amun. Copenhagen. Schunk, M. 1985. Untersuchungen zum Wortstamm xa. Bonn. Schwaller de Lubicz, R.A. 1999. The Temples of Karnak. Rochester, VT. Teeter. E. 1997. The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt. SAOC 57. Chicago. Traunecker, F. 2010a. “La chapelle d’Osiris «seigneur de l’éternité-​neheh» à Karnak.” In L. Coulon (ed.), Le culte d’Osiris au Ier millénaire a.v. J.C. Cairo, 155–​194. Traunecker, F. 2010b. “La Divine Adoratrice Isis, fille de Ramsès VI: un document nouveau.” Égypte Afrique & Orient 56: 23–​32.

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Mariam F. Ayad Traunecker, F. 2010c. “Review of God’s Wife, God’s Servant: The God’s Wife of Amun (c. 740–​525 BC).” Égypte Afrique & Orient 56: 79. Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History. Uppsala. Von Beckerath, J. 1984. Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen. Berlin. Wagner, M. 2016. Der Sarkophag der Gottesgemahlin Anchnesneferibre. Wiesbaden.

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6 THE ROLE AND STATUS OF ROYAL WOMEN IN KUSH Angelika Lohwasser

Introduction The region known as Nubia, situated south of Egypt, upstream from the first Nile cataract, is an important bridge between the Mediterranean world and inner Africa.2 Most relevant is the relationship to Egypt, the cultural and economic strong neighbor to the north. The cultures of ancient Sudan stay incomprehensible without knowledge of the pharaonic culture. The appearance of the material culture of the Kingdom of Kush in particular expresses a strong Egyptian influence; this influence was rooted in the long-​lasting contacts between the two lands, especially in the phase of Egyptian domination over Kush.3 Egypt tried to gain control over Nubia because of its desire to gain access to the goods of inner Africa as well as the goldmines in Lower Nubia. In the New Kingdom (1650–​1070 BCE), Egypt occupied Nubia, and some Nubian inhabitants adopted certain forms of Egyptian culture, visible especially in grave goods. After the end of Egyptian political presence in Nubia, an indigenous kingdom emerged. Scholars call it “the Kingdom of Kush,” as Kush is the Egyptian toponym for the region of Nubia.4 The kingdom of Kush extended from the first Nile cataract at the southern border of Egypt to about the area of confluence of the two Niles, at today’s Sudanese capital, Khartoum. However, the limits of the kingdom of Kush’s sphere of influence are still not clear; researchers especially disagree about whether Kush had dominion over the hinterland of the Nile, but also about its general southern expansion. In a short phase of Kush’s history, in the late eighth and in the first half of the seventh century BCE, the “black pharaohs” of Kush also ruled Egypt.5 During this time, Egyptian cultural elements were taken over, partially adapted, and embedded in the written and pictorial presentation of the royal family. The Kushite king appears in the iconography of the Egyptian pharaoh, including the adoption of the Egyptian royal titular with two names in cartouches. The period between the eighth and fourth centuries BCE is called the Napatan Period of the kingdom of Kush. In that time, texts were written with Egyptian hieroglyphs and in Egyptian language, which, however, was used exclusively in the royal and religious sphere. In addition, the appearance of visual presentations (statuary, relief) was strongly influenced by the Egyptian canon of art and Egyptian iconography. With the relocation of the royal cemetery from the region around the Jebel Barkal, the sacral center of the empire, to the south, into the region of Meroe—​long since become the governmental and administrative headquarters—​an increasingly 1

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visible indigenous component is superimposed on the Egyptian element. Egyptian script and language are largely abandoned and their own language, called Meroitic, is written with its own characters. This second phase of the kingdom of Kush, from the third century BCE to the third century CE, is labeled the Meroitic Period.

Sources For the reconstruction of the position of the royal woman in Kush, we can refer to contemporary archaeological (above all graves), pictorial (reliefs on steles and temples), and written sources. The latter, however, can currently only be evaluated for the Napatan period, since, though the Meroitic script has been deciphered since 1909, the language is still incomprehensible, except for a few words. However, there are some meaningful references in the opus of classical authors who relate wonders about the Meroitic queens. In this respect, some statements are applicable to royal women of the kingdom of Kush in general, others—​such as the fact that a woman was able to act as ruling queen—​only for one of the two periods.

Archaeological sources Archaeological sources include the graves of royal women. These are situated, like the graves of the rulers themselves, in the cemeteries of El Kurru, Nuri, Jebel Barkal and Meroe (Beg. S and Beg. N).6 Parallel to the tombs of kings there is an architectural development that leads from very simple tombs to substructures with two rooms, a pyramidal superstructure, and a funerary chapel. However, this configuration only affects the tombs of women in the highest positions, especially queen mothers and some wives. Women of the royal court in a subordinate position, usually minor wives and daughters, often have only very small shaft graves. Nonetheless, even these small tombs can be equipped with a high quality grave inventory. In the excavations by G.A. Reisner, finds from precious metals to prestigious imports have been made in all these cemeteries.

Pictorial presentations Pictorial representations we know especially from temple or funerary chapel reliefs and the lunettes of stelai (e.g. Figure 6.1).7 There are very few statues of royal women,8 and hardly any paintings are preserved.9 Both in temple depictions and on the stelai, the royal women are usually involved in scenes in which the king is indeed the main actor, but they are also actively involved in the cult. From the Napatan period, the temple for Amun in Kawa10 and the temple for Mut at Jebel Barkal11 should be mentioned, since they are at least partly preserved and bear substantial relief. Other sanctuaries dating from this period are severely destroyed and give little or no trace of decoration.12 Also from Kawa and the Jebel Barkal originate large stelai with official inscriptions.13 In the lunette, the king is usually accompanied by a royal wife or mother. In the Meroitic period, most of our knowledge about pictorial presentations derives from the temples of Naqa and a few other sacral buildings, as well as some stelai.14 A huge corpus of pictures of royal women originates from the decoration of funerary chapels in the royal cemeteries of Meroe.15 There are royal women either depicted centrally as the deceased or as marginal figures in royal tombs. The outstanding corpus of seal-​r ings of queen Amanishakheto can be used as an additional source, since its decoration shows motifs which can be interpreted as various aspects of queenship.16 Most prominent is the cycle of divine birth and royal 62

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Figure 6.1  Lunette of the coronation stele of king Aspelta. His mother Nasalsa is depicted in front of Amun and the king, rattling the sistra and presenting the “speech” to ask for the kingship for her son. Cairo Egyptian Museum JE 48866 Source: Grimal 1981: pl.V © Nicolas Grimal

inauguration, depicted on six rings in total.17 According to Kushite ideas, the ruler—​in this case Amanishakheto—​is an offspring of Amun, major god of the realm. The child is presented to the king’s mother who elects the future king or ruling queen. This election is repeated or confirmed by Amun.

(Egyptian) texts From the Napatan period texts are preserved in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in the Egyptian language. These allow a deep insight not only into the history of events—​the texts contain descriptions of campaigns, cult activities, and other incidents—​but also into the ideology of kingship. Here also royal women play a certain role. The inscriptions to scenes in temples provide information and can be evaluated as sources.18 Unfortunately, texts from the Meroitic period are largely incomprehensible and can only to a limited degree be considered as a source for the position of royal women, even though at least titles and names are handed down.

Classical authors The area called “Ethiopia” by classical authors is often associated with wondrous and extraordinary attributes. One of these peculiarities, which has been discussed several times, is the fact that women could also rule in this country. The “one-​eyed queen Kandake” defied even the 63

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Roman invaders. However, one has to be cautious with these sources, as the details are not based on primary information. They can be handed down through several intervening if not lost sources and correspondingly altered. Nonetheless, these comments may also help round out the image of royal women in Kush.19

Appearance in textual and visual representations Names and titles Nearly all preserved names of royal women are Meroitic, thus indigenous. A  few Kushite women with Egyptian names are known in the 25th Dynasty, but their names may also have had Meroitic versions. Several theophorous names, all composed with the name of the god Amani (Amun), are also known. Although they are more typical in the Meroitic period (as in Anamirenas, Amanishakheto, Amanitore), a few of them already appeared in the Napatan period (like Amanimalol, Amanitakaye, Tekehatamani). As with the royal names, they are all used only once, which is a clear contrast to the Egyptian naming practice, where very often the same names are given within a family, but also within a period of time. All titles and epithets documented for Napatan royal women are borrowed from the Egyptian terminology. But, in contrast to the Egyptian system, the titles in Kush are generally not numerous.20 Only a few titles indicate a priestly role, like jḥy.t (singer). Some titles imply a specific status at court (rpʽt.t, noblewoman); others are analogous to king’s titles expressing dominion (nb.t tꜢ.wj, Lady of the Two Lands).Yet other titles, especially those with the element ḥnw.t (mistress), hint at a political duty, but the precise meaning remains unclear.21 The epithets express the esteem in which the bearers were held, or refer to pleasant characteristics. All these epithets, like “great of praise,” “sweet of love,” or “great one of loveliness,” seem to convey no profounder significance.22 In the Meroitic period, two distinct titles are given to royal women: qore and kandake. Qore means “ruler, king” and is documented earlier, in Egyptian sources.23 Only ruling kings and queens are given this title; thus, it is not a general title of Meroitic royal women. While qore is used by male as well as female monarchs, kandake is exclusive to royal women. Only a few women are attributed with this title,24 which seems to define the highest rank in the royal court. Its precise meaning is unclear, but presumably it identifies the mother of the ruler. Bion of Soloi (third century BCE) mentions that “The mother of each king they call Candace.”25 Later on, it was even thought that kandake was a personal name. Strabo, who claims to have visited “Aithiopia,” mentions, “Queen Candace, who ruled the Aithiopians in my time.”26 Early European travelers to Sudan also understood it as a personal name. Scholarly discussion on the title kandake focuses on a translation like King’s Mother, whereas two of the known kandake bear the title qore as well. This suggests the possible interpretation that these women were not only mothers of the king but also rulers, perhaps for their underage sons.

Costume There is a remarkable difference between Napatan and Meroitic representations of royal women. In contrast to Napatan royal women’s clothing, the costume of the Meroitic queen is similar to that of the king. In the Napatan period, women wore an indigenous costume, different from that of the Egyptian queens, while the appearance of the Kushite king does resemble that of the Egyptian one, except for some additional specific details. In the Meroitic period, both male and female royal appearance differ from the Egyptian counterpart and are analogous in their presentation. 64

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The Napatan queens wrapped a large shawl around the body below the armpits or around the hips. A second shawl, which could be fringed or decorated with woven stripes, was worn over the first. Sometimes women draped a sash over the shoulder. A small tab-​like element hangs below the edge of a dress, reaching the ground. This distinctive element has been described as a “little tail” which can be interpreted as an animal-​tail (fox?) as a counterpart to the king’s bull’s tail.27 Napatan women were depicted with their natural hair, in contrast to the wigs of contemporary Egyptian women. The “Kushite headdress,” an unusual headgear with band-​like elements springing upward from tiny “supports” to arch down over the back of the head, is worn in a few instances. These elements might be interpreted as feathers. Royal women of Kush wore headdresses and crowns similar to their Egyptian counterparts.28 This usage is in contrast to the dress and hairstyle of Kushite royal women, features which have a totally indigenous appearance. Kushite royal woman are seldom depicted wearing the vulture headdress. Often a fillet that served to secure a lotus blossom at the forehead and/​or a uraeus was tied around the head.The most frequently documented headgear consists of double plumes with a sun disc and cow horns. The headdress is short and squat in comparison to its Egyptian prototype and provided a basis for later Meroitic styles. In Meroitic times, male and female royal vestments consisted of a long underdress and a coat with pleats and fringes at the bottom and at the vertical edge.29 A shawl with long fringes drapes over the right shoulder. Another element of the royal regalia is the tasseled cord hanging down from the shoulders of the royal person. Another costume of the queen is a dress covered with wings and feathers of the falcon. The skirt is overloaded with feathers and even with the talons of the bird. A girdle with two uraeus-​serpents keeps the skirt tight. The upper part of the body can be nude. The Meroitic queen wore sandals, broad bracelets with decoration, and also jewelry on the upper arm. A famous accessory is the necklace with large spherical beads already common in the Nubian Kerma culture of the second millennium BCE. Broad necklaces, rings, and earrings are typical. On the head, the queen can wear a cap with a uraeus (sometimes with the body of a falcon), the Hathor-​crown, the feathers of Amun or other crowns. The most notable feature of the presentation of the Meroitic queens is their opulent body. In contrast to goddesses, who are depicted as very slim, the Meroitic queen is shown very fat, again a noticeably different image from that of Napatan queens, who were represented as much slimmer, although with pronounced hips. This corpulence could hint at a specific ideal of beauty or a high social status involving abundant food without need of physical labor, which is the case in many African societies even today.30 Two Meroitic royal women, Amanishakheto and Amanitore, are several times depicted with extremely long fingernails. Both of these women were exceptional exemplars in many ways: Amanishakheto was the most prominent ruling queen and Amanitore the most prominent kandake. It is difficult to estimate the meaning of the depiction of these long fingernails: it might be an ethnic marker, but it could be a social marker as well since the fingernails prevent the queens from working with their hands or from grasping things with their fingers. The nails could also indicate a certain taboo.31 Amanishakheto is the only royal woman who is depicted with scars on her face. On the relief of her pyramid chapel, three slightly bent and diagonal lines on her cheek are clearly visible. Again these scars have been interpreted as ethnic markers, since they occur on several depictions of non-​royal people of various origins.32 They could have other purposes as well, like beautification, medical or religious reasons, or markers of social status.33 The long fingernails and the scars are not part of the general costume of the Meroitic royal women, but appear for specific queens only. 65

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The functions of the royal women in the Kushite kingdom Especially when exploring the functions of the royal women, Egyptian parallels have to be used again, since the architectural and ideological conception of temples, their image program, and motifs in texts are heavily based on Egyptian models. As a rule, interpretations have therefore been made analogous to those of Egyptian culture. However, some details show Kushite adaptations and therefore it can be assumed that some ideas, although represented in Egyptian-​ like material culture, are to be understood differently.

Roles in cultic actions In the cult of the gods, the royal women of Kush assisted the kings by shaking the sistrum (a rattling instrument) and pouring a libation, both actions part of preparation for communication with the gods. Furthermore, the libation of liquid is an offering by itself and might express a wish for fertility.Thus, the Kushite royal women participated in a cult that in contemporary Egypt was restricted to the king.34 These activities are depicted most prominently on the lunettes of the official royal stelai, thus marking the pre-​eminent importance of this exact part of the cultic action. In the Meroitic period, and especially at the time of the male qore Natakamani and kandake Amanitore (first century BCE)—​the rulers who left most of the representations so far known—​ a queen could act like a king. She is depicted smiting or spearing the enemy, an archaic Egyptian motif demonstrating absolute power (see Figure 6.2).35 Moreover, she raises her hands in adoration in front of the gods in the temple, thus performing cultic actions in parallel to the king. On the Amun-​temple at Naqa, Amanitore is even shown receiving the crowns from the gods—​ usually a prerogative of the king.36 It is only for Amanitore that sources are so numerous that an interpretation is possible. Other kandakes are much less visible in the record; thus, it is uncertain if Amanitore was just an exception.

Roles in succession and coronation Besides titles and epithets, royal women bear kinship terms:  royal mother, wife, sister, or daughter. Interpretation of these terms is crucial for understanding the succession to the throne of Kush. Different reconstructions of the succession system have been proposed:  patrilinear, matrilinear, collateral, election, adoption, and variations including elements of several of these options.37 There are arguments for each of these systems and the problem seems unresolved as yet. Although the scholarly community does not agree on their specific function, it seems clear that royal women were intensively involved in the succession system. “Mother of the King” seems to be the highest rank within the kinship terms and it is this royal woman who occupies a specific role also at the coronation of the king. The most important event that ensured the continuity of kingship was the enthronement of the new king. Royal women were mentioned and represented in the context of the coronation ceremonies. In Kush, the coronation was symbolized by the “presenting of a figure of the goddess Ma’at (who represents the world order), pectoral, and necklace by the king” motif.38 This scene is depicted in the lunette of several royal stelai as well as on temple walls. In each case the king is accompanied by two royal women, usually a “Mother of the King” and a “Wife of the King.” They assist him at the occasion of this crucial ceremony by shaking sistra and pouring a libation. Their presence at this very moment implies that the female complementary 66

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Figure 6.2  Pylon of the pyramid chapel of Amanishakheto (Beg. N6). The Meroitic ruling queen is depicted in the scene “spearing the enemy,” a prerogative of the king Source: LD vol.V: pl. 40

aspect was eminently important. In the Napatan period, no representation of the coronation exists without royal women. Apart from the involvement in this action, especially the “Mother of the King” played a decisive role in other areas as well. Besides her potential influence in the succession system—​ if one favors the interpretation of a matrilineal system of succession or at least a matrilineal influence—​she made a journey to her newly crowned son and delivered a speech to Amun to bestow the rulership to “their” son. For both actions there are textual sources, all of them dating to the Napatan period (see Figure 6.1, p. 63). Therefore, we cannot trace this motive into the Meroitic period as well, but perhaps two seal rings of Amanishakheto hint at a similar practice in that time. One shows the election of the future ruler by the queen, who grasps the elbow of the child.39 This gesture has been interpreted as depicting, in ritual context, the king as the predestined choice of the gods.40 On the other ring, the goddess Mut—​as divine aspect of the earthly queen—​presents the future king before Amun/​Amani.41 Although we do not yet have an explicit mention of the role of Meroitic royal wives in the coronation ceremony, these rings might refer to it. Like the “Mother of the King” in the Napatan period, the title kandake may imply a Meroitic kinship term and is therefore a hint for its role in the succession. Nevertheless, as already pointed out, the interpretation of kandake is far from clear. 67

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Roles in the ideology of kingship The lunettes of royal Napatan stelai are a good starting point to place royal women within the conceptual frame of Kushite kingship. In the Napatan period, the king is depicted accompanied by his mother and wife. The opposing male and female principles form a whole. They complement each other and are essential for ongoing renewal.42 The guarantee for continuation of life and kingdom is visible in the complementary male/​female dichotomy. But it is not only the complementary nature of gender that is depicted by the king and his female companions; they represent different generations, too. The generations are the basis for movement, for perpetual development and renewal. The king’s mother is a symbol of the ancestors. Through her presence, the king is linked to his forefathers and through the presence of his wife he is connected to the future and the eternal continuation of kingship. Moreover, these two women depicted in the lunettes show layers of the influence of queenship. The rule of the king is based on two factors guaranteeing the durability of rulership: the initial and unique action of a god and the continuous exercising of rulership by the king is ritualized in the coronation (granted by the god) and the performance of kingly duties such as cult activities, temple construction, and guaranteeing order in the kingdom. Therefore, we can connect the unique occurrence of “becoming a king” with the continuum of “being a king.”43 Kushite queenship should be integrated into this scheme. The antithetical composition of the lunette renders this image precisely in its Kushite manifestation. On one side, the “Mother of the King” is shown in a manner entirely characteristic for Kush: she bears responsibility for her son becoming a king, by her descent and by her ritual role in the coronation ceremonies. On the other side, the “Wife of the King” accompanies him. She is the female component that complements the male ruler.Without the female component, renewal is impossible. Her task lies in continually reiterating that the king exists and endures.Therefore, queenship as a component of rulership is responsible for guaranteeing the kingship of the king and thus the continued existence of the kingdom. Without the female aspect, rulership would not function. The concept of queenship in Kush gave royal women the opportunity to become active participants in the state.

Ruling queens In the Meroitic period, certain royal women ascended to the throne. Although the title qore is primarily male, the representation of the ruling queens was explicitly female: whereas their costumes were created with reference to the male royal dress, their impressive curves were a strong statement of femininity. We know at least nine ruling queens by their tombs in Meroe.44 They date to the period between the end of the second century BCE and the beginning of the fourth century CE. Only a few of these queens left evidence apart from their pyramid chapels: the most famous are Amanirenase and Amanishakheto (see Figure 6.2, p.  67). Both of them could have been the opponents of the Roman legions, since they lived in the second half of the first century BCE. While Amanirenase erected two monumental stelai with a long Meroitic—​thus not comprehensible—​inscription, qore Amanishakheto is depicted only on smaller stelai. Nevertheless, the composition of the scenes gives the impression that Amanishakheto might have been deified by her successors.45 Moreover it is this queen whose throne treasure was found in her tomb. Her divine birth as well as the godly election is depicted on her golden seal rings.46 68

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In the depictions of the queens on their pyramid chapels, we find the representation of a (usually anonymous) man behind the queen. This evidence can be supplemented by the similar depiction of a man behind the female qore Shanakhdakhete in temple F at Naqa.47 It is reasonable to interpret these men as the counterpart of the female ruler. In Napatan times, the royal women formed a significant factor in the Kushite kingship. Without the queenship, this kingship would be inconceivable. This “female complement,” manifested as a wife and as a mother, does not apply to a female ruler, a Meroitic qore. Perhaps the men who appear among the Meroitic female rulers are seen as the “male complement” necessary for their legitimacy? If the ideology of the Kushite kingdom is built upon complementary male and female aspects—​ or powers—​the male king needs a female companion like the royal women presented in the lunettes of the Napatan stelai, and the female qore needs a male support as on the depictions in the Meroitic pyramid chapels.

Final remarks Queenship in Kush fulfilled the task of complementing kingship with the feminine aspect of royal ideology. At the same time, several female rulers are known in the first few centuries CE, who, like the male kings before and after them, were able to lead the empire politically (war against Rome) as well as sacrally (execution of the divine cult). This fact, coupled with the remoteness of the country, made classical authors, early explorers, as well as modern scholars, think of Kush as an exotic matriarchy. This conclusion cannot be confirmed by the available sources, but considerable evidence definitely indicates a form of rule in which the feminine aspect had a significant share.

Notes 1 A well-​defined terminology is not settled yet. Following Pope (2014: XIX) I understand “Nubia” as the region, and people from Nubia as “Nubians.” “Kush” is the name of the kingdom of the eighth century BCE to fourth century CE, and persons conducting the rule are known as “Kushites.” 2 For a general introduction to the cultures of ancient Nubia see Raue 2019 and Emberling and Williams in press. 3 For this influential phase in Nubia see Spencer, Stevens, and Binder 2017. 4 No indigenous toponym is transmitted. 5 Morkot 2000. 6 Modern Begrawiya. All royal cemeteries of Kush were excavated by G.A. Reisner in the early twentieth century. Publications: Dunham 1950; Dunham 1955; Dunham 1957. 7 For the Napatan period see the catalogue in Lohwasser 2001a. For the Meroitic period a comprehensive publication is lacking, but see Kuckertz in press for the first century BCE. 8 Napatan period:  Torso of Amanimalol (Wildung 1996:  222–​3); Meroitic period:  double statue of Shanakdakhete or Nahirqo (Cairo Egyptian Museum CG 684, Wenig 1978: 212–​4). 9 Napatan period: painted tomb of Qalhata (Ku. 5, Dunham 1950: pl. IX, X); Meroitic period: a few preserved panels in temple M720 in Meroe (Bradley 2003). 10 Macadam 1955. 11 Robisek 1989. 12 Like the Amun-​ temple of Sanam, where a scene with a royal woman is preserved (Griffith 1922: pl. XLV). 13 Macadam 1949; Grimal 1981. 14 For the Lion-​temple see Gamer-​Wallert 1983; for the Amun-​temple LD V: Bl. 66–​9; online at: http://​ edoc3.bibliothek.uni-​halle.de/​lepsius/​tafelwa5.html. For a general discussion of Meroitic temples, see Kuckertz 2019. For the recent excavations of Naqa, including the stelai, see Kröper, Schoske, and Wildung 2011. 15 Chapman and Dunham 1952.

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Angelika Lohwasser 16 Priese 1993. 17 Lohwasser 2001b. 18 Literature and translation in FHN I, FHN II. 19 Literature and translation in FHN II, FHN III. 20 Lohwasser 2001a: 192–​209. 21 Pope 2014: 222–​3. 22 Contra Török 1995: 102–​8. 23 Priese 1968. 24 Amanirenase, Amanishakheto, and Amanitore. 25 Act. Apost. 8.27. For translation and comment see FHN II: 549–​51 (nos. 105, 106). 26 Geogr. XVII, 1, 53–​54. For translation and comment see FHN III: 828–​35 (No. 190). 27 Lohwasser 1999. 28 See the discussion in Lohwasser 2001a: 219–​25. 29 Török 1990. 30 See Kendall (1989: 655–​8) on ethnographic parallels of female corpulence. 31 For a discussion with literature see Kuckertz in press. 32 King Natakamani, who might be from the same family, is depicted likewise with three scars on his cheek. Therefore, it might be the marker of a clan. In general see Kendall 1989: 672–​80; Lohwasser 2012: 543–​9. 33 See Kuckertz in press. 34 Lohwasser 1998. 35 Visible for example at the Lion-​temple in Naqa, see Gamer-​Wallert 1983: Bl. 2. 36 LD V: Bl. 67d (online at http://​edoc3.bibliothek.uni-​halle.de/​lepsius/​tafelwa5.html). 37 For a discussion see Morkot 1999; Lohwasser 2000; 2001a: 226–​56; Kahn 2005. 38 Lohwasser 1995. 39 Berlin ÄMP Inv.-​No. 1747; Priese 1993: fig. 44. 40 Wenig 1993: 211. 41 Berlin ÄMP Inv.-​No. 1723; Priese 1993: fig. 42. 42 Lohwasser 2001a: 334–​49. 43 Assmann 1990: 208–​9; Lohwasser 2001a: 344–​5. 44 Kuckertz in press. 45 Kuckertz in press. 46 Priese 1993. 47 Hofmann, Tomandl, and Zach 1985.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). FHN I-​III Eide, T., Hägg, T., Pierce, R.H., and Török, L. (eds.) 1994–​1998. Fontes Historiae Nubiorum: Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region between the Eighth Century BC and the Sixth Century AD, vols. I–​III. Bergen. LD  Lepsius, C.R. (eds.) 1849–​ 59. Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, nach den Zeichnungen der von seiner Majestät dem König von Preussen Friedrich Wilhelm IV nach diesen Ländern gesendeten und in den Jahren 1842–​1845 Ausgeführten wissenschaftlichen Expedition auf Befehl seiner Majestät herausgegeben und erläutert von R. Lepsius. Berlin.

Bibliography Assmann, J. 1990. Maat. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten. Munich. Bradley, R. 2003. “Painted Plaster Murals from Meroe Townsite.” Sudan & Nubia 7: 66–​70. Chapman, S.E. and Dunham, D. 1952. Royal Cemeteries of Kush III: Decorated Chapels of the Meroitic Pyramids at Meroë and Barkal. Cambridge, MA. Dunham, D. 1950. El Kurru.The Royal Cemeteries of Kush I. Cambridge, MA.

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The role and status of royal women in Kush Dunham, D. 1955. Nuri.The Royal Cemeteries of Kush II. Boston. Dunham, D. 1957. Royal Tombs at Meroë and Barkal. Royal Cemeteries of Kush IV. Cambridge, MA. Emberling, G. and Williams, B. (eds.) In press. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Oxford. Gamer-​Wallert, I. 1983. Der Löwentempel von Naq’a in der Butana (Sudan) III: Die Wandreliefs. [with Dittmar, J.] Beihefte TAVO, Reihe B (Geisteswissenschaften) Nr. 48/​3. Wiesbaden. Griffith, F.L. 1922. “Oxford Excavations in Nubia.VIII-​XVII, Napata, Sanam Temple, Treasury and Town.” Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 9: 67–​124. Grimal, N.-​C. 1981. Quatre stèles Napatéennes au musée du Caire JE 48863–​48866. Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut français d’Archéologie orientale du Caire, 106. Cairo. Hofmann, I., Tomandl, H., and Zach, M. 1985. “Der Tempel F von Naqa.” Varia Aegyptiaca 1: 27–​35. Kahn, D. 2005. “The Royal Succession in the 25th Dynasty.” Der Antike Sudan. Mitteilungen der Sudanarchäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 16: 143–​63. Kendall, T. 1989. “Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic studies.” In S. Donadoni and S. Wenig (eds.), Studia Meroitica 1984. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference for Meroitic Studies, Rome 1984, Meroitica 10. Berlin, 625–​745. Kröper, K., Schoske, S., and Wildung, D. 2011. Königsstadt Naga. Grabungen in der Wüste des Sudan [Naga Royal City, Excavations in the Desert of the Sudan]. Munich. Kuckertz, J. 2019. “Meroitic Temples and their Decoration.” In D. Raue (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Berlin and Boston, 813–​47. Kuckertz, J. In press. “Amanishakheto  –​a Meroitic Ruling Queen of the Late 1st Cent. BC/​Early 1st Cent. AD.” Lohwasser, A. 1995. “Die Darstellung der kuschitischen Krönung.” In D. Kurth (ed.), 3. Ägyptologische Tempeltagung. Systeme und Programme der ägyptischen Tempeldekoration. Hamburg, 1.-​5. Juni 1994. ÄAT 33,1. Wiesbaden, 163–​85. Lohwasser, A. 1998. “Die Handlungen der kuschitischen Königin im Götterkult.” CRIPEL 17, 3: 135–​46. Lohwasser, A. 1999. “Die Darstellung der Tracht der Kuschitinnen in der 25. Dynastie.” In S. Wenig (ed.), Studien zum antiken Sudan. Akten der 7. Internationalen Tagung für meroitistische Forschungen vom 14.-​19. September in Gosen/​bei Berlin. Meroitica 15. Wiesbaden, 586–​603. Lohwasser, A. 2000. “Die Auswahl des Königs in Kusch.” Beiträge zur Sudanforschung 7: 85–​102. Lohwasser, A. 2001a. Die königlichen Frauen im antiken Reich von Kusch. 25. Dynastie bis zur Zeit des Nastasen. Meroitica 19. Wiesbaden. Lohwasser, A. 2001b. “Der Thronschatz der Königin Amanishakheto.” In C.-​B. Arnst, I. Hafemann, and A. Lohwasser (eds.), Begegnungen. Antike Kulturen im Niltal. Festgabe für Erika Endesfelder, Karl-​Heinz Priese, Walter Friedrich Reineke und Steffen Wenig. Leipzig, 285–​302. Lohwasser, A. 2012. “Haut als Medium im antiken Nordostafrika. Temporäre und permanente Modifikationen der Körperoberfläche.” In A. Berlejung, J. Dietrich, and J.F. Quack (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient. Orientalische Religionen der Antike 9. Tübingen, 527–​59. Lohwasser, A. and Phillips, J. In press. “Women and Gender in Ancient Kush.” In G. Emberling and B. Williams (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Oxford. Macadam, M.F.L. 1949. The Temples of Kawa I: The Inscriptions. London. Macadam, M.F.L. 1955. The Temples of Kawa II: History and Archaeology of the Site. London. Morkot, R. 1999. “Kingship and Kinship in the Empire of Kush.” In S. Wenig (ed.), Studien zum antiken Sudan. Akten der 7. Internationalen Tagung für meroitistische Forschungen vom 14.-​19. September in Gosen/​bei Berlin. Meroitica 15. Wiesbaden, 179–​229. Morkot, R. 2000. The Black Pharaohs: Egypt’s Nubian Rulers. London. Pope, J. 2014. The Double Kingdom under Taharqo: Studies in the History of Kush and Egypt, c. 690–​664 BC. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 69. Leiden. Priese, K.-​H. 1968. ”Nichtägyptische Namen und Wörter in den ägyptischen Inschriften der Könige von Kusch I.“ Mitteilungen des Institutes für Orientforschungen 14: 165–​91. Priese, K.-​H. 1993. The Gold of Meroe. New York. Raue, D. (ed.) 2019. Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Berlin and Boston. Robisek, C. 1989. Das Bildprogramm des Mut-​Tempels am Gebel Barkal. Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie 52. Vienna. Spencer, N., Stevens, A., and Binder, M. 2017. Nubia in the New Kingdom: Lived Experience, Pharaonic Control and Indigenous Traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. London.

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Angelika Lohwasser Török, L. 1990.“The Costume of the Ruler in Meroe: Remarks on its Origin and Significance.” Archéologie du Nil Moyen 4: 151–​202. Török, L. 1995. The Birth of an Ancient African Kingdom: Kush and Her Myth of the State in the First Millennium BC. Cahier de recherches de l’Institut de papyrologie et d’égyptologie de Lille. Supplément 4. Lille. Wenig, S. 1978 Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia II, The Catalogue. Brooklyn. Wenig, S. 1993. “Die Darstellungen. Untersuchungen zu Ikonographie, Inhalt und Komposition der Reliefs.” In F. Hintze et al. (eds.), Musawwarat es Sufra, Bd. I.1. Der Löwentempel,Textband. Berlin, 74–​227. Wildung, D. 1996. Sudan. Antike Königreiche am Nil. Exhibition catalog. Munich and Paris.

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7 PTOLEMAIC ROYAL WOMEN Anne Bielman Sánchez and Giuseppina Lenzo

Introduction In recent decades, Ptolemaic queens have attracted the attention of researchers, with several royal figures being the subject of detailed analysis.1 However, studies that compare Greek and Egyptian documentation are not so many, despite the fact that the Ptolemies ruled a bi-​cultural kingdom. In addition, few studies have explored the differences between the queens in terms of their political status, titles, and participation in the management of the kingdom in partnership with the king.The purpose of the present study is to fill this lacuna by examining the Ptolemaic queens from Berenike I to Kleopatra II (300–​115 BCE).2 This period sees the implementation of a series of institutional innovations that promote the public stature and official role of the Ptolemaic queens–​–​by which we mean royal wives–​–​thus paving the way for the most famous of them, Kleopatra VII. We have identified three structural elements that we believe serve as the foundation for the political status of the Ptolemaic queens: (1) the valorization of the royal matrimonial couple; (2) the system of joint rule with two or three partners, which is a form of political partnership between a king and a queen; and (3) the dynastic cult and the presence of the queens in the Egyptian temples. Our observations concerning these three major elements are based on a detailed study of the testimonies of literary authors from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods, as well as epigraphic documents (such as bilingual stelai in Egyptian and Greek erected on the orders of Egyptian priest synods), reliefs decorating Egyptian temples, coins, and even opening protocols—​those formal preambles which precede any notarial act of the Ptolemaic period written on papyri. However, due to space constraints, we have generally omitted references to these primary sources and have referred to modern studies in which they are extensively analyzed.

The valorization of the royal conjugal couple According to the available documentation, Ptolemy I seems to have had little interest in creating a public role for his wife Berenike I. By contrast, Ptolemy II (reign 282–​246 BCE) and his successors showed considerable concern to develop the royal conjugal couple. This phenomenon stems from Ptolemy II’s decision to marry his sister Arsinoë II,3 who had taken 73

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refuge in Egypt to escape her half-​brother and second husband, the king of Thrace/​Macedon Ptolemy Keraunos. The union of Ptolemy II and his sister was not intended to give birth to heirs (Ptolemy II already had three children—​including two sons—​by his first wife, Arsinoë I, and his sister Arsinoë II was over 40 years old at the time of the marriage). This marriage was part of a strategy aimed at strengthening descendants of the Ptolemy I–​Berenike I couple—​the parents of Ptolemy II—​to the detriment of the rival descendants of the Ptolemy I–​Eurydike couple. Ptolemy II justified the consanguineous union with Arsinoë II—​a union that shocked some of his contemporaries—​by evoking Egyptian cultural models (Osiris and his sister-​wife Isis)4 and Greek cultural models (Zeus and his sister-​wife Hera).5 The divine epithet Theoi Adelphoi (“the sibling gods”) also underscores the fact that the conjugal bond was coupled with a fraternal bond. In addition, Theokritos in his “Praise of Ptolemy (II)” refers to the love that united the parents of the inbred couple (Idyll 17.35–​40). However, the death of Arsinoë II, a few years after her marriage to Ptolemy II,6 led the king to modify his plans and concentrate his efforts on the dynastic cult. It was therefore his son and successor, Ptolemy III (reign 246–​222), who established a lasting strategy to enhance the reigning conjugal couple. This strategy was based on the “Lock of Berenike” staged by the Alexandrian poet Kallimachos.7 Through what we would today call storytelling, Berenike II is presented as a model loving wife, whom the gods transformed into a celestial constellation during her lifetime in recognition of her exemplary marital behavior. The documentary sources from the reign of Ptolemy III echo this glorification of conjugal values. Berenike was the cousin of Ptolemy III, but their familial relationship is presented in all official sources as a fraternal bond,8 in order to strengthen the conjugal bond according to the model of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II. It should be noted that the term “sister” is regularly used for “wife” in Pharaonic Egypt from the second half of the 18th Dynasty onwards, perhaps under the influence of the royal consanguineous marriages at the beginning of this dynasty.9 Contrary to what is said about Ptolemy III and Berenike II, literary sources typically present Ptolemy IV (reign 222–​204) and his sister-​wife Arsinoë III as a dysfunctional couple:10 the king is said to maintain many mistresses, neglect his wife, or even murder her. However, several ancient testimonies contradict these statements. Arsinoë III is invited by her brother-​husband to accompany him during the campaign of the Fourth Syrian War, and the queen encourages the troops during the battle of Raphia (217 BCE) which ends with the Ptolemaic victory (Polyb. 5.83; 3 Macc. 1.1). Many documentary sources show these royal spouses as political partners.11 For instance, the royal couple is prominent on the upper register of the Raphia Decree that is erected in all Egyptian temples after the military victory.12 The Decree shows the couple facing the enemy and the gods, the queen standing behind the king on horseback. It thus promulgates honors for the king and queen, and gives orders to erect images of both sovereigns in the temples. We know from several Greek inscriptions that the king and queen established joint diplomatic relations with Greek cities in Boeotia and the Aegean islands; in return, these cities honor the royal couple.13 Furthermore, Arsinoë is omnipresent alongside the king in the Egyptian temples. Under Ptolemy IV, the royal couple—​beyond the possible private tensions that cannot be ruled out, but about which we know nothing reliable—​played an important role in shaping foreign policy and official propaganda. This role for the royal couple continued under Ptolemy V (reign 204–​180), despite the foreign origin of his wife, Kleopatra I, the daughter of the Seleukid king Antiochos III, whom he married around 194–​193.14 The spouses made joint donations to sanctuaries in Egypt and Delos. In dedications from private individuals written in Greek, as well as in hieroglyphic testimonies from Egyptian temples (Edfu, Philai), Kleopatra II is called the “sister of the king.” 74

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This shows that this title is now being used to glorify the conjugal stability of the royal couple, regardless of any actual blood relationship. The official role of the royal conjugal couple was maintained by the Ptolemies during the marriage of Ptolemy VI and his younger sister Kleopatra II in 175, which was celebrated when both were still minors.The importance of the conjugal couple was strengthened with the establishment of joint rule between Ptolemy VI and his sister-​wife (163–​145):15 from this point on, the royal partners were recognized with an official role: they benefited—​sometimes with their children—​from gestures of loyalty by officers or senior officials—​and they also made trips to the countryside and donations to the temples. With Ptolemy VI and Kleopatra II, the conjugal and consanguineous Ptolemaic couple reached its peak. Immediately after the death of Ptolemy VI in the summer of 145, Kleopatra II married his younger brother Ptolemy VIII; for this reason, D. Ogden wrote that the polygyny of the first Ptolemaic kings is followed by the polyandry of the queens.16 These new inbred partners were staged in accordance with previous practices and the fact that Ptolemy VIII married his niece Kleopatra III in 141–​140 did not lead to the repudiation of Kleopatra II, who retained her privileges and her place at the court. After the death of Ptolemy VIII in 116 and until the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the conjugal couple gradually lost its importance in dynastic propaganda. This was due to several factors: sometimes the ruling duo turned into a trio; sometimes the ruling duos were no longer conjugal couples but mother–​son or father–​daughter tandems; sometimes circumstantial elements limited the value of the conjugal couple (for example, owing to bad relations between spouses, or because the husband was of non-​Ptolemaic blood and could not be recognized as a pharaoh).17

Royal partnership in political matters and joint rules The first reference to the intervention of a Ptolemaic queen in the political field appears in an Athenian document dated to the autumn of 268 called the Decree of Chremonides (IG II2 687). In this inscription, which concerns a military alliance established between Sparta, Athens, and Ptolemy II against Macedonia, the Ptolemaic king is said to defend the common freedom of the Greeks “following the policy (proairesis) of his ancestors and sister.” By this sentence, the Athenians seem to note Ptolemy II’s desire to present himself and his sister as thinking and acting in a united way in the diplomatic and military fields,18 even though, by the date of the Decree, Arsinoë II was already dead.19 An important step is taken by Berenike II: she appears in nine demotic papyri as Per-aat Pr-​ ʿȝ.t—​that is, as “pharaoh” in the feminine form—​and she is mentioned as such in the opening protocols, immediately after the king.20 It is the first use of this formulation for a queen in official documents. How shall we explain this? Some scholars suppose that Berenike II temporarily ruled the kingdom during the Third Syrian War, while her husband is campaigning (246–​245). In this case, she would have been equal to the king for this brief time.21 Literary and documentary sources from the reign of Ptolemy IV reveal queen Arsinoë III’s active participation in the political affairs of the kingdom: she urged the Ptolemaic troops on the battlefield in Raphia (3 Macc. 1.4), thus assuming a role that was rightfully incumbent on the king.22 Her participation earned her a prominent place in the Decree of Raphia alongside the king: she makes a donation to the Mouseia festival at Thespiai (Boiotia), writing a letter to the city in her own name, while the king announces in a second letter that he supports his sister’s action; she is honored by the city of Kos with a statue and perhaps benefits from a coin in Thespiai; she receives purple clothing from the Senate of Rome in 210–​209 at the same time 75

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as the king (Liv. 27.4.10); finally, in 204, she is probably murdered just before or after the king for political reasons (perhaps because someone wants to prevent her from playing a role in the royal succession and assuming guardianship over the young Ptolemy V).23 Nevertheless, Arsinoë III never appears in an opening protocol; this means that, officially, she did not share royal power with her brother-​husband, even though the latter relied heavily on her to rule the kingdom. During the reign of Ptolemy V, his wife Kleopatra I does not seem to have assumed a particular political role. However, she was associated with the king in an embassy dispatched by the Alexandrian court to Rome in 190 (Liv. 37.3.9).24 The unexpected death of Ptolemy V in 180 produced an institutional revolution. The protocol of a Greek papyrus dated October 180 is formulated as follows: “Under the joint rule of queen Kleopatra and king Ptolemy, the son of the gods Epiphanes, year 1” (P. Ryl. Gr. 4.589, lines 92–​4).25 Furthermore, the same document confirms that the queen and her son Ptolemy VI—​who was about 6 years old in 180—​received royal power as their inheritance and now rule the kingdom (lines 107–​111). In demotic papyri, the protocols confirm the establishment of joint rule by using the term “pharaohs” in the plural. Thus, we note a triple innovation: (1) the transition from a monarchical system to a system of joint rule with two sovereigns; (2) the inclusion of a queen in the new royal tandem; and (3) the mention of queen Kleopatra I before her son Ptolemy VI, the sign of her hierarchical pre-​eminence. However, according to the information we have, these major changes did not provoke any reaction from courtiers or from the inhabitants of the kingdom. This passivity can be explained in different ways: on the one hand, the queen certainly had strong support at the court (notably her faithful eunuchs who had come with her from the Seleukid court); on the other hand, by keeping a queen of Seleukid origin on the throne, it was hoped that peaceful relations would be maintained with the Seleukid king Seleukos IV, brother of Kleopatra I; finally, the queen’s dowry, while she was alive, could guarantee the income from Koilesyria for Egypt.26 The protocol form remains unchanged during the three years of the joint rule, until the queen’s death which took place in the autumn of 177 at the latest. This joint rule led by a queen was not simply a facade: a papyrus testifies to a court decision made by the rulers (P. Coll.Youtie I.12), hence by the queen alone, in light of the young age of the king; we can detect Kleopatra’s involvement in the coinage, owing to her monogram “K” on the reverse of the bronze coins.27 However, this joint rule does not seem to have enjoyed any official recognition outside the Ptolemaic kingdom, and Ptolemy VI was legitimized by foreign powers as the successor to Ptolemy V only when he came of age. Kleopatra I left behind her three minor children: Ptolemy VI, his sister Kleopatra II, and his brother Ptolemy VIII. To strengthen this fragile royal power base, two operations were carried out: first, a marriage between Ptolemy VI and his younger sister was conducted in the spring of 175, then joint rule was established between the three siblings in 170. Even if Kleopatra II appears in the protocols of this ruling trio only in final position, behind the two kings, she nevertheless played a political role by mediating between her brothers in the Sixth Syrian War (Liv. 44.19.6; 45.11.3 and 6).28 After the reconciliation of the siblings in 168, the ruling trio was active again, but tensions persisted and led to a split in 163: Ptolemy VIII became king of Kyrenaika while Ptolemy VI and his sister-​wife began a joint rule over Egypt and Cyprus, a rule that lasted until the death of Ptolemy VI in 145. The queen then appears in all Greek and demotic protocols, in second posi­ tion behind Ptolemy VI, and is often referred to as the “sister” or “sister and wife” (of the king). In addition, she officially participates in the management of the kingdom: the two sovereigns are invoked in the oaths of Egyptians and they receive petitions and reports in both their names and co-​sign some royal orders and letters to officials.The honors for the queen and her husband 76

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in several gymnasiums in Kypros and Egypt confirm that she was considered the king’s partner by Greco-​Macedonian inhabitants of Egypt. The death of Ptolemy VI in the summer of 145 put an end to this duo and promoted Ptolemy VIII’s ambitions. Indeed, the option of a joint rule between Kleopatra II and her minor son is abandoned in favor of a joint rule between Kleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII. Through these events, the queen appears to be the legitimizing element of Ptolemaic power. In the protocols of the new joint rule, Kleopatra II regains her rank behind the king as well as her title of “sister” or “sister and wife” (of the king), while her role as an effective co-​ruler of the kingdom seems to have been maintained. While the marriage in 141/​140 of Ptolemy VIII and his niece—​the daughter of Kleopatra II and Ptolemy VI—​led to a ruling trio, Kleopatra II kept her place in the new configuration: she appears in the second rank, behind the king, and is generally called “the sister” to distinguish herself from Kleopatra III, who is called “the wife.” The agreement between the trio shattered in 132, when the Alexandrians drove out Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra III, and supported Kleopatra II. Kleopatra II’s two sons (one born of Ptolemy VI, the other of Ptolemy VIII) were murdered by order of Ptolemy VIII to prevent the queen from forming a joint rule with one of them. Kleopatra II was then forced to assume sole royal power: in 131 and 130, documents from cities in the south of the country (notably Thebes) mention a new sequence of regnal years, and a protocol of a Greek papyrus from Hermonthis is dated “under the reign of Kleopatra, goddess Philometor Soteira” (P. Baden Gr. II.2, October 29, 130). After the failure of an alliance attempt with her son-​in-​law, the Seleukid king Demetrios II, Kleopatra II facing the military reconquest of the country by Ptolemy VIII, left Egypt in 127 and took refuge at the Seleukid court. However, her royal career was not over: in 124, thanks to negotiations between Ptolemies and Seleukids, she returned to a ruling trio with Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra III, and regained the same rank and title as before the civil war. Finally, we cannot rule out the possibility that, after the death of Ptolemy VIII in 116, Kleopatra II briefly participated in a ruling trio with Kleopatra III and her son Ptolemy IX. She probably died in 115. As a partner in six joint rules, Kleopatra II sets the record for the longest reign of a queen on the Ptolemaic throne (55 years). However, she failed to take over a joint rule with one of her sons, while her mother Kleopatra I had succeeded in doing that with her underage son Ptolemy VI, and her daughter Kleopatra III would do so with each of her two adult sons, Ptolemy IX and Ptolemy X. The example of these three queens shows how the system of joint rule served as the cornerstone of the power of the Ptolemaic queens.

The dynastic cult and the representation of the rulers in Egyptian temples29 Throughout the entire Ptolemaic period, the dynastic cult remained an important means of valorizing the ruling couple. An eponymous priest of the cult of Alexander the Great was established in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I.30 However, it was under the reign of Ptolemy II that the dynastic cult underwent significant development. In fact, the 270s were a time when various activities were established. First, the parents of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy I and Berenike I, were divinized and honored during the Ptolemaia (Kallixeinos of Rhodes, apud Ath. 5.27, 197D and 35.203A).31 Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II married in the same years and, probably shortly after this event, they were both added to the priesthood of Alexander with the divine epithet Theoi Adelphoi, “the sibling gods.” In fact, the first mention of a priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi is found in a Greek papyrus dated May 28, 271 (P. Hibeh I 199).32 The epithet highlights the family blood bonds and was used as part of Ptolemaic propaganda. From that time on, each couple on the throne of Egypt was added to the list of gods honored by the 77

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priest of Alexandria with a specific epithet.These epithets are found not only on the papyri and inscriptions in Greek and demotic, but also in hieroglyphs in stelai or temple’s reliefs.33 Ptolemy I and Berenike II, the Theoi Soteres “savior gods” were included in the list of the eponymous priests only under Ptolemy IV, when the dynastic cult was revised. However, under Ptolemy II, the Theoi Soteres are represented on the reverse of coins—​or maybe on the obverse, the distinction between obverse and reverse being deliberately ambiguous—​while the Theoi Adelphoi are on the other side, thereby linking the living rulers with the deified ancestors.34 Two hieroglyphic stelai of the reign of Ptolemy II, namely the Mendes Stele and the Sais Stele, provide information about the establishment of a posthumous cult of Arsinoë II Philadelphos.35 On the basis of the Mendes Stele, it has been assumed that Arsinoë II probably died in 270 (year 15),36 while her cult was probably diffused in all of Egypt in 265 (year 20), as the Sais Stele suggests.37 A statue of the queen as a goddess was thus elevated in every temple in Egypt. She also appears as a goddess in the lunettes of the Mendes and Pithom Stelai, in small stelai, as well as on the walls of the temple of Philai, where Ptolemy II honors his sister by giving her offerings. Furthermore, in Alexandria the cult of the deceased queen is attested in the Arsinoeia-​festival, and especially the establishment of a specific priestess devoted to her cult, the kanephoros. This priestess is mentioned after the priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi; the first mention is in a Greek papyrus of year 18 of Ptolemy II, that is 268/​267 (P. Sorbonne Institut de Papyrologie 2440).38 The cult of Arsinoë II spread not only throughout Egypt, as can be seen in both Egyptian and Greek documents, but also throughout the Hellenistic world; there were for example altars for Arsinoë in Cyprus (Paphos, Limassol), Lesbos, Delos, Paros, Amorgos, Thera, Miletos, and Eretria. The image of Arsinoë II was thus mainly used after her death, in the context of the dynastic cult staged by her brother Ptolemy II.This opens the door for similar dynas­ tic cults for all other Ptolemaic rulers. Henceforth, royal leadership in Egypt was dominated by two figures, a masculine pharaoh and a feminine counterpart. As the wife of Ptolemy III, Berenike II already played a considerable political role during her lifetime. She was integrated into the dynastic cult with her husband: the attribution of the epithet Theoi Euergetai, “the beneficent gods,” to Ptolemy III and Berenike II is attested for the first time in a Greek papyrus from August/​September 243 (PSI IV 389)39. It mentions the priest of Alexander, of the Theoi Adelphoi, of the Theoi Euergetai, and the kanephoros of Arsinoë II.40 Both decrees from that reign, that is the Alexandrian Decree (December 3, 243)41 and the Kanopos Decree (March 7, 238)42 confirm the attribution of this epithet to the ruling couple and give the context of such a decision. In fact, because of the benefits of the couple, especially those accrued from the Egyptian temples and cults, the epithet Euergetes and honors were established for them, as well as for their young child Berenike who died during the synod of priests in 238.43 In this context, Berenike II also wears a Horus-​name—​one of the five names of the pharaoh—​in the feminine form in the Kanopos Decree, which is unusual for a queen.44 The dynastic cult is also developed on the walls of the temples. On the Euergetes Gate in Karnak, two scenes facing each other illustrate the insertion of the ruling couple and their ancestors in the Egyptian temples. The first scene shows Ptolemy III making offerings to his divinized parents Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II Philadelphos, while the second shows the god Khonsu inscribing regnal years for the rulers Ptolemy III and Berenike II Euergetes.45 Furthermore, Berenike II also wears a Horus-​name in the feminine form, much as in the Kanopos Decree. Finally, a priestess for the cult of Berenike II, the athlophoros, is established after her death; the priestess is attested for the first time in various demotic papyri of the year 211/​ 210 BCE, that is year 12 of Ptolemy IV.46 78

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The presence of Arsinoë III, wife of Ptolemy IV, in the dynastic cult is very similar to that of Berenike II. First, Arsinoë III shares the divine epithet Theoi Philopatores (“the gods who love their father”) with her brother-​husband. The emphasis on blood is reminiscent of the Theoi Adelphoi. She also receives honors in the Raphia Decree (June 22, 217)  together with the pharaoh47 and is attested in the scene in the Edfu temple in which she and the pharaoh receive regnal years.48 As in the case of Arsinoë II and Berenike II, a priestess is established for her in Alexandria after her death; the priestess is first attested in two demotic papyri in 199/​198 (P. dem Schreibertrad. 26 and P. dem Receuil 8).49 During the reign of her husband Ptolemy V, Kleopatra I receives with him the epithet Theoi Epiphanes “the appearing/​manifest gods” and sometimes Eucharistos “benevolent.” She also bears a Horus-​name in the feminine form in two inscriptions in Edfu,50 and, like her predecessors, she was honored in the Egyptian temples.51 As co-​ruler with her son Ptolemy VI, Kleopatra kept the epithet “Epiphanes.”When Kleopatra I disappears from the joint rule protocols, proba­ bly because she has died, a new priest appears from 177 until 164 in Ptolemais, the “priest of the pharaoh Ptolemy and Kleopatra his mother” (see for example the demotic P. BM EA 10230).52 In 164 two separate priesthoods are established: a “priest of the pharaoh Ptolemy” and a “priestess of Kleopatra the mother, Epiphanes Eucharistos” (first attestation is P. dem. BM EA 10515) until at least 123. After that we have no detailed mention of the list of priests in Thebaid. In contrast, for an unknown reason, there was no priesthood for Kleopatra I in Alexandria. Therefore, Kleopatra I regularly appears—​during the reign of Ptolemy VI alone, or during the co-​rule between Ptolemy VI and his sister Kleopatra II—​in the temple reliefs as an ancestral figure, with her husband Ptolemy V. Considerable changes can be observed in the reigns of Kleopatra II, the daughter of Kleopatra I, who co-​ruled with her two brothers Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII. First, her divine epithet is tailored to fit varying circumstances during her various reigns: she and Ptolemy VI are Theoi Philometores “the gods who love their mother” (175–​145), while she and Ptolemy VIII, and also sometimes Kleopatra III after her, are Theoi Euergetai, “the beneficent gods” (145–​132 and 124–​116), as was also the case for Ptolemy III and Berenike II. The choice for the same epithet as their illustrious predecessor was certainly deliberate. During the civil war of 132–​127, she is Thea Philometor Soteira (“the goddess who loves her mother, the savior”) as a reminder of both her brother Ptolemy VI Philometor and her illustrious ancestor Ptolemy I Soter.53 The second substantial change was the establishment of a priestess of the queen Kleopatra II in September 171 (first attested in P. dem. Louvre E 10440), hence during Kleopatra II’s lifetime, probably to increase the strength of the rulers Ptolemy VI and Kleopatra II prior to the commencement of the Sixth Syrian War (170–​168).54 Kleopatra II, like the other queens before her, is attested in many scenes depicting the transmission of kingship on the walls of the temple.55 The dynastic cult and the divinization of Arsinoë II under the direction of Ptolemy II were the first steps in an elaborate process of legitimating the Ptolemaic dynasty and giving it divine features. During the time of Ptolemy III, the queen was fully integrated into a program that positioned the ruling couple as central to the dynastic cult. Ptolemy IV strengthened this process while reforming the dynastic cult. Another step was reached during the reign of Ptolemy VI when a priestess of the queen was appointed during the latter’s lifetime. The eponymous priest and the festivals in Alexandria played a key role in the dynastic cult. Furthermore, the divine epithets were translated into Egyptian, and the divinized ancestors are represented in the scenes on stelai and walls of temples, together with the ruling couple, who receive regnal years from the gods. Finally, the ancestors and the ruling couple were introduced in the temples as Synnaoi Theoi (“gods sharing the same temple”). This practice served to legitimate the king, with the queen serving as an indispensable partner of the king in this framework. 79

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Ptolemaic queens regularly appear on scenes carved on the walls of the temples, not only as ancestors or members of the dynastic cult, but also as figures making offerings to the gods behind the pharaoh. This is striking, given that presenting offerings was an ancient role of the pharaoh, one which women rarely carried out, but in scenes from the Ptolemaic period, by contrast, the queen is more often present. Berenike I is represented in the temples only as an ancestor alongside Ptolemy I. The first queen to be shown on the walls of the temples is Arsinoë II, who is represented as synnaos thea in the Isis Temple in Philae during the reign of Ptolemy II. Berenike II is then present in the inscriptions and on the scenes during the reign of Ptolemy III. However, as Joliton has shown, Arsinoë III is the first Ptolemaic queen who was frequently represented on the temple walls. She even appears on her own before the god in two reliefs in Philae; a distinction that is probably indicative of her political role during her lifetime.56 Other queens, such as Kleopatra II 57 and especially Kleopatra III and Kleopatra VII, retained this representation of queens in temples. Kleopatra I appears less often on temples than her predecessor Arsinoë III, but this is probably due to the fact that temples were less decorated during her lifetime, when Ptolemy V ruled, and also during her joint rule with Ptolemy VI. Kleopatra I is mentioned in certain inscriptions, but she is represented only as an ancestor alongside Ptolemy V or other members of the royal family.58 As various scholars have shown, the presence of the Ptolemaic queen in temple scenes must be understood as an extension of her political power and official role as one partner of a ruling couple; her presence in such scenes was used to reinforce the dynasty.59

Conclusion Three major elements form the basis of female power in Ptolemaic Egypt: (1) the valorization of the royal matrimonial couple (from at least the time of Berenike II); (2) the system of joint rule with two or three partners (from the time of Kleopatra I); and (3) the dynastic cult (from the time of Arsinoë II). Each reign introduced innovations that were usually accepted and developed by the next ruler, including the institutional revolution of joint rule. However, some innovations were tolerated only because circumstances necessitated it, despite the fact that they were neither valued nor developed: this can be observed in the case of the reign of a single queen. In fact, the strength of the Ptolemaic queens rested on the presence of a mixed–​gender couple. It could be a husband–​wife tandem (inbred or not), as in the case of Berenike II or Kleopatra II. It could also be a mother-​son tandem, as in the case of Kleopatra I, who established the first joint rule with the young Ptolemy VI; or Kleopatra III, who innovated by leading a joint rule with each of her adult sons Ptolemy IX and Ptolemy X; or, finally, Kleopatra VII, who, through her joint rule with her son Caesarion, represents the climax of Ptolemaic female power.

Notes 1 For the queens discussed in this study, see in particular the following treatments: (Arsinoë II) Collombert 2008; Müller 2009; Nilsson 2012; Carney 2013. (Berenike II) Carrez-​Maratray 2014; Clayman 2014. (Arsinoë III) Bielman Sanchez and Joliton 2019. (Kleopatra I and Kleopatra II) Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a; Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b. 2 All the dates should be understood as BCE. 3 The exact date of the marriage is debated (around 275?), see Hazzard 2000: 89–​91; Carney 2013: 70–​82; Caneva 2016: 129, n. 1. 4 See Carney 2013: 71–​2. 5 The Alexandrian poet Theokritos explicitly compares the divine couple and the royal one: Idyll 17.131.

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Ptolemaic royal women 6 For the date of Arsinoë’s death, see pp. 87-9, n. 35. 7 See Chapter 8. 8 See Carrez-​Maratray 2014: 134. 9 Frandsen 2009: 36–​9. 10 For an analysis of all literary sources relating to the couple Ptolemy IV–​Arsinoë III, see Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019. 11 For an analysis of documentary sources relating to this couple, see Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019. 12 About the Decree, see in particular Clarysse 2000: 42–​3. 13 Pernin 2014:  n° 27; Roesch 2007–​2009, IV:  no 152 and 153; Petrakos 1997:  n° 427 and 175; IG IX.12.202; IG XII.5.481; SEG 43: 561; SEG 33: 674; I. Ephesos II.199; Frisch 1975: n° 44. For all these documents, see Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 74–​6. 14 On the ancient sources about this couple, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a. 15 On the ancient sources about this couple, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 51–​76. 16 Ogden 1999: 86.We can see a new parallelism between kings and queens because: (1) both could conclude several unions during their lifetime and (2) the second or third successive husband of a queen gained his legitimacy by this marriage, whereas before, only the woman could gain her legitimacy by her union with a king. 17 A study on Ptolemaic royal couples from 101–​54 BCE is underway by Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo. 18 See Carney 2013: 92–​5. 19 See below, n. 35. 20 The papyri come for the most part from Upper Egypt.The list is given by Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 72. 21 According to Herklotz 2000: 55–​6, we could see a proof of that in the representation of the queen on the coinage during her lifetime, carrying the royal title. For some examples see ANS 1970.2000.1.498; Numismatica Genevensis SA–​Auction 10, Lot 23; SNGUK-​0300-​3416. 22 Bielman Sánchez 2012: 53–​5; Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 70–​4. 23 On the ancient sources about this couple, see Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 82–​5. 24 On this queen, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a. 25 On the document, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 154–​5. 26 See Bielman Sánchez 2017b: 407–​8; Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 170. 27 For this coinage, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 425–​30. 28 On the complete political activities of this queen within several joint rules between 170 and 115, see Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b. 29 For the dynastic cult, see Chapter 9, Quaegebeur 1989; Pfeiffer 2008. For the queens in the temples, see Quaegebeur 1978; Hölbl 2001; Minas 2005; and the complete study of Joliton 2015. 30 In 290/​289 according to Minas 2000: 89. 31 Caneva 2016: 87–​91. 32 Minas 2000: 91; Caneva 2016: 163. Both authors indicate P. Hibeh II 199, but it is P. Hibeh I 199 according to the papyri database Trismegistos.org (TM 2826). 33 See the list in Minas 2000, which gathers the main sources with the divine epithets. 34 For example ANS 1935.117.1084; ANS 1957.191.41; ANS 1944.100.75919. 35 Thiers 2007: 179–​80, 190–​1; Collombert 2008. 36 There is much debate on the date of the death of Arsinoë II, whether it is 270 or 268. See for example Collombert 2008:  83, n.  1; Bennett 2013:  s.v. “Arsinoe II” n.  17; Carney 2013:  104–​5; Caneva 2016:  135–​41. For the cult of Arsinoë II, see most recently Carney 2013:  95–​100; Caneva 2016: 141–​52. 37 See Collombert 2008. 38 Minas 2000: 94. 39 Minas 2000: 102. 40 Clayman 2014: 165–​8. 41 el-​Masry, Altenmüller, and Thissen 2012. 42 Pfeiffer 2004. 43 el-​Masry, Altenmüller, and Thissen 2012: 117–​46; 179–​83. 44 Eldamaty 2011: 24–​9. 45 Clère 1961: pls. 43, 61. 46 See the list in Minas 2000: 116–​7. 47 Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 73.

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Anne Bielman Sánchez and Giuseppina Lenzo 48 Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 79. 49 Minas 2000: 125. 50 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 151–​3; Eldamaty 2011: 29–​33. 51 See the Alexandrian Decree (Philensis II, 186): Nespoulous-​Phalippou 2015: 314; von Recklinghausen 2018: 84–​90; and the Memphis Decree (Philensis I, 185): Nespoulous-​Phalippou 2015: 324–​31; von Recklinghausen 2018: 135–​45. 52 See the list of papyri in Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 161–​3. 53 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b:  77–​114 (Philometor), 194–​5 (Evergetes), 296–​7 (Philometor Soteira), and 480–​3 for a summary for both Kleopatra I and Kleopatra II. 54 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 110–​3. 55 Many examples are cited in Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 476–​80; see also Preys 2015. 56 Bielman Sánchez and Joliton 2019: 76–​82. 57 The presence of Kleopatra II in the temples is listed and commented in Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 115–​28, 203–​11, 224–​36, 260–​70, 360–​80, 466–​8, 476–​80. 58 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 149–​53; Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b: 462–​3, 476–​80; Preys and Degrémont 2013. 59 See for example Hölbl 2001; Minas 2005.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). ANS I. Ephesos P. SNGUK

American Numismatic Society Börker, C. and Merkelbach, R. (eds.) 1979. Die Inschriften von Ephesos. Bonn. The abbreviations for the papyri are those used by Trismegistos (www.trismegistos.org). Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum–​UK

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Ptolemaic royal women Clarysse, W. 2000. “Ptolémées et temples.” In D.Valbelle and J. Leclant (eds.), Le décret de Memphis. Colloque de la Fondation Singer-​Polignac, à l’occasion de la célébration du bicentenaire de la découverte de la Pierre de Rosette. Paris, 41–​62. Clayman, D.L. 2014. Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt. New York. Clère, P. 1961. La Porte d’Evergète à Karnak. Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale 84. Cairo. Collombert, P. 2008. “La ‘Stèle de Saïs’ et l’instauration du culte d’Arsinoé II dans la chôra.” Ancient Society 38: 83–​101. Eldamaty, M.M. 2011.“Die ptolemäische Königin als weiblicher Horus.” In A. Jördens and J.F. Quack (eds.), Ägypten zwischen innerem Zwist und äußerem Druck: die Zeit Ptolemaios’VI. bis VIII. Wiesbaden,  24–​57. el-​Masry Y., Altenmüller, H., and Thissen, H.-​J. 2012. Das Synodaldekret von Alexandria aus dem Jahre 243 v. Chr. Hamburg. Frandsen, P.J. 2009. Incestuous and Close-​Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia. Copenhagen. Frisch, P. 1975. Die Inschriften von Ilion. Bonn. Hazzard, R.A. 2000. Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda. Toronto. Herklotz, F. 2000. “Berenike II. Königin und Göttin.” In A. Lohwasser (ed.), Geschlechterforschung in der Ägyptologie und Sudanarchälogie. Beiträge eines Kolloquiums für Sudanarchäologie und Ägyptologie der Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin (8.5. und 19.6.1999). IBAES II. Berlin, 43–​61. www2.hu-​berlin.de/​ nilus/​net-​publications/​ibaes2/​index.html (accessed June 8, 2020). Hölbl, G. 2001. “Ptolemäische Königin und weiblicher Pharao.” In N. Bonacasa and A. Donadoni Roveri (eds.), Faraoni come dei,Tolemei come faraoni. Turin/​Palermo,  88–​97. Huss, W. 2001. Aegypten in hellenistischer Zeit. Munich. Joliton, V. 2015. Étude iconographique des représentations de la reine dans les temples de l’Egypte ptolémaïque. PhD Dissertation, Université de Lausanne. Minas, M. 2000. Die hieroglyphischen Ahnenreihen der ptolemäischen Könige. Ein Vergleich mit den Titeln der eponymen Priester in den demotischen und griechischen Papyri. Mainz. Minas, M. 2005. “Macht und Ohnmacht. Die Repräsentation ptolemäischer Königinnen in ägyptischen Tempeln.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 51: 127–​54. Müller, S. 2009. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoë II. Berlin. Nespoulous-​Phalippou, A. 2015. Ptolémée Épiphane, Aristonikos et les prêtres d’Égypte: le Décret de Memphis (182 A.C.). Édition commentée des stèles Caire RT 2/​3/​25/​7 et JE 44901. Cahiers Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 12 (I-​II). Montpellier. Nilsson, M. 2012. The Crown of Arsinoe II: The Creation of an Imagery of Authority. Oxford. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London and Swansea. Pernin, L. 2014. Les baux ruraux en Grèce ancienne. Lyon. Petrakos, B. 1997. Hoi epigraphes tou Oropou. Athens. Pfeiffer, S. 2004. Das Dekret von Kanopos (238 v. Chr.): Kommentar und historische Auswertung eines dreisprachigen Synodaldekretes der ägyptischen Priester zu Ehren Ptolemaios’ III. und seiner Familie. Munich. Pfeiffer, S. 2008. Herrscher-​und Dynastiekulte im Ptolemäerreich:  Systematik und Einordnung der Kultformen. Munich. Preys, R. 2015. “Roi vivant et roi ancêtre:  iconographie et idéologie royale sous les Ptolémées.” In C. Zivie-​Coche (ed.), Offrandes, rites et rituels dans les temples d’époques ptolémaïque et romaine. Montpellier, 149–​84. Preys, R. and Dégremont, A. 2013. “Cléopâtre I et la couronne d’Arsinoé. À propos des scènes de culte royal sur la porte ptolémaïque du 2e pylône de Karnak.” In C. Thiers (ed.), Documents de théologies thébaines tardives. Montpellier, 95–​109. Quaegebeur, J. 1978. “Reines ptolémaïques et traditions égyptiennes.” In H. Maehler and M.V. Strocka (eds.), Das ptolemäische Ägypten. Mainz, 245–​62. Quaegebeur, J. 1989. “The Egyptian Clergy and the Cult of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.” Ancient Society 20: 93–​116. Roesch, P. 2007–​2009. Les inscriptions de Thespies. www.hisoma.mom.fr/​sites/​hisoma.mom.fr/​files/​img/​ production-​scientifique/​IT%20IV%20%282009%29.pdf (accessed June 8, 2020). Thiers, C. 2007. Ptolémée Philadelphe et les prêtres d’Atoum de Tjékou: nouvelle édition commentée de la ‘stèle de Pithom’ (CGC 22183). Montpellier. von Recklinghausen, D. 2018. Die Philensis-​Dekrete:  Untersuchungen über zwei Synodaldekrete aus der Zeit Ptolemaios’V. und ihre geschichtliche und religiöse Bedeutung, 2 vols. Wiesbaden.

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Introduction In Berenike II’s lifetime, the mid-​third century BCE,1 royal women were regularly part of the public monarchical representation at the Macedonian courts and seemed to be more “institutionalized” than during the last stage of the Argeads or in early Hellenistic times.2 However, the word basilissa attested for Berenike as a Ptolemaic royal woman marked her status as a member of the dynasty but did not imply any office or specific powers.3 It was not restricted to her as the king’s wife but also applied to her daughters (IG IX I² 1, 56; OGI 56, l. 47). While the spaces of action of Hellenistic royal women varied across dynasties and individuals and no general pattern can be applied regarding their roles, Ptolemaic royal women in particular become visible to us as representatives of their house.4 Images of Berenike II appear in historiography, poetry, cult, visual arts, on artifacts (such as gems or faience jugs), and coins. Nevertheless, the sources on her life, mostly dating to her times as a Ptolemaic basilissa, are scarce. The woman emerging from the evidence is an artificial figure shaped in accordance with Ptolemaic ideology. Thus, the extent to which Berenike was involved in politics remains unclear:  while Ptolemaic monarchical representation made her appear as an active political person at her husband’s side, it is uncertain whether this image reflects the facts.

Berenike’s early years Berenike’s descent illustrates the contemporary “continuing cross-​contamination of Hellenistic dynasties.”5 She was related to the Ptolemaic, Seleukid, and Antigonid houses. Her father was Magas, a stepson of Ptolemy I. The latter had married Magas’ mother Berenike I (Paus. 1.6.6, 7.3), who bore him his successor Ptolemy II and the latter’s later sister-​wife Arsinoë II. Berenike II’s mother, Magas’ wife Apame (Paus. 1.7.3), was the daughter of the Seleukid king Antiochos II and Stratonike, the daughter of Demetrios Poliorketes and his Ptolemaic wife Ptolemais (Porphyrios, BNJ 260 F 32.5). Hence, Berenike II and her later husband Ptolemy III, the son of Ptolemy II and his first wife Arsinoë I, were cousins sharing the same paternal grandmother. However, the third Ptolemaic couple was publicly represented as full siblings and children of the preceding couple of (real) siblings, Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II (Kallim. F 110.43–​78 Pf.; Hyg. astron. 2.24; OGI 56, ll. 7–​8).6 This fictitious parentage making them “protocolar” siblings was in 84

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accordance with the ideological ideal established by Ptolemy II: a royal nuclear family of parents and children all descending from the founding couple Ptolemy I and Berenike I, imagined as a series of loving royal couples conveying double benefits to their friends, allies, and population.7 Berenike bore a typical Macedonian female name that reflected one of the distinctive phonetic peculiarities of the Macedonian language, in the current debate mostly seen as a northwestern Greek dialect with ties to Doric: the Macedonians said β (beta) instead of φ (phi) (Plut. Mor. 292 E). Hence, the Greek name Pherenike (“bearer of victory”) was transformed into the Macedonian name Berenike. Berenike’s upbringing lies in darkness. Her native land, the Kyrenaika, was a granary situated on the North African coast. The city of Kyrene, founded in the seventh century by Greek settlers from Thera, was the Kyrenaika’s commercial center, connected with Egypt and Nubia through the caravan trading network of the Libyan desert. Taking over his satrapy, Egypt, in 323, Ptolemy followed the example of Alexander, who had established Macedonian control over the Kyrenaika in 332/​331.8 In 300, Magas was appointed by Ptolemy as Kyrene’s governor (Paus. 1.6.8, 7.1), a clear mark of confidence: the fertile, prosperous Kyrenaika was a key geostrategic possession.9 Magas seemed to have stayed loyal as long as Ptolemy I was in charge. He revolted only after the death of Ptolemy I, allied with the Seleukids, against Ptolemy II (Paus. 1.7.1–​3).10 While Magas’ march on Alexandria failed, the Kyrenaika was half-​autonomous in the aftermath.11 At some point Magas even adopted the title basileus, attested by the legend of his coins.12 Kyrene experienced a cultural blossoming. Berenike would have been accustomed to a refined court life. Berenike first entered the historical scene when she became involved in paternal marriage politics. At some—​debated—​point (in the 250s or 260s)13—​toward his reign’s end, according to Trogus-​Justin (26.3.2)—​Magas reconciled with Ptolemy II, a reconciliation sealed by the betrothal of one of Ptolemy’s sons and Magas’ only child Berenike. After Magas’ death (dated to 259/​8 or 250–​48), his realm was to return to Ptolemaic rule. Since Magas left no son, he perhaps tried to spare the Kyrenaika any struggles against Ptolemaic expansionist interest. Most scholars believe that the future Ptolemy III was Berenike’s fiancé. Lorber hints at the possibility that the reconciliation occurred before 259 and involved Ptolemy “the son,” Ptolemy II’s enigmatic co-​ruler (268/​7–​259), who had apparently been removed from the line of succession after he rebelled against his father (Trog. Prol. 26; Polyain. Strat. 5.25; App. Syr. 65).14 After Magas’ death, a court faction assembled around his widow Apame and intervened against the Ptolemaic claims by arranging a marital bond with the rival Antigonids. Antigonos II Gonatas sent his half-​brother Demetrios, nicknamed Kalos (“the Handsome”), a son of Apame’s grandfather Demetrios Poliorketes, as an alternative match for Berenike. Demetrios ruled the Kyrenaika for a short time (Just. 26.3.3–​4).15 McAuley emphasizes that the arrangement shows that Apame never ceased to cultivate ties to the maternal side of her natal family.16 Her role in the matter also illustrates Carney’s argument that regarding marriage policy, royal women were not always or usually “genetic tokens” but “dynastic go-​betweens with enduring ties to the oikos of their birth.”17 The Antigonid alternative was not unanimously welcomed in the Kyrenaika. Apparently as a result of the longstanding factional strife between an “aristocratic” or oligarchic faction and a “democratic” faction (Diod. 18.19.2–​7), Demetrios was killed. The “democratic” faction temporarily got the upper hand and invited the Greek legislative reformers Ekdelos and Demophanes to preserve the Kyrenaika’s freedom (eleutheria: Polyb. 10.22.3; Plut. Philop. 1.4).18 It is uncertain whether Berenike played any role during this short interlude of autonomy. Thereafter, the Kyrenaika was restored to the Ptolemies, sealed by the marriage of Ptolemy III

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and Berenike II. In the absence of explicit evidence, it is assumed that the wedding occurred in 246, shortly after his succession.19 Unfortunately, our main source on the aforementioned events (Just. 26.3.3–​8) tells a sensationalist tale that reveals more about Trogus-​Justin’s moral view than about the struggle for the Kyrenaika’s future. The narrative focuses on stock images of a dissolute court life and ends up in a bedchamber scene: allegedly, Demetrios behaved most arrogantly, Apame fell for him, and the upset soldiers killed him while he lay in bed with her.20 Styled as Apame’s counter-​ image, Berenike showed courage and piety toward her parents (the Roman virtue of pietas erga parentes): by instigating Demetrios’ murder, she paid respect to Magas’ marriage plans. By trying to save Apame’s life, she honored her mother. However, Apame is never heard of again and may have been eliminated together with Demetrios and his supporters. Against the background of the Kyrenaian factional strife, the degree of Berenike’s personal involvement in Demetrios’ murder is uncertain.

Berenike as a Ptolemaic basilissa Most evidence on Berenike dates to the period of her second marriage to Ptolemy III. He inscribed her name into the imperial landscape by (re)naming cities after her. One of the—​ if much debated—​examples may be Kyrenaian Euesperides, renamed Berenike.21 Frequently, Berenike’s visibility is connected with the Ptolemaic ruler cult that served to bind the empire together and align the population with the Ptolemies.22 In 244/​243, Berenike and Ptolemy were deified during their lifetime as Theoi Euergetai (“Benefactor Gods”) (OGI 56, l. 8)—​a programmatic cult epithet that emphasized the blessings the couple claimed to provide, one that was understandable to Greeks, Macedonians, and Egyptians.23 The blueprint of their apotheosis was the Greek and Egyptian cult of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II as Theoi Adelphoi (“Sibling Gods”).The reference to the eponymous priest in the dating formula of documents brought the Theoi Euergetai and their deified “parents” constantly to the mind of the population.24 Another way to be virtually (omni)present is illustrated by relicts of faience jugs, affordable ceramics for cultic use, showing portrays of Ptolemaic royal women such as Berenike II standing at an altar and pouring a libation.25 The veneration of the Theoi Euergetai was spread by the soldiers of the Ptolemaic garrisons (Austin no. 265) and exported to the allies. For example, in Athens, a cult for the royal couple with its own priest, the festival of the Ptolemaia, a new phyle (subdivision of citizens) called Ptolemaïs (Paus. 1.5.5), and a demos (local community) called Berenikidai (Steph. Byz. s.v. Βερενικίδαι) were installed.26 For Berenike’s cult image, elements of the image of her “mother” Arsinoë II as part of the Theoi Adelphoi and separately as Thea Philadelphos (“Brother-​Loving Goddess”) and Kypris (Aphrodite) Zephyritis were adopted and advanced.27 Responding to the double-​faced character of Ptolemaic rule over Greeks, Macedonians, and Egyptians, in the Egyptian temples such as Philai, Edfu, or Karnak, Berenike was associated by her titles and iconography with Re’s daughter Hathor (who could be assimilated with Isis).28 On reliefs, Berenike wears Hathor’s headdress with the plumes, horns, and sun disk.29 It is not proof that Berenike took an active role in creating and promoting her own cultic image. On the reverse of Ptolemaic coins minted in Berenike’s name, as a variant of the double cornucopia—​Arsinoë II’s unique attribute, reportedly invented by Ptolemy II to symbolize double Ptolemaic benefactions—​,30a single cornucopia appears. It is wrapped in the royal diadem and filled with fruits, cake and, as a new addition, grain, which points at Berenike’s association with Demeter, maybe in connection with her descent from the Kyrenaian granary.31 The cornucopia is mostly accompanied by the symbols of the Dioskouroi: two stars or two conical 86

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caps.32 According to Kallimachos, likely reflecting an official claim, the Dioskouroi, wanderers between the spheres of the mortals and immortals and often evoked as saviors of seafarers, took Arsinoë II to heaven (F 228 Pf.). Fittingly, one of her divine functions was the protection of the Ptolemaic maritime power. The symbols of the Dioskouroi on the coins bonded Berenike II ideologically with them and the deified Arsinoë. On coins showing Berenike’s daughter Arsinoë III on the obverse, a single star appears on the reverse, certainly a reference to Berenike’s catasterized lock.33 Reportedly, Arsinoë III imitated her mother’s dedication of a lock (Anth. Gr. 6.277), perhaps on the eve of the battle of Raphia in 217 where she appeared together with her sibling husband Ptolemy IV (Polyb. 5.83.3, 84.1, 87.6).34 Berenike II and Ptolemy III had six children: Arsinoë, Ptolemy, Magas, Alexandros, a child whose name is unknown, and Berenike.35 The names, each accompanied by their ethnic identifier “Macedon,” are preserved on the statue bases that are left of a family group at Thermos in northwestern Greece (IG IX 1² 1, 56), likely commissioned by the Aitolians, with whom Ptolemy had allied in 229/​228.36 According to the contemporary Decree of Kanopos (238), little Berenike died as a child and was consecrated as ἀνάσσης παρθένων (“Mistress of Virgins”) (OGI 56, ll. 45–​73).37 Her cult statue was introduced into the Egyptian temples and adorned with a special crown made of two ears of grain, an asp, and a papyrus-​shaped scepter (OGI 56, ll. 61–​63).The grain as an iconographic element hints at her mother’s association with Demeter and implies that little Berenike was paralleled with Demeter’s daughter Persephone, both linked to fertility.38 Accordingly, the first grains were to be sacrificed to the new goddess and the wives of the priests received a “loaf of Berenike” (OGI 56, ll. 68, 72–​73).The population was supposed to participate in mourning the dead child,39 another means to align the people to the Ptolemies. Even the dead members of the dynasty were involved in its promotion, sometimes particularly successfully. Ptolemy III died in 222/​221 and was succeeded by Ptolemy IV. Shortly after, in 221, Berenike was eliminated, reportedly by poison, on the instigation of the influential courtier Sosibios, who had built his career under Ptolemy III (Polyb. 5.36.1; 15.25.1–​2). Presumably, Berenike was killed because she and her faction had supported her other son Magas, who also had to die (Plut. Kleom. 33.5; Just 30.1.2), or because they at least tried to cut Sosibios’ influence.40 However, the background is blurred by the bias of our literary sources, which concentrate on a stereotypical depiction of the loss of morals and political decline at the Ptolemaic court.

Poetic images of Berenike II Berenike is particularly present in contemporary Alexandrian poetry that addressed a sophisticated courtly audience and reflected the main elements of Ptolemaic ideology, cultural politics, and dynastic representation.41 Kallimachos of Kyrene, Berenike’s compatriot, who had sung her father’s praise (F 388 Pf.) and celebrated her as a fourth Grace (Ep. 51 Pf.), is one of the most famous Hellenistic poets. She essentially owed her posthumous fame to him. Kallimachos’ Aitia—​a series of poetic explanations for the origin of current circumstances tracing the evolution to third-​century Alexandria—​contain two poems on Berenike. The famous Lock of Berenike (Greek:  Βερενίκης πλόκαμος; Latin:  Coma Berenices) is regarded as reflecting a “foundational story for the third generation of the Ptolemaic dynasty,” engineered by the court.42 While the Greek original only survives in fragments (F 110 Pf.), it is preserved as a whole by the Latin translation of the Roman poet Catullus (Carm. 66).43 The poem’s historical setting is the so-​called Third Syrian War (246–​241). At the beginning of his rule, Ptolemy III invaded the Seleukid territory. In 252, his sister Berenike had married 87

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Antiochos II (App. Syr. 65). Since she bore Antiochos II a son and potential heir, Ptolemy III felt justified to interfere in Seleukid succession matters when, after Antiochos II’s death, not his nephew but Seleukos II, Antiochos II’s son by his other wife Laodike, succeeded (Polyain. Strat. 8.50; Polyb. 5.58.11).44 Officially waging war either to support or avenge his sister and nephew—​they were assassinated and the exact date is debated (Austin no. 266, col. IV 20–​22; Polyain. 8.50; Just. 27.1.7)—​,45 Ptolemy claimed to have reached Baktria (OGI 54, ll. 18–​20). In fact, he came as far as Babylon (App. Syr. 65). His Eastern achievements were only ephemeral, but he established control over Seleukia in Pieria, Ephesos, and Miletos.46 According to Kallimachos, when Ptolemy departed, his young wife Berenike vowed to sacrifice a lock of her hair if he would return safely—​a variant of a Greek custom (Il. 23.140–​149). Berenike kept her promise, according to Hyginus (astron. 2.24) at the temple of her ideological mother Arsinoë II at Cape Zephyrion near Alexandria. Arsinoë was venerated there as Kypris Zephyritis, a protectress of Ptolemaic seafaring and young love.47 The lock was blown up to the sky, transformed into a star and discovered by the astronomer and mathematician Konon. The lock’s catasterization is mostly interpreted as a prelude to Berenike’s deification that followed soon, together with that of her husband.48 Literally, Berenike’s name was inscribed into the stars: a star constellation located between Virgo and Leo is called Coma Berenices.49 In his poem, Kallimachos shows a romanticized picture of the royal couple. In the voice of Berenike’s lock itself as an eye-​witness, he provides an artificial insight into the honeymoon suite (Catull. 66.11–​25). The theme of mutual love, passion, and harmony in the royal house as one key factor of the dynastic image, engineered by Ptolemy II, served to ensure that the offspring was legitimate, the house stood solid as a rock, provided peace and prosperity, and kept any succession struggles at bay.50 Kallimachos skillfully combines the royal love theme with the celebration of Arsinoë Zephyritis as a protectress of the Ptolemaic (maritime) power and with the image of Berenike following in her footsteps. As for Berenike’s warlike and naval image, according to one of the different interpretations of a mosaic from Thmouis (eastern Delta) signed by the artist Sophilos and dated to the third century, it may show her as embodying Ptolemaic naval prowess. The mosaic shows a figure with a shield and purple cloak, holding a mast with its yardarm adorned with the diadem and wearing a ship’s prow on the head.51 It is debated to what extent the Greek poets at the Ptolemaic court of Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III—​ dominated by Macedonians and Greeks—​ reflected Egyptian themes. Some scholars suggest that Kallimachos’ Lock paralleled Isis’ mourning of Osiris or Hathor-​Tefnout’s transformation from a wild lioness into a soft (still warlike) beauty, or showed Berenike as a guarantor of world order in Egyptian terms by locating the catasterized lock at the battlefield of the nightly fight between chaos and order.52 However, other scholars recognize the construction of a purely Greek literary space with only marginal references to Egyptian themes that were common knowledge and not directed at an Egyptian audience.53 Another matter of debate is the suggestion that Demetrios’ assassination was inconvenient for Berenike’s image as a Ptolemaic basilissa and had to be retold in a way favorable to her.54 Kallimachos’ reference to Berenike’s brave or noble deed (bonum facinus) in his Lock is often interpreted as an allusion to the murder.55 According to Clayman, in his oeuvre, Kallimachos referred multiple times to the incident, transforming the resolute girl into a virgin bride pure of heart, dutiful wife, and loving mother, associated with Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, Isis, and their links to marriage, fertility, and love.56 However, even if Kallimachos alluded to Demetrios’ assassination—​the suggestion is not uncontested—​,57 it is far from certain that he did so in order to justify Berenike. It is not even clear that she had any image problems. Her—​undefined—​involvement in Demetrios’ murder 88

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may have been a problem at the Antigonid court. But it is doubtful that at the Ptolemaic court, the elimination of an Antigonid who had snatched away the rich Kyrenaika, thus an act that paved the way for its return under Ptolemaic control, required any justification or positive reinterpretation. In addition, the Ptolemaic court was a political world. The courtiers were knowledgeable about the mechanisms of marriage policies, factional strife, and establishment of political control, which often involved violence. Clayman’s thesis that in his epic Argonautika—​a modernized version of Jason’s search for the golden fleece with allusions to Alexander III’s wars—​Apollonios Rhodios created a more negative version of Berenike (paralleling her to the murderous Medea) and therefore was replaced as the head of the Alexandrian library,58 is similarly speculative. Gutzwiller interprets Medea’s role in the Argonautika—​in her view “a foundation story in which the Argonauts’ connection to Africa becomes a mythical precedent for the new Ptolemaic kingdom”—​as a sign of “a cultural audience coming to terms with women’s power and privilege,” thus a marker of the increasing visibility of Macedonian royal women such as Berenike.59 In the Victoria Berenikes in his Aitia, Kallimachos celebrates Berenike’s chariot victory at the Nemean Games (SH 254–​268). Hellenistic royals like her participated through the patronage of professional charioteers and provision of the racing horses.60 A victory at the Panhellenic games stressed her Hellenic persona and contributed to the glory of her house.61 Connecting Berenike’s success with the foundation of the Nemean Games by Herakles, benefactor of the Greeks and ancestor of the Argeads and Ptolemies, Kallimachos suggests a heroic (and ancestral) prototype for it.62 Berenike’s equestrian victories at Panhellenic games were also praised in the epigrams of the Milan papyrus, ascribed to Poseidippos of Pella, another poet working in Alexandria under Ptolemaic patronage.63 In 211/​210, roughly a decade after her assassination, Ptolemy IV installed a separate cult for his mother Berenike and appointed her own annual priestess called athlophoros (“prize-​bearer”) (OGI 90, l.  5), apparently referring to Berenike’s victories at the Panhellenic games.64 It is suggested that he tried to exploit her reputation as a winner in times of political crisis.65 In the ruler cult, her priestess got precedence over the kanephoros (“bearer of a (sacred) basket”), the priestess of Arsinoë II’s separate cult, on which it was likely modeled. The cultic presence of the Ptolemaic royal women left its traces: female members of Egyptian priestly families were given the names Berenike and Arsinoë.66

Regency and co-​rule? The assumption that Berenike II acted as regent of the Kyrenaika (before her marriage to Ptolemy III and/​or during his war) and/​or of the Ptolemaic empire during the war in Asia,67 is based on a—​disputed—​interpretation of numismatic evidence. There exist Kyrenaian silver didrachms and bronze coins struck in the name of the basilissa Berenike showing a diademed unveiled female bust with a melon coiffure (the typical hairstyle of female Ptolemies on portraits, named after its shape) on the obverse. It is widely assumed that Berenike II was the issuing authority and that the coins implied that she acted as regent in the Kyrenaika or the Ptolemaic empire.68 However, according to recent re-​evaluations, these Berenike coins were likely issued under Magas and showed his mother Berenike I.69 This identification with Berenike I  had been suggested before.70 As a parallel, Magas issued matching coins with Ptolemy I’s portrait and linked both series by his monogram (Μ). Lorber sees the two series as a demonstration of Magas’ goodwill after his reconciliation with Ptolemy II: the latter’s parents and prime factors of his dynastic legitimization were shown, perhaps as a variant of their jugate portrait on Ptolemy II’s Alexandrian coins.71 89

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Similarly, the legend naming the basilissa Berenike on the reverse of the famous issues from Egypt showing her veiled and diademed portrait on the obverse do not imply that she was the issuing authority: it only indicates that the coins were minted in her name, perhaps in honor of her.72 The use of these, the largest silver and gold pieces ever struck by the Ptolemies, probably issued for special occasions, is still debated.73 In sum, the numismatic evidence does not support the thesis that Berenike II ruled the Kyrenaika after Magas’ death or the united Ptolemaic Empire during Ptolemy III’s absence. Berenike’s Egyptian titles are often quoted as another indicator of her assumed (co-​)regency, particularly because she was the first Ptolemaic royal woman to receive a female Horus name.74 However, Herklotz stresses the peculiarity that Berenike, the female Horus title’s bearer, does not appear on her own but always in connection with her husband, the bearer of the male Horus title.75 Her titles might have been an attempt by the Egyptian priests to translate Berenike’s prominent role in the dual Ptolemaic representation into Egyptian terms.76 Granted this, the titles cannot be seen as a proof of any political regnal functions.

Conclusion Berenike’s appearance as her husband’s complement in the official monarchical representation is not proof that she was his co-​regent. All that we can say is that according to their public dynastic image in accordance with the ideological guidelines installed by Ptolemy II, the mastermind of the Ptolemaic dual representation, they appeared as an inseparable unity. It is uncertain to what extent this was more than just an image. Thanks to Kallimachos and his reception by Catullus, Berenike did not cease to be remembered. The Coma Berenices was acknowledged as a star constellation of its own in the sixteenth century CE.77 The historical Berenike vanished behind her artificial images in the  Ptolemaic representation policy. The extent of her freedom of movement and possible influence on the politics of her native and marital houses remains uncertain.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Cathy Lorber. Unless indicated otherwise, all dates are BCE. 2 Carney 2013: 6; Carney 2011: 203. See also ­chapters 26 and 27 in this volume. 3 Carney 2019: 112–​5; Carney 2011: 202 (the functional significance varied); Carney 2010: 419–​20; Carney 1991. 4 Carney 2011: 196, 202, 205. 5 Carney 2011: 195; Ager 2003: 41. 6 Hose 2015: 301; Weber 2011: 89; Pfeiffer 2004: 16; Carrez-​Maratray 2008. Just. 26.3.3 calls Berenike’s mother Arsinoë instead of Apame. This may either be erroneous (Lorber 2018:  I.1, 68, n.  84)  or conforming to the Ptolemaic protocol (van Oppen de Ruiter 2015: 11). In a Greek inscription from Thermos, probably dating to the 320s, Berenike is, however, called “the daughter of Magas” (IG IX 1² 1, 56). On the background of Ptolemy II’s sibling marriage see Carney 2013: 65–​82; Prioux 2011: 215–​8, 224; Müller 2009: 105–​11. 7 See Chapter 29; Müller 2017; Carney 2013: 70–​82; Ager 2005; Ogden 1999: 80; Carney 1987. 8 Alexander:  Curt. 4.7.9–​10; Diod. 17.49.2–​3; Ptolemy:  Diod. 18.21.6–​9. Cf. Worthington 2016:  94; Müller 2016: 224–​32, 236–​40; Pfeiffer 2015: 26–​33; McAuley 2015: 428–​31; Hölbl 1994: 19; Laronde 1987: 85–​91. 9 Worthington 2016: 114, 174; Thompson 2003: 106–​7; Hölbl 1994: 21; Laronde 1987: 356–​61. 10 McAuley 2016: 179 (Magas married Apame before his revolt); Grainger 2010: 81–​91. 11 Ager 2003: 38. 12 Lorber 2018: I.1, 33; I.2, 81 B 255. Cf. McAuley 2016: 179; Hölbl 1994: 36.

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Berenike II 13 McAuley 2016:  181–​2; Clayman 2014:  34–​5; Grainger 2010:  146–​50; Huß 2001:  333; Laronde 1987: 380–​1. On the higher dating see Lorber 2018: I.1, 68, 117; Forrer 1969: 11. On the lower dating see Clayman 2014: 34–​5; Huß 2001: 333; Hölbl 1994: 44. Athen. 12.550 B attributes a 50-​year reign to Magas (however, citing a biased fragment of Agatharchides of Knidos: BNJ 86 F 7). For the chronological difficulties see van Oppen de Ruiter 2015: 7–​22; Buttrey 1997: 37–​41. 14 Lorber 2018: I.1, 68, n. 82 argues that this nullified the marital arrangement and there was no evidence whether or when the betrothal was negotiated in favor of Ptolemy III. For the debate on the identity of Ptolemy the son see Carney 2013: 125–​6, 144–​5; Müller 2009: 94–​100. 15 D’Agostini 2017; Ager 2003: 44; Laronde 1987: 380–​2. 16 McAuley 2016: 177–​89. Cf. D’Agostini 2017; Clayman 2014: 36; Hölbl 1994: 44. 17 Carney 2011: 208, argueing against Ogden 1999: 155. 18 McAuley 2016: 185–​7; Lorber 2018: I.1, 68; McAuley 2015: 428–​33; van Oppen de Ruiter 2015: 7–​ 22; Clayman 2014: 36–​7; Llewellyn-​Jones and Winder 2010: 248; Hölbl 1994: 44; Laronde 1987: 382. Barbantani 2011: 191 sees a reference to the factional struggle in Kallimachos’ Hymn to Apollon, ll.  25–​7. 19 Clayman 2014: 38–​9; Huß 2001: 333–​4, 426; Hölbl 1994: 46. 20 Obviously, Trogus-​Justin or his source interpreted Demetrios’ nickname in a one-​dimensional way. In Greek eyes, kalos was not restricted to physical beauty but encompassed inner virtues. Contra Clayman 2014: 37. 21 Clayman 2014: 39–​40, 133. Another example might be mentioned by Joseph. AJ 8.163. However, it is debated after which Berenike the cities carrying her name were renamed. On the symbolism of eponymous cities see Carney 1988. 22 Weber 2010: 71; Thompson 2003: 115. 23 Pfeiffer 2015: 88–​91, no. 15; Weber 2011: 89, 94; Weber 2010: 71; Pfeiffer 2004: 16–​17; Chaniotis 2003: 437; Huß 2001: 337–​8. Cf. Chapter 9 in this volume. 24 Chaniotis 2003: 437. 25 Clayman 2014: 168–​71; Pfeiffer 2004: 282; Plantzos 1999: 43–​4, 48; Thompson 1973: 20, no. 139. 26 Palagia 2007: 237–​8; Huß 2001: 358; Habicht 1997: 182–​3; Hölbl 1994: 51–​2. 27 Carney 2013: 106–​10; Müller 2009: 134–​8, 262–​6; 280–​300, 385–​6. 28 Llewellyn-​Jones and Winder 2010: 256–​64. Cf. Prioux and Trinquier 2015: 47–​8; Carney 2013: 8–​9; Pfeiffer 2004: 32. 29 Pfeiffer 2004; Herklotz 2000: 46–​54. 30 Ath. 11.497b–​c. Cf. Carney 2013: 114–​5; Müller 2009: 373–​80. 31 Müller 2009:  352–​3; Mørkholm 1991:  106. On the association with Demeter see Hölbl 1994:  99; Pantos 1987. 32 Clayman 2014: 129; Müller 2007: 152–​3; Schwentzel 2000: 101; Beyer-​Rotthoff 1993: 28. 33 Müller 2007: 153. 34 Huß 2001:  464; Gutzwiller 1992:  371–​2; Hölbl 1994:  115–​6. According to the categorization of Carney 2004: 184–​95, this is symbolic leadership. 35 Huß 1975: 312–​20. 36 Lorber 2018: I.1, 151. Huß 1975: 320 tentatively dates the group to 324. On the alliance see Hölbl 1994: 51. 37 Pfeiffer 2004: 144–​94; Hölbl 1994: 102–​3. 38 It may also allude to Osiris. Clayman 2014: 167–​8; Pfeiffer 2004: 268–​9. 39 Clayman 2014: 167–​8. In the city Arsinoë in Kilikia, the cult for little Berenike was also celebrated (Austin no. 272, l. 33). 40 Clayman 2014:  172, 183; Clayman 2011:  243; Herklotz 2000:  46; Hölbl 1994:  111–​12; Macurdy 1932: 135. On Sosibios (PP VI 77239) see Huß 2001: 458–​9. 41 Harder 2010: 94–​5, 105; Strootman 2010: 37–​44. See also Chapter 10 in this volume. On poetry at the Ptolemaic court in general see Strootman 2017; Barbantani 2010; Weber 1993. 42 Gutzwiller 2007: 67. Cf. Prioux 2011: 203–​4. 43 Marinone 1997: 55–​8. Cf. Rossi 2000. 44 See Coşkun 2016: 123–​5; Chapters 15 and 17 in this volume. 45 Clayman 2014: 126–​7; Austin 2006: 463–​4, with n. 6; Huß 2001: 341–​4. Cf. Strootman 2014: 236–​7. 46 Coşkun 2016: 111; Ager 2003: 43–​4; Huß 2001: 338–​52; Hölbl 1994: 46–​50. 47 It is debated whether, according to Kallimachos, the lock was dedicated in the temple of Kypris Zephyritis (Clayman 2014:  128; Prioux 2011:  219; Carrez-​ Maratray 2008:  112–​ 13; Bertazzoli 2002:  147; Stephens 2002:  241; Gutzwiller 1992:  363; Macurdy 1932:  133) or in another temple,

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Sabine Müller close to the Alexandrian port, and blown to Cape Zephyrion (Strootman 2014: 214; Asper 2004: 175, n. 100; Huß 2001: 353). Cf. Marinone 1997: 160–​2. On the Greek model for the hair-​cutting ritual see Clayman 2014: 100; Gutzwiller 1992: 369–​73; Nachtergael 1980: 240–​5, 247–​53. 48 Stephens 2002: 242; Huß 2001: 354; Koenen 1993: 90. 49 Van Oppen de Ruiter 2015: 109; Clayman 2014: 101; Marinone 1997: 181. 50 Carney 2013: 37; Prioux 2011: 207–​9; Müller 2009: 136–​8. 51 Clayman 2014: 136; Palagia 2007: 243; Andreae 2003: 35–​6; Koenen 1993: 27. A second mosaic is either held for a copy of the first or for a portrait of Arsinoë II (Kuttner 1999: 111–​13). Cf. Carney 2013: 164, n. 64. On Berenike’s portraits cf. Schernig 2004; on intaglios portraying her see Plantzos 1999: 48, 50, 114 nos. 30–​2. 52 Prioux 2011: 213–​14; Llewellyn-​Jones and Winder 2010: 262 (Hathor was known for her beautiful hair: the Lady of the Lock); Selden 1998; Koenen 1993: 108; Nachtergael 1980. On this approach cf. Stephens 2003; Stephens 2002. 53 Asper 2011: 174–​7; Asper 2004: 19–​20; Gutzwiller 2007: 192–​3. Hunter 2003: 484 notes an apparent lack of interest by Alexandrian poets in Egyptian things. 54 Clayman 2014: 103. Cf. McAuley 2016: 187–​9. 55 Van Oppen de Ruiter 2015: 9; Clayman 2014: 98; Clayman 2011: 231–​44; Ogden 1999: 81; Gutzwiller 1992: 378; Macurdy 1932: 132. 56 Clayman 2014: 78–​104. 57 For an overview including the alternative that it referred to the rescue of her father (Hyg. astron. 2.24.11-​18) see Marinone 1997: 112. 58 Clayman 2014: 105–​20. On Apollonios see Gutzwiller 2007: 74–​84; Hunter 2003: 484. 59 Gutzwiller 2007: 77, 81. Cf. Hunter 2003: 492. 60 Prioux 2011: 202–​3. On the sponsorship see Thompson 2005: 272; Bielman Sánchez 2002: 268–​70; Pomeroy 1984: 20–​2. 61 Hose 2015: 308. 62 Prioux and Trinquier 2015: 44–​5; Prioux 2011: 203; Harder 2010: 96; Hunter 2003: 490; Gutzwiller 1992: 379, n. 54. 63 AB 78–​81; AB 87–​88. Ep. 82. AB mentions the victory of Berenike’s horse at the Isthmian Games. It is debated whether the victor is always Berenike II. Cf. Chapter 10 in this volume; Hose 2015: 299–​316; Clayman 2014: 142–​58; Müller 2009: 229–​38; Kosmetatou 2004: 232; Fantuzzi 2005: 265–​6; Bennett 2005; Criscuolo 2003: 326–​31; Parsons 1977. 64 Weber 2011: 91; Minas 2000: 116–​17. 65 Minas 2000: 111–​12. 66 Carney 2013: 128; Thompson 2003: 115; Pfeiffer 2004: 283. 67 Herklotz 2000:  45, 55–​ 6; Hölbl 1994:  45; Caltabiano 1998; Caltabiano 1996:  188–​ 9; Macurdy 1932: 132 believes in the joint rule of the Kyrenaika (however as an unmarried couple), cf. Llewellyn-​ Jones and Winder 2010: 249. Pfeiffer 2004: 21 thinks that she ruled during the Third Syrian War. 68 Herklotz 2000: 55; Caltabiano 1996: 188–​9; Kyrieleis 1975: 94; Thompson 1973: 85, n. 1. 69 Lorber 2018:  I.1, 116–​ 7; I.2, 77–​ 8, 80–​ 1 (issued in Euesperides); Asolati 2011:  134; Buttrey 1997: 37–​8. 70 Mørkholm 1991: 102; Plantzos 1999: 47; Hazzard 1995: 3; Forrer 1969: 11, nos. 32–​3 (however, dating the issues to Magas’ revolt); Svoronos 1904–​1908: II, 51–​2. 71 Lorber 2018: I.1, 116–​17; I.2, 77–​8, 80–​1.The coins showing Ptolemy I were issued at Kyrene. On the Ptolemaic jugate portraits see Chapter 30. 72 Lorber 2018: I.1, 153, 163, 389, 391–​2, nos. 728–​31; LeRider and de Callataÿ 2006: 37, 52–​3; Mørkholm 1991: 106. The same is true for the special coins (mnaineia) in the name of Arsinoë Philadelphos, cf. Lorber 2018:  I.1, 105–​10; Carney 2013:  120–​2; Müller 2009:  365–​80. Alternatively, the Berenike issues are thought to show Ptolemy III’s sister: Llewellyn-​Jones and Winder 2010: 251; Ager 2003: 43; Hazzard 1995: 5–​6. Contra: LeRider and de Callataÿ 2006: 53. 73 Lorber 2018: I.1, 153, 163–​6; LeRider and de Callataÿ 2006: 37. 74 Lorber 2018: I.1, 148–​9; Minas 2005: 135, 142; Pfeiffer 2004: 21, n. 138, 31, 69; Herklotz 2000: 43, 52–​54; Koenen 1993: 56; Troy 1986: 179. 75 Herklotz 2000: 52–​3. Cf. Hölbl 1994: 99. 76 Given this, it would be comparable to the case of Arsinoë II, cf. Minas 2005: 152. 77 Sprondel and Schröder 2013: 175.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). AB Austin, C. and Bastianini, G. (eds.) 2002. Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia. Milan. Anth. Gr. Greek Anthology Austin Austin, M.  2006. The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest, 2nd ed. Cambridge. Pfeiffer Pfeiffer, R. (ed.) 1949–​53. Callimachus, vols. I–​II. Oxford. PP Peremans, W. and Van’t Dack, E. (eds.) 1950–​2002. Prosopographia Ptolemaica, 10 vols. Leuven. SH Lloyd-​Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (eds.) 1983. Supplementum Hellenisticum. Leiden.

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Berenike II Mørkholm, O. 1991. Early Hellenistic Coinage. Cambridge. Müller, S. 2007. “Arsinoë III.  als Artemis? Zur Ikonographie ptolemäischer Königinnen.” Anzeiger der philosophisch-​historischen Klasse Wien 142: 137–​57. Müller, S. 2009. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoë II. Berlin. Müller, S. 2016. “Kambyses II., Alexander und Siwa:  Die ökonomisch-​geopolitische Dimension.” In C. Binder et al. (eds.), Diwan. Duisburg, 223–​45. Müller, S. 2017. “Visualizing Political Friendship, Family Ties, and Links to the Argead Past in the Time of the Successors.” In F. Landucci Gattinoni and C. Bearzot (eds.), Alexander’s Legacy. Rome, 121–​40. Nachtergael, G. 1980. “Bérénice II, Arsinoé III et l’offrande de la boucle.” Chronique d’Égypte 55: 240–​53. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Palagia, O. 2007. “Berenike II in Athens.” In P. Schultz and R. von den Hoff (eds.),  Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, Style, Context. Cambridge, 237–​45. Pantos, P.A. 1987. “Bérénice II Démèter.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 111: 343–​52. Parsons, P.J. 1977. “Callimachus: Victoria Berenices.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 25: 1–​50. Plantzos, D. 1999. Hellenistic Gems. Oxford. Pfeiffer, S. 2004. Das Dekret von Kanopos (238 v. Chr.). Leipzig. Pfeiffer, S. 2015. Griechische und lateinische Inschriften zum Ptolemäerreich und zur römischen Provinz Aegyptus. Münster. Pomeroy, S.B. 1984. Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra. New York. Prioux, E. 2011. “Callimachus’ Queens.” In B. Acosta-​Hughes, S. Stephens, and L. Lehnus (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden and Boston, 212–​24. Prioux, E. and Trinquier, J. 2015. “L’autruche d’Arsinoé et le lion de Bérénice.” In P. Linant de Bellefonds, E. Prioux, and A. Rouveret (eds.), D’Alexandre à Auguste. Dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie. Rennes, 31–​56. Rossi, L. 2000. “La Chioma di Berenice: Catullo 66, 79–​88, Callimaco e la propaganda di corte.” Rivista du Filologia e d’istruzione classica 128: 299–​312. Schernig, E. 2004. “Berenike II. und die anderen.” Städel Jahrbuch 19: 433–​54. Schwentzel, C.G. 2000.“Les cornes d’abondance ptolémaïques dans la numismatique.” Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille 21: 99–​103. Selden, D.L. 1998. “Alibis.” Classical Antiquity 17: 289–​412. Sprondel, J. and Schröder, B. 2013. “Berenike.” Der Neue Pauly Supplement 8: 175–​86. Stephens, S.A. 2002. “Egyptian Callimachus.” In F. Mantanavi and L. Lehnus (eds.), Callimaque. Sept exposés. Geneva, 235–​62. Stephens, S.A. 2003. Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Berkeley and London. Strootman, R. 2010. “Literature and the Kings.” In J.J. Clauss and M. Cuypers (eds.), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Oxford and Malden, 30–​45. Strootman, R. 2014. Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires. Edinburgh. Strootman, R. 2017. The Birdcage of the Muses: Patronage of the Arts and Sciences at the Ptolemaic Imperial Court, 305–​222 BCE. Leuven. Svoronos, I.N. 1904–​1908. Ta nomismata tou kratous Ptolemaion, 4 vols. Athens. Thompson, D.B. 1973. Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience. Oxford. Thompson, D.B. 2003. “The Ptolemies and Egypt.” In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 105–​20. Thompson, D.B. 2005. “Posidippus, Poet of the Ptolemies.” In K.J. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus. Oxford, 269–​83. Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History. Uppsala. Van Oppen de Ruiter, B.F. 2015. Berenice II Euergetis: Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship. New York. Weber, G. 1993. Dichtung und höfische Gesellschaft. Die Rezeption von Zeitgeschichte am Hof der ersten drei Ptolemäer. Stuttgart. Weber, G. 2010. “Ungleichheiten, Integration oder Adaptation?” In G. Weber (ed.), Alexandreia und das ptolemäische Ägypten. Berlin, 55–​83. Weber, G. 2011. “Der ptolemäische Herrscher-​und Dynastiekult—​ein Experimentierfeld für Makedonen, Griechen und Ägypter.” In L.-​M. Günther and S. Plischke (eds.), Studien zum vorhellenistischen und hellenistischen Herrscherkult. Berlin, 77–​97. Worthington, I. 2016. Ptolemy I: King and Pharaoh of Egypt. Oxford.

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9 ROYAL WOMEN AND PTOLEMAIC CULTS Stefan Pfeiffer

Arsinoë II –​the religious role model of the deified basilissa The special role of the female members of the Ptolemaic dynasty began when Arsinoë II, daughter of Ptolemy I, escaped in the 270s from her murderous half-​brother and husband, king Ptolemy Keraunos in Macedonia, and found refuge with her brother, king Ptolemy II in Alexandria.1 At some point before 273 BCE, Ptolemy took his sister as his spouse (cf. Chapters 7 and 29),2 likely for politico-​dynastic reasons: after Ptolemy I had founded the royal house, his son, eager to foster its legitimacy, presented himself and his spouse as living incarnations of the preceding royal couple.3 In order to create a sacral aura for this unconventional sibling union, he may have equated the marriage of his sister to the marriage of Zeus and his sister Hera, for his Greco-​Macedonian subjects,4 and to Osiris and Isis, for his Egyptian subjects.5 Ptolemy II underlined the importance of the marriage by creating an epithet for his sister: brother-​loving (philadelphos).6

Arsinoë –​a new Greek goddess in Alexandria and beyond Ptolemy’s first aim was to implement a new ruler cult in Alexandria and the vast territories of his empire outside Egypt. He therefore not only deified his parents with the epithet “the savior gods” (Theoi Soteres),7 but also officially propagated his own and his sister’s veneration as the “sibling gods” (Theoi Adelphoi),8 erecting for himself and his wife temples and altars.9 Some time before 272/​271 BCE these “sibling gods” were attached to the cult of Alexander the Great in Alexandria, too. The eponymous priest, mentioned in every dating protocol in the Ptolemaic empire, was from now on “priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi.”10 The official character of the two new gods can be seen by the fact that Ptolemy and Arsinoë were also included in the official oath formula, a practice that lasted until the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.11 Since Arsinoë II had died the end of the 270s BCE,12 she would have been Ptolemy’s consort for only about five years. It is therefore difficult to evaluate the political influence she had in running the empire.13 The least one can say is that the court wanted her to appear as active co-​ruler.14 She even dedicated the largest round building we know from the Greek world to the sanctuary of the Great Gods in Samothrace; however, one does not know if she already had the means to do this as spouse of King Ptolemy Keraunos, or only after she had married her 96

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full brother.15 The dedication itself nevertheless emphasizes the important role of the wife of a Hellenistic king. Granted her short “reign,” her influence would have nevertheless had limited effect on Ptolemy’s politics, whereas after her death, her image and her cult played a preponderant role in the representation of kingship and empire.16 Most scholars therefore think that her complete apotheosis as thea philadelphos was posthumous.17 Soon after her death, Ptolemy II established an eponymous priestess called “bearer of the (golden) basket” (kanephoros), who was responsible for the cult of the goddess Arsinoë,18 and who was listed after the “priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi” in every official dating formula.19 A feast called the Arsinoeia was also instituted in Alexandria for the new goddess.20 The epithet of the priestess shows that processions were an important part of the rituals of the newly instituted cult. Since processions were normally conducted along the most important official and religious places of a city like Alexandria, the aim was to achieve visibility of the new goddess, to publicize her and encourage the citizenry to participate in the cult. Normally such processions were combined with abundant food and free wine,21 surely guaranteeing a positive emotional connection to Arsinoë. It is likely that so-​called Ptolemaic oinochoai, special wine jugs made of faience that show pictures of Arsinoë II and later other Ptolemaic queens, were used to make wine libations in the context of this or similar royal processions for Ptolemaic basilissai.22 On some of these wine-​pitchers a Greek inscription equates Arsinoë with Isis, which clearly demonstrates that even a Greek-​ styled festival could incorporate an “Egyptian face” for the Ptolemaic queen.23 Sometimes the basilissai on these jugs are also presented as the hybrid Greco-​Egyptian Isis with her typical, but newly created, costume, a mantle that is tied between the breasts with a so-​called Isis knot.24 Arsinoë II was honored with a temple at the harbor of Alexandria, just to the west of the palace quarter. The erection of the highest obelisk ever built in Egypt, measuring 42 meters, inside her temple, asserted Arsinoë’s connection to her homeland.25 Admiral Kallikrates, one of the highest-​ranking Ptolemaic functionaries, dedicated another temple to this new “basilissa Arsinoë Aphrodite” at Cape Zephyrion and combined her name with the epiklesis Kypris, the epithet of Aphrodite of Cyprus, the goddess of the gentle west-​wind (zephyrites).26 With the placement of both temples on the coast and bearing the epithet “fair sailing” (euploia), Arsinoë became a goddess of navigation.27 Thus, eventually she also became a popular goddess of the Ptolemaic navy, as indicated by the many altars dedicated to her throughout the eastern Mediterranean.28 As a goddess in her own right, Arsinoë needed a new attribute, the double cornucopia (dikeras), that directly pointed to the second function of Arsinoë as patron deity of fecundity. Gold coins (mnaieiai) from the later 260s BCE onwards, on the obverse show a veiled Arsinoë II with a ram’s horn around her ear and a lotus scepter behind her and, on the reverse, the double cornucopia, encircled by the inscription “(coin of) Arsinoë Philadelphos.”29 Thus, the figure of Arsinoë established the famous Ptolemaic ruler ideal of tryphe (“living a life of luxury”), an ideal that celebrated the well-​being Ptolemaic rule brought to its subjects.30 The fleshy depiction of the faces of Arsinoë or later queens also embodied tryphe. Again, the new Greek goddess belonged to Egypt too since she had Greek and Egyptian attributes.The aspect of fecundity, also attested by her epithet “the fruit-​bearing” (karpophoros),31 is closely related to the re-​naming of the Faijum oasis, re-​irrigated by Ptolemy II, “district of Arsinoë” (Arsinoites nomos). The foundation of cities on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea named after Arsinoë means that she must have had temples and cults as the eponymous deity of the cities.32 Indeed, the fact, that most city foundations of the Ptolemies were named after basilissai (Arsinoë, Philadelphia, Philoteris, Berenike, or Kleopatris) confirms the importance of the female part of the dynasty for the representation of power.33 In keeping with this policy, Ptolemy II also declared his other sister Philotera a Greek and Egyptian goddess.34 97

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Arsinoë: becoming an Egyptian goddess The Egyptian face of Arsinoë during her lifetime was rather superficial; she even lacked an elaborated titulary as Egyptian co-​regent of her brother.35 However, directly after her death, she was established as an Egyptian goddess, and in this aspect she became one of the most important royal gods of the Ptolemaic era. In every Egyptian temple, statues of “the goddess who loves her brother” were erected.36 Her epithet “female King of Upper and Lower Egypt”37 also assimilated her to Isis, Hathor, and other goddesses.38 A special Egyptian crown, designed for her alone, makes her easily identifiable. It combines the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, out of which stick two feathers, a ram’s horn, cow’s horn, and a solar disk.39 The new cult was funded with a special tax (apomoira) that soldiers and royal functionaries had to pay from the revenues of their orchards and gardens, from which temple land was explicitly exempt.40

Berenike II –​the political role model of Ptolemaic female pharaohs We do not know to what extent Berenike II had real political influence in court life or whether she co-​ruled (see also Chapter 8).41 In any case, there is more to say about her than her predecessors, if one looks at her position in cults and royal cultic activities during her lifetime. Berenike, the daughter of the Kyrenaian king Magas, a brother of Ptolemy II, became “sister and spouse” of Ptolemy III; Kallimachos refers to her as “sacred blood of the Sibling Gods.”42 Apparently the precedent of Arsinoë had worked out so well that the court thought it plausible to continue the ideal of brother–​sister-​marriage as something making the king and his spouse sacral, even when she was not his actual sister. Already at the beginning of Ptolemy’s III reign, cults for the royal “sibling” pair spread over the empire.43 By 243 BCE both Ptolemy III and Berenike II were also added to the official state cult of Alexander the Great, as the “beneficent gods” (Theoi Euergetai), who from now on were included into the titulary of the eponymous priest of Alexander beside their “parents.”44 Like Arsinoë, Berenike II had her own cults in Alexandria, too, as the Ptolemaic oinochoai demonstrate.45 The special position of Berenike was, in the Greek context, shown on gold coins, called Berenikeia nomismata,46 that depict the “fleshy” portrait of the queen.47 She was also the first basilissa to organize cults herself in Alexandria: she dedicated two temples for the well-​being of her spouse, her children, and herself.48 After her death her son Ptolemy IV, following the precedent of Arsinoë II, installed an eponymous priestess for her called “bearer of the victory prize of the beneficent Berenike” (athlophoros Berenikes euergetidos), again a title pointing to the importance of processions in the veneration of the Ptolemaic basilissa. Hereafter, the priestess was to be named directly after the priest of Alexander in every dating formula and before the kanephoros, who was still also appointed every year.49 Her son also established posthumously a special temple, a Berenikeion, for his deified mother in Alexandria.50 Berenike found her way into Egyptian temple religion, too. Here, since the earliest times pharaoh was the sole and only “master of the ceremonies”: by performing the temple rituals he guaranteed the world order called Maat, and this is also presented on thousands of temple reliefs all over Egypt. These reliefs had furthermore a performative function: by showing him acting as cultic agent, the cults were enacted. This performative role of pharaoh as the main agent of cult was also taken over by the foreign pharaohs from Macedonia.51 However, it was slightly changed: in terms of Berenike II’s role in these Ptolemaic temple cults, we can see that the indigenous priests also incorporated her into their temple religion as an active co-​ruler, a female pharaoh. From now on, in temple decoration the royal spouse is very often depicted 98

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behind pharaoh: sometimes assisting him in ritual for the gods, sometimes even performing her own offerings.This was rarely done in pre-​Ptolemaic times and vanished again with the Roman domination.52 Berenike was also the first Ptolemaic royal woman to have her own elaborated titulary, that functioned as a model for all later titularies of Ptolemaic queens.53 The new position that the priests attributed to the royal spouse can also be seen in the so-​called “scenes of ancestor worship” that were depicted on the inner walls of sanctuaries. They show the reigning pharaoh, accompanied by his wife, performing the rituals in front of all his dynastic male and female ancestors. These scenes accentuate the importance of the female pharaoh, because in similar scenes from Pharaonic times, the rituals were performed only by pharaoh and only for male predecessors; furthermore, not just for the pharaoh’s own dynasty, but for all pharaohs from the beginning of Pharaonic rule on.54 Further scenes in temple reliefs, called the “transmission of royalty” and “inscribing the annals” also indicate the new cultic inclusion of the female pharaoh.55 Now male and females were both instituted as sovereigns! And most important: the king and often his consort, because of their attributes (the wâs-​and the wadj-​scepters), are depicted as gods, though the special sandals of the king marked him as the earthly ruler.56 Thus, in Ptolemaic times, male and female pharaohs were understood as complementary entities and both could be considered gods who ruled on earth. We see that priests created Berenike, and from then on every Ptolemaic basilissa, as a co-​ ruler with her spouse, an active agent of the rituals for the gods. A comparison of the sacerdotal Decree of Alexandria from 243 to the one of Kanopos from 238 BCE demonstrates that this function developed in the first decade of Berenike’s co-​rule. If one looks at the motivations of the first one, we only learn about the actions of Ptolemy III alone in favor of the gods, priests, and people of Egypt.57 This has changed by 238 BCE, because now Ptolemy and Berenike together perform every good deed for the temples of Egypt.58 However, this cultic agency resulted not only in benevolence of the Egyptian gods, but in deification of male and female pharaoh, too: in both the decrees of 243 and 238 BCE, the priests declared Ptolemy and his wife Egyptian gods because of their good deeds for Egypt and its temples. Statues of both were erected in the inner sanctuary of every Egyptian temple; they were now Synnaoi Theoi (“temple-​sharing gods”) all over Egypt. Furthermore, the new gods received public festivals lasting several days, with processions of their statues.59 All this was something very new, because pharaoh and especially his spouse were in ancient times not considered gods: the office of pharaoh was divine but not the person, which means that there were no cults for the living pharaoh in Egyptian temples, just offerings for his well-​being.60

The Kleopatras The seven basilissai of the second and first centuries BCE called Kleopatra relied heavily on the cultic conception of the royal spouse as a Greek and an Egyptian goddess, established with Arsinoë II, and on her politico-​religious role as female pharaoh, attributed to her since the time of Berenike II. Moreover, the conception of brother–​sister-​marriage was so deeply rooted that even Kleopatra I, who was of Seleukid origin, was called the sister of the king.61 As she had married her “brother” in 193 BCE, when he was already basileus and thus fully integrated into the Greek and Egyptian ruler cults, the priests of Egypt issued an honorific decree. They state for the ruler (ḥḳ3.t) Kleopatra: [As well the Ruler, the Lady of the Two Lands (Kleopatra), … gave] plenty [of silver, gold and genuine precious stones,] a divine image among [?]‌the gods of Egypt and the goddesses; she made a great offering performing burnt 99

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offerings and libations as well as celebrating festivals for [all] the gods of Egypt a[nd the goddesses. Her piety is great and noble anytime (toward) their affairs and their fields]. (von Recklinghausen and Martinez forthcoming) Kleopatra appears as female pharaoh, performing rituals and donating offerings to the temples, which means that she does the same things the male pharaoh has to do. As a consequence of her cultic agency and donations, the priests ordered that cultic statues of Kleopatra and portable shrines should be created and put beside the shrines of the gods in the sanctuary of every temple in Egypt; Kleopatra, now a goddess, could be venerated together with her spouse and the other Egyptian gods during the Egyptian temple rituals and during special feasts for the ruling couple, when the shrines with the statues of the gods were carried around.62 It is evident that the agency of Kleopatra in Egyptian cults resulted in her deification and cults dedicated to her. After the death of her husband, Kleopatra I was also the first basilissa who ruled in her own right over the Ptolemaic empire. Kleopatras II, III and VII gained real political power, too; they even led armies and had the high command in wars. Temple reliefs (cf. Chapter 3) reflect their political superiority over their husbands or sons.63 In the Greek context, there was also a “flood” of new Alexandrian ruler-​cults for the deified basilissai: Arsinoë II and Berenike II had only one, posthumous eponymous priestess, whereas Kleopatra II got her own priestess when she was still alive64 and a priestess who performed the cult for Kleopatra, the “mother-​loving saving goddess” (Thea Philometor Soteira).65 Her daughter Kleopatra III presented herself as incarnation of Isis, having received a cult by a priest acting as “sacred foal (hieros polos) of Isis, the Great Mother of the Gods.” She had three more priestesses: a processional priestess called stephanephoros, who was carrying a crown, a processional priestess carrying a torch called “phosphoros of basilissa Kleopatra, Thea Euergetis Philometor Soteira Dikaiosyne Nikephoros” and a priestess just called hiereia. Even a cult of her as “Kleopatra Thea Aphrodite who is also Philometor” is attested.66

Conclusion The cultic veneration of the Ptolemaic basilissa began during Arsinoë II’s lifetime, but was extended to her as a thea philadelphos and an Egyptian goddess “who loves her brother” after her death, since the role of the royal spouse as agent in Greek or Egyptian cults had not yet been fully elaborated. With Berenike II the Ptolemaic female pharaoh became the role model for the female agency of the royal spouse in Egyptian temple rituals. She could act as a co-​pharaoh, even performing in her own relevant rituals that complemented those of the king:67 in this context, one can speak of a kind of “duality of power.”68 This conception has firm roots in pharaonic Egypt,69 but the framing and visibility of it was new, especially since this female agency resulted in cultic worship of the agent herself. The same may be the case in Greek cults as well, as we see in the poem “Lock of Berenike,” where the newlywed basilissa is presented as so pious, that even a lock that she had dedicated to the gods became a constellation.70 It was indeed with Berenike II that the worship of the living queen as goddess became a common practice, firmly embedded into Greek and Egyptian temples and rituals. The special thing about the Ptolemaic monarchy was its two-​headed nature, which means that the rulers were not only basileis but also pharaohs. However, in Greek contexts, the basilissa could also have a Greco-​Egyptian representation of her persona, where Egyptian elements supplemented the Greek appearance of the royal goddess. All in all, the depictions of these Greco-​Egyptian basilissai were (nearly) identical with the depictions of the Greco-​Egyptian form of Isis, developed in Alexandria: a presentation of Isis that combines Greek and Egyptian elements (she had curled locks and the newly invented Greco-​Egyptian dress with its Isis-​knot 100

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between the breasts).71 It is thereby clear that the basilissa should be considered a living emanation of Isis.72 This “merged” picture of the basilissa was so prevalent that it dominated female royal representation in Alexandria itself. When a sailor, arriving in Alexandria, looked at the Pharos lighthouse, the first images he saw of the Ptolemies were monumental statues of them in pharaonic outfit.73 Why did Ptolemy II want his deified wife to appear in such a way? His recently founded dynasty lacked either historical or geographical legitimation. The Ptolemies were ethnically Macedonian but not of royal descent and ruling far away from Macedonia, strongly depending on the loyalty of Greco-​Macedonian soldiers and settlers. The Greeks and Macedonians who came to Egypt normally brought their cults with them, or they venerated Egyptian gods by giving them the names of their familiar gods (Zeus could be seen in Amun or Dionysos in Osiris). The court therefore might have thought it helpful to create a new Greek goddess who seemed to non-​Egyptians to be an original Egyptian deity and whose attributes were especially connected to Egypt, but whose cult in reality had elements of Greek tradition combined with clearly Egyptian elements. Greek migrants therefore could focus their veneration on a new Greco-​Macedonian goddess and at the same time establish a relation to their new homeland in a foreign country, since the new Greek goddess with her clearly Greco-​Macedonian name looked Egyptian. As a bonus, this new cult tied their subjects not only to Egypt, but to the reigning dynasty, now legitimized by the ancient and respectable religion of Egypt. Since the majority of Ptolemaic subjects were of Egyptian origin, their loyalty was as necessary as the loyalty of the Greeks. These new Greco-​Egyptian goddesses, with their robes and curled locks, would have looked strange to Egyptians. The crown therefore provided a different approach that presented the female pharaoh as a typical Egyptian goddess. The introduction of a ruler cult into the Egyptian temples was highly important, because the temples could be regarded as an “enorme machine de propagande (enormous propaganda machine).”74 The Egyptian priests who worked out the Egyptian image of the female pharaoh indeed managed to create a new Egyptian goddess who had been adapted to the patterns of visual perceptions familiar to the Egyptians. The temples did their job of winning the hearts and minds of the Egyptians for the dynasty so well, that, despite all the frictions and insurrections, the Ptolemies had the longest lasting dynasty in the long history of pharaonic Egypt.

Notes 1 Müller 2009: 70–​84; on Arsinoë II: Carney 2013. 2 For the terminus ante quem: Thiers 2007: 50–​51; Pithom Stele, ll. 15–​16. 3 Convincingly argued by Carney 2013: 77. 4 Theoc. Id. 17.128–​ 34; cf. Kallim. fr. 392 Pf.; Poseid. 114 AB; see also the dedication of the two statues of Ptolemy and Arsinoë just in front of the Zeus temple of Olympia by the admiral Kallikrates: Hoepfner 1971. 5 Paus. 1.7.1; on brother–​sister-​marriage as an allegedly common Egyptian practice:  Remijsen and Clarysse 2008. 6 OGI II 725; Fraser 1972: I 217; II 367, n. 228; II 377, n. 311, pace Caneva 2016: 146–​8; list of Arsinoë Philadelphos dedication in Caneva 2014: Appendix; see also Caneva 2016: 133. 7 Theoc. Id. 17.34–​52, 121–​5; Ath. 5.202d; McKenzie 2007: 51. 8 See the gold coins (mnaieia) presenting both couples on one coin: Olivier and Lorber 2013: 50–​64; Lorber 2018: 105. 9 Cf. Theok. Id. 17.45–​50; OGI II 725 (altar); Herond. 1.23–​55 (temple); on this cf. Lewis 1986: 10–​11; Caneva 2016: 163–​76. 10 P.Hib. II 199; cf. Minas 2000: 90–​101; on the eponymous priests of Egypt: IJsewijn 1961; Clarysse and van der Veken 1983. 11 P.Iand. Zen. 49; Caneva 2016: 154–​5; Minas 2000: 163–​71.

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Stefan Pfeiffer 12 Most recent discussion on the date of her death: Caneva 2016: 135–​41. 13 Van Minnen 2010: 40–​1; Burstein 1982; contrary to Macurdy 1932: 11–​130; Pomeroy 1984: 16–​20. 14 Pithom Stele: Schäfer 2011: 218; on possible political functions of Arsinoë: Carney 2013: 89–​95. 15 OGI I 15; cf. McCredie et al. 1992. 16 On the modeling of her image after her death, see Caneva 2016: 129–​78. 17 Kallimachos: P.Berol. 13417; Caneva 2016: 141–​52. 18 Before 269/​268 BCE: Cadell et al. 2011: 12–​13. 19 Minas 1998; Minas 2000: 93–​6. 20 On cult regulations: P.Oxy. XXVII 2465, fr. 2 (Satyros); Schorn 2001; on the festival Perpillou-​Thomas 1993: 155–​8. 21 Cf. the description of the Ptolemaia festival: Ath. 197c–​203b. 22 Thompson 1973: 71–​5, 117–​22. 23 SB I 601 and 602; Thompson 1973: 57–​9. 24 Cf. Thompson 1973: 30–​1, 93; Albersmeier 2002: 85–​105. 25 Plin. NH 36.14.5, 36.67–​69; McKenzie 2007: 51. 26 Poseid. 116 AB, 5–​6; cf. 119 (ed. Austin and Bastianini); Bing 2002/​3; Hauben 1970; 2013. 27 Poseid. 39 AB, 2; cf. Demetriou 2010; Müller 2009:  215–​16; on Arsinoë in epigrams:  Barbantani 2005; 2008. 28 Anastassiades 1998; Schreiber 2011; Tal 2019. 29 Olivier and Lorber 2013; Lorber 2018: 106. 30 On the ideal of luxury cf. Tondriau 1948; Heinen 1983; Müller 2009: 159–​72. 31 P.Tebt. III 879.15; however, this does necessarily imply a Demeter-​association of Arsinoë: Thompson 1998: 702. 32 Strab. 16.4.5; see e.g. Arsinoë’s temple in Arsinoë in Kilikia: SEG 39, 1426, 52–​53. 33 Hazzard 2000:  101–​59; Koenen 1983; on Ptolemaic city foundations generally, see Mueller 2006; Cohen 2006. 34 Kallim. fr. 181 Asp. (228 Pf.); in Egypt:  Quaegebeur 1971:  246; cf. Carney 2013:  98; the priestess Heresanch of Philotera: Paris, Louvre, Inv. Nr. N.2456, with Albersmeier 2002: 137–​8. 35 The only more elaborate titulary of her is presented on the Mendes stele and is posthumous; Caßor-​ Pfeiffer and Pfeiffer 2019. 36 On her deification see the Mendes Stele: Schäfer 2011: 263. Collombert 2008 discusses the exact date of the installation of the Egyptian cult for Arsinoë, proposing 266/​265 BCE, that is, five years after her death. 37 Quaegebeur 1969: 209–​17; Caneva 2016: 158–​62; on her Pharaonic titulature: Hölbl 2003: 91.There is only one example where Arsinoë II, “the (female) king of Upper and Lower Egypt” is clearly presented during her lifetime as ritual agent together with her spouse, but this may be posthumous: Albersmeier and Minas 1998: 7; Quaegebeur 1998: 94, no. 42; in her lifetime: Minas 2005: 134; Nilsson 2012: cat. no. 15. 38 Hölbl 2003: 90–​1, 95; Leitz 2002: 347; on the identification of the queen with Hathor and Isis in general Nagel 2015, 128–​35. 39 On the reliefs: Quaegebeur 1988: 44 and figs. 16, 17; on the crown: 47, fig. 18; Nilsson 2012. 40 Clarysse and Vandorpe 1998. 41 Clayman 2014: 159; more cautiously, Carrez-​Maratray 2014: 242, pointing to Hyg. Poet. Astr. 2.24.2 and Ael. VH 14.43; pace Pomeroy 1984: 23; Caccamo Caltabiano 1998. 42 Call. Aitia, III, fr. 143 Massimilla (= fr. 383 Pf. + SH 254), l. 2; on the title: Parsons 1977. 43 See e.g. IC III, iv 4 = Syll3 463 = http://​phrc.it, PHRC011 (accessed April 30, 2019); I.Hermoupolis I = SB VIII 9735; on further Greek and Egyptian honours for Berenike: Hazzard 2000: 112–​13. 44 Carrez-​Maratray 2014: 155–​64. 45 Clayman 2014: 168–​71. 46 Poll. Onom. 9.85. 47 Fulinska 2010: 86; Olivier and Lorber 2013; Lorber 2018: 153–​4, 162–​6. Coin legends naming basilissa Berenike do not imply that she was the issuing authority, but rather designate the coinage as belonging to her: Lorber 2018: 153 (see also Chapter 8). 48 I.Alex. ptol. 16 and Abd el-​Maksoud et al. 2015: 125–​44, Inv. no. E211,3; Carrez-​Maratray 2014: 129–​45. 49 Minas 2000: 116–​20. 50 Ath. 5.202d. 51 Pfeiffer forthcoming.

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Royal women and Ptolemaic cults 52 Quaegebeur 1978; Hölbl 2003: 91; Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 476. 53 On the title Caßor-​Pfeiffer and Pfeiffer 2019, with a complete philological discussion. 54 Minas 2000: 3–​79. 55 Winter 1978; Minas 2006: 197–​213; Pfeiffer 2008a: 99–​104; Minas-​Nerpel 2013: 150–​7; Preys 2017; especially on the representation of the queen: Preys 2015: 170–​1. 56 Preys 2015: 150–​4. 57 BE 2013, 472 and 475. 58 OGI I 56,7–​10. 59 Pfeiffer 2004: 243–​9. 60 Pfeiffer 2008a: 24–​30; Pfeiffer 2020. 61 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015b. 62 On Philensis I: von Recklinghausen 2018. 63 Minas-​Nerpel 2011; on the political power of these Kleopatras see van Minnen 2010. 64 Bielman Sánchez and Lenzo 2015a: 481–​5. 65 Bielman Sánchez 2017. 66 Fraser 1972, I: 221; Minas 2000: 157–​61. 67 Perdu 2000; Martzolff 2009. 68 Bielman Sanchéz and Lenzo 2015a: 476–​7. 69 Troy 1986: 150. 70 Catull. 66. 71 On the so-​called “Libyan” or “corkscrew locks”: Albersmeier 2002: 67–​75. 72 Dunand 1973:  36–​45. See e.g. the seal in London, BM inv. GR 1923.4-​1.676; Galbois 2018:  223, evaluation: 141–​7. 73 On the dating of the statues Guimier-​Sorbets 2007; Queyrel 2009: 20, n. 54. 74 Preys 2015: 149; cf. Quaegebeur 1989.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). BE 2013 Dubois, L. et al. 2013. “Bulletin épigraphique.” Revue des Études Grecques 126: 421–​613. C.Ord. Ptol. 67  Lenger, M.-​Th. 1980. Corpus des Ordonnances des Ptolémées. Brussels. I.Alex. ptol. Bernand, É. 2001. Inscriptions grecques d’Alexandrie ptolémaïque. Cairo. I.Hermoupolis Bernand, É. 1999. Inscriptions grecques d’Hermoupolis Magna et de sa nécropole. Paris. I.Prose Bernand, A. 1992. La Prose sur pierre dans l’Égypte hellénistique et romaine. Paris. P.Berol. 13417 von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, U. 1912. “Neues von Kallimachos.” Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-​Historische Klasse 12: 524–​44. P.Hib. II Turner, E.G. and Lenger, M.-​Th. 1955. The Hibeh Papyri II. London. P.Iand. Zen. Schmitz, P. 2007. Die Giessener Zenonpapyri. Paderborn. P.Oxy. Turner, E.G. et al. 1962. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London. P.Tebt. I Grenfell, B.P. et al. 1902. The Tebtunis Papyri I. London. P.Tebt. III Hunt, A.S. and Smyly, J.G. 1933. The Tebtunis Papyri III. London. SB I Preisigke, F.  1913–​15. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten I. Strassburg and Berlin. SB V Bilabel, F.  and Kiessling E.  1934–​55. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten V. Heidelberg and Wiesbaden. SB VIII 9735 Kießling, E.  et  al. 1965–​7. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten VIII. Wiesbaden. SEG 39  Pleket, H.W.  and Stroud, R.S. 1989. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum XXXIX. Amsterdam. UPZ I 106 Wilcken, U.  1927. Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (ältere Funde) I:  Papyri aus Unterägypten. Berlin and Leipzig.

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10 PTOLEMAIC WOMEN’S PATRONAGE OF THE ARTS Silvia Barbantani

Ptolemaic patronage: gendered strategies of representation1 The Ptolemaic dynasty, especially in its heyday during the third century BCE, considered control over cultural institutions and patronage of the arts and sciences as a means to showcase its primacy in protecting and promoting Greek paideia (education), as well as a clever way to advertise its power among potential rivals and allies. In the cultural project of Ptolemy I, Alexandria was to become the “New Athens” of the Hellenistic Mediterranean.2 The Museum and the main Library were an integral part of the royal palace (Strab. 16.1.8), and scholars were—​logistically and ideologically—​close to the court. Sponsorship of the literary arts was not confined to Library-​based philology and learned poetry, but was also understood as world-​wide engagement in funding Panhellenic festivals, which often included poetic performances.3 The Ptolemies directly sponsored one of the many Hellenistic guilds of technitai (professional poets and musicians), that of Egypt and Kypros.4 Occasions for performance of poetry also included the celebrations organized in the public spaces of Alexandria: religious rites (see p. 112), royal pageants (Kallix. FGrH 627 F 2 = Ath. 5.27, 198b–​c) and local festivals.5 Rulers also promoted visual artists who could help them to disseminate idealized images of themselves and their family; collections of pre-​existing works of art were displayed as evidence of their far-​reaching power.6 Since the first Ptolemaic kings exhibited liberality toward the arts, we may suppose that their wives (it is in this sense that I use the word “queen” in this chapter) would have shared the same interest in patronage. The strategies court poets use to represent the same euergetic function in male and female rulers, however, are quite different. A common characteristic of the Ptolemaic ruler was to be equally interested in military and artistic activities; in the Hellenistic royal ideology only a king with a solid military power was considered able to grant peace and prosperity to his kingdom, and to his artists.7 Ptolemy II, responsible for the development of the Library and the Museum established by his father, is defined as φιλόμουσος (Muse-​lover) in Theok. Id. 14.61; the same king in Id. 17 is extolled as lord of a vast empire. Ptolemy III is saluted by Eratosthenes (CA fr. 35.13–​15) as the one who has given to his son (Ptolemy IV Philopator) “all that is dear to the Muses and to kings.”8 Ptolemy III and Berenike II are blessed in an anonymous epigram (SH 979.6–​7), because they raised Ptolemy IV “most excellent in war and arts.” The protection granted by the Muses to 108

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poets and kings is a well-​established topos (Hes. Theog. 80–​103). The king may be presented under the guise (or as companion) of Apollon, god of poetry, but this depiction often has belligerent rather than poetry-​oriented overtones (Kall. H. 2.25–​7; H. 4.165–​90).9 What about queens? In court poetry they are never “lovers/​beloved of the Muse;” their status as patronesses of the arts is advertised with their assimilation to the goddesses of poetry (Muses or Charites), or, less effectively, with their identification with a goddess close to Apollon (Kyrene in Kall. H. 2; Leto in Poseid. Ep. 40).10 We have to consider the possibility that the queen’s depiction as a goddess who traditionally protects and inspires artists could just be a flattering trope by encomiastic poets, in order to present the consort of the king as participating in her husband’s cultural policy. Queens successfully represented the euergetic and popular aspects of the Hellenistic monarchies, often in association with female deities supervising the house and family life.11 Ptolemaic royal women, however, thanks to their Egyptian and Macedonian cultural backgrounds, enjoyed a special status. The first four Ptolemies were highly literate, and we may well hypothesize that their consorts were equally cultivated.12 Multi-​layered and refined court poems addressed to queens were to be enjoyed not only by the fellow scholars of the Library, but, first and foremost, by the dedicatee herself. A coherent program of poetic and figurative representations stressed the dynastic and (sometimes fictitiously) biological continuity between Ptolemaic queens, at least in the first four royal couples.13 Queens were officially divinized following both the Egyptian and the Greek ritual, starting from the reign of Ptolemy II.14 Every virtuous couple is presented as the copy of its predecessors (e.g. the Philadelphoi to the Soteres in Theok. Id. 17.34–​57; Poseid. Ep. 88). The perfect harmony (homonoia) of the couple is another fundamental element of royal Ptolemaic ideology. Arsinoë II and Berenike II are depicted as having a particularly close relationship with their husbands, so that their political, cultural, and diplomatic activities are in accord with those of their male counterpart, and this may well have included patronage of the arts. The political concept of Homonoia applied to the couple stresses the legitimacy and continuity of the recently established dynasty; hence the insistence on the theme of conjugal love in Alexandrian poetry and the identification of the queen with Aphrodite. In the Chremonidean decree (Syll3 434/​5) Homonoia is celebrated not only as a symbol of the alliance between Egypt and Athens, but also of the perfect accord of hearts and minds of Arsinoë II and Ptolemy II.15 The cult of the royal couple as a solid unity was actively promoted by any means (inscriptions, iconography on coins, sculpture) and powerful symbols (e.g. the double cornucopia).16 The alleged perfect spiritual agreement of the Adelphoi is advertised by Herodas in Mimiamb 1.26–​32.17 The perfect harmony between wife and husband in the royal couple is shown by the queen’s sharing of the second element of the binomial “Muses and war.” Poseid. Ep. 36 represents Arsinoë II holding a spear, possibly alluding to her involvement in the Chremonidean War,18 or simply stressing the legitimacy of Alexander’s legacy to the Ptolemaic family. Arsinoë’s identification, after her death, as Aphrodite Euploia/​Isis and the numerous epigrams celebrating her shrine at Cape Zephyrion reflect her close relationship with the highest representatives of the army and navy when she was alive.19 Berenike II’s military, or para-​military, deeds before her wedding with Ptolemy III have been much discussed (Catull. 66.26; Hyg. Astr. 2.24).20 Kallimachos’ portrayal of her as the nymph Kyrene, love interest of Apollon and slayer of a lion, may allude to the manly deeds of the Kyrenaian queen.21 The presence of royal women (wives and concubines)22 is particularly striking in Poseidippos’ epigrams for equestrian victories (Hippika) in P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309.23 The celebration of queen and king together as victorious competitors in Panhellenic games confirmed the image of perfect internal concordia of the couple. For none of these epinikia, however, we have evidence of a direct commission from a queen. 109

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Berenike I Nothing is known about the relationship between Berenike I  and the scholars who started to flock to the newly founded Alexandria to study under the protection of Ptolemy I Soter. His heir, the future Ptolemy II Philadelphos, was educated in Kos by some of the best minds of the century and we can only guess that the royal couple acted in agreement in this case; both the Euergetai, Ptolemy III and Berenike II are hailed as good educators of their son (SH 979). It is likely that Arsinoë, his sister and, later, wife, had been taught by the same scholars.24 Berenike I only appears in court poetry after her death and apotheosis (Theok. Id. 17.34–​50), as a symbol of the conjugal love which grants stability and continuity to the dynasty, but, unlike her successors, she is never compared to a Muse or another goddess of poetry. Although she may have mostly played the role of wife and mother (Paus. 1.6.8; Plut. Pyrrh. 4.4), Berenike I is a precursor of Arsinoë II and Berenike (II or Berenike Syra) as a victorious competitor in Panhellenic games in the epigrams by Poseidippos (Ep. 87–​88). However, in none of the Hippika celebrating queens does the poet let a woman speak in the first person; Ptolemy II is the persona loquens of Poseid. Ep. 88,25 where he takes pride in the exploits of his mother Berenike I.26 This is striking, if we compare these with the first epinician epigram for a woman, Kyniska, daughter of Archidamos II of Sparta:  in the epigram (AP 13.16) celebrating her four-​horse chariot victory (in 396 or 392 BCE), Kyniska, speaking in the first person, boasts of being the first and only woman to have won an Olympic crown. Poseidippos himself evokes her (Ep. 87) when he states that she is the only queen who could compare to the glory of Berenike I.27 Following Berenike Soter’s example, other Ptolemaic queens appear as victorious in equestrian competitions: the first group of Poseidippos’ royal Hippika (78–​82) is mainly devoted to another Berenike, who could be Berenike II, wife of Ptolemy III, or Berenike Phernephoros, daughter of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë I.28 The competitive Arsinoë II seems to be superior to her mother in the genealogic climax of Poseid Ep. 78.7–​8, where she obtains three equestrian victories in just one Olympics.

Arsinoë II and Berenike II The fact that Arsinoë II was often the subject of contemporary poetry of the highest quality has led modern scholars to take for granted her direct involvement in promoting the arts,29 and the same is hypothesized for Berenike II. Both queens are compared or identified with a goddess of poetry, either a Muse or a Charis.30 The privileged position of the queen as a goddess allowed court poets to play with the multiple aspects of such deities and of what they represent. A clue to the involvement of Arsinoë II and Berenike II in poets’ patronage could be the polysemantic key-​word χάρις,31 meaning both aesthetic “grace” and moral “reward, thanks,” with special reference to the patron–​poet relationship.32 The Charites frame Kallimachos’ four books of Aitia (Book 1, fr. 3–​7.18 –​epilogue, fr. 112). χάρις could also be “sensual beauty and the queens’ power of seduction, features that occupied a central place in the ideological apparatus of the first Ptolemies.”33 Epithalamic topoi and celebration of conjugal love are scattered throughout Alexandrian learned poetry celebrating the queen.34 Arsinoë II has often been presented by modern historiography as one of the most powerful and independent female rulers of the Hellenistic period, at least in the last years of her life, when, after complicated marriages and escapes, she settled down in Egypt after marrying her full brother, Ptolemy II, who chose her over his previous wife, Arsinoë I.  35 Known as the

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Philadelphoi, together they created one of the most effective propaganda machines in the Hellenistic world, involving any form of visual representation and the most refined docta poesis. In representing Arsinoë, Alexandrian court poets followed a cultural project already devised by Ptolemy II’s divinization of his parents. In some cases, court poets depicted an unthreatening image of the queen,36 as in the case of Arete’s “soft power” in Apollonios’ Argonautika, but, as we have seen above (p. 109), in other cases Arsinoë is presented as a New Alexander or armed goddess, being the perfect female paredros (“companion”) of her husband-​brother in war and in peace. Allusions to Arsinoë II Philadelphos have been spotted or hypothesized in many poems. All of this, again, attests the importance of the queen in the public representation of the royal couple, but does not absolutely prove her direct involvement in choosing the topic of the poems or the way artists should depict her. Her close links with powerful admirals, however, may suggest that she herself had expressed a preference for some themes (e.g. identification with Isis/​Aphrodite Euploia) which were elaborated by poets after her death. Arsinoë’s role as a patroness of poets has been detected in an anonymous short poem in elegiacs (SH 961). The verses have been preserved by a fragmentary papyrus of the third century BCE and seem to deal with a nuptial rite, most probably the royal wedding of the Philadelphoi.37 The name of Arsinoë is readable at l. 13 and has been supplied at l. 2: she is associated with Hera (l. 7), in tune with the celebratory assimilation of the marriage of Arsinoë II and Ptolemy II with the union of the divine siblings Zeus and Hera (cf. Theokr. Id. 17.131–​4).38 The elegy is tentatively attributed to Poseidippos (Ep. 114), since on the verso of the papyrus sheet there a list of authors including his name, and the title σύμμεικτα ἐπιγράμματα, “mixed epigrams.”39 Kallimachos may have actually composed a wedding song for Arsinoë Philadelphos, of which the incipit survives (fr. 392).40 Scholars have tried to spot her presence in his main poem, the Aitia. Unfortunately we have only fragmentary material, with an uncertain chronology of the various parts of the poem. Since the third and fourth books of the Aitia are framed by two encomiastic poems to Berenike II, the second patroness of Kallimachos, one may also expect to find Arsinoë II presented (overtly or in allusion) in a similar, prominent position, in the first two books. Just after the Prologue to the Telchines (fr. 1), the poem starts with the “Dream” (fr. 2), framing the first two books of the Aitia as a dialogue between Kallimachos and the Muses on Helikon. Of this section, a few words survive thanks to papyrus commentaries. A lemma of a scholion preserves the term “δεκ̣ά̣ς” (P.Lond.Lit. 181.42 col. II). Most scholars would see this word as referring to the group of the nine Muses enhanced with one more element, the queen; at ll. 44–​7 the same commentary mentions “Arsinoë” as “Tenth Muse.” The scholiast of another papyrus (P.Oxy. 2262, fr. 2a.10–​15),41 suggests different possibilities: either the tenth member of the “decade” is Zeus, or Apollon “Musagetes” (leader of the Muses), or Arsinoë, because she is “honored with the honors of the Muses” and “a statue of her is erected with them in the Mouseion.” Since it is not specified which one of the various “temples of the Muses” hosts the statue of Arsinoë in a group of the Nine Muses, scholars have suggested identifying this statue with the bronze one seen by Pausanias (Paus. 9.31.1) in the sanctuary of the Muses on mount Helikon, representing the queen on an ostrich.42 I rather suspect that the scholia here preserve memory of a statuary group (either in the Museum of Alexandria or elsewhere) like the one described by the epigram SH 978, a nymphaeum adorned with statues, with one of Arsinoë standing at the center. Similar groups were common in Hellenistic Egypt, and were an integral part of Ptolemaic royal ideology.43 It is almost certain that Kallimachos did not mention Arsinoë explicitly in these verses; however, even alluding to her in a key passage was not a casual choice. The protection of this queen is presented as just as divine as that granted by the Muses to the poet since his childhood (Kall. Ep. 35).44

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With the “decade,” we are in the presence of a familiar encomiastic strategy, that is, the inclusion of the dedicatee in an established, famous group.45 The same encomiastic device is used by Kallimachos for praising queen Berenike II as fourth among the Graces in Ep. 51 (AP 5,146). The inclusion in the group of the Muses was also granted to Sappho, as the most prominent female poet of antiquity, in an anonymous epigram, AP 9,571 (first century BCE).46 Recent studies have underlined the complex web of references to the Lesbian poetess in Kallimachos’ poems for queens and other court poetry; a strategic reason for this could be the political control over Lesbos exercised by the Ptolemies in the third century BCE.47 It is likely that, in a ring-​composition, Arsinoë II was recalled in the Epilogue of the Aitia (fr. 112,2, P.Oxy. 1011,1–​2).48 The lacunae of the papyrus make the interpretation challenging, however it is clear that Kallimachos is closing his poem in the name of “his” Muse (Kalliope? The queen, Arsinoë or Berenike?) and of the Graces. The word (μο̣ιαδ̣’) before “queen,” in genitive, ἀνά̣σ̣σ̣ης, is corrupt; if we accept the correction μαῖα, the “nurse” of the queen could be Aphrodite, Kalliope, or, if the “queen” is Berenike II, her nurse is her home town Kyrene, or even Arsinoë II divinized as Aphrodite, since she adopted Berenike II. Arsinoë II subsidized various cults and the poetic expression which usually accompanied them. Theok. Id. 15 shows the queen through the eyes of two Syracusan ladies living in Alexandria. They enthusiastically take part in the yearly festival in honor of Adonis, sponsored by Arsinoë (ll. 23–​4) and involving rites both in the streets and at the royal palace. Arsinoë II is presented at l. 110 as the daughter of the divinized Berenike I (cf. Id. 17).49 The queen has chosen a very special singer, an Argive virtuosa50 to perform a lyric dirge for Adonis, also celebrating Aphrodite (ll. 100–​44).51 Theokritos is paying a double compliment to Arsinoë II: once, by reporting the song, whose content is encomiastic toward the queen (it is linked to the apotheosis of her mother Berenike I),52 and secondly, by stressing, through the opinion of Gorgo, the quality of the song and therefore the care taken by the queen in hiring the best singer on the market, for the entertainment of the Alexandrian people and to the glory of the god Adonis. One may expect this kind of showcase-​performances to be frequent in festivals and religious rites sponsored by the court and attracting audiences not only from Alexandria, but from all over the Greek-​speaking world: an exceptional singer would have advertised the role of the Ptolemies as patrons of the arts as much as Kallimachos, Theokritos, and Poseidippos’ erudite poems, and with a more immediate effect. Burton has written extensively about the “countercultural” nature of the original Adonia, which partially survives in this Alexandrian version;53 this, however, has been tamed and adapted into a civic festivity showcasing the generosity of the royal house: the hymn focuses on luxury ornaments, which is perfectly in tune with the tryphe (“softness,” “magnificence”) Ptolemy II exhibited in the Great Pageant and in the Pavilion described by Kallixeinos; once again, Arsinoë II is appears to be ideologically in harmony with her brother-​husband. The festival, according to Carney: enabled the queen to provide entertainment and demonstrate the wealth and culture of her family while at the same time she made the court somewhat accessible to her subjects, though Arsinoë was too elevated, like Aphrodite herself, to appear in person. (Carney 2013: 101) The lyric piece recreated by Theokritos is an example of “learned poetry” and not a form of “popular” entertainment; however Idyll 15 as a whole shows how patronage of the arts was not only confined to the Museum and Library, but could be extended to theatrical and musical representations in other parts of the city. 112

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As for the relationship with the poetae docti, was the patronage of the queen only directed to the production of new encomiastic poems in her honor, or was it also extended to the scholarly work conducted by the same poets-​philologists on ancient Greek poetry in the Museum? Arsinoë II could have been interested in ancient lyric poetry as well as in its contemporary revisitations. Poseid. Ep. 37, a poem on a lyre, suggests a connection between the artistic patronage of ancient rulers (Periandros) and that of modern ones.54 The epigram, which is defaced by many lacunae of the papyrus,55 is apparently a dedicatory piece, like many which were produced for ex-​votos in the shrine of Arsinoë-​Aphrodite Zephyritis. It may be inferred from the extant verses that a lyre has been carried by a dolphin “Arionios” (“lover of song,” like the one who saved the poet Arion?) to the shores of Egypt. By evoking the instrument of an ancient lyric poet, Poseidippos may also imply that the queen, now deceased, was not only a patroness of contemporary poets,56 but also a keen listener/​reader of lyric poetry of the past: she was a Kallimachean “learned Muse,” fostering the conservation and study of the Hellenic poetic tradition.57 As for Berenike II, she must have been very close to her fellow Kyrenean Kallimachos, though this is just an inference from the elaborate poems he dedicated to her. An elegy now fragmentary, fr. 387–​8, possibly focuses on “heroic deeds” before the wedding. The Victoria Berenices58 opens the third book of the Aitia, while the Coma (fr. 110; Catull. 66), which was also circulating as an independent poem, ends the fourth book of the Aitia. Kallimachos implicitly dedicates the two books to the queen by making Berenike the beginning and the end of the second section of the Aitia. In the absence of any direct sources, we can only surmise that the poem was somehow “commissioned” by the queen: possibly Berenike II wanted to celebrate the successful outcome of a dangerous period (the absence of her newlywed husband in the Third Syrian War, her role as regent in wartime as a young queen from another city, and with no heir yet) with a poem that underlined her close links to her predecessor, Arsinoë-​Aphrodite, and focused on the political value of conjugal love.

Arsinoë III To the Philadelphoi couple, represented in perpetual agreement, can be compared the Philopatores (“father-​loving”) couple, depicted in a contemporary source (Eratosth. ap. Ath. 7.276a–​c)59 as made up of incompatible characters: Ptolemy IV, extravagant and whimsical in his cult of Dionysos, and Arsinoë III, showing resigned disapproval. Although Arsinoë III followed in the footsteps of her predecessors, Arsinoë II and Berenike II, in sharing a “military moment” with the king, Ptolemy IV (Polyb. 5.83; 3 Maccab. 1.1),60 she seems to have been sidelined politically by her husband and had to face the deadly hostility of powerful courtiers (Polyb. 15.25). Arsinoë III was not celebrated in court poetry as frequently as her two predecessors, but the loss of most of the literary production of this period limits the significance of this omission. Eratosthenes, chief Librarian during her reign, published a work titled Arsinoë, probably a biography, of which only an anecdote survives.61 Damagetos (AP 6.277) celebrates Arsinoë’s dedication of a lock as a parthenos, assimilating the princess to Berenike II.62 This disappointing picture, however, changes if we turn to epigraphic and figurative documents. Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III appear together as financial sponsors of the Museia at Thespiai, a Boeotian festival in honor of the Muses, on Mount Helikon. Around 220 BCE, these poetic competitions and athletic games were promoted to quinquennial status, like the major Greek festivals:63 the Thespians engaged in an intense diplomatic discourse with contemporary kings in order to obtain donations and acknowledgment of these games as Panhellenic (stephanitai, that is “with a crown given as a prize”). Inscriptions show that in fact they received 113

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financial contributions from various rulers, including Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III.64 The interest of a queen, probably Arsinoë, in the stephanitai games, is mentioned in a damaged decree of the city of Thespiai (I.Thesp. IV 155. l. 11).65 In an epigraphic letter (I.Thesp. IV 152),66 a “sister” of a king (Arsinoë III) seems to deal with penteteric games involving auletes and dramatic poets; another inscription dating to 210–​203 BCE (I.Thesp. II 62)67 records a donation of a Ptolemy and an Arsinoë.68 Tightening the relations between the Museum of Alexandria and the ancient temenos of the Muses in Boeotia69 was a “return to the origins” with an extraordinary propagandist strength. A clue to the close relationship between Ptolemaic Alexandria and the Thespian sanctuary is the bronze statue of an “Arsinoë” placed on Helikon (as mentioned earlier). Although it could be identified with Arsinoë Philadelphos, the diplomatic exchange between the Philopatores and the Thespians documented above (p.  113) suggests that we cannot rule out Arsinoë III. Her link to the renovation of the contests is evident from her portrait appearing on a series of bronze coins from Thespiai, probably minted between 210 and 208 BCE;70 on the reverse a crowned lyre alludes to the promotion of the local poetic competitions to stephanite status. A further testimony of the Ptolemaic sponsorship of the Museia could be a papyrus (SH 959)71 that preserves fragments of a poem in elegiac couplets dealing with Boeotian myths/​cults. The name of Arsinoë, at l. 4, evokes the close cultural and political relationship between Egypt and Boeotia during the reign of the Philopatores. At l. 13, a poet declares “I competed among the inhabitants of Thespiai.” At l. 16 the Graces, χάριτεϛ, are mentioned. Arsinoë III shared with her husband the responsibility for the completion of a temple of Homer (Ael. V.H. 13.22), the legendary co-​founder of Alexandria (Plut. Alex. 26.5), and a symbol of the Greek culture preserved by the Ptolemies in the Library. Although the queen is not mentioned in the epigram on the dedication of this shrine (SH 97972 celebrates only Ptolemy), she is presented in a key role in the relief of Archelaos of Priene showing Homer’s apotheosis.The relief shows a complex allegorical scene where a poet73 is celebrated by Apollon and the Muses, while Arsinoë III, as the personification of Oikumene (the inhabited Earth), bestows a crown on him, assisted by Ptolemy IV as “Chronos.”74

Conclusion While patronage of artists and management of the Library and the Museum is usually attributed to Ptolemaic kings, evidence for Ptolemaic queens’ patronage of poetry is scarce, and it can only be inferred from the poems celebrating them. However, in the relief celebrating the triumph of Homer and the dissemination of his poetry throughout the world, Arsinoë III takes a pre-​ eminent position over Ptolemy IV (also materially, since her figure is in higher relief than that of the king), a very gratifying and powerful representation for a queen otherwise underestimated as poets’ patroness. After her death in 204 BCE, Egypt would face the beginning of a dramatic period of internal and external conflicts. The golden age of Ptolemaic queens and kings’ patronage was ended.

Notes 1 Fragments of Kallimachos are always quoted from Pfeiffer, R.  1949–​53. Callimachus I-​II. Oxford; epigrams by Poseidippos are following the numbers of Austin and Bastianini’s edition: Austin, C. and Bastianini, G. 2002. Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia. Milan. 2 Maehler 2004. 3 On court patronage see Weber 1993; Cameron 1995; Barbantani 2001:  32–​ 49; Murray 2008; Strootman 2017.

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Ptolemaic women’s patronage of the arts 4 On the Technitai of Egypt and Cyprus see Le Guen 2001, I:  293–​300, II:  34–​6, 89–​90; Aneziri 2003: 109–​19. On Ptolemaic-​sponsored poetry and professional poets see Barbantani 2017a; Barbantani 2018b. Cyprus was a thriving site for Ptolemaic ruler-​cult, especially that of queens. See Barbantani 2005; Barbantani 2008; Meliadò 2008; on the main town, Paphos, under the Ptolemies, see inscriptions nos 4–​97 in Cayla 2018. 5 Remijsen 2014: 352–​4. 6 On the epigrams by Poseidippos on statuary and precious stones see Prioux 2007; Petrovic 2014. 7 On the relationship between literary paideia and military power see Agosti 1997; Barbantani 2001: 53–​5; Barbantani 2018a. 8 On the poem see Leventhal 2017; Berrey 2017: 136–​7. 9 Barbantani 2011: 190–​200; Barbantani 2001: 188–​203. 10 See Stephens 2004: 176. 11 Savalli Lestrade 1994: 415–​32, 424–​6; Bielman Sánchez 2003. 12 According to Pomeroy 1977, Macedonian royal women were usually well educated, likewise probably the Ptolemaic queens. See Pomeroy 1984; Alonso Troncoso 2005a: 101; Alonso Troncoso 2005b. 13 See Barbantani 2008: 133–​4; Müller 2009; Prioux 2011: 206. The incipit of the Victoria Berenices (SH 254.2) salutes the queen as “sacred blood of the Sibling gods:” she is a newlywed wife (νύμφα) of a king (Ptolemy III; their conjugal love is the focus of Coma Berenices, fr. 110), and adopted as a daughter by the Philadelphoi as part of the policy of unity and continuity inside the dynasty. 14 The apotheosis of Arsinoë II was celebrated by Kallimachos in a poem (fr. 228); see Acosta-​ Hughes 2010: 68–​9; Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012: 108–​10; Acosta-​Hughes 2019; Barbantani 2017a: 359. 15 See Barbantani 2005: 111–​14. In the Decree is underlined the fact that Ptolemy II follows the example of his progonoi (Ptolemy I Soter and Berenike I); the name of the deceased Arsinoë II is added to mark the parallelism between the two royal couples. 16 Müller 2009; Barbantani 2007: 122–​3. 17 Burton 1995: 152–​3. 18 See Stephens 2004:  163–​70; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2005:  379–​91, 383; Barbantani 2007:  114–​19; Barbantani 2008: 73; Barbantani 2010: 231–​6; Müller 2009: 216–​29; Prioux 2011: 210–​11. 19 For Arsinoë “mistress of the Sea” and on the epigrams for the shrine of Canopus see Stephens 2004; Barbantani 2005; Barbantani 2007; Barbantani 2008. Poseidippos’ program in the Anatematikà section of the Milan papyrus is underlined by Stephens 2004: 176: “They portray Arsinoë as a queen, goddess, and patron of the arts, as the successor of Alexander on the one hand and as an instrument of succor and mercy on the other.” 20 On the poem see Acosta-​Hughes 2010, ch. 2.1.1; Prioux 2011: 211. 21 H. 2.91–​2. See Prioux 2011: 211; Barbantani 2011: 179–​80. Equestrian victories of Berenike II are celebrated by Kallimachos in Aet. III (see note 60) and by Poseidippos. 22 Concubines, like Bilistiche, were also celebrated for agonistic triumphs. See Cameron 1990; Cameron 1995: 243–​6; Kosmetatou 2004b; Criscuolo 2003: 319–​20. Burton 1995: 147 reads the sponsorship of the Adonia by Arsinoë II as a “part of an ongoing dialogue with a Ptolemy notoriously ‘erotikos’ (amorous), as Theokritos remarks in Idyll 14 (61).” 23 On the Hippikà for queens see Cameron 1995: 239–​46; Criscuolo 2003; Stephens 2004; Kosmetatou 2004a; Fantuzzi 2005; van Bremen 2007; Köhnken 2007; Barbantani 2012:  43–​ 9; Kainz 2016; Barbantani 2017a: 346–​53. 24 Zenon, Philitas, Strato of Lampsakos. Strato stated that he educated a princess (Diog. Laert. 5.4), possibly Arsinoë; Suda s.v. Ζηνόδοτος uses the plural: τοὺς παῖδας. 25 For the “family group” monuments that may have inspired this poem see Kosmetatou 2004a. 26 The same family trio is presented by Theok. Id. 17.34–​52, 56–​60 as a model of continuity in virtues and victories. 27 On the epigram, see Fantuzzi 2005: 253–​4, 258–​64; van Bremen 2007: 360–​4, 368–​72; Barbantani 2010: 48–​9; Barbantani 2012: 46–​9 (on “Doric” and Ptolemaic ladies competing in equestian races). 28 Thompson 2005; Criscuolo 2003. 29 Bertazzoli 2002; Stephens 2004: 173–​6. 30 The divinized sister of Arsinoë II, Philotera, interacts with Charis in Kall. fr. 228. 31 So Prioux 2011: 209–​10. 32 See Gutzwiller 1983, esp. on Theok. Idyll 16. 33 Quote from Prioux 2007: 209. Cf. Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 69–​71.

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Silvia Barbantani 34 Barbantani 2008; Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 63–​81 (cf. also 158–​60) analyzes Kallimachos Coma and Victoria Berenices (opening and closing Aitia books 3–​4) in this light. 35 Burton 1995: 151. Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II were full brother and sister (hence the epithet “Brother-​ loving,” Philadelphoi). See also Chapter 29 in this volume. 36 So Carney 2013: 102, 105. 37 On SH 961 see Barbantani 2001: 57–​63; Barbantani 2017a: 354–​8; Werner 2014: 98–​109. 38 On the treatment of the sensitive issue by poets see Cameron 1995: 18–​22; Burton 1995: 153; Prioux 2011: 204–​5. 39 Lasserre 1959 considered the nuptial elegy as sort of “preface” of an epigrammatic anthology offered to Arsinoë as a wedding gift. 40 Weber 1993: 260–​1; Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012: 128–​9. 41 On this papyrus see Natalucci 2001; Cameron 1995: 141–​3; Bertazzoli 2002: 145–​6. 42 Pausanias specifies that this was the Arsinoë whom “Ptolemy married although he was her brother.” Cameron 1995: 140–​1 suggests that Arsinoë Philadelphos had already funded the games Museia. For the analysis of the statue see Prioux and Trinquier 2015: 33–​56. Barbantani 2000: 154–​5 identifies the queen with Arsinoë III. 43 Lauer and Picard 1955; Barbantani 2017b: 99–​101. 44 On the epigram see Barbantani 2018a: 288–​91. According to Ambühl 1995, in the Prologue of the Aitia Arsinoë II appeared as endorsing, as a Muse, the revolutionary Kallimachean poetics against the singing of “kings and heroes.” 45 See Barbantani 2018a: 303–​4. 46 Barbantani 1993: 284–​7; Barbantani 2000: 154–​5; Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 16. 47 Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 74–​5; Bing 2005: 123–​30; Brun 1991. 48 See Barigazzi 1961; Knox 1985; Knox 1993; Cameron 1995: 112–​13, 139–​45. 49 Acosta-​Hughes 2010:  37; Burton 1995:  148–​52. Berenike I  now is synnaos of the goddess lover of Adonis, Aphrodite. When Arsinoë II died, she was divinized as Aphrodite, and so she appears in Kallimachos’ Coma Berenices (fr. 110) and in the epigrams on the shrine of Cape Zephyrion. On the role of Aphrodite in Idyll 15 and 17 see Burton 1995: 134–​5. 50 On the political reason for chosing an Argive performer see Burton 1995: 146. 51 See Barbantani 2017b: 117–​19; Prioux 2013, 139–​42; Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012: 88; Burton 1995: 136–​46, esp. 136–​7. 52 Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 71–​2. 53 Burton 1995: 135–​7, 147. 54 Stephens 2004: 173–​5: “[Arsinoë] is imaginatively positioned as the successor of earlier artistic patrons.” An elaborate discourse on ancient and new patronage in Theok. Id. 16 involves only male patrons. 55 On the philological problems of this epigram see Barbantani 2008: 132–​4; Bettarini 2003; Angiò 2004; Stephens 2004. 56 On the implications of this epigram about the queen’s artistic patronage see Bertazzoli 2002: 150–​3; Acosta-​Hughes 2010: 1–​3. 57 Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012: 2. 58 SH 254-​268C, fr. 54–​60, 383, 176–​7, 677, 597. See Fantuzzi/​Hunter 2005: 30, 83–​5; Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012: 127–​30; Barbantani 2012: 40–​1. 59 On Eratosthenes’ Arsinoë see Berrey 2017: 40–​1; Geus 2002: 61–​8; Kosmin 2017: 86. 60 Thompson 1973: 26, tav. 38, fig. 109 (cf. 97–​9, fig. 112) identifies her in the queen armed with a spear on an oinochoe. See also Barbantani 2000: 138, n. 39. 61 See n. 59. 62 Nachtergael 1980. 63 On the documents attesting Ptolemaic donations to the temenos of the Muses see Barbantani 2000: 142–​ 55; Prioux and Trinquier 2015: 32. On the evolution of the Boeotic poetic competitions see Schachter 2016; Manieri 2009: 313–​433; Barbantani 2000: 135–​6, 145–​58. 64 On Boeotian diplomats and dignitaries at the court of Alexandria see Barbantani 2000: 157–​8. 65 Feyel 1942: 101–​2; Manieri 2009: 367–​8. 66 Feyel 1942: 105, nr. 5, iscr. B–​C. Savalli Lestrade 1994: 430; Manieri 2009: 370–​3. 67 Feyel 1942: 245–​6; Barbantani 2000: 151. 68 On the identity of the Ptolemaic couple, see Barbantani 2000:  151–​2. Inscriptions also show that Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III subsidized other Boeotian sanctuaries, see Manieri 2009: 231; Barbantani 2000: 155–​6.

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Ptolemaic women’s patronage of the arts 69 On the mouseia around the Greek world see Caruso 2016. 70 See Barbantani 2000: 155, 169. 71 For a thorough discussion of the text see Barbantani 2000. 72 The epigram is preserved by a papyrus, together with another (SH 978) describing a nymphaion adorned with statues, including one of Arsinoë. On the Homereion see Barbantani 2001: 53–​5; Petrovic 2017. 73 On the identification of the dedicant see also Pinkwart 1965:  83–​9 (a choregus); Preuner 1920 (Hesiod); Cameron 1995: 273–​7 (Kallimachos). On the relief see Newby 2007; Barbantani 2000: 134–​ 5; Butz 2017. 74 Not every scholar agrees in recognizing the Philopatores in those figures. Butz 2017 (see her article for a status quaestionis), on the basis of a comparison with bronze portaits of the queen, supports the identification with Arsinoë III.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). AP CA I.Tesp  SH

Anthologia Palatina Powell, J.U. (ed.) 1925. Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford. Roesch, P. (ed.) 2009. Les Inscriptions de Thespies. Lyon. Lloyd-​Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (eds.) 1983. Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin.

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11 THE KLEOPATRA PROBLEM Roman sources and a female Ptolemaic ruler Christoph Schäfer

Introduction Kleopatra VII was born in December 70 or January 69 BCE.1 Her father, Ptolemy XII, in keeping with a Ptolemaic practice, had been married to his sister Kleopatra VI Tryphaina since as early as 80/​79 BCE. This apparently did not prevent him from marrying another woman. Polygamy was no rarity in the social environment of the Hellenistic courts. However, the disappearance of Kleopatra VI from the dating conventions used in Ptolemaic papyri between August 69 BCE and February 68 BCE, which was around the time of the birth of Kleopatra VII, is noteworthy.2 Kleopatra’s mother was most probably an Egyptian from the family of the high priests of Memphis, the old Egyptian royal city.3 This would account for her extraordinary knowledge of languages; according to Plutarch: her tongue like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect. (Plut. Ant. 27.4–​5 )4 We may presume that Kleopatra would not have had much trouble learning the Egyptian language: she was probably raised bilingually. Three younger siblings of Kleopatra were born over the next few years: Arsinoë, Ptolemy XIII, and Ptolemy XIV. There did not seem to have been any serious problems with regard to the recognition of the children as legitimate descendants of the ruler and thus also with regard to a possible dynastic succession. After all, her father Ptolemy XII was himself likely born of an Egyptian mother.5 Our sources, largely written from the perspective of her subsequent foe Octavian, are silent on the subject of her childhood.The various omens and anecdotes pointing to her later queenship that are typical for Hellenistic biography are missing from our accounts. 121

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Ptolemy XII gave his children the title of Theoi Neoi Philadelphoi, “the new sibling-​loving gods,” certainly with a view to the succession.6 Since his eldest son was still a child, he decided that his daughter Kleopatra was to marry him and rule jointly with him.7 Shortly before her father’s death, Kleopatra was promoted to co-​regent.8 Ptolemy XII Auletes likely died of natural causes in February of 51 BCE.9 A council of three courtiers (the eunuch Potheinos, the general Achillas, and Theodotos, the Chian teacher of the kings) assumed guardianship for Kleopatra’s brother-​husband, little Ptolemy XIII.10 A power struggle between this faction and Kleopatra was thus almost preordained. On March 22, 51 BCE, Kleopatra appeared personally at cultic ceremonies in Hermonthis near Thebes. Notably, a stele describing the enthronement of the sacred bull Buchis, is dated to the regal year 1 of an unspecified king and a female ruler with the cult title “Goddess Philopator.”11 In autumn of the next year, after about one and a half years of sole rule, the queen lost the supremacy she had claimed. In a royal decree of October 27 of the same year, the young Ptolemy is listed as primary agent, with his sister-​queen relegated to the second rank.12 In the course of the summer of 49 she was finally pushed out of power: Potheinos and his allies had won for now. Kleopatra settled in the Thebais in Upper Egypt, where she was apparently quite popular and from where she intended to continue the fight for power.When her position there also proved precarious, she left Egypt for Syria. In Palestine, for example in the port city of Askalon, where coins were struck with her diadem-​crowned portrait, she recruited mercenaries to attack her brother’s army.13 Both royal army and king took up a position at Pelusion to prevent her from crossing into Egypt with an armed force.14 While a battle seemed inevitable, an uninvited and highly dangerous guest arrived on the doorstep: Pompeius Magnus. After his defeat at Pharsalos, Pompeius had hurried to Egypt, where he hoped for support. Fearing involvement in the Roman civil wars, however, the state council, under Potheinos’ leadership, decided to have Pompeius assassinated.15 Kleopatra was fortunate to have been uninvolved in this rash decision. Everything now depended on Caesar, the new strong man in the Greek East. How would he react to these events and to the complicated situation in Egypt? He arrived in Alexandria on October 1, 48 (July 27, according to the Julian calendar),16 only two days after the murder of Pompeius, with 3,200 men and 800 cavalry. There, he was presented with Pompeius’ seal and severed head. Caesar publicly showed his dismay at the cruel death of his adversary and vehemently distanced himself from the atrocity committed in the name of the king.17

Kleopatra and Caesar As Caesar went ashore, his lictors (civil servants who accompanied and guarded Roman magistrates) preceded him, underlining his authority as Roman consul. This provoked Alexandrine resistance. Though cooler tempers prevailed, the situation remained explosive.18 Caesar now summoned both Ptolemy XIII and Kleopatra to his presence, called on them to dismiss their armies, and to let Rome arbitrate their dispute.19 Ptolemy was the first to obey. He moved into the royal palace with his entourage, but kept his army ready, under the command of Achillas near Pelusion.20 Kleopatra arrived soon thereafter. Plutarch claims that Apollodoros of Sicily smuggled her into the palace in a bag containing bedlinen.21 Lucan, more soberly, reports that Kleopatra bribed a guard and landed at the Macedonian palace in a small boat, unnoticed by Caesar. Admittedly, Lucan then also indulges in the literary motifs of eroticism and seduction.22 The pair must actually have soon begun an affair, though their political relationship seems absolutely rational. Kleopatra was far more dependent on the support of Caesar than vice-​versa, but he too needed her help if he wanted to control Egypt in the future. He had little trust in 122

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the advisors of Ptolemy XIII and the murderers of Pompeius. At the end of October, about four weeks after his arrival, Caesar confirmed the last will of Ptolemy XII in a people’s assembly, in the presence of Kleopatra and her brother, with the provision that both should be married according to Egyptian custom and rule together, but that the Roman people should assume guardianship over both. As dictator, Caesar intended to oversee his decision being put into practice. By this expedient, he only briefly calmed the situation. Conflict soon broke out again; what has become known as the Alexandrian War ensued.23 After a months-​long siege of the royal palace, the long-​awaited relief army under the command of Mithradates of Pergamon appeared before Pelusion in the first days of March 47 BCE and defeated the garrison there, in a combined land and sea operation. Caesar was now able to unite his troops with this army.The decisive battle then took place on the canopic branch of the Nile. Ptolemy XIII was defeated and, while on the run, drowned in the Nile.24 With the defeat of the main army and the death of the king, resistance broke and Caesar accepted the capitulation on March 27 (January 15, according to the Julian calendar), a date that was commemorated in the Roman fasti calendar.25 Caesar now sought to secure the restoration of Kleopatra with all means at his disposal. He married her to her second, even younger brother, the 11-​or 12-​year-​old Ptolemy XIV, and presented the new royal couple to the Egyptians as “sibling-​loving” rulers (Theoi Adelphoi). However, Cassius Dio notes that Kleopatra was the de facto sole ruler and spent her days with Caesar.26 After the installation of Kleopatra and her wedding, Caesar had time to tackle other pressing problems that required action beyond Egypt. He left Alexandria for Asia Minor on April 10, 47 BCE. Since the enthronement of the new ruling couple must have happened between his victory over Ptolemy XIII on March 27 and his departure in April, the prolonged Nile cruise of Kleopatra and Caesar, recounted by Suetonius and Appian,27 cannot have taken place.28 By the time Caesar left Egypt, Kleopatra was pregnant and soon afterwards gave birth to a son whom the Alexandrians called Kaisarion (Plut. Caes. 49.10), but whose correct name was Ptolemy Caesar (Ptolemaios o kai Kaisar). The very name is an early indication for a shared political program never to be implemented because of Caesar’s murder. Though Caesar’s paternity has been doubted, it is now considered fairly certain.29

In Rome After he had defeated both the Bosporan king Pharnakes in Asia Minor and the remaining republicans in Africa, Caesar returned to Rome on July 25, 46. He entered the city in a quadruple triumph, parading captives in the procession that included the Gaul Vercingetorix, the Numidian prince Iuba, as well as Kleopatra’s captive sister Arsinoë.30 Soon afterwards, Kleopatra herself arrived in Rome. Caesar must have agreed to her arrival. It may even be that he had invited her, as Suetonius claims.31 Her arrival had the character of a state visit. A treaty of alliance and friendship was to be concluded to secure her position in the same way as with her father. Although extant sources do not expressly mention this, we can safely assume that she brought her son with her, perhaps to introduce him to his father, perhaps also to remind the Roman public that Caesar, despite the early death of his daughter Julia, was not without descendants (and one of royal blood, to boot). Kleopatra could expect a reception appropriate to her position, for Caesar’s long stay in the Alexandrian royal palace meant that she had a hospitium relationship, allowing her, at a pinch, to insist on the obligation of hospitality. Although this will hardly have been necessary, it was useful in justifying her luxurious accommodation on Caesar’s estates beyond the Tiber to the Roman 123

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populace.32 Although Caesar officially cohabitated with his wife Calpurnia, Kleopatra could already feel like the woman at his side.The way in which he demonstrated his relationship with her in the Roman public sphere left little to be desired in terms of clarity. Because of the ongoing war against the republican remnant in Spain, Caesar left Kleopatra alone in Rome for almost a year, which does not seem to have put her in a difficult position.33 On the contrary, she ran an open house, the high society of the city meeting at her banquets and feasts. True to the traditions of Hellenistic rulers, artists and philosophers appeared at her receptions. The famous singer and musician M.  Tigellius Hermogenes belonged to Caesar’s circle, and we also know that the philosopher Philostratos entertained guests with examples of his oratory and instigated philosophical discussions in which the queen herself took part with alacrity, thus demonstrating to her guests not only the capabilities of her favorite philosopher, but also her own. The Roman elite found itself face to face with a young and attractive Eastern queen, who was their intellectual peer or, in many cases, superior, and whose position and self-​ confidence allowed her to ignore Roman conventions about women. Roman women, in turn, gladly imitated the fashions of cosmopolitan Alexandria, e.g., by the typical Ptolemaic melon hairstyle. Kleopatra was a trendsetter for urban Rome, demonstrating ostentatious wealth and a high-​brow lifestyle that would lead to envy and resentment.34 Caesar certainly contributed to this growing resentment by having a golden statue of Kleopatra erected in the temple of Venus Genetrix, the mythical progenitor of his family, and in the immediate vicinity of the revered image of the goddess. This went far beyond the scope of usual honors. As other Ptolemaic rulers had done before her, Kleopatra presented herself as the incarnation of Isis and in Egypt she was worshiped accordingly. Since the interpretatio romana of Isis was the goddess Venus, an Egyptian cult image with the features of the queen was now added to the Roman one. To Romans, this was effrontery, particularly as Kleopatra herself, as the living model for the image and self-​proclaimed embodiment of Isis, was very much present in Rome. In view of her public relationship with Caesar, rumors quickly spread about a planned union of the gens Iulia with the Ptolemaic royal house, first hinted at in the name given to Caesar and Kleopatra’s offspring. The cultic image erected in the temple of Venus Genetrix confirmed the union and elevated it to a sacral sphere. Remarkably, Octavian dared not rescind Caesar’s religious-​political measure; Kleopatra’s statue remained in the temple of Venus. The affair of the statue shows Caesar dropping the republican mask he still occasionally wore and indicating willingness to expand his position in the state in a way that would bring him much criticism and enmity, especially among the senators.35 It certainly contributed to the conspiracy that led to Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 by a group of 60 senators, three days before his planned departure for the Parthian campaign.36 Each dagger thrust in Caesar’s lifeless body was also an indirect attack on Kleopatra. In traveling to Rome and staying in the city as the obvious consort of Caesar, she had abandoned the traditional role of the Ptolemies as allied territorial rulers in Egypt and had associated her fate with that of Caesar. Through her integration into Caesar’s cultic reforms and his representation as ruler, their ambitious goals and concept of world politics had become visible to everyone. With his death, their plans and the dream of a Roman–​Egyptian dynasty lay shattered. Caesar’s will did not mention Caesarion, Kleopatra’s son. He was much too young and not even a Roman citizen and thus unable to take over Caesar’s inheritance. But because her role and that of her son in Caesar’s plans had already become so obvious, the queen remained a political issue. In view of the tumultuous situation in Rome, she feared for her safety. Four weeks after Caesar’s death, Cicero was able to write to his friend Atticus that the queen had disappeared.37 124

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Back in Alexandria Thus, her son Caesarion and her second husband Ptolemy XIV securely in tow, Kleopatra returned to Egypt in the spring of 44. The last trace of her husband is found in a papyrus from Oxyrhynchos, dated to July 26, 44.38 He died soon after, under uncertain circumstances. Flavius Josephus, whose judgment of Kleopatra is devastatingly negative anyway, accuses her of the murders of multiple relatives, including that of her brother.39 Be that as it may, his death cleared the way for Caesarion. The latter began appearing as co-​regent in Egyptian documents, signaling a fundamental change in Kleopatra’s dynastic politics. Egypt had become the hub of her plans for Caesar’s son, confirming Kleopatra’s provisional farewell to dreams of a larger empire, under a Julio–​Ptolemaic dynasty. At the same time, Caesarion’s elevation satisfied the requirements of the Egyptian tradition, which demanded a male ruler on the throne, even if it was otherwise no problem that a woman held the actual power. As so often the case in the ancient mindset, it was a matter of respecting forms.40 The choice of the cult name of “father-​loving and mother-​loving god” for Ptolemy XV Kaisar (Caesarion), was an obvious signal, not only to her own subjects, but also to Rome, where Caesar’s heir Octavian proclaimed himself Caesar’s son (by adoption). For the latter, this was a clear attack, the emphasis on Caesar’s paternity highlighting through whose veins the murdered dictator’s blood actually flowed. No wonder that Octavian regarded Caesarion’s very existence as a threat and later lured him into a trap to eliminate him. A growing number of internal issues also required Kleopatra’s attention. The Egyptian economy had been mired in crisis since her father’s reign and had further deteriorated since the late 50s. Many farmers had been driven to leave their home villages by oppressive tax burdens. This rural exodus remained a serious problem for the maintenance of the country’s infrastructure.The annual Nile flood was decisive for the country’s productivity.While it had already been at a low level in 48, the situation was even worse in 43 and 42, years that saw no Nile flood at all. People were starving and the situation worsened with the outbreak of an epidemic.41 Kleopatra opened the state grain storehouses in Alexandria and distributed grain to the citizens. Jews were probably denied allocation, as they did not possess Alexandrian citizenship. This is an indication of how low the royal stockpiles must have been: Kleopatra would likely not otherwise have risked the hostility of the large and contentious Jewish community of the capital.42 Her main occupation will have been the preservation of internal stability. This is also the reason why she cultivated a good relationship with the powerful local priesthoods and promoted religious building programs in the interior. For instance, in the temple of Kom Ombo, Kleopatra (by herself!) is figured on a relief, performing the ritual pharaonic acts for the preservation of the Maat, the world order.The newly added birth house at the temple of Hermonthis (Armant) dates from the time of her dual reign with Caesarion and, although the latter is mentioned in the king’s cartouches with both his throne and proper names as well as his cult titles, the relief again features only her. She also undertook the construction of the temple house in the temple of Hathor in Dendera, a project her father had initiated on July 16, 54. Here, she had herself depicted with Caesarion on a monumental scale on the relief on the back wall of the temple, but she is relegated to the second tier, likely to present Caesarion as her successor.43 Through such measures, the queen garnered sympathy in both Upper and Lower Egypt (beyond the borders of Alexandria proper), despite the difficulties caused by the partial or complete absence of the Nile flood. Recovering royal finances soon enabled the queen to pursue a more active foreign policy. Here too she acted decisively and took the side of the Caesarians, whose representative and contact was P. Cornelius Dolabella.To him, she sent the four Roman legions stationed in Egypt, 125

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although these were intercepted by Cassius, one of the murderers of Caesar, who had landed in Syria and was fortifying his position there.44 When civil war again broke out and Roman legions converged in Greece, Kleopatra attempted to intervene personally in the conflict. Intending to land in Greece with her powerful fleet, the queen’s plans were dashed by a storm; she barely survived to return to Alexandria with the survivors. The decisive battle in Greece was fought without Kleopatra’s help.45

Kleopatra and Mark Antony After the victory at Philippi in 42, Antony took over the reorganization of the East and the preparations for a new Parthian war. He was also supposed to collect funds for the supply of the veterans.46 The most important political factor in the Roman East was Kleopatra herself. She met with Antony in Tarsos, arriving with great pomp, appearing as Nea Isis or Aphrodite/​ Venus. This was a good match for the self-​portrayal of Antony, celebrated by the cities and the population of Asia Minor as Neos Dionysos.47 Though our sources talk of great banquets and sundry debaucheries,48 extensive discussions must have taken place about the main features of cooperation, making a well-​calculated and lasting partnership possible. Kleopatra and Antony seem also to have gotten to know each other better personally in Tarsos. As we can see from the events and measures following the Tarsos meeting, Kleopatra’s visit was undoubtedly a great diplomatic success. Perhaps alone among Roman client rulers, she was able to communicate with the Triumvir on something approaching peer status. Antony, on the other hand, could also feel satisfied: he had assured himself of the full support of the eminently important Ptolemaic kingdom on a very personal level. Last but not least, “Aphrodite’s Journey to Dionysos” had clearly expanded his ritual representation of sovereignty and increased his legitimacy in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Greek East. With the help of her new paramour, Kleopatra eliminated a number of enemies, especially her sister Arsinoë, who had acted as rival queen in the Egyptian civil war and who, after her appearance in Caesar’s triumphal procession, had been allowed to retreat into exile in Ephesos. On Antony’s command, Arsinoë was killed inside the local temple of Artemis.49 While Antony was now turning to the problems in Syria, Kleopatra traveled back to Egypt alone. Only after the balance of power in Syria had been restored did Antony come to Alexandria, where, during the winter of 41/​40, Kleopatra spoiled him with personal attention and every luxury.50 This interlude came to a halt when the Parthians invaded Roman territory. Antony hurried to Syria and Asia Minor, then to Italy in the autumn of 40, to rearrange the situation there.51 Kleopatra, who had given birth to Antony’s twins, remained in Alexandria, where news reached her of an arrangement between Antony and Octavian and the former’s marriage to the latter’s sister, Octavia. Within three years, this new union produced two daughters.52 Despite this personal setback, the queen remained loyal to Rome under the threat of the Parthians. Too weak militarily to intervene in Syria, she granted refuge to Herod the Great, who had fled his domain, and gave him a vessel for his journey to Rome, where he intended to ask for assistance.53 P. Ventidius Bassus, one of Antony’s most experienced generals, finally expelled the Parthians from Asia Minor and Syria in 38.54 We hear little of Kleopatra during these years: the Parthian–​Roman conflict overshadowed other political developments. In the summer of 37, Antony again traveled to Syria to prepare for his campaign against the Parthians. He also needed to replace the 120 ships he had left for Octavian as quickly as possible. Financially and logistically, he was once again dependent on Kleopatra. And indeed, we find the queen immediately at his side again. Both pursued similar political interests and 126

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soon also rekindled their private relationship. The pair spent the winter of 37/​36 in Antiocheia. Here, Antony recognized Kleopatra’s twins as his children. His son became known as Alexander Helios, while his daughter was henceforth called Kleopatra Selene. Sun and moon were regarded as attributes of the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. In this fashion, he included his two children in the politico-​religious propaganda at the outset of his Parthian war.55

The eastern “land grants” The so-​called “land grants” of Antony to his children were denounced by Octavian as the surrender of Roman territories to a dependent queen. More likely, however, they were a reorganization of the client ruler system with which Rome administered the East. Caesar had already placed Cyprus under Ptolemaic administration. Strabon reports that Kleopatra was now also given control of “Rough” Cilicia “since it was suited to the building of her fleets,” as the port of Hamaxia was an important transshipment point for ship-​building timber.56 The transfer of areas in Koile-​Syria and Nabatene must also be seen from this point of view. The numismatic evidence is an important corrective to the literary tradition influenced by the Augustan propaganda in this case.The primary sources do not give any indication that Antonius’ children by Kleopatra were involved in the territorial transfers, as is claimed by the literary sources and most scholarship. Numismatic and epigraphic studies, however, show that the territorial allocation was not modified in 34. The narratives of Plutarch and Cassius Dio are clearly disproved by the epigraphic and numismatic evidence.57

The Parthian Campaign Antony’s Parthian campaign failed due to his loss of the siege train, probably as a consequence of the Armenian king’s treason. In addition, the Parthian Great King successfully avoided open battle and Antonius ultimately could do little but retreat, his forces under constant attack. He succeeded in leading two thirds of his army over the Armenian mountains in the winter of 36/​ 35.58 Kleopatra relieved his troops with vast stores of clothing and money, landing at a town between Beirut and Sidon.59

Celebrating the Armenian victory In the spring of 34, Antony launched a new campaign against Armenia. He captured King Artavasdes and was able to take full possession of Armenia.60 Back in Alexandria, Antony and Kleopatra organized a parade to celebrate his victory in the autumn of 34. Caesarion and the three children of Kleopatra and Antony, Alexander Helios, Kleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy Philadelphos, took part in the celebrations.61 Antony transferred control over the newly conquered Armenia to Alexander Helios and proclaimed him and Caesarion as “Kings of Kings,” a title claimed by the Parthian ruler. This was reflected in Kleopatra’s acceptance of the title “Queen of Kings.”

The war against Octavian Before Antony could renew the Parthian War, the conflict with Octavian became a civil war. Officially, Octavian declared war on Kleopatra. Antony assembled a huge army and a fleet of 800 ships. Kleopatra provided a quarter of his naval power, in addition to 20,000 talents and a large amount of stores and provisions. She accompanied him to Athens.62 The leadership 127

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circle around Antony in the field camp seems to have resisted Kleopatra’s presence, but Antony remained loyal to her.63 Eventually, Kleopatra convinced Antony to divorce his wife Octavia, although the latter had proved a loyal spouse, still taking his side in Rome with her brother.64 For strategic reasons, Kleopatra and Antony’s headquarters were moved to Patrai in autumn of 32, where they spent the winter.

The battle of Actium At Actium, the armies of Anthony and Octavian finally faced each other. Octavian’s general, Agrippa, cut off Antony’s supply with fleet operations and the situation rapidly became untenable. Cassius Dio attributes to Kleopatra the suggestion that garrisons should be left behind at the most important strategic points, while the remainder of the army was to accompany her and Antony to Egypt.65 On September 2, 31, Antony and Kleopatra broke through the enemy blockade with a large part of their fleet, most of their elite units, and all of their war chest and sailed passing Leukas to Egypt.66

Showdown in Egypt Arriving in Alexandria, Kleopatra once again mobilized Egypt’s resources to fight Octavian.67 But when the troops of Antony, still holding Syria and Kyrenaika, as well as important client kings, went over to Octavian’s side, the situation became hopeless. Kleopatra and her lover Antony now founded the “Club of Partners in Death” in place of their “Club of Inimitable Livers.”68 They tried to cope by throwing lavish banquets and by ostentatious hilarity.69 In late July 30, Octavian arrived in front of Alexandria.When Antony’s fleet and cavalry switched sides, the decision was made.70 On August 1, Octavian entered the capital.

Suicide Kleopatra had already retreated to a tomb prepared for her and sent a message to Antony announcing her own death. He thereupon fell onto his sword but did not die immediately. She may have faked her death in order to induce Antony to commit suicide. In any case, the queen had him brought to her mausoleum, where he died in her arms.71 Octavian allowed her to have Antony’s body embalmed and buried. She then refused food under the pretext of a fever and tried to end her life. Octavian, however, suspected her intentions and blackmailed her by threatening her children. Hence, she abandoned her hunger strike.72 Her alleged attempts at seducing Octavian are almost certainly later inventions.73 The queen believed that, even if she stayed alive, there was little more she could do for her children. Caesarion, her eldest son, was still on the run in southern Egypt, but Antyllus, Antony’s son by Fulvia, had probably already been executed.74 In any case, she wanted to avoid being humiliated by being paraded in Octavian’s triumph. Even in antiquity, the cause of her death was controversial. The most popular proposal, then and now, was a snake bite from an Egyptian cobra. Cassius Dio stresses that she prepared for a painless death. In a sealed farewell letter to Octavian, she had asked to be buried alongside Antony, as Antony and Kleopatra had been worshiped as a couple, as Nea Isis and Neos Dionysos. Octavian later allowed her burial in her mausoleum next to her dead lover.75 In Dio’s account, after sending her message to Octavian, the queen died, clothed in precious garb, grasping the symbols of her rule. But Dio himself admits that no one knew how the queen died. The only

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physical evidence was a few puncture wounds on her arm. He offers two variants to explain them.76 In Plutarch’s version, the queen first adorned Antony’s grave, said goodbye, and bathed herself. She then reclined for a last delicious meal, during which a basket of figs was brought to her, which the guards had let pass. After the meal, she sent a sealed letter to Octavian, asked all but her two chamber maids to leave the room, and locked the doors.When the doors were opened, Kleopatra was found lying dead on a golden bed in royal dress. Eiras, one of the two servants, was dead at her feet, the other, Charmion, was dying and still busy adjusting the tiara on the queen’s head.77 Plutarch also mentions variants on the cause of death.78 The geographer Strabon refers to the application of a poison plaster as a potential means of bringing about death.79 Snake venoms cannot penetrate intact human skin. Other known poisons could not be administered with a needle or a plaster in sufficient quantity to be fatal; both hypotheses must be excluded.80 The famous snake bite, however, seems equally improbable. Cobra liveliness and agitation varies depending on external temperature. Kleopatra would scarcely have had to irritate a cobra with a spindle; she would likely not have been able to control the extremely active snake. Kleopatra would have had to take the snake in her hand, put it to her skin, and, if the cobra bit, massage the venom into the snake’s upper jaw by applying pressure on the venom glands, as cobras are known to bite without injecting venom. Moreover, death by cobra bite is by no means as pleasant as is described by Plutarch.81 Plant poisons, hemlock among them, were foremost among poisons in antiquity.82 Hellenistic rulers often had gardens created especially for poisonous plants.83 It would have been easier for Kleopatra to use plant poisons.84 Moreover, one could plausibly explain the almost simultaneous death of the queen and her maids if they had simultaneously consumed a similar dose.

Conclusions It seems obvious that Plutarch, Cassius Dio, and their sources were misled by a cleverly staged dramaturgy that probably originated among Kleopatra’s entourage. Their versions have nothing to do with the actual cause of death. Kleopatra had a final message to send to her subjects: the rightful queen of Egypt, the Nea Isis, had died and an epoch had ended. Since the uraeus snake, the royal cobra, was not only regarded as a royal attribute, but also as a form of appearance of Isis, with a cobra bite, one incarnation of Isis would have been carried to the afterlife by the other. The only logical outcome would have been a divine rebirth. Thus, Kleopatra, as Isis, would be moved to the divine realm in the eyes of her Egyptian subjects, exactly as she wanted to be perceived.85 That no snake could be found in the aftermath further encouraged this particular reception. How closely this was connected to the figure of the queen herself is evident in the fact that it was her personal physician who first spread the story of the cobra bite.86 Kleopatra was worshiped as a deity long after her death. She herself must be seen as the originator of her own death myth, but Octavian cemented this “official” version by having an image of Kleopatra carried in his triumph:  it showed her being bitten by two cobras.87 History was written by the victor.

Notes 1 All dates in this chapter are BCE. 2 BGU VIII 1762.3–​4; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 2 (14); Bevan 1927:  354–​5; Huß 1990:  192–​3; Ogden 1999: 99–​105; Whitehorne 2001: 1287–​93. 3 Hölbl 1994: 196.

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Christoph Schäfer 4 Translation from Perrin 1920: 197. 5 SEG IX.5; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 2.12; Cic. Leg. agr. 2.42. Cf. Bloedow 1963: 3–​4; Olshausen 1963:  30–​1; Huß 1990: 202–​3. 6 OGI II 741. Cf. Fraser 1972: 428. On the title and its function, Criscuolo 1990: 89–​96; Hölbl 1994: 196. 7 For sibling marriages, Theokr. 17.131–​4; Hölbl 1994: 88, 106; see also Chapter 29 in this volume, with recent bibliography. 8 Quaegebeur 1991: 49–​66, esp. 60–​1, 66; Ricketts 1992: 280–​1; Bianchi 2003: 13–​14; Bingen 1999: 54. 9 Strab. 17.796; Buch. II.13. Cf. Thompson 1988: 125. For the date see Heinen 1966: 28. 10 For Potheinos see Caes. BCiv. 3.108.1–​2.; Cass. Dio 42.36.1; Plut. Pomp. 77.2–​3; Plut. Caes. 48.2. Heinen 1966: 36–​37; PP VI 14620; Mooren 1975: 72–​73. For Achillas see App. B Civ. 2.84; Caes. BCiv. 104.1–​2; Plut. Caes. 49.4; Cass. Dio 42.4.1.; Cf. PP II 2154; Mooren 1975: 73–​4. Achillas was probably of local Egyptian origin, but this does not seem to have been an encumbrance for his career: Plut. Pomp. 77.3; Heinen 1966: 41–​2. On Theodotos: Plut. Pomp. 77.3, 8, 9; Plut. Brut. 33; Liv. per. 112;Vell. Pat. 2.53.2. Cf. PP VI 14603; App. B Civ. 2.84. 11 Buch. II.13. Cf. Bloedow 1963: 91–​2; Heinen 1966: 25–​6, 28; Hölbl 1994: 205, 254; Huß 1994: 53. 12 BGU VIII 1730 = C.Ord.Ptol. 73. Cf. Rostovtzeff 1955, II: 716–​17. 13 For the retreat into the Thebais: Malalas 9.279. Cf. Criscuolo 1989: 328–​9. See Hölbl 1994: 206–​7 for Kleopatra’s popularity in Upper Egypt. On the retreat into Palestine: Strab. 17.796; App. B Civ. 2.84. On coinage in Ascalon: Brett 1937: 455; cf. Hazzard 2000: 150. 14 Caes. BCiv. 3.103.1–​2; Plut. Pomp. 77.1. 15 Plut. Pomp. 79.4, 80. On the murder of Pompey: Caes. BCiv. 3.104.2–​3; Plut. Pomp. 78–​80; Cass. Dio 42.4–​5. Cf. Heinen 1966: 65–​6; Greenhalgh 1981: 256–​7. 16 Liv. Per. 112; Plut. Pomp. 80.7; Eutrop 6.22.1. Cf. Heinen 1966: 70–​1. 17 Cass. Dio 42.8.1–​3; Lucan. 9.1036–​9. 18 Caes. BCiv. 3.106.4–​5; Cass. Dio 42.7.3; Lucan. 10.9–​14. 19 Caes. BCiv. 3.107.2. 20 Lucan. 10.53–​60. 21 Plut. Caes. 49.1-​2. Whitehorne 2001: 1287–​93. Cf. Cass. Dio 42.34.3–​35.1. 22 Lucan. 10.56–​103, 141. Zwierlein 1974: 54–​64. 23 Cass. Dio 42.35.3-​6. 24 Cass. Dio 42.43.4; Plut. Caes. 49.9; Plut. Pomp. 80.8; App. B Civ. 5.9. 25 CIL I.1², p. 212 (Fasti Caeretani); p. 223 (Fasti Maffeiani). 26 Cass. Dio 42.44.2-​4. 27 Suet. Iul. 52.1; App. B Civ. 2.90. 28 The contemporary author of the Bellum Alexandrinum notably refrains from mentioning any tourist activity on the part of Caesar; instead, he has him leave the country immediately (Bell. Alex. 30.5). Heinen 1966: 148–​9; Clauss 1995: 31–​2; Baumann 2003: 43. 29 Against Caesar’s parenthood, see Étienne 1997:  64–​ 5. In favor:  Heinen 1969:  181–​ 202; Hölbl 1994: 213; Deininger 2000: 221; Schäfer 2012: 142. 30 Cass. Dio 43.19.2–​4; App. B Civ. 2.101. 31 Suet. Iul. 52.1; Cass. Dio 42.27.3. For the date, see Van’t Dack 1970: 53–​67. 32 Heinen 1966: 162–​3. On gifts made to her: Suet. Iul. 52.1. 33 Schäfer 2012: 143–​4. 34 On M. Tigellius Hermogenes Porph., see Hor. Sat. 1.2.1ff. Cf.Treggiari 1969: 269–​70. On Philostratos’ appearance see Anth. Graeca 7.645 (Krinagoras of Mytilene); Philostr. Soph. 1.5; Fraser 1970: I, 490, 494; Becher 1966: 177. On the adaptation of hairstyles see Fleischer 1996: 46, 239–​40. 35 App. B Civ. 2.102; Cass. Dio 51.22.3. Gelzer 1960: 265–​6; Becher 1966: 20–​1; Hölbl 1994: 266; Huß 2001: 725; Schäfer 2014: 198–​9. For the date of the statue see Van’t Dack: 1970: 66–​7. 36 Cic. Div. 2.23; Suet. Iul. 80.1–​4.; Plut. Caes. 63–​5; Nik. Dam. 23.81ff. (= FGrH 90 F 130); Cass. Dio 44.13–​15; App. B Civ. 2.111ff. 37 Cic. Att. 14.8.1. Schäfer 2014: 195–​202. 38 P.Oxy. 14.1629. See Heinen 1998: 336–​7. 39 Ioseph. AJ. 15.89; Ioseph. Ap. 2.57. Cf. Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 2.16–​17. For the death of Ptolemy XIV see Skeat 1954: 42. On the murder of relatives by Kleopatra see Joseph. BJ. 1.359. 40 See Samuel 1971: 73–​9 for the joint rule of Kleopatra and Caesarion. 41 On starvation and disease in Egypt: App. B Civ. 4.61, 4.68. For Dioskurides see PP 6.16595; Fraser 1972: I, 367, 372. See Sen. Qnat. 4.2.16 for the missing Nile flood.

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The Kleopatra problem 42 Ioseph. Ap. 2.60; Hölbl 1994: 214. 43 She is still mentioned in the crypts, together with her father. On Mammisi of Hermonthis Lepsius: 59–​65; Budde 2005: 339. For Dendera, see Quaegebeur 1991: 49–​72; Bingen 1999: 54–​66; Bianchi 2003: 13–​24. 44 App. B Civ. 3.78, 4.59, 5.8; Cic. Fam. 12.11.1–​2. 45 App. B Civ. 4.74, 4.82, 5.8. 46 Eck 1998: 20–​1. 47 Plut. Ant. 26.1–​3; Tarn and Charlesworth 1967: 65. 48 Plut. Ant. 26.6–​7; Ath. 147e–​148b. 49 App. B Civ. 5.9; Joseph. AJ. 15.89. Cf. Cass. Dio 48.24.2. 50 App. B Civ. 5.11; Plut. Ant. 28.1. 51 See Buchheim 1960: 35 for the Parthian invasion. 52 On this so-​called treaty of Brundisium see App. B Civ. 5.60–​65; Cass. Dio 48.28–​30; Plut. Ant. 30–​1. See Fischer 1999: 67–​81, esp. 79–​81 for Octavia. 53 Ioseph. AJ. 14.370–​8; Ioseph. BJ. 1.14.1–​2. 54 On the career of P. Ventidius Bassus, see Cic. Fam. 10.18.3; Plin. HN 7.135. 55 On the conferral of the epithets in winter of 37/​36, see Plut. Ant. 36.5. 56 Strab. 14.5.3. Schrapel 1996: 92–​4. 57 Schrapel 1996. 58 Plut. Ant. 37–​38, 41.7; Cass. Dio 49.25–​26.2; Vell. 2.82.1–​3. Kromayer 1896:  70–​104; Buchheim 1960: 82–​3. 59 Plut. Ant. 51.1–​2. Cf. Cass. Dio 49.31.4. 60 Cass. Dio 49.39.3–​40.1. Cf.Vell. 2.82.3. 61 Cass. Dio 49.40.2–​41.5; Plut. Ant. 50.6–​7. 62 Plut. Ant. 56.1–​57.2. Schäfer 2007: 167–​9. See also Oros. 6.19.4; Huß 2001: 741. 63 Carlsen 2006: 131, 145–​6. 64 Plut. Ant. 57.4–​5; Liv. Per. 132; Cass. Dio 50.3.2. For the divorce see Gardthausen 1917: 158–​69; Fischer 1999: 102–​4. 65 Cass. Dio 50.15.1–​3. 66 Kleopatra’s alleged abandonment of Antony: Cass. Dio 50.33.1–​3; Cf. Plut. Ant. 66.5. For the battle, see Kromayer 1933: 361–​3; Carter 1972: 251–​3; Roddaz 1984: 164–​6; Schäfer 2006: 188–​96. 67 Cass. Dio 51.5.3–​6.3. 68 Plut. Ant. 71.3. 69 Plut. Ant. 71.3. 70 Cass. Dio 51.5.3–​6.3. 71 Plut. Ant. 77.3–​4. On Antony’s suicide: Bengtson 1977: 249; Goltz Huzar 1978: 226. 72 Plut. Ant. 82.1–​2. Cf. Cass. Dio 51.11.5. 73 Cass. Dio 51.12.1–​3; Plut. Ant.  83–​5. 74 Suet. Aug. 17.5; Plut. Ant. 81.1; Cass. Dio 51.15.5. See Heinen 1995: 3152–​4 for Anytllus’ unsuccessful attempt to find safety in the Kaisareion of Alexandria. 75 Cass. Dio 51.13.4–​6. For the later worship of the pair, see Schäfer 2006: 121, 125–​8, 177–​8; 183–​4. 76 Cass. Dio 51.14.1–​3. 77 Plut. Ant. 85.3–​4. 78 Plut. Ant. 86.1–​3. 79 Strab. 17.795. 80 Mebs and Schäfer 2008: 349. 81 Plut. Ant. 71.8.Visser and Chapman 1978; Warrell 1995: 433. 82 Morel 1931: 224–​8; Kaufman 1932: 161–​7; Kerner 1958: 345–​7; Barb 1978: 1213–​14. 83 Arsac 2002: 10–​11; Samama 2002: 14–​27. 84 See Barb 1978: 1213–​14 on plant poisons known in antiquity. 85 See Hölbl 1994: 269 for the divine rebirth of the earthy Isis regina. Clauss 1995: 102 rightly emphasizes that Kleopatra was acknowledged as a divinity during her lifetime and hence that the point of this rebirth could not have been to acquire immortality. On the apocalyptic connotations of the uraeus, see Pfrommer 1999: 144. 86 On Olympos see Schäfer 2006: 242–​3; 248. 87 Verg. Aen. 8.697; Griffiths 1961: 113–​17, esp. 116–​17; Johnson 1967: 393–​402; Hölbl 1994: 269.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). C.Ord.Ptol. Lenger, M.-​T. 1964. Corpus des ordonnances des Ptolémées. Brussels. PP Peremans, W. and Van’t Dack, E. (eds.) 1950–​2002. Prosopographia Ptolemaica, 10 vols. Leuven.

Bibliography Arsac, F. 2002. “Ce que la toxicologie du XXIe siècle doit aux auteurs anciens.” In F. Collard and E. Samama (eds.), Le Corps à l’ Épreuve. Langres, 9–​13. Barb, A.A. 1978. “Gift.” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 10: 1209–​47. Baumann, U. 2003. Kleopatra. Reinbek. Becher, I. 1966. Das Bild der Kleopatra in der griechischen und lateinischen Literatur. Berlin. Bengtson, H. 1975. Herrschergestalten des Hellenismus. Munich. Bengtson, H. 1977. Marcus Antonius.Triumvir und Herrscher des Orients. Munich.  Bevan, E.R. 1927. The House of Ptolemy. Chicago. Bianchi, R.S. 2003. “Images of Cleopatra VII Reconsidered.” In S.Walker and S.-​A. Ashton (eds.), Cleopatra Reassessed. London, 13–​23. Bingen, J. 1999. “La politique dynastique de Cléopâtre VII.” Comptes Rendus de Séance de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-​Lettres 1: 49–​66. Bloedow, E. 1963. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Ptolemaios XII. Würzburg. Brett A.B. 1937. “A new Cleopatra Tetradrachm of Ascalon.” American Journal of Archaeology 41: 452–​63. Buchheim, H. 1960. Die Orientpolitik des Triumvirn M. Antonius. Heidelberg. Budde, D. 2005. “Ägyptische Kindgötter und das Orakelwesen in griechisch-​römischer Zeit.” In H. Beck, P.C. Bol, and M. Bückling (eds.), Ägypten –​Griechenland –​Rom: Abwehr und Berührung. Munich, 333–​41. Carlsen, J. 2006. The Rise and Fall of a Roman Noble Family: The Domitii Ahenobarbi 196 BC –​AD 68. Odense. Carter, J.M. 1972. Die Schlacht bei Actium. Wiesbaden. Clauss, M. 1995. Kleopatra. Munich. Criscuolo, L. 1989. “La succesione a Tolemeo Aulete ed i pretesi matrimoni di Cleopatra VII con i fratelli.” In L. Criscuolo and G. Geraci (eds.), Egitto e storia antica dall’Ellenismo all’età araba. Bologna, 325–​39. Criscuolo L. 1990. “Philadelphos nella dinastia lagide.”Aegyptus 70: 89–​96. Deininger, J. 2000. “Kaisarion. Bemerkungen zum alexandrinischen Scherznamen für Ptolemaios XV.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 131: 221–​6. Eck, W. 1998. Augustus und seine Zeit. Munich. Étienne, R. 1997. Jules César. Paris. Fischer R.A. 1999. Fulvia und Octavia. Berlin. Fleischer R. 1996. “Kleopatra Philantonios.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Istambul 46: 237–​40. Fraser, P.M. 1972. Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2 vols. Oxford. Gardthausen,V. 1917. “Die Scheidung der Octavia und die Hochzeit der Kleopatra.” Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 20: 158–​69. Gelzer, M. 1960. Caesar. Der Politiker und Staatsmann. Wiesbaden. Goltz Huzar, E. 1978. Mark Antony: A Biography. Minneapolis. Greenhalgh, P. 1981. Pompey, the Republican Prince. London. Griffiths J.G. 1961. “The Death of Cleopatra VII.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 47, 113–​18. Harvey A.L. 1991. Snake Toxins. New York. Hazzard, R.A. 2000. Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda. Toronto. Heinen, H. 1966. Rom und Ägypten von 51 bis 47 v. Chr. Tübingen. Heinen, H. 1969. “Cäsar und Kaisarion.” Historia 18: 181–​203. Heinen, H. 1995. “Vorstufen und Anfänge des Herrscherkultes im römischen Ägypten.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.18, 5: 3144–​80. Heinen, H. 1998. “Eine Darstellung des vergöttlichten Iulius Caesar auf einer ägyptischen Stele? ” In P. Kneissl and V. Losemann (eds.), Imperium Romanum. Studien zu Geschichte und Rezeption. Stuttgart, 334–​45.

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The Kleopatra problem Hölbl, G. 1994. Geschichte des Ptolemäerreiches. Darmstadt. Huß, W. 1990. “Die Herkunft der Kleopatra Philopator.” Aegyptus 70: 191–​203. Huß, W. 1994. Der makedonische König und die ägyptischen Priester. Stuttgart. Huß, W. 2001. Ägypten in hellenistischer Zeit 332–​30 v.Chr. Munich. Johnson, W.R. 1967. “A Queen, a Great Queen? Cleopatra and the Politics of Misrepresentation.” Arion 6: 387–​402. Kaufman, D.B. 1932. “Poisons and Poisoning among the Romans.” Classical Philology 27: 156–​67. Kerner, D. 1958. Der Giftmord im Altertum. Materia Medica Nordmark 10, vol. 12. Hamburg. Kromayer, J. 1896. “Der Partherzug des Antonius.” Hermes 31: 70–​104. Kromayer, J. 1933. “Actium. Ein Epilog.” Hermes 68: 361–​83. Lepsius, K. R. 1901. Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. Berlin. Lewin, L. 1920. Die Gifte in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin. Mebs, D. and Schäfer, C. 2008. “Kleopatra und der Kobrabiß –​das Ende eines Mythos?” Klio 90: 347–​59. Mooren, L. 1975. The Aulic Titulature in Ptolemaic Egypt. Brussels. Morel, W. 1931. “Gifte.” In Pauly, A.F.  von and Wissowa, G.  (eds.), Realencyclopaedie für classische Altertumswissenschaft Suppl.V: 223–​8. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Olshausen, E. 1963. Rom und Ägypten von 116 bis 51 v.Chr. Erlangen and Nuremberg. Perrin, B. (ed. and trans.) 1920. Plutarch: Lives, IX: Demetrius and Antony; Pyrrhus and Gaius Marius. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA. Pfrommer M. 1999. Alexandria. Im Schatten der Pyramiden. Mainz. Quaegebeur, J. 1991. “Cléopâtre VII et le temple de Dendara.” Göttinger Miszellen 120: 49–​72. Ricketts, L.M. 1992. “The Administration of Late Ptolemaic Egypt.” In J.H. Johnson (ed.), Life in a Multi-​ Cultural Society. Chicago, 275–​81. Roddaz, J.-​M. 1984. Marcus Agrippa. Rome. Rostovtzeff, M. 1955–​6. Gesellschafts-​und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der hellenistischen Welt, 3 vols. Darmstadt. Samama, É. 2002. “Empoisonnée ou guéri? Remarques lexicologiques sur les pharmaka et venena.” In F. Collard and E. Samama (eds.), Le Corps à l’ Épreuve. Langres, 13–​27. Samuel A.E. 1971. “The Joint Regency of Cleopatra and Caesarion.” Études de Papyrologie 9: 73–​9. Schäfer, C. 2006. Kleopatra. Darmstadt. Schäfer, C. 2007. “Transportkapazitäten und Logistikprobleme bei der Versorgungsflotte des Antonius im Feldzug gegen Oktavian.” In S. Günther, K. Ruffing, and O. Stoll (eds.), Pragmata. Wiesbaden, 167–​72. Schäfer, C. 2012. “Kleopatras politisches Streben im Zusammenspiel mit Caesar.” In L.-​M. Günther and V. Grieb (eds.), Das imperiale Rom und der hellenistische Osten. Stuttgart, 139–​50. Schäfer, C. 2014. “Kleopatra in Rom. Kulturkontakt oder Herausforderung?” In R. Rollinger and K. Schnegg (eds.), Kulturkontakte in antiken Welten. Leuven, 193–​202. Schrapel, T. 1996. Das Reich der Kleopatra:  quellenkritische Untersuchungen zu den “Landschenkungen” Mark Antons. Trier. Skeat, T.C. 1954. The Reigns of the Ptolemies. Munich. Tarn, W.W. and Charlesworth, M.P. 1967. Oktavian, Antonius und Kleopatra. Munich. Thompson, D.J. 1988. Memphis under the Ptolemies. Princeton. Touwaide, A. 1994.“Galien et la toxicologie.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.37, 2: 1887–​1986. Treggiari, S. 1969. Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic. Oxford. Van’t Dack, E. 1970. “La date de C. Ord. Ptol. 80–​83 = BGU VI 1212 et le séjour de Cléopâtre VII à Rome.” Ancient Society 1: 52–​67. Visser, J. and Chapman, D.S. 1978. Snakes and Snakebite. Cape Town. Warrell, D.A. 1995. “Clinical Toxicology of Snake-​bite in Africa and the Middle East/​Arabian Peninsula.” In J. Meier and J. White (eds.), Clinical Toxicology of Animal Venoms and Poisons. Boca Raton, 433. Whitehorne, J.E.G. 2001. “Cleopatra’s Carpet.” In I. Andorlini et  al. (eds.), Atti del XXII congresso internazionale di papirologia, vol. II. Florence, 1287–​93. Zwierlein O. 1974. “Cäsar und Kleopatra bei Lucan und in späterer Dichtung.” Antike & Abendland 20: 54–​64.

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PART III

The ancient Near East

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12 INVISIBLE MESOPOTAMIAN ROYAL WOMEN? Sebastian Fink

Mesopotamian textual evidence A quick survey of Mesopotamian Royal Inscriptions would lead to the conclusion that royal women are virtually absent from these records. The texts focus on the king and his pious and heroic deeds, and other human beings mostly find mention as evildoers, who oppose the just reign of the king and are consequently defeated by him. If we only had royal inscriptions available, we could conclude that Mesopotamian queens are virtually invisible to us. However, as an exception to the rule, royal females are mentioned in a rather small number of inscriptions; more often we find information regarding their lives and duties in literary texts and archival material like letters or administrative documents. Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers Euphrates and Tigris, yields a rich textual heritage. Although there is no detailed survey of the number of ancient texts, it is likely that about half a million cuneiform documents are stored in museums all over the globe.The edition and re-​edition of these texts, their number increasing practically every day due to new discoveries, is an ongoing task for Assyriologists. Although much has been achieved, it will still take some generations before cuneiform editions reach the same status as classical sources. Nearly all of the major texts in Greek and Latin are nowadays available in good editions, as generations of scholars since the Renaissance have devoted their efforts to the correct understanding of the language, the peculiarities of certain genres, and the cultural, as well as historical, background of these texts. Compared to that, the history of Assyriology is much shorter; the year 1857 is often mentioned as the birth year of Assyriology as an academic discipline.1 Cuneiform script was in use for about 3,500 years, from the middle of the fourth millennium BCE until the first century CE.2 While the language of the texts from the fourth millennium is still under debate, because the texts only contain numbers and signs referring to certain objects, the evidence becomes clearer in the third millennium. At that time, cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia made use of two main languages: Sumerian and Akkadian. The language of the earliest readable texts from the third millennium is Sumerian, a language that was only decipherable through ancient dictionaries, written down by Akkadian-​speaking scribes in the second millennium. Akkadian in turn belongs to the vast and well-​known family of Semitic languages. While the use of Sumerian was declining toward the end of the third millennium,

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the number of Akkadian texts was steadily increasing. In the second millennium, the use of Sumerian was restricted to scholarly and priestly circles.3 The nature of these first texts was administrative and it is communis opinio in Assyriology that cuneiform was originally developed for administrative purposes. It took several hundred years until people realized the potential of that script and to notice that cuneiform can also be used to represent actual language. This innovation made it possible to expand the scope of its applications. All of a sudden, literature could be written down, kings could inscribe objects with their great deeds, and, according to a Sumerian epic, a letter was the first text that was ever written. After this literary revolution in the first half of the third millennium, Mesopotamia has abundance textual evidence for kingship. However, the evidence is not distributed evenly. Because of the haphazardness of archaeological discoveries, some kings are extremely well-​documented, while others are completely or largely absent from the textual records. In these cases, we know their names only because of entries in a king-​list or in an administrative document.While there were manifest differences in royal ideology over time and space, Mesopotamian kingship has some clear features. The male rulers of Mesopotamia are the darlings of the gods, the protectors of their land, builders of temples, and the foremost heroes of their time. Royal inscriptions, royal hymns, and epics focusing on the deeds of a king all bear witness to these common features, though different genres center on different aspects of kingship, be it the pious ruler or the warrior king.4 While assemblies held an important role in several cities,5 kingship was the political norm in Mesopotamia. Although at some points in Mesopotamian history the land was united under one ruler, it was the norm that Mesopotamia was divided between several rival powers that concluded alliances or fought against each other. Since the second millennium, Babylonia and Assyria were the major rivals for dominance. For more than 2,000  years, Mesopotamia was ruled by kings residing in Mesopotamia, if not necessarily Mesopotamians themselves. However, this tradition ended when Babylon was taken by the Persians in 539 BCE and Mesopotamia became part of a larger political entity with an imperial center outside of Mesopotamia. For this reason, 539 BCE is often regarded as the end of Mesopotamian history; for this chapter I will follow this definition of the limits of Mesopotamian history and end with Adad-​guppi, the famous mother of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-​Babylonian Empire. The aim of the following is to make some Mesopotamian queens and royal women visible by combining the mostly sparse evidence that is available. Not all of these women are necessarily historical figures; some of them are not even human. I  include in my discussion two Mesopotamian goddesses, since they offer a good approach to the general depiction of royal females in cuneiform texts.

Terminology The most common title for Sumerian kings is lugal (literally “big man”), and we have nearly 25,000 attestations of this word in the corpus of the ePSD. If we search for a word meaning “queen,” then ereš is the best candidate, but if we look at the few attestations—​ePSD has 11 of them—​we quickly learn that most of them come from lexical lists or ancient dictionaries, and that the two instances from literary texts use the word as an epithet of the goddess Inanna. A more common Sumerian word for a royal woman is nin, which has the very general meaning “lady” and is often used in divine names. In Akkadian there is a straightforward female form of the word šarru “king,” šarratu, but in the Neo-​Assyrian period this title was only used for goddesses or female tribal leaders. Royal 138

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women at the Neo-​Assyrian court were usually designated as sēgallu, which can be translated as “woman of the palace.”6 So it seems that the title šarratu was only given to someone who really held power and kingship.

Heavenly queens Mesopotamian literature has two prototypical roles for mythological women: the mother and the lover. In the Mesopotamian pantheon, these prototypes are represented by Ninsun, who famously features as the wise mother of king Gilgamesh, and by Inanna/​Ishtar, the goddess of love and war. While most kings remain silent about their wise mothers—​a famous exception will be discussed below (p. 145)—​many kings claim to have been chosen by the love of Inanna/​ Ishtar. In Mesopotamia, the imagination used to organize and populate the divine realm was bound to the society an individual lived in and the experiences he or she had there. Therefore, we can assume that the Mesopotamian organization of the heavens mirrors, at least partly, actual social reality. In contrast to the “women of the palaces,” the goddesses actually held an office; they were designated as queens because they were officially held responsible for some aspects of the world. As pointed out above (p. 138), Mesopotamian rulers are usually astonishingly quiet about their actual family in their inscriptions; instead they often inform us about their intimate relation to goddesses, be it as their lover or their child.7

Ninsun—​the loving mother Ninsun is, at least according to one influential tradition, the wife of Lugalbanda and the mother of Gilgamesh. She features prominently in the Sumerian inscriptions of the third millennium, especially in the third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100–​2000 BCE). In the early second millennium a king of Uruk built a temple for Lugalbanda and his wife Ninsun. Several historical kings of the third millennium claim in their inscriptions that they are the “born child” of Ninsun and their divine mother is responsible for securing the support of the major deities for the king.8 Ninsun plays an important role in the standard version of the Gilgamesh epic, the most famous product of Mesopotamian literature, which we could describe as an ancient coming-​ of-​age story.9 While the first Gilgamesh texts are written in Sumerian and recount different episodes of the hero’s life, most of these stories were united in the so-​called standard version, which is written in Akkadian. The hero of the story is Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, who first needs to find a friend in order to overcome his despotic behavior, then starts out for fame and fortune, and finally realizes over the death of his friend Enkidu that he also has to die. The rest of the story informs us about his (failed) quest for eternal life and how he finally came to terms with his privileged life as the king of Uruk. Gilgamesh’s mother Ninsun is depicted as a wise dream-​interpreter, loving mother, supporter of her son and good advisor.10 In the first tablets, which deal with youthful Gilgamesh, she plays an important role in guiding and protecting her son.When Gilgamesh is upset because of strange dreams, he immediately consults his mother in order to understand their meaning, as in the following example: The mother of Gilgamesh was clever, she was wise, she knew everything, she said to her son. Wild-​Cow Ninsun was clever, she was wise, she knew everything, she said to Gilgamesh: “The stars of heaven appeared before you, like a lump of rock from the sky 139

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one fell toward you.You picked it up but it was too much for you, you kept trying to roll it but you could not dislodge it.You picked it up and set it down at my feet, and I, I made it your equal, you loved it like a wife, caressing and embracing it. A mighty companion will come to you, the savior of (his) friend: he is the mightiest in the land, he has strength, his strength is as mighty as a lump of rock from the sky.You will love him like a wife, caressing and embracing him, he, being mighty, will often save you. Favorable and precious was your dream!” (Tablet 1, 259–​73)11 Here Ninsun first repeats the content of the dream that was told to her by Gilgamesh and then in turn interprets it in a way that is favorable for Gilgamesh and makes him feel confident. Later in the story, Enkidu replaces her as advisor and dream-​interpreter. We can read this change as a typical human phenomenon: when people grow up they do not need their parents’ advice so often and they rather rely on their friends’ instead. After Enkidu’s death Gilgamesh has no clear advisor any more. Perhaps this is also a sign that he has become an adult, maybe even a sage, who can make decisions on his own and give advice to other people. Gilgamesh’s father plays no role in the epic, so we can quite safely assume that Gilgamesh only became king after his father had died and thus had no option to ask for his advice. This fact might also explain why the king’s mother often takes the role of an advisor in literature and real life.

Inanna/​Ishtar—​the dangerous  lover Inanna (Sumerian) or Ishtar (Akkadian) is the goddess of love and war. Rivkah Harris fittingly characterized her as “paradox and a coincidence of opposites,” since this goddess incorporates so many different and even contradictory aspects.12 To summarize the character of this goddess in the categories of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, we could say that Inanna represents the Dionysian, ecstatic aspects of life, in contrast to the well-​ordered, rationally arranged universe (the Apollonian in Nietzsche’s words) of the male gods, which is for example found in the myths centering on Enki, the clever organizer of the Sumerian world.13 The various aspects of this goddess can perhaps best be summarized by stressing that every time someone does something with passion and overcomes the usual boundaries of the well-​organized world, this is connected to Inanna/​Ishtar. Concerning her role as a lover, it should suffice to mention two texts. An exceptional Old Babylonian song praising Ishtar describes how she has sex with 120 men, 14 times with each of them, and after this the men are exhausted, but Ishtar is not, and she invites them to start anew.14 In the Epic of Gilgamesh several females could be seen as representations of Ishtar. So, for example, Shamhat, the prostitute who civilizes Enkidu by seducing him, or Shiduri, the ale-​ wife, who lives at the edge of the known world and tries to give good advice to Gilgamesh. On Tablet VI, Ishtar’s role as lover is emphasized and, against the usual norms, she takes the initiative and invites Gilgamesh to be her husband. In a speech she promises him that as her husband, he will be rewarded with a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold and all kings will bow down before him. This is a clear hint of the motif of the “King by love of Inanna”15 that we can find in so many inscriptions, but instead of being happy about Ishtar’s proposal, Gilgamesh bluntly rejects her offer with a long speech focusing on the bad fate of her former lovers.16 Ishtar becomes furious about this and forces her father An to give her the monstrous Bull of Heaven in order to punish Gilgamesh.17

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Earthly queens If we return to the earthly domain, we can clearly state that most of the royal women we encounter in the inscriptions are of the Ninsun-​type and they represent the caring mother or the loving wife. The administrative evidence of all periods clearly demonstrates that royal women could profit from their privileged position.They held estates, bought and sold lands, and had substantial property of their own.18 Most probably, they received these estates for different reasons, but one of them was surely their role in cult, where they had a responsibility for certain offerings. However, this aspect of royal women as businesswomen plays almost no role in the official representation.The best evidence for the role of royal women in cult from Neo-​Assyrian times comes from ritual descriptions.19 These texts clearly indicate that royal women had their obligations during important rituals. The stories of the Ishtar-​like Mesopotamian queen Semiramis, who is depicted as warrior queen, are only found in later Greek historiography, but not in the available Mesopotamian sources.20 In the following, I will treat some exceptional queens in chronological order.

Ku-​Baba of Kish Kish is an ancient city in what is now central Iraq and it held a powerful position during some periods of the third millennium. It was once speculated that Kish had formed a first Mesopotamian Empire, but the evidence for this claim is not very strong.21 The Sumerian King-​ List, a text that maintains the fiction that there always was only a single king in Mesopotamia, mentions only one female ruler, namely Ku-​Baba, who is the only “king” of the third dynasty of Kish: At Kish, Ku-​Baba, the innkeeper, the one who strengthened the foundations of Kish, was king; she reigned 100 years; one king reigned 100 years. Kish was defeated; its kingship was taken to Akshak. (SKL, IV, 37–​44)22 From the Sumerian text, it is completely obvious that Ku-​Baba is a female; nevertheless, she is given the title lugal (“king”). Normally that title is only used for male individuals and there is no exact female counterpart to it. However, we can argue that lugal was used to make it obvious that she was not simply a royal woman, the wife of a ruling king, or a princess, but that she was executing kingship herself. Ku-​Baba is one of the few individuals in the King-​List who is described with some more details than others and the only “female king” mentioned there. The text also mentions Ku-​Baba’s former profession—​she was an innkeeper, not an unusual but also not a very highly regarded profession for females—​and additionally informs us that she strengthened the foundations of Kish. We can assume that this strengthening of the foundations does relate to some story about rebuilding the city and the city wall of Kish. Since the city wall was the pride and the most important military asset of any Mesopotamian city, rebuilding or strengthening the city wall was a great heroic task for any Mesopotamian ruler. Unfortunately, the Sumerian King-​List only gives us these allusions to a story in which the rise of the innkeeper Ku-​Baba to the throne was described and her great deeds as building-​ queen were celebrated. Therefore, we cannot say much about the character of this queen, but her profession might indicate some relationship to Inanna/​Ishtar, since that goddess is the patron of taverns, which were often connected with prostitution.23 Despite the fact that Ku-​ Baba was defeated by the city Akshak, and kingship was taken there, her story does not end 141

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here. After Akshak held kingship for 93 years, Puzur-​Sîn, explicitly designated as son of Ku-​ baba, defeated Akshak and brought back kingship to Kish and established a dynasty that ruled for 491 years.24 Puzur-​Sîn is the only king in the list whose rule is legitimized by mentioning his mother. The so called “Chronicle of the Esagila,” a much later text (Glassner suggests a date not earlier than 1100 BCE),25 mentions Ku-​Baba again. The text focuses on the role of the god Marduk in granting kingship and explains history as a result of offerings made or not made to Marduk in his temple Esagila: every successful ruler regularly offered fish to Marduk, while bad kings did not and their downfall was a consequence of this failure. In the chronicle, Ku-​Baba is a clever innkeeper who offered bread and water to the captured fishermen of the temple Esagila and, by delivering the fish to the temple, she made Marduk happy and he granted kingship to her (“Chronicle of the Esagila,” 48–​55).26 It is virtually impossible to decide, based on the character of our evidence, whether Ku-​Baba was a literary or a historical figure, but it is obvious that the story of the clever innkeeper Ku-​Baba fascinated the Mesopotamians and traces of this story are found in documents from three millennia.

Enheduanna Enheduanna was actually no queen, but the daughter of Sargon of Akkad (2350–​2300 BCE), the founder of the Empire of Akkad.27 She held several prominent religious offices and is one of the most popular Mesopotamian females, as she is often mentioned as the first author of world history known by name.This is not because Enheduanna composed the first literary texts from Mesopotamia, but rather because she took the extraordinary step to mention herself as the author of these compositions. Usually the author of literary texts remained anonymous in Mesopotamia and only very few authors are mentioned by name in the texts. However, some authors are mentioned in lists that attribute composition to certain persons.28 That Enheduanna actually is the author of these texts is assumed by many Assyriologists.29 The compositions attributed to her consist of several hymns. Among these compositions are the temple-​hymns,30 a collection of 42 hymns praising temples, where we can read:  “The compiler of the tablet (is) Enḫeduanna. My lord, that which has been created (here) no one has created before (ls. 543–​4).”31 Here Enheduanna takes up a typical heroic motif from the Royal Inscriptions, the motif of doing something for the first time. While kings usually capture cities, or traverse inaccessible mountain paths and claim that no one had captured that very city or traversed this very mountain path before them,32 Enheduanna here puts pride in her literary skills. No one before her has ever collected and compiled 42 temple hymns in 480 verses. While the content of the temple hymns does not yield any information concerning the life of Enheduanna, the song “nin-​me-​shara” is of a more personal character.33 There Enheduanna informs us about a dramatic moment in her life. The text starts with a highly literary hymnal section praising the power of Inanna. In line 66, the tone changes; we are informed that Enheduanna is speaking.34 After having praised Inanna, Enheduanna now laments her bad fate. She asks Inanna to have her fate and the verdict that was cast over her reconsidered, and to save her life and reinstall her as the En-​priestess of the Eana in Ur. The background for her dramatic appeal was a rebellion against the dynasty of Akkad, during which Enheduanna, the En-​priestess of the temple Eana in Ur, was removed from her office. The leader of the rebellion, Luagal-​Ane, entered the temple and, according to Enheduanna, defiled its sacred rites. From the point of view of the rebels, the installation of Sargon’s daughter Enheduanna might have been understood as a sacrilege and so they strove to remove this 142

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member of Sargon’s royal family from this seemingly very important office.35 Ultimately, the rebellion was not successful. The supremacy of Akkad in the south was restored and the rebels were heavily punished—​according to Enheduanna—​by the wrath of Inanna. To conclude, we can say that Enheduanna was not only a very active poet, but that she also actively took part in an ideological justification of the Akkadian Empire and the harsh measures undertaken against the rebels by explaining these measures as a result of the scorn of Inanna. If she was involved in the further development of this ideology, we can state that it was quite a success. Although the rebellions in the south continued, the Royal Inscriptions of this period are characterized by the frequent mentions of Inanna and by a taste for violence.36

Sammu-​ramat Sammu-​ramat was the wife of King Shamshi-​Adad V (823–​811 BCE) and mother of King Adad-​narari III (810–​783). Some scholars assume that she was co-​regent with her son, while others doubt that she served this function.37 The main evidence for the assumption that she functioned as co-​regent (not a clearly defined office, but a rather an ad hoc solution in a difficult situation), is a stone stele that is extraordinary in several regards: Boundary stone of Adad-​narari, king of Assyria, son of Shamshi-​Adad (V), king of Assyria (and of) Semiramis, the palace-​woman of Shamshi-​Adad, king of Assyria, mother of Adad-​narari, strong king, king of Assyria, daughter-​in-​law of Shamaneser (III), king of the four quarters. When Ushiplulume king of the Kummuhites, caused Adad-​narari, king of Assyria (and) Semiramis, the palace woman to cross the Euphrates. I fought a pitched battle with them –​with Atarshumki, son of Adramu, of the city of Arpad together with eight kings who were with him at the city Paqarahubunu. I took away from them their camp. To save their lives they dispersed. In this (same year) they erected this boundary stone […] (Grayson 1996: 205) The first extraordinary fact is that the king mentions his mother in his genealogy, something that is completely unusual. Additionally, he states that he was accompanied by his mother while he was on a campaign, which seems a bit strange for a heroic king. These two points indicate that Sammu-​ramat actually held a truly prominent role, that perhaps she herself led the military operation instead of her son Adad-​narari, who might simply have been too young to rule himself. However, as we do not have much further evidence,38 her co-​regency will remain a matter of discussion, but the simple existence of this inscription indicates that something extraordinary was going on here. As mentioned above (p. 143), we have no evidence for later narratives that refer to a powerful warrior queen Sammu-​ramat in Mesopotamia that might have inspired the creation of the Greek image of the Mesopotamian warrior queen Semiramis (see Chapter 39). Since most of our sources derive from official or even royal archives, it comes as no surprise that folk stories are not very well attested. They mainly belonged to the oral sphere and if they were written down, scribes might have used the easier Aramaic for such stories. Unfortunately, Aramaic was mostly written on papyri and parchment and these organic materials quickly deteriorated under Mesopotamian climatic conditions. Therefore, it seems very unlikely that we will ever know what inspired the Greeks when they wrote about the famous queen Semiramis, who has often been considered identical with Sammu-​ramat. Actual evidence for links between the two women are as yet missing.39 143

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Naqi ͗a Naqi ͗a (c. 730–​668 BCE), wife of Sennacherib (705–​681), mother of the Neo-​Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681–​669) and grandmother of Ashurbanipal (668–​627), is the best documented and in all probability most influential royal woman of the Neo-​Assyrian period.40 It was often suggested that Naqi ͗a was the driving force behind Sennarcherib’s installment of Esarhaddon as crown prince. This was a truly exceptional case, as Esarhaddon was one of Sennacherib’s younger sons and most probably, even as a young man, suffered from an illness that would later kill him.41 Sickness was often interpreted as a sign of divine wrath in Mesopotamia; therefore, it was a severe obstacle for a claimant to the throne and any sickness of the king could be used to question his status as the darling of the gods. Maybe we will never know what the reasons for Esarhaddon’s promotion were, but we are sure about the results of Sennacherib’s decision. Sennacherib was assassinated by his other sons and Esarhaddon had to fight his brothers in order to be enthroned. While the rebellion was going on, Naqi ͗a explored the future of her son by asking for prophetic messages, something that was usually a privilege of the kings. The answer highlights the role of Ishtar, here called the Lady of Arbela, and the privileged position of Naqi ͗a: I am the Lady of Arbela! To the king’s mother, since you implored me, saying: “The one on the right and the other on the left you have placed in your lap. My own offspring you expelled to roam the steppe!” No, king, fear not! Yours is the kingdom, yours is the power! By the mouth of Aḫat-​abiša, a woman from Arbela. (text 75, lines v 12–​25 of SAA 9, 1.8)42 Seemingly, the prophecy was right:  it took Esarhaddon only two months to defeat his brothers and he was enthroned as Assyrian king.43 In this text Naqi ͗a is already designated as queen mother; according to Melville this was “the highest rank a woman could achieve.”44 In earlier research Naqi ͗a was often seen as the strong woman behind a weak, sick, and superstitious king. Newer research has demonstrated that despite all of his problems, Esarhaddon was a capable ruler, who brought the Neo-​Assyrian Empire to its maximal extension and pacified Babylonia, at least for a while.45 During his reign Naqi ͗a became really powerful and commissioned her own building inscription. To undertake large building projects and praise them in inscriptions is typical for kings, but extraordinary for a royal woman. The inscription introduces Naqi ͗a in a bombastic tone, which is quite typical for inscriptions commissioned by kings: I, Naqi ͗a … wife of Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, daughter-​in-​law of Sargon [II], king of the world, king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of the world [and] king of Assyria; the gods Aššur, Sîn, Šamaš, Nabû, and Marduk, Ištar of Niniveh, [and] Ištar of Arbela … He [Essarhaddon] gave to me as my lordly share the inhabitants of conquered land, foes plundered by his bow. I  made them carry hoe [and] basket and they made bricks. I … a cleared tract of land in the citadel of [the city of] Nineveh, behind the temple of the gods Sîn and Šamaš, for a royal residence of Esarhaddon, my beloved son … (Leichty 2011: 315–​16 (text 2003)) We can clearly see that Naqi ͗a held an extraordinarily powerful position during the reign of her son and this continued even after Esarhaddon’s death. She was eager to assure the enthronement 144

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of her grandson Assurbanipal. The loyalty treaty that was intended to secure his reign is called the treaty of Zakutu, another name of Naqi ͗a. Its first lines read: The treaty of Zakutu, the queen of Sannacherib, king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, with Šamaš-​šumu-​ukin, his equal brother, with Šamaš-​metu-​uballiṭ and the rest of his brothers, with the royal seed, with the magnates and the governors, the bearded and the eunuchs, the royal entourage, with the exempts and all who enter the Palace, with Assyrians high and low: Anyone who (is included) in this treaty which Queen Zakutu has concluded with the whole nation concerning her favorite grandson Assurbanipal […] (SAA 8, 2, lines 1–​9)46 That Naqi ͗a was able to conclude a treaty with the most powerful persons throughout the empire and to establish her favorite grandson on the throne is clear evidence for her powerful position, even if she simply continued the plans she had made earlier with Esarhaddon.47 It seems that Naqi ͗a died shortly after Assurbanipal was enthroned as king.

Adad-​guppi Adad-​guppi was the mother of the last Neo-​Babylonian king Nabonidus (556–​539 BCE) and most details about her are known from a pseudo-​autobiographical text, which was most probably composed after her death.48 The text, written in the first person, informs us about the long life of Adad-​guppi. The text emphasizes her special relationship to the moon good Sin, to whom Adad-​guppi dedicated her life: When in my dreams his hands were set (upon me), Sîn the king of gods spoke to me thus: “The return of the gods is because of you. I will place the dwelling in Harran in the hands of Nabonidus your son. He will construct Ehulhul and make perfect its work.” (Svärd 2019: 56 ) Earlier, the text recounted that the city of Harran was destroyed in 610, the destruction that made it necessary to reconstruct or at least to renovate the temple Ehulhul. It is not the king himself who receives the dream about his divine mission, but the dream is revealed to his mother who takes the role of a mediator between the god and her son.The reason for stressing the role of his mother might be that Nabonidus seemingly had no right to the throne through his paternal line, so he focused on his wise mother who had closer ties to his predecessor on the throne. Although Adad-​guppi was not the daughter of one of the earlier kings, she claims to have had such a close relationship to the former kings that they elevated her to the status of a daughter. She repaid this treatment by taking care of the offerings for the kings after their deaths.49 According to her autobiography, Adad-​guppi played an important role as an advisor and supporter of her son, the king Nabonidus.There was not much reason for her son to exaggerate the role of his mother after her death, so her assertion is likely correct.

Conclusion This short chapter has demonstrated that, despite all the source problems, we can find evidence for powerful royal women in different epochs of Mesopotamian history. Royal women had 145

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privileged access to the most powerful men of their times, and some of them used this access to gain wealth and influence. Royal women often gained influence through their intimate relationship to the king and their role as advisors. For instance, we clearly saw in the case of Naqi ͗a, that royal women could be so rich and powerful that they were even able to construct a palace. Returning to the title of this chapter, we could conclude that Mesopotamian royal woman remain invisible to us, in many cases, because their activities are usually not reflected in the official inscriptions. The few cases where we have ample evidence, could lead us to the conclusion that queens were not invisible in antiquity itself and that royal women always played an important role in Mesopotamian kingship and its public representation. The evidence from the Neo-​Assyrian Empire even allows us to see developments and changes in the role of royal women over time. Svärd concludes that the strong emphasis on the family line of the ruling dynasty in Neo-​Assyrian times fostered the status of royal women.50 The case of Adad-​guppi also demonstrates the role of women in taking care of the royal family, which included the deceased predecessors of the king as well. To conclude: while royal woman mostly played the Ninsun-​role of a loving mother, extraordinary circumstances could lead them to execute power in a more direct way, more appropriate to Inanna/​Ishtar than to Ninsun.

Notes 1 See Diekmann 2017: 70–​130 for a detailed analysis of the decipherment of cuneiform and the early years of Assyriology. 2 See Veldhuis 2012 for an analysis of the development of cuneiform script. 3 Michalowski 2000. 4 See the contributions in Brisch 2012 for a discussion of various aspects of Mesopotamian kingship. 5 Barjamovic 2004. 6 See Svärd 2015a: 39. 7 For the motif of the king being breastfed by a goddess, see Selz 2018. Westenholz 2000 discusses the role of the king as Inanna’s lover. 8 Wilcke 1998, 502–​3. 9 See George 2003 for an edition and translation of the text with extensive commentary. 10 Svärd 2019. 11 George 2003: 553–​5. 12 Harris 1991. 13 On this god, see Espak 2015. 14 For an edition and translation of the text, see Hurowitz 1995. 15 Westenholz 2000. 16 Abusch 1986. 17 Fink 2017. 18 For a detailed analysis of the situation in Neo-​Assyrian times, see Svärd 2015a, 61–​74. 19 Parpola 2017. 20 See Rollinger 2010 for a discussion of the figure of Semiramis and possible connections to the Neo-​ Assyrian queen Sammu-​ramat. 21 However, Steinkeller 2013 could demonstrate that far-​reaching military activities were undertaken by the early kings of Kish. 22 Glassner 2004: 123. 23 See Worthington 2009: 133–​4. 24 Glassner 2004: 123. 25 Glassner 2004: 263. 26 Glassner 2004: 267. 27 See Foster 2016. 28 See, for example, in the “catalogue of texts and authors” published in Lambert 1962. 29 For a discussion of the evidence for Enheduanna’s authorship, see Sjöberg 1969: 5; and Zgoll 1997: 181–​ 2 with further references.

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Invisible Mesopotamian royal women? 30 On the history of this composition, see Espak 2019. 31 Translation from Sjöberg 1969: 49. 32 See Radner 2011 for a detailed analysis of competition in the Neo-​Assyrian Empire. 33 For an edition, see Zgoll 1997. 34 Zgoll 1997: 118. 35 Zgoll 1997: 99–​107. 36 See Fink 2016, 58–​61. 37 For a history of the discussion, see Svärd 2015a: 49–​51. 38 There are two more texts that mention Sammu-​ramat; for a discussion of them, see Svärd 2015a: 50. 39 Rollinger 2010. 40 Sarah Melville dedicated a whole monograph to her: Melville 1999. 41 Melville 1999: 22–​3. 42 Translation from Nissinen 2019: 119. 43 On this episode, see Frahm 1997: 18–​19 and Parpola 2015. 44 Melville 1999: 31. 45 Melville 1999: 31–​32. 46 Translation from Parpola and Watanabe 1988: 62. 47 Melville 1999: 89–​90. 48 Beaulieu 1989: 68. 49 Svärd 2019: 56–​8. 50 Svärd 2015b.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). ePSD  The Pennsylvanian Sumerian Dictionary http://​psd.museum.upenn.edu/​nepsd-​frame.html (accessed June 9, 2020). SAA  State Archives of Assyria, Helsinki.

Bibliography Abusch, T. 1986. “Ishtar’s Proposal and Gilgamesh’s Refusal:  An Interpretation of the Gilgamesh Epic, Tablet 6, Lines 1–​79.” History of Religions 26: 143–​87. Barjamovic, G. 2004. “Civic Institutions and Self-​government in Southern Mesopotamia in the Mid–​First Millennium BC.” In J.G. Dercksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen. Leiden and Istanbul, 47–​98. Beaulieu, P.-​A. 1989. The Reign of Nabonidus King of Babylonia 556–​539 B.C. Yale Near Eastern Researches 10. New Haven. Brisch, N. (ed.) 2012. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond. Oriental Institute Seminar 4. Chicago. Diekmann, N. 2017. Tabot’s Tool. Notizbücher als Denklabor eines viktorianischen Keilschriftforschers. Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 25. Gladbeck. Espak, P. 2015. The God Enki in Sumerian Royal Ideology and Mythology. Wiesbaden. Espak, P. 2019. “The Transformation of the Sumerian Temple Hymns.” In R. Da Riva, M. Lang, and S. Fink (eds.), Literary Change in Mesopotamia and Beyond and Routes and Travellers between East and West. Münster,  15–​22. Fink, S. 2016. “Battle-​Descriptions in Mesopotamian Sources I:  Pre-​Sargonic and Sargonic Period.” In K. Ulanowski (ed.), The Religious Aspects of War in the Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome. Leiden,  51–​64. Fink, S. 2017. “Inanna schreit! Kriegsgeschrei im Alten Sumer.” In J. Gießauf (ed.), Zwischen Karawane und Orientexpress. Streifzüge durch Jahrtausende orientalischer Geschichte und Kultur. Festschrift für H. Galter. Münster,  91–​8. Foster, B. 2016. The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia. Abingdon and New York. Frahm, E. 1997. Einleitung in die Sanherib-​Inschriften.Vienna.

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Sebastian Fink George, A. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic:  Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, vol. I. Oxford. Glassner, J.-​J. 2004. Mesopotamian Chronicles. Atlanta. Grayson, A.K. 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858–​745 BC). Toronto. Harris, R. 1991.“Inanna-​Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites.” History of Religions 30: 261–​78. Hurowitz, V.A. 1995. “An Old Babylonian Bawdy Ballad.” In: Z. Zevit, S. Gitin, and M. Sokoloff (eds.), Solving Riddles and Untying Knots. Winona Lake and Indiana, 543–​58. Lambert, W.G. 1962. “A Catalogue of Texts and Authors.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 16: 59–​77. Leichty, E. 2011. The Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–​669 BC). Winona Lake and Indiana. Melville, S. 1999. The Role of Naqia/​Zakutu in Sargonid Politics. Helsinki. Michalowski, P. 2000. “The Life and Death of the Sumerian Language in Comparative Perspective.” Acta Sumerologica 22: 177–​200. Nissinen, M. 2019. Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta. Parpola, S. 2015. “De Moord op Sanherib en de Opkomst van Esarhaddon, Koning van Assyrië.” Phoenix 61, 1: 23–​37. Parpola, S. 2017. Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts. Helsinki. Parpola, S. and Watanabe, K. 1988. Neo Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. Helsinki. Radner, K. 2011. “Fame and Prizes: Competition and War in the Neo-​Assyrian Empire.” In N. Fisher and H. van Wees (eds.), Competition in the Ancient World. Swansea, 37–​57. Rollinger, R. 2010. “Semiramis.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 12: 383–​6. Selz, G. 2018. “Intimate Relations:  Reconsidering Background of the Mesopotamian Mistress of the Animals.” In K. Kaniuth, D. Lau, and D. Wicke (eds.), Übergangszeiten. Altorientalische Studien für R. Dittmann anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstags. Münster, 143–​51. Steinkeller, P. 2013. “An Archaic ‘Prisoner Plaque’ from Kiš.” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale 107: 131–​55. Sjöberg, Å.W. 1969. The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns. Locust Valley and New York. Svärd, S. 2015a. Women and Power in Neo-​Assyrian Palaces. Helsinki. Svärd, S. 2015b. “Changes in Neo-​Assyrian Queenship.” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 21: 157–​71. Svärd, S. 2019. “Female Sages in Akkadian Literature.” In S. Anthonioz and S. Fink (eds.), Representing the Wise: A Gendered Approach. Münster, 53–​64. Veldhuis, N. 2012. “Cuneiform:  Changes and Developments.” In S.D. Houston (ed.), The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change. Santa Fe, 3–​23. Westenholz, J.G. 2000. “King by Love of Inanna—​An Image of Female Empowerment?” NIN: Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity 1: 75–​89. Wilcke, C. 1998. “Ninsun.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 8: 501–​4. Worthington, M. 2009.“Schankwirtin.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 12: 132–​4. Zgoll, A. 1997. Der Rechtsfall der En-​hedu-​Ana. Münster.

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“[B]‌ecause Atossa was all powerful” (Gr. pan krátos; Hdt. 7.3.43). With this statement Herodotos passed his verdict about a Persian royal woman, in this case the daughter of Kyros the Great and the wife of Dareios I. Herodotos characterized her as “all powerful” because she exercised her influence over the king and interfered with royal politics. According to the Greek historian, Atossa ensured that her son Xerxes became the heir to the throne, rather than Dareios’ firstborn son Artobarzanes, the son of the daughter of the Persian noble Gobryas whom he had married before he became king. Herodotos also alleged that Atossa instigated Dareios I to undertake the campaign against Greece in order for her to obtain foreign slaves (Hdt. 3.134.1). Women’s influence over the royal succession and meddling in political affairs thus became the key characteristics of Achaimenid women in Greek sources. In the view of Herodotos and his successors, Atossa’s power was not an exception among Persian royal women: Amestris, the daughter of Otanes and wife of Xerxes I, exercised such influence at the royal court that she could exact her revenge on the family of Xerxes’ brother Masistes which, in turn, caused him to rebel against the king (Hdt. 9.114–​119). As King’s Mother at the court of her son Artaxerxes I, she is alleged to have used her power to avenge the death of her son Achaimenes, who had governed the satrapy of Egypt during the rebellion of 465–​455 BCE (Ktesias FGrH 688 F14). Parysatis, the daughter of Artaxerxes I and the Babylonian Andria, is said to have been so powerful that her husband, Dareios II, relied on her for any decision-​making (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15). Parysatis’ ability to interfere in politics became particularly apparent when she supported her son Kyros the Younger in his rebellion against Artaxerxes II, while her vindictiveness seemingly knew no bounds when she intrigued until those responsible for her son’s death at the battle of Kounaxa in 401 had been killed (Ktesias FGrH 688 F16; Plut. Art.14.10, 16.1, 17.1, 32.1). She was involved in the punishment of the family of Teritouchmes (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15), and finally, resenting her daughter-​in-​law Stateira, daughter of the Persian noble Hydarnes, whether for personal reasons or perceiving her family as a political threat, instigated her death by having her poisoned (Deinon FGrH 690 F15b; Plut. Art.19.2–​3). This catalog of Persian royal women exerting power at the royal court and, by all accounts, acting without (male) control or restraint shaped the Greek view of Achaimenid women. Historical reality, however, may have been rather different.

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As will be argued below, a hierarchical structure defined the royal and noble women of the Achaimenid period (550–​330 BCE). This structure determined their ability to act, involve themselves in matters related to the court and the stability of the kingship. They owned estates and employed workforces in their service, remunerated by rations from their own estates. Rather than being confined to the palace women traveled throughout the empire.To mark his affection for his favorite wife Irtašduna/​Artystone, Dareios I ordered a gold statue of her (Hdt. 7.69.2), a clear indication that women were depicted in Achaimenid art. Near-​Eastern and Greek sources clearly recognize a hierarchy among Persian royal women, at the top of which were the King’s Mother and the King’s Wife.The latter was defined through her being the mother of the heir to the throne, and thereby the future King’s Mother. As King’s Wife she outranked other women of the polygamous Achaimenid kings. Together with the king’s daughters, as well as his sisters, they formed the core of the female royal household; Neo-​Assyrian and Neo-​Babylonian evidence used the collective term of reference, “woman of the palace” (Bab. ša ekalli) to describe royal women at the court. The expression is also used in Babylonian documents to refer to Persian royal women (BE 9 28). Further female members will have included the wives and daughters of the king’s brothers and sons.Texts from the Persepolis Fortification archive written in Elamite refer to royal women collectively as dukšišp, “princesses” (PFa 31), though we may recognize the terms of reference to the king, i.e. the King’s Mother, the King’s Wife, and the King’s Daughter (El. sunki pakri; PFa 5) as titles as well.1 Their status was characterized by privileges as well as official duties, by landownership and entrepreneurial activities. There is no doubt that any power royal women may have held was dependent on their relative position or closeness to the king. In the case of Atossa and Artystone, their importance for Dareios I was their descent from Kyros the Great and Kassandane (Hdt. 3.1.1, 88.2–​3), this marriage itself the union between the clan of the Pasargadai and the family of the Achaimenids. Parmys, daughter of Bardiya and niece of Kambyses II, likewise held a crucial position as Kyros’ granddaughter. Following his ambiguous succession to the throne, and in an effort to legitimize his reign, Dareios I married all three princesses, as otherwise their offspring could claim a direct link to the dynasty’s founder and thus jeopardize Dareios’ kingship. The strategic move to conclude marriage alliances between the king and members of the Persian nobility that we observe as early as the marriage of Kyros the Great leads us to a central “purpose” of royal women as strengthening the bond between the king and the nobility. Within this scheme they were but pawns of their male relatives, who negotiated the marriage alliances; they themselves would have had no say in the matter. The practice of international diplomatic marriages is well attested in ancient Near-​Eastern and eastern Mediterranean societies. Treaties were confirmed by a marriage alliance between one treaty partner and the daughter of the other. In the sixth century BCE, Alyattes of Sardeis gave his daughter Ayrenis in marriage to Ištumegu/​Astyages the son of Kyaxares of Media (Hdt. 1.74.4). Alyattes’ alliance with Nabu-​kudurri-​usur/​Nebuchadnezzar II resulted in another daughter, Amytis, being married to the Babylonian king (Berossos FGrH 680 F8). Kašša, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar II was married to Nergal-​šur-​usur/​Neriglissar, son of Nabu-​epir-​ la, governor of Puqudu (area along the Tigris in central and northern Babylonia) who usurped the throne after Nebuchadnezzar’s death.2 The implication that the custom of diplomatic marriage continued in the early Persian period is made by Ktesias’ claim that Kyros married the daughter of Astyages after his victory over the Median king (Ktesias FGrH 688 F9), and is equally apparent in Herodotos’ statement that Kambyses II wanted to marry the daughter of Amasis of Egypt (Hdt. 3.1–​2). The alternative versions offered for both kings by Herodotos, namely that Astyages had already married his daughter Mandane to Kambyses I (Hdt. 1.107.1), or similarly, 150

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that Kyros II had married an Egyptian princess who became the mother of Kambyses II (Hdt. 3.2.1), all suggest that, in the early stages of the empire, diplomatic marriage alliances continued. Whatever the historical reality of these versions, parallel to these marriages of international diplomacy, we observe the beginning of dynastic marriages among Persian kings and members of the Persian nobility. As a member of the Pasargadai tribe (Hdt. 1.125.3), Kyros II had married Kassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, a member of the Achaimenid clan (Hdt. 3.1.1). These two lines were to become intrinsically intertwined under Dareios I. Dareios himself was the son of Hystaspes, a brother of Pharnaspes. One of Dareios’ sisters was married to Otanes (Hdt. 7.82), his cousin. Otanes’ sister Phaidyme, meanwhile, had first been married to Kambyses II and then to Bardiya (Hdt. 3.68.3). The two families clearly sought to strengthen the bond between them over the reigns of three kings. Dareios I pursued the same policy, though he or his father Hystaspes also created a bond with another Persian noble clan, that of Gobryas the Patichoraean. One of Hystaspes’ daughters was married to this Persian noble (Hdt. 7.5.1), while Dareios himself, even before he ascended to the kingship, had married a daughter of Gobryas with whom he had a son, Artobarzanes (Hdt. 7.2.2). As king, Dareios married Phaidyme, a daughter of Otanes (Hdt. 3.88.4). In all these instances of royal marriage alliances, nothing suggests that any of the royal women had a say in the matter; they had no choice but to accept their fate as members of the royal household or of the Persian nobility. What we may note at this point, though, is that, apart from the international alliances, dynastic marriages were concluded between the king and women belonging to the Persian elite, evidently a mark for a “proper” King’s Wife and future King’s Mother. Yet not even at the well-​organized Achaimenid court did things always go according to plan; designated heirs to the throne could die before they ascended to the throne and kings might not have sons. The latter scenario arose with Kambyses II and Bardiya, neither of whom produced a son and heir. It created a power vacuum that allowed Dareios I to succeed to the throne. Dareios must have ensured that the bond between the royal family and that of the nobles Otanes and Gobryas was maintained in the next generation. His heir to the throne Xerxes I  was married to Otanes’ daughter Amestris (Hdt. 7.61.2), while Xerxes’ sister Artazostre became the wife of Gobryas’ son Mardonios (Hdt. 6.43.1; PFa 5). It is with the murders in 465 BCE of Xerxes I and that of Dareios, his designated heir to the throne, that we observe the consequences of palace intrigue at the Achaimenid court for securing the royal Persian line. Following Dareios’ murder, several brothers competed for the throne: Sogdianos, Arsites, and Ochos, the latter of whom succeeded to the throne, taking the throne name Artaxerxes I. The designated heir, Dareios, had already been married to his cousin Artaÿnte (Hdt. 9.108.1). Artaxerxes’ wife, Damaspia, remains unknown beyond the fact that she was the mother of the heir to the throne, Xerxes II, and that she died on the same day as Artaxerxes I himself (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15).Yet Xerxes II, too, passed away, having been king for only 45 days, allowing his half-​brother Ochos (Bab. Umasu), himself the son of the king and the Babylonian Kosmartidene, to succeed to the throne in 424/​423 BCE, taking the throne-​name Dareios II. Up to this point Ochos had been satrap of Hyrkania and was already married to his half-​sister, Parysatis. Her mother, Andria, was of Babylonian origin and accordingly must have been part of the female royal household (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15).This is the only marriage of an Achaimenid king with a non-​Persian female and can be explained by the fact that royal sons not born of the King’s Wife and thus technically not eligible for the throne, were able to marry half-​sisters within the extended royal family. Parysatis (and Andria for that matter) descended from a high-​ranking Babylonian family: documents from the bank house of the Murašu family in Babylon attest to the ownership of estates and property, managed and administered by officials in Parysatis’ 151

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service. Unfortunately, as her marriage to an Achaimenid prince seems to have been an exception, it is difficult to say how this marriage came about and whether the marriages of royal half-​siblings reflect a general practice. Parysatis’ surprise elevation to King’s Wife meant that in time, at Artaxerxes II’s court, she became King’s Mother. Both Ktesias and Xenophon describe the machinations of Parysatis as a King’s Mother at considerable length: she favored her younger son Kyros over the king and effectively supported Kyros’ rebellion by making her estates in Trans-​Euphrates available to him and his mercenary army (Xen. An.1.4.9). When Kyros’ attempt at overthrowing the king failed and he was killed in his battle against Artaxerxes II at Kounaxa, Parysatis went on a relentless path of revenge until those responsible for Kyros’ death had been killed. A closer look at the activities of Achaimenid royal and noble women as described in the Greek sources may allow us to explain their actions in a more nuanced manner. In the case of Atossa, Herodotos’ claim that the King’s Wife had any influence over the choice of heir is highly unlikely. Xerxes was the first son born to Dareios I while he was king, and thus, he was born “to the purple.” This timing of his birth nullified any claim by a son born before his father was king, and accordingly there was never a question of Artobazanes succeeding to the kingship.The notion that Atossa instigated Dareios I to undertake the campaign to Greece in order for her to obtain Greek slaves as servants seems highly unlikely, given the fact that Herodotos places the episode before 513 BCE, when Dareios undertook the Skythian campaign, and Atossa would have needed to wait for over 20 years to obtain foreign slaves. His claim also completely omits the political circumstances which led to the punitive campaign of 490 BCE, or the fact that it was conducted under the command of two generals, Datis and Artaphernes, rather than being led by the king himself. What Herodotos aims to achieve with these episodes is to demonstrate the alleged influence of royal women over the king, and that this influence per se was negative. This becomes no more evident than in his depiction of Xerxes’ wife Amestris and in Ktesias’ and Plutarch’s description of her as well as of Parysatis, the wife of Dareios II. Amestris exacted a cruel revenge on the family of Masistes when she tortured Masistes’ wife. Hurt pride was at the base of her action, since she felt wronged when Xerxes I gave his mistress and niece Artaÿnte (the daughter of Masistes) a robe that Amestris herself had woven for the king. Learning about the betrayal, she had Artaÿnte’s mother mutilated in a manner used for rebels. Why Amestris’ revenge was directed against her, rather than Artaÿnte, remains a matter of debate. Was it because she had been the initial object of Xerxes’ affections, or because, as Artaÿnte’s mother, she had failed to keep her daughter under control? Or was Artaÿnte spared because she was the wife of the future king? Still, in reaction to Amestris’ deed, Masistes and his sons fled to their satrapy Baktria to stage a revolt, but he and his sons were killed by royal troops. Was Amestris indeed so powerful that hurt pride led her to destroy a family that was so closely related to the king? The complexity of the story has allowed scholars to suggest that it may be the synopsis of at least two different narrative strands, one a palace intrigue, the other a revolt.3 Handing over the royal robe to his brother’s family might have been a symbolic gesture which indicated that Xerxes meant to pass royal power on to his brother, and that Amestris fought to secure the throne for her son. Masistes’ revolt may have been staged after the deaths of Xerxes I and of Dareios, after which a struggle for the throne ensued among other royal sons. The key narrative components Herodotos identified earlier appear again now: the King’s Wife interfering with the succession and being the cause for a military campaign, or, in this case, a rebellion. Amestris’ trail of destruction continued when she became the King’s Mother at the court of her son Artaxerxes I. When her son Achaimenes, the satrap of Egypt, was killed during the 152

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rebellion of 465–​455 BCE, she did not rest until she had avenged his death by having the leader of that rebellion, Inaros, as well as 50 Greeks in his service, killed (Ktesias FGrH 699 F14). The same fate was to await Alkides, who was responsible for killing her grandson Zopyros after he had rebelled against the king (FGrH 688 F14). And in order to avenge her daughter Amytis, who had been involved in an intimate relationship with the court physician Apollonides of Kos, Amestris saw to it that Apollonides was tortured to death on the orders of Artaxerxes I (Ktesias FGrH 688 F14). Ktesias provides us with a similarly cruel biography of Parysatis. Her power was so substantial that her husband, her half-​brother Dareios II, is said to have been entirely dependent on her for any decision-​making. This was the case when Dareios II’s half-​brothers, Sogdianos and Arsites, attempted to ascend to the throne. Later, as the King’s Mother at the court of Artaxerxes II, her influence went as far as supporting the rebellion of Kyros the Younger, whom she favored over Artaxerxes as king. When Kyros died in battle, Parysatis did not rest until those responsible for his death had been killed. Due to her interference, Artyphios, son of Megabyxos, was killed when he threatened the kingship, and the family of the Persian noble Teritouchmes son of Hydarnes was eliminated. Having at first saved the life of Artaxerxes’ wife Stateira, a sister of Teritouchmes, she later conspired to have her killed by poison. Finally, Parysatis was held responsible for approving of an incestuous act, the union between her son Artaxerxes I and her granddaughter Atossa (Plut. Art. 23.3). What emerges from this catalog of destructive behavior is that royal women were linked to palace intrigue, caused upheaval and rebellion, and jeopardized the stability of the empire. Plutarch’s claim of an incestuous union between father and daughter approved of by the King’s Mother adds a despicable detail which reveals the immoral behavior of the Persian king and his court. Whether royal women could indeed exact that level of revenge, whether they had the power to eliminate some or all members of a noble family or those considered a threat to the king, will remain an open question. The fact that Greek writers focused on palace intrigues and women in their writing about Persia, and that women appear consistently in their works as the instigators of war and rebellion, of palace intrigue and acts of revenge, raises our suspicion. Greek writers may have employed the description of such stereotypical behavior for historiographical reasons. Not only were, in the Greek view, the lives of Persian royal women the antithesis of those of Greek women, but their stereotyped depiction also served to underscore the immoral and decadent practices of another, hostile culture. Closer inspection of these allegedly cruel actions may allow a different view. Parysatis’ revenge on the family of Hydarnes arose when Teritouchmes rejected the king’s daughter Amestris in favor of his half-​sister Roxane (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15 (54–​55); this rejection amounted to an affront to the king Dareios II, who accordingly sentenced Teritouchmes to death. There are contradictory versions regarding the fate of the rest of Hydarnes’ family, though Plutarch claims that all other members were allowed to live. Artaxerxes I prevented Stateira’s death by asking his mother to spare her. In the case of Parysatis, both the (unnamed) Karian and Mithridates were accused of disloyalty against the king, since they claimed that they had killed Kyros, even though the official court version asserted that Artaxerxes I himself had killed his brother. Artaxerxes I, informed about these two men’s disloyalty, in one case through one of Parysatis’ eunuchs, condemned them to death. Rather than regarding this as an act of revenge on Parysatis’ part, one could argue that she acted appropriately as the King’s Mother whose duty it was to protect the king and the kingship. Effectively, Parysatis had no say in the matter of Mithridates’ killing. Likewise, the Karian had already been sentenced to death by Artaxerxes, before Parysatis requested to determine which type of death he was to suffer. In the matter of Masabates’ death, the man who had mutilated Kyros’ body, Parysatis waited until a situation had arisen in which 153

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the king was bound to keep his word and thus had to grant her wish to hand Masabates over to her. Certain rules operated in the way palace affairs were handled and royal women had to adhere to these rules. There were clearly limits as to how royal women could act, and it seems a case in point that Parysatis was forced into Babylonian exile after she had killed Artaxerxes’ wife (Plut.Art.19.2–​7). But, as her first intervention shows, there was also another side to their actions: royal women could save lives. This is the case with Amestris, who intervened on behalf of her son-​in-​ law Megabyxos, whom Artaxerxes I had sent into exile, after he staged a rebellion in Trans-​ Euphrates following the death of Inaros (Ktesias FGrH 688 F14 (39)). The king sent several embassies to him in order to end the conflict. One of these embassies included Amestris. The conflict was finally resolved through Amestris’ daughter Amytis, the wife of Megabyxos, and her husband was allowed to return to the court. Both women intervened a second time on behalf of Megabyxos, after a mishap during a hunt in which Megabyxos had shot the first arrow even though that was the king’s privilege. The king sentenced him to be beheaded, but the women were able to alter the sentence: Megabyxos was sent into exile at the Red Sea instead. In time, and thanks to Amestris and Amytis, Megabyxos’ honor was restored and once again he became a King’s Friend and was re-​admitted to the King’s Table, enjoying the privilege of belonging to the close court circle, being bestowed with gifts, and permitted to attend royal banquets (Ktesias FGrH 688 F14 (41)). Interestingly, Herodotos tells us of two other incidents in which Persian noble women intervened with the king on behalf of family members. The wife of Intaphernes went to the palace in the hope to be admitted to an audience with the king after Intaphernes had been accused of treason and he and his male family members were captured. Intaphernes’ wife asked the king to spare the life of her brother and succeeded in freeing him as well as her eldest son (Hdt. 3.119.2). Likewise, the wife of Teaspes asked Xerxes I to spare the life of her son Sataspes, who had been charged with violating the daughter of Zopyros and sentenced to death (Hdt. 4.43.2). Teaspes’ wife was a sister of Dareios, and thereby Xerxes’ aunt. She succeeded in having the sentence altered: Sataspes was ordered to sail around Libya. When, however, he failed do as ordered, the original sentence was upheld and Sataspes was impaled. These incidents indicate that women of the royal household were able to intervene on behalf of members of their family. Their intervention could modify the verdict of the king and thus save a life. However, if the conditions of this new verdict were not met, the original king’s verdict was once more in force. One of the most intriguing questions relates to the names of royal women. It is clear from the Near-​Eastern and Greek sources that Achaimenid kings took an official throne name which replaced their personal name. Thus Ochus took the throne name Dareios II, Arsaces became Artaxerxes II, and Umasu ascended the throne as Artaxerxes III.4 The repetition of royal names, such as Kambyses, Kyros, Dareios, and Artaxerxes was undoubtedly undertaken with the intention of creating a link to the royal namesake, adhering to a dynastic policy, and expressing a degree of continuity.Would there be a similar situation in terms of a change in women’s names? There is some evidence that royal women, too, changed their names, but it is much harder to extract its purpose.5 A striking case of an Achaimenid royal woman bearing two names is that of the Persian woman Irdabama. Unknown in Greek sources, she features prominently in texts from the Persepolis Fortification and the Treasury archives. However, her identity is still a matter of debate, as none of the archival texts refer to her as dukšiš or identify her in relation to the king or to a Persian nobleman. It has been suggested that she may have been the daughter of Gobryas and Dareios’ first wife, or perhaps Dareios’ mother. Research on the Persepolis Fortification texts has allowed the conclusion that a second name or title was used for her.6 This name, Abbamuš, 154

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is rendered Apame in Greek sources and recurs as the name of a daughter of Artaxerxes II who was married to Pharnabazos (Plut. Art.27.7) and as that of a daughter of Spitamenes of Baktria, who famously became the wife of Seleukos I and the mother of Antiochos I (Arr. Anab. 7.4.6). Four cities bear her name. Her son Artabazos named one of his daughters after his mother. She was married to the future Ptolemy I in 324 BCE, but was possibly abandoned soon after Alexander’s death. Incidentally, this Apama is also known in Greek sources as Artakama. The name Amestris (OP *Amāstrī-​) is given both to the daughter of Otanes married to Xerxes I (Hdt. 7.61.2) and to a daughter of Dareios II (Ktesias FGrH F688 F15); a daughter of Artaxerxes II of that name was married to Tiribazos (Plut. Art. 23.6). A niece of Dareios III named Amestris/​Amastris was married to the Macedonian Krateros at the mass wedding at Susa in 324 BCE, followed by a marriage to Dionysios of Herakleia (Diod. Sic. 20.109.7; Polyaen. 6.12). A daughter of this union was named after her. In fact, this Achaimenid princess became one of the first royal women in the Hellenistic period to bear the title basilissa. Amastris founded a city that bore her name and even minted coins with the Greek legend basilissa Amastris.7 Atossa (OP *Utauθa, Av. Hutaosā) was the name of Kyros’ daughter and that of a daughter of Artaxerxes II (Plut. Art. 23.6), while the name Mandane was given to one of Dareios I’s daughters (Hdt. 7.78; Diod. Sic. 11.57.1). The name Parysatis (Bab. Purrušatu) reappears as that of a daughter of Artaxerxes III (Curt. 3.13.12; Arr. Anab. 7.4.4). Finally, the name Stateira was given to a daughter of Hydarnes and wife of Artaxerxes II (Ktesias FGrH 688 F15 (53)) as well as to the wife of Dareios III (Plut. Alex. 30.3; Curt. 4.10.2). She too may have borne a second name, as Greek sources also refer to her as Barsine. A daughter of this union, also named Stateira, was married to Alexander in 324 BCE (Arr. Anab. 7.4.4). In terms of this evidence, only Irdabama/​Abbamuš/​Apama and Barsine/​Stateira indicate a name change or the existence of a second (official) name. This is too scant evidence to identify a practice of official names.Yet the reappearance of several female personal names throughout the Achaimenid dynasty points at least to a deliberate choice for the names of Persian royal and noble daughters. The power and level of activity executed by Persian royal women needs to be seen in a historical context which includes the Middle Elamite and Neo-​Elamite periods. This becomes apparent in the artistic depiction of women as well as in the use of Neo-​Elamite seals in the Achaimenid period. One such seal carved in the Neo-​Elamite style depicts a female wearing a bobbed hairstyle and seated on a throne, receiving a female guest who stands before the seated lady, separated by an incense burner (PFS 77*).The seal is accompanied by an inscription which reads “I am Šeraš daughter of Hubanahpi.” Hubanahpi was a local Elamite ruler in the late seventh century, and Šeraš, thus, a royal daughter. The fact that the seal depicts an audience scene has allowed the conclusion that Elamite royal women did hold audiences, presumably allowing other women to approach them. Further scenes similarly depicting a female audience scene but carved in Achaimenid style suggest that Persian royal women adopted an Elamite court practice.8 Beyond the evidence on seals, female audience scenes can be identified on several stelai from Western Asia Minor.9 We can only surmise these images to be a reflection of an historical reality that played itself out in the Achaimenid palaces, and, as with satrapal life, was probably copied by the Persian wives of the satraps in the provinces (and by extension by the wives of local rulers and city-​ kings).The acceptance of this view allows several conclusions. If Achaimenid women did indeed hold audiences, not only did the Persian court model itself on Elamite predecessors, but it also implies that they held a significant position at court, which allowed them to take their own decisions in matters brought before them, or mediate between the visitor and the king (or satrap) if they considered their case worthy of attention. Accordingly, women of the Achaimenid 155

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court must have held a degree of power and ability to make decisions that was independent from the king. Based on the female audience scenes, public or semi-​public appearances of royal women must have taken place. Nehemiah, the wine steward of Artaxerxes I, remarked that the King’s Wife was seated next to the king when he spoke about his wish to travel to Jerusalem (Neh. 2.1–​6) It is also attested that royal women traveled across the empire, receiving food rations for their journey from the royal stores en route.10 Plutarch remarks on the fact that Stateira traveled in a carriage with the curtains pulled back so that she could be seen (Plut. Art. 5.3). Whether they joined royal banquets is more controversial. Herakleides of Kyme remarked that the king dined with his wife and his mother (Herakleides of Kyme FGrH 689 F2; ap.Athen. 4.145c). Apparently women participated in the king’s banquets but had to leave at a certain point (Herakleides of Kyme FGrH 689 F2; Plut. Mor. 140b).Yet, according to the Book of Esther, the king’s wife Vashti was celebrating a banquet separate from that of her husband, when she was then asked to join him (Book of Esther 1:9–​12). As for other indicators of power, we are relying on archaeological material, most of which originates outside Persis, the central province of the empire, or from the Middle and Neo-​ Elamite periods. We may infer from these that they reflect customs and practices followed by Achaimenid royal women, but we need to exercise caution in doing so. In terms of dress and appearance, there are strong indicators that royal women wore a crenelated crown and a bobbed hairstyle. They wore a many-​folded dress held together by a long belt, seemingly identical to the dress worn by the Persian king on the audience relief of the apadana, the throne hall, in Persepolis. A striking image of this appearance is a high relief figure of a Persian lady from Egypt. Like the king and the Persian nobles, she wears a torque, earrings, and a bracelet.11 She is depicted fully frontal, a position we otherwise find only in the statue of Dareios I from Susa. The intriguing aspect of this figure, however, is the position of her hands, which Margaret Cool Root identified as a hand-​over-​wrist gesture known from Elamite art, specifically from the bronze statue of queen Napirasu and from the reliefs at Šekaft-​e Salman.12 They all date to the Middle Elamite period. The reliefs show the king, the queen, and the royal couple with a son, presumably the heir to the throne, standing between them, facing to the right. All three depictions appear in a religious context, which raises the question whether the hand-​over-​wrist gesture observed in the Persian lady likewise carries a religious meaning. If so, this causes some problems, since women do not appear in any religious context according to the Persepolis Fortification texts. Alternatively, the gesture could have been adapted in Achaimenid art without the religious connotation it had in Elamite art. Two points are significant here. The first is the fact that this and other images of Persian women suggest they wore a dress identical in style to that worn by the king and the Persian nobility.The women’s dresses may have been woven from different fabric and may have differed in color, but the style was identical. The fact that they were also depicted wearing a crown is equally intriguing. Further examples can be found in a fourth-​century textile which was part of a saddlecloth discovered in a tomb in Pazyryk.13 Two pairs of women can be seen standing opposite one another, separated by an incense burner. The taller women wear a crown on a bobbed hairstyle and a long dress with appliqué. The fabric was locally produced, emulating the Achaimenid court style. Similarly, a fourth-​century funerary stele from Daskyleion shows a banquet scene with a reclining male and his wife seated beside him on a high-​backed chair. The depiction of seated women on Lydo-​Persian gems and finger rings show these women crowned and wearing a many-​folded dress, but here their hair is gathered in a long braid falling down their back. Still, this may allow us to regard the depictions as mirroring representations from the center of rule; it is highly likely that women of the local elite in the provinces, wives 156

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of officials within the Persian high administrations, copied the Achaimenid style of Persian royal women. The more difficult question is what these features indicate. Are we to understand these as a signal that royal women and women of the Persian nobility were regarded as equal to their male counterparts? Were the identical dress, hairstyle, and jewelry an expression of these women’s status as equal to their husbands’ or sons’ status? If the extraordinary status of royal and noble women was defined by their relation to the male, that is the king, the king’s brothers, and sons who acted as satraps, were they meant to mirror their position? Women’s power and ability to act was most tangible in the realm of landownership, employment of labor, and business transactions. This fact even caught the attention of Greek writers and philosophers. Herodotos noted that the Egyptian town Anthylla provided the King’s Wife with shoes (Hdt. 2.98.1). Plato commented on the property owned by Amestris as the King’s Mother of Artaxerxes I  (Plat. Alk. I 121c-​123c-​d). Xenophon noted the estates and villages owned by the King’s Mother Parysatis in Trans-​Euphrates as well as in Media (Xen. An. 1.4.9). Babylonian documents of the banking house of the Murašu family are primary evidence for Parysatis’ landownership.14 From these texts is becomes clear that Parysatis leased her estates to fief-​holders; the rent was collected by bailiffs working on her behalf. One text (PBS 2/​1–​75) records the rent payment in the form of dates for a woman named Madumitu who had rented the field to the Murašu bank. In a further text she is described as a woman “from the house of (the woman) Amisiri.’ ” This lady owned land along the Euphrates–​ Nippur canal (BE 10 45), while a reservoir on a canal bordering on land belonging to the king was named after her (CBS 5199). Amisiri’ shared her steward with Artaremu who has been identified with Artarios, a son of Xerxes I and half-​brother of Artaxerxes I who was satrap of Babylon.15 Without a doubt Amisiri’ was a royal woman; if we identify her with Amestris, wife of Xerxes I, she must have lived a long time. Alternatively it has been suggested that she was Artaremu/​Artarios’ wife. Two Babylonian documents, BE 9 28, dated to Year 31 of Artaxerxes I, and BE 9 50, dated to year 36, refer to an estate belonging to a woman merely referred to as “woman of the palace” (ša É.GAL). The rent was collected by the bailiff (Bab. ustarbaru) Enlil-​šum-​iddin. In Persis these estates were referred to as Elamite ulhi. Dareios’ wife Artystone, whose name is rendered Irtašduna in the Persepolis texts, owned estates in Kukkannakan, Matannan, and at Mirandu/​Uranduš. The transfer of foodstuffs, including wine and grain, was ordered directly by her, authorized with her personal seal (PFS 38). Two officials in her service are identified as Šalamana, who was based in Kukkannakan, and Datukka, who was based in Mirandu/​Uranduš. The economic activities of Irdabama are prominently represented. She owned at least one estate at Šullake (PFa 27). Orders regarding foodstuffs from her estates were authorized with her own seal (PFS 51). Likewise, she sealed orders for royal provisions at various places in Persis, including Persepolis itself, Hidali, and Liduma, reaching as far as Susa (PF 737). The name Irdabama features most prominently in connection with a workforce located at Tirazziš, which has been identifed with modern Shiraz. Here she employed several workforces which can be identified as belonging to her. One of these groups is a small workforce consisting of two women and one man, and known variously as kurtaš Irdabamana (“workers of Irdabama”), abbakkanaš Irdabamana, or simply as abbakkanašp. In a few instances they are known as matištukkašp. Their rations are being handled by two officials who are in Irdabama’s service, Rašda (PFS 78) and Uštana (PFS 36). These officials were also in charge of rations for Tirazziš-​based workers who were being referred to as kurtaš Abbamušna (“workers of Abbamuš),” or abbakannuš Abbamušna. Comparison of these groups of workers of Irdabama and workers of Abbamuš have allowed the conclusion that the woman Abbamuš and Irdabama may be one and the same individual. 157

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Irdabama employed a large workforce in Tirrazziš, and it is tempting to argue that these were engaged in the construction of a palace for her. Seventeen texts all identify these workers as working in the service of Irdabama. In three texts, the workforce amounts to 480 workers (PF 1028, PF NN-​1068, PF NN-​1146), while a third records 429 workers (PF NN-​2054).16

Conclusion What does this tell us about Persian royal women? Quite clearly, certain royal women held considerable economic power within the empire, attested both for Persis and for other satrapies such as Babylonia, Trans-​Euphrates, Media, and Egypt. The economic independence of these women becomes evident in the fact that they owned a personal seal, had officials in their service, and maintained their own workforce. Furthermore, the concentration of Irdabama’s workforce at Tirrazziš and the suggestion that their purpose was the construction of her own palace allows us to argue that royal women did indeed have their own palatial buildings. However actively or inactively involved they were in landownership, land was rented from them and income received. By all accounts they disposed of their income and produced freely and independently, without external interference or restriction. The implications of this fact are significant. Royal women, as King’s Mothers and King’s Wives, as well as other female members of the royal household, controlled their own wealth. Whether their estates and villages were linked to their royal position and who had the right to inherit this wealth, are questions we cannot answer at present. In many respects, it may be argued that the phenomenon of landownership of Persian royal women may have been adopted from Babylonia. Seal ownership of royal women, and the implication this has, are, of course also apparent in the Neo-​Elamite period, as well as in the Neo-​Assyrian period. In that respect we may argue that the Persian practice followed Near-​Eastern and Elamite predecessors. These women claimed a considerable amount of independence and with that came their power of decision-​making and authority. This ability to act must have extended to the wives of satraps as well as other female members of the royal family married to Persian nobility. Comparison with women in Mesopotamia is further justified when we look at the evidence for Persian royal women’s participation in war. As part of the king’s entourage, women accompanied the king on campaigns. Most notably, Dareios III included them in his march against Alexander III, leaving them at Damaskos after the battle of Issos, so that they were captured and forced to join Alexander’s army train (Arr. Anab. 2.11.9–​10; Curt. 3.8.12; Plut. Alex. 24.1). Women’s presence in the army is not unusual. Šammuaramat had accompanied her son Adad-​ nerari on his campaign against Ushpilulume/​Shupiluliuma, king of Kummuh (Boundary stone of Adad-​Nerari),17 and the Nabonidus Chronicle records the death of the king’s wife after Kyros’ conquest of Babylon in 539 (NCh 7: col. iii: 13–​14). Though she is not mentioned by name, it is possible that this is a reference to the death of Kyros’ wife. By all accounts, Achaimenid royal and noble women held a degree of power which enabled them to act on behalf of family members. While they had no influence over their marriage alliances, through their relation to the king certain women held audiences and intervened and mediated at the court. It does not appear to be the case that they took an active role in political decision-​making, but as part of the king’s entourage they accompanied the king on campaigns. Whether they played any role within religious rites remains obscure. Economically, royal women managed considerable wealth and employed administrative personnel and personal work forces for their own building projects. In appearance they reflected the splendor and royalty of the king and the Persian nobility.

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Notes 1 For titles of royal women see Brosius 1996: 21–​31. 2 See Beaulieu 1998. 3 Sancisi-​Weerdenburg 1983: 20–​33. 4 When Bessos declared himself king he claimed the throne-​name Artaxerxes IV. 5 For the occurrence of name changes in the Hellenistic period see Carney 1991: 154–​72. 6 Cf. Brosius 1996: 140–​1. 7 Imhoof-​Blumer 1885: 25. 8 Cf. Brosius 2010. 9 Cf. Brosius 2010. 10 For travel rations for Persian women see Brosius 1996: 96–​7. 11 The high relief figure of the Persian woman is now in the Brooklyn Museum (Acc. no. 63.67). 12 For Naparisu see Root 1979: 273; for a discussion of the reliefs at Šekaft-​e Salman see Álvarez-​Mon  2018. 13 The saddle cloth is in the State Heritage Museum (Inv. no. 1687/​100). 14 On the Murašu family firm see Pirngruber 2017: 47–​66; Cardascia 1951; Stolper 1985. 15 Lewis 1977: 18 and n. 94. 16 For a full discussion of the archive texts relating to workers of Irdabama see Brosius 1996: 129–​44. 17 On the boundary stele of Adad-​nerari III and Šamuramat see Zaccagnini 1993.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). CBS PBS PF PFa PFS PFS*

Tablets in the Collection of the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphia The Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section, University of Pennsylvania Siglum for Persepolis Fortification Texts published in Hallock 1969 Siglum for Persepolis Fortification Texts published in Hallock 1978 Siglum for Persepolis Fortification Seal Siglum for inscribed Persepolis Fortification Seal

Bibliography Álvarez-​Mon, J. 2012. “Elamite Sculptural Reliefs from the Highlands.” In K. De Graef and J. Tavernier (eds.), Susa and Elam: Archaeological, Historical, Philological and Geographical Perspectives. Leiden, 207–​48. Álvarez-​Mon, J. 2018. “The Sculptural Arts of Elam.” In J. Alvarez-​Mon and G.P. Basello (eds.), The Elamite World. London, 602–​23. Beaulieu, P.-​A. 1998. “Ba’u-​asitu and Kaššaya. Daughters of Nebuchadnezzar II.” Orientalia 64: 173–​201. Bigwood, J. 2009. “Incestuous’ Marriage in Achaemenid Iran: Myths and Realities.” Klio 91: 311–​41. Boardman, J. and Vollenweider, E. 1970. Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical. London. Brosius, M. 1996. Women in Ancient Persia (559–​331 BC). Oxford. Brosius, M. 2010. “The Royal Audience Scene Reconsidered.” In J. Curtis and St.J. Simpson (eds.), The World of Achaemenid Persia: The Diversity of Ancient Iran. London, 141–​52. Burstein, S.M. 1978. The Babyloniaca of Berossus. Malibu. Cameron, G.G. 1948. Persepolis Treasury Texts. Chicago. Cardascia, G. 1951. Les archives de Murašu: une famille d’hommes d’affaires babyloniens à l’époque perse (455–​403 av. J.-​C.). Paris. Carney, E.D. 1991. “‘What’s In a Name?’ The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period.” In S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History. Chapel Hill, 154–​72. Garrison, M. and Root, M.C. 2001. Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets. Chicago. Grayson, A.K. 1975. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Locust Valley, NY. Hallock, R.T. 1969. Persepolis Fortification Texts. Chicago.

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Maria Brosius Hallock, R.T. 1978. “Selected Fortification Texts.” Cahiers de la Délégation Archéologique Française en Iran 8: 109–​36. Imhoof-​Blumer, F. 1885. Porträtköpfe auf griechischen Münzen hellenistischer Zeit. Leipzig. Lewis, D.M. 1977. Sparta and Persia. Leiden. Pirngruber, R. 2017. The Economy of Late Achaemenid and Seleucid Babylonia. Cambridge. Potts, D.T. 2016. The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Cambridge. Root, M.C. 1979. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art. Leiden. Sancisi-​Weerdenburg, H. 1983. “Exit Atossa: Images of Women in Greek Historiography on Persia.” In A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity. London. 20–​33. Spycket, A. 1980. “Women in Persian art.” In D. Schmandt-​Besserat (ed.), Ancient Persia. The Art of an Empire. Malibu, 43–​6. Stolper, M.W. 1985. Entrepreneurs and Empire:  The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia. Istanbul. Zaccagnini, C. 1993. “Notes on the Pazarcik Stela.” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 7, 1: 53–​72.

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14 KARIAN ROYAL WOMEN AND THE CREATION OF A ROYAL IDENTITY Stephen Ruzicka

There are three “Karian Royal Women”:  Artemisia I  of the sixth-​and fifth-​century BCE Lygdamid dynasty of Halikarnassos, and Artemisia II and Ada of the fourth-​century Hekatomnid dynasty, also of Halikarnassos after a move from inland Mylasa in the 370s.1 All exercised sole power after their husbands’ deaths. Their husbands were in each case also their brothers. Rather than investigating such adelphic marriages in various non-​Karian dynasties to cast light on the Karian practice, I want to investigate the possible purpose of these brother–​sister marriages in the context of their own settings and times. Halikarnassos (modern Bodrum) was located on the Keramic Gulf on the southern edge of the Halikarnassos Peninsula, which jutted out into the Aegean as the southwestern extremity of Karia. Like other cities along the Karian coast, Halikarnassos had a mixed Greek and Karian population, but it appears thoroughly Greek linguistically, politically, and culturally in the late Archaic and Classical periods. In the sixth century, as was the case in many Greek cities along the western edge of Anatolia, Halikarnassos had a ruling tyrant, Lygdamis. We have no direct evidence about his beginnings or activities as tyrant. Throughout much of the rest of Karia, including elsewhere on the Halikarnassos peninsula, local dynasts exercised power on a hereditary basis, so whatever its origins and however it was designated, the so-​called “tyranny” at Halikarnassos conformed to the prevailing pattern in many nearby Greek cities and to the traditional Karian pattern of petty dynasts as local rulers. Having conquered the whole of Anatolia in the 540s, the Persians favored one-​man rule in subject cities, since tyrants or dynasts could function efficiently under Persian governors (satraps) as local officials responsible for gathering tribute and mustering and leading military contingents levied for Persian service.The Persians kept such figures in power in Greek cities in western Anatolia, including Halikarnassos, through the end of the sixth century, subordinating Ionian and Karian tyrants and dynasts to the satrap at Sardeis. Then, between 499 and 494, the so-​called Ionian Revolt, led initially by subject tyrants in Ionian Greek cities, but ultimately involving subject populations all the way to Kypros, disrupted Persian authority. Persian punitive measures ranged across Ionia and parts of Karia, leaving many cities burned and toppling most still surviving tyrants (Hdt. 6.32). Almost uniquely, however, Halikarnassos’ tyrant family

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survived for at least two more generations, into the middle of the fifth century, probably an indication that Lygdamid Halikarnassos had not participated in the revolt. Artemisia (I), daughter of Lygdamis, is the best known of the Lygdamid “tyrants,” thanks to Herodotos’ detailed description of her activities during Xerxes’ invasion of the Greek mainland in 480. After identifying various contingents in the Persian fleet in 480, Persian fleet commanders, and “the most famous” non-​Persian men on board the ships, Herodotos singles out Artemisia for an extended introduction. I find it absolutely amazing that she, a woman, should join the expedition against Hellas. After her husband died, she held the tyranny, and then, though her son was a young man of military age and she was not forced to do so at all, she went to war, roused by her own determination and courage. Artemisia was the daughter of Lygdamis, by race Halicarnassian on her father’s side, and part Cretan on her mother’s side. She led the men of Halikarnassos, Kos, Nisyros, and Kalymna, and provided five ships for the expedition. Of the entire navy, the ships she furnished were the most highly esteemed after those of the Sidonians, and of all the counsel offered to the king by the allies, hers was the best (Hdt. 7.99). Herodotos follows the Persian fleet’s movements and activities up to the Battle of Salamis without mentioning Artemisia again (although he has her state that she had performed significant feats in naval battles off Euboia preceding the move to the Saronic Gulf), but he gives Artemisia a special role in his account of the Battle of Salamis. She provides the speeches that frame the battle story. In the first, she urges Xerxes to avoid a naval battle and invade the Peloponnese instead. In the second, following Persian failure in the sea battle predicted by Artemisia, she advises Xerxes to withdraw to Asia and leave his foremost general Mardonios to command further operations on land, observing that any victory by Mardonios would still be attributed to Xerxes, while failure would not jeopardize Xerxes’ power in Asia. Both speeches reflect sound military and political strategic thinking, and they serve to establish Artemisia as the wisest of Xerxes’ subordinates. In Herodotos’ account of the naval battle itself, Artemisia is also the most resourceful of Xerxes’ subordinates, ramming and sinking a ship in her own contingent to deceive Attic pursuers into believing that hers was a Greek ship or a deserting ship from the Persian side. Herodotos concedes that he cannot say whether the ramming, which saved Artemisia from further pursuit, was premeditated or accidental, but his main point is that, seen as premeditated, the move immensely impressed Xerxes (Hdt. 8.68, 87–​8). As Artemisia had advised, Xerxes departed for Asia after the Salamis defeat, dispatching his remaining fleet to the Hellespont to secure the pontoon bridge needed to cross to Asia. Xerxes showed great trust now in Artemisia, assigning her the special task of conveying his sons by ship to Ephesos. The sons continued overland to rendezvous with Xerxes at Sardeis. Artemisia presumably returned to Halikarnassos from Ephesos. She does not appear in Herodotos’ account of the Persian and Greek naval engagements which ended in the destruction of the Persian fleet in the summer of 479. That is all there is in the way of direct evidence, except for a remark in the pseudo-​ Hippokratic corpus that Artemisia at some time kept up a siege of Kos, the island city-​state located off the tip of the Halikarnassos peninsula, until victorious (Ps.-​Hippokrates, Ep. 27.25). If historical, this presumably took place before the 480 Persian campaign, since the contingent Artemisia commanded in 480 included Koan ships. What can we learn from this about Artemisia and the Lygdamids?2 First, family matters. Though Herodotos does not identify Artemisia’s father Lygdamis explicitly as tyrant, the 162

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recurrence of the name in a later tyrant of Halikarnassos establishes Lygdamis I as tyrant.3 In the next generation (that of Lygdamis’ daughter Artemisia and her husband), Lygdamis’ successor was presumably his son. If, as Herodotos says, Artemisia held the tyranny after her husband’s death, then we may infer that Artemisia’s husband was Lygdamis’ son and that Artemisia’s husband was her brother or half-​brother. That is, at least in Artemisia’s case, the Lygdamids practiced brother–​ sister or adelphic marriage (her father married a Kretan woman). Herodotos does not identify Artemisia’s husband by name, but if we accept the historicity of Artemisia’s adelphic marriage, the report by the Suda that Artemisia (I) married her brother Maussollos, often treated as reflecting confusion with the later Artemisia’s marriage to her brother Maussollos, merits consideration.4 There is no evidence for adelphic marriage as a regular Karian or Greek practice, so something unusual is happening here. Presumably, Lygdamis I arranged the marriage for some special reason. The only possible explanation seems to be that such a marriage strategy insulated the dynastic family from challenges by any local families who might gain a connection to the ruling family through marriage. If Lygdamis was the first tyrant, then this adelphic marriage was a way of securing the Lygdamid hold on the tyranny through the next generation and beyond. Persian officials did not object to a woman exercising local power. Witness the case of Mania, widow of Zenis, the dynast of Dardanos in Aeolis and hyparch (subordinate official) in the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia toward the end of the fifth century. According to Xenophon, when Zenis died, Mania visited Pharnabazos, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, and argued that so long as she performed the functions previously performed by Zenis, there was no reason why she should not succeed her husband. Pharnabazos agreed, and, Xenophon reports, Mania performed exceptionally well, even leading military campaigns of her own and at times accompanying Pharnabazos in the field (Hell. 3.1.10–​15). This matches Artemisia’s situation and activities exactly. When did Artemisia assume sole power? If we trust the reference to a successful siege of Kos by Artemisia and date the siege sometime before 480, we might link it to the (voluntary) departure from Kos by the tyrant Kadmos, most likely at the time of or just after the 490s Ionian Revolt (Hdt. 7.163–​4). Artemisia may have exploited political confusion following the end of Kadmos’ tyranny at Kos to bring it under her control or influence. If so, she evidently exercised sole power in Halikarnassos by c. 490. Circumstantial considerations may bolster the case for such a date. Artemisia’s command, not only of five Halikarnassian ships but also of the whole contingent of ships from islands off the Halikarnassos Peninsula—​Kos, Nisyros, Kalymna—​and her capable performance in 480 strongly suggest prior maritime experience and even expertise. Right after the Persian defeat at Marathon in 490, the Persian king ordered new and massive preparations for a large-​scale attack to avenge the defeat as quickly as possible. Herodotos reports that Persian officials pressed Dareios’ demands on the subject populations with special haste (7.1.1–​3). For subject Greek and other coastal cities, this meant the construction, outfitting, and manning of ships and the training of crews on a hurry-​up basis. It is plausible to see this as the beginning of Artemisia’s involvement in naval matters and to place her in sole power by 490, giving her at least a decade of sole rule before the 480 campaign. We can only guess the time of Artemisia’s death. Herodotos (of Halikarnassos) was in his early life involved in an attempt to overthrow a later Lygdamind tyrant, Lygdamis II or Pisendelis. Herodotos’ uncle Panyassis perished in the attempt and Herodotos went into exile for a time (Suda, s.v. “Herodotos”).We might expect animus against the Lygdamids and specifically against Artemisia, the ruling Lygdamid during the 480s, to surface in Herodotos’ history. But Herodotos treats Artemisia with respect and admiration. This suggests that she did not for him embody Lygdamid rule in Halikarnassos, perhaps because she died before he reached adulthood. Thus, if Herodotos was born c. 484 and Artemisia was active through 480, she may not have survived through the 470s. 163

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Syll345, an inscription from the time of Lygdamis II, who succeeded Artemisia’s son Pisendelis as tyrant, may shed some light on Lygdamid rule in Halikarnassos. Dated approximately 465–​ 450, the inscription specifies the procedure for settling property disputes in the aftermath (it appears) of the return of exiles to Halikarnassos. It begins by stating “These are the decisions of the syllogos of Halikarnassians and Salmakitai, as well as Lygdamis.”5 Halikarnassos and Salmakis were evidently originally two separate, largely Greek poleis, located quite close to each other, Salmakis to the west and Halikarnassos to the east.6 At some point, they entered into a sympoliteia to create a single state, referred to in the inscription as “the joint totality of the Halikarnassians.” Nevertheless, the two parts of Halikarnassos retained sufficiently separate identities that the provisions for settling disputes involved parallel boards—​one for Halikarnassians and one for Salmakitai with their respective board officials. But there is a single set of eponymous officials, and above all the tyrant Lygdamis (II), whose concurrence to the decision of the joint assembly of Halikarnassians and Salmakitai appears necessary to validate it. The initial lines, stating to whom it seemed best, when and where the decisions that follow were made, appear formulaic and thus suggest conventional practices—​the syllogos of the two parts of Halikarnassos decides; the tyrant ratifies. This may reveal something of the nature of the Lygdamid role in the political life of Halikarnassos—​overseeing or moderating the decision-​making process in the joint syllogos. It might be conjectured that it was an earlier Lygdamid, probably Lygdamis I, who instigated the sympoliteia as a means of managing chronic conflicts between two very closely located settlements. Perhaps Lygdamis I came to power originally in just these circumstances, and, as an only recently established “tyrant,” sought to secure that position against aristocratic challenges by joining his son and his daughter in an adelphic marriage—​should Lygdamis’ son die, the tyranny would remain in the hands of family members. However much actual synoikismos may have followed sympoliteia, it is evident that even by the time of Lygdamis II, separate Halikarnassian and Salmakitian identities remained. The continuing political necessity of Lygdamid supervision of and mediation between Halikarnassos’ two parts may help to explain the longevity of the Lygdamid tyranny, even beyond the time of Artemisia and her brother–​husband. Whenever it came to an end (absence of reference to a tyrant at Halikarnassos in the Athenian Tribute Lists from 454 is often seen as indicating the demise of Lygdamid tyranny by that time), the Lygdamid tyranny at Halikarnassos was by far one of the longest-​lasting tyrannies of the sixth-​to fifth-​century Aegean world, spanning at least four generations over nearly a century. Given the likelihood of Lygdamid involvement with the sympoliteia that created a new Halicarnassian state, a very important as well as a lengthy portion of Halikarnassos’ history was closely connected with the Lygdamid family. A century later, when Artemisia II held sole power (353–​351), Halikarnassos and inland Karia were very different places than in the early fifth century. Both remained subject to Persia, but in the 390s Karia, previously part of the Lydian satrapy centered on Sardeis, had become a separate satrapy, and a native dynast, Hekatomnos of Mylasa, son of Hyssaldomos, had become satrap.7 Hekatomnos and probably Hyssaldomos before him were already pre-​eminent among Karian dynasts as “kings of the Karian koinon.” Centered on the sanctuary of Zeus Karios at Mylasa, the koinon or league joined together inland dynasteiai for cultic and perhaps deliberative purposes. Dynasts of Mylasa held this kingship on a hereditary basis, performing priestly functions and exercising military leadership if Karian dynasts undertook some common military enterprise (something attested only during the Ionian Revolt in the 490s).8 In the early fifth century, Mylasa and the kingship of the Karians had belonged to the family of Ibanollis and his sons (Hdt. 5.37, 121), while Hekatomnid ancestors resided at Kindya, about ten miles 164

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from Mylasa. Hekatomnid ancestors seem to have moved to Mylasa only sometime in the early fifth century, perhaps after the demise of Ibanollid family members during the Ionian Revolt. The satrapal position gave Hekatomnos and his successors far greater powers—​not least, the power to collect taxes—​and status than those deriving from the largely ceremonial position of King of the Karians. Hekatomnos’ new wealth and interest in displaying it are evident in his minting of coins on both Milesian and Rhodian standards bearing his name, and in various benefactions in the Mylasa region. Zeus Labraundos, whose sanctuary lay in a remote rural setting close to Mylasa, was the special Hekatomnid deity. Hekatomnos used his image on his Rhodian standard coins and dedicated a new statue of the god at Labraunda. Hekatomnos’ patronage, expressed mainly through building activities, is evident elsewhere in his dynastic territory: construction of cult centers for the three tribes that made up Mylasa’s population, new buildings, and the dedication of an offering table at the sanctuary of the god Sinuri.9 Hekatomnos had five children—​three sons, Maussollos, Idrieus, and Pixodaros, and two daughters, Artemisia and Ada. Xenophon’s observation (Kyr. 7.4.1–​7) about Karians before the Persian conquest—​“having their homes in strong places, they fought against each other”—​ points to the circumstances which traditionally dictated avoidance of intermarriage among Karian families. For Hekatomnos’ sons that might have meant marriage to non-​Karian females, as it had for a Hekatomnid forebear, Pixodaros of Kindya, who married the daughter of a Kilikian ruler (Hdt. 5.118.2). However, this was not the case. Hekatomnos’ two older sons, Maussollos and Idrieus, each married a sister, Artemisia and Ada respectively. The youngest son, Pixodaros, lacking an available sister, married a Kappadokian woman named Aphneis. When Hekatomnos died in 377/​376, Maussollos succeeded as satrap, dynast, and “King of the Karians.” But at least in terms of a Karian identity (as opposed to satrapal status), Maussollos’ sister-​wife Artemisia joined him as part of a public/​official “royal couple.” They appear jointly in various inscriptions, though not on coins or dedications. Over the next quarter century, they sponsored a building program “surpassing anything seen in the Greek world since Athens in the time of Pericles.”10 This involved nothing less than a political, cultural, and architectural transformation of Karia. Employing leading fourth-​century architects and sculptors, Maussollos and Artemisia greatly enlarged existing sanctuaries, built numerous new, fully Greek temples, terraces, and ritual dining buildings (andrones). They fostered the adoption of Greek political practices in Karian centers and hellenized the names of various cities. Most significantly, Maussollos and Artemisia made Halikarnassos the new Hekatomnid capital city and used it for a spectacular display of town planning and monumental architecture. A new fortification wall 3,5 miles in circumference encompassed a greatly enlarged urban area. The city itself featured straight, intersecting streets based on the most up-​to-​date Hippodamian model. An existing sanctuary of Apollo, Halikarnassos’ main deity, remained intact on the elevated part of the Zephyra peninsula. Next to it rose a great palace designed, according to Vitruvius (2.8.13) by Maussollos himself, with its own arsenal and secret harbor. Here resided a luxurious court replete with eunuchs, musicians, and bodyguards. Additional great new structures, a second palace on the western Salmakis promontory, a temple of Ares, and various new harbor facilities, completed the architectural transformation of Lygdamid Halikarnassos into Hekatomnid Halikarnassos.11 To provide his capital city with a population commensurate with its new size and importance and to furnish manpower for the fleet and the standing army that he maintained at Halikarnassos, Maussollos moved to Halikarnassos much of the population from surrounding, so-​ called Lelegian settlements on the Halikarnassos Peninsula.12 Maussollos advertized Halikarnassos as the new Hekatomnid center by issuing new coinage that placed the Hekatomnid deity on 165

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one side and Halikarnassian Apollo on the other.13 These coins also pointed to an emerging Hekatomnid dynastic identity marked by the amalgamation of Karian and Greek elements. Further to denote Halikarnassos as distinctively Hekatomnid, Maussollos and Artemisia began construction of the centerpiece of new Halikarnassos—​the enormous tomb/​heroön/​ dynastic memorial ultimately known as the Maussolleion. When finished, it rose to a height of more than 140 feet above its elevated terrace, making it easily the first sight for anyone approaching Halikarnassos by sea or land. A monumental propylaion, reminiscent of that leading to the Athenian acropolis, provided entry to the raised terrace. The monument’s different structural parts referenced various Persian, Egyptian, and Anatolian antecedents. Elaborate sculptural programs, including friezes as well as free-​standing sculpture, made allusions to Greek myths and legends, pre-​eminently that of Herakles, the hero believed responsible for bringing to Karia the labrys, now held by the special Hekatomnid deity Zeus Labraundos. In its finished state, the monument displayed sculptural portraits of four Hekatomnid couples between the columns on the northern flank, paralleled, it appears, by a similar display of four Lygdamid couples on the opposite side—​the families responsible for Halikarnassos’ two refoundations.14 After Maussollos’ death in 353, Artemisia held sole power. Idrieus and Ada, the second brother-​husband–​sister-​wife Hekatomnid pair, apparently resided at Mylasa, perhaps having remained there since Maussollos and Artemisia’s move to Halikarnassos. It is unlikely that Artemisia held the satrapal title, but there were by now long-​established subordinate officials and administrative routines that certainly continued to function, uninterrupted by Maussollos’ death. The Persian king, Artaxerxes III, was in the late 350s preoccupied with a campaign to recover control of Egypt and probably little concerned about titles for governors in westernmost Anatolia, as long as tribute and levies for military service were forthcoming.15 Like Artemisia I, before assuming sole rule, Artemisia II had spent her whole life immersed in dynastic and satrapal affairs. She was clearly not ill-​equipped to exercise power, and she seems to have dealt directly and successfully with a Rhodian conspiracy to seize Halikarnassos (Vitruv. 2.8.14), now Rhodes’ primary commercial rival among cities in the region.16 Most importantly, Artemisia oversaw the ongoing work on Maussollos’ great monument in Halikarnassos and organized splendid funeral games held in the new theater just to the north of the Maussolleion, which featured leading Greek poets and rhetoricians honoring Maussollos with both verse and prose encomia. In this way, the couple continued to display Hekatomnid patronage in magnificent fashion even after Maussollos’ death. Idrieus and Ada followed Artemisia II as rulers after her death in 351. Thanks to Maussollos’ inclusion of a variety of nearby and even distant city-​states in a loose symmachia and his repulse of Athenian intervention in the eastern Aegean in the 350s,17 the Hekatomnids were important, powerful figures in the larger Aegean world. Not surprisingly, observers also viewed them as among the most prosperous, being “stuffed with revenues” (Isok. 5.103;Vitruv. 2.8.10). Maussollos and Artemisia had displayed Hekatomnid wealth and power through building projects in Karia and in nearby cities—​Latmos, Erythrai, and Priene. Idreius and Ada continued local patronage at Labraunda and Sinuri. But they now advertized Hekatomnid wealth and power much further afield through various benefactions on the Greek mainland—​at Tegea and at Delphi and possibly Olympia. Notably, Idrieus and Ada’s images were displayed at these sites along with that of Zeus Labraundos, the Hekatomnid deity par excellence.18 Idrieus died in 343/​342. As Artemisia II had followed her brother-​husband Maussollos, Ada now succeeded her brother-​husband Idrieus. We may pause here—​roughly 35  years after Hekatomnos’ death—​for some observations and questions. Unmistakably, the Hekatomnids engaged over several decades in a sustained and comprehensive project whose primary aim was the development and display of a dynastic 166

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identity. Scholars have analyzed the mix of Karian, Greek, and Persian elements in Hekatomnid art, architecture, and coinage to determine just what the Hekatomnid dynastic identity involved. However, one of the most distinctive Hekatomnid practices was the use of adelphic marriage and the presentation of Hekatomnid rule as embodied in pairs of Hekatomnid males and females as brother-​husbands and sister-​wives. This makes it necessary to ask what role Hekatomnid women may have played in the conception and creation of a dynastic identity. Or to put it another way, what does the use of adelphic marriage tell us about the dynastic identity the Hekatomnids tried to create?19 We start with chronology. Maussollos and Artemisia were presumably married before 377, while Hekatomnos was still alive. Given Idrieus’ death only eight years after that of Artemisia, there is no difficulty in assuming that Idrieus reached adulthood before Hekatomnos’ death. Idrieus’ sister-​wife Ada probably lived through the 330s, but not too long after this. If she was born as late as 400, she would have been about 70, if as late as 390, about 60 at her death. In either case, she would have been old enough before the time of Hekatomnos’ death to wed Idrieus in the second of the Hekatomnid brother–​sister marriages. Recognizing this, we can conclude that Hekatomnos himself was responsible for the adelphic marriages. To understand the purpose of these marriages, then, we should first ask what Hekatomnos might have envisioned. Plausible conjecture is possible. Hekatomnos was probably the pre-​eminent Karian dynast in his capacity as King of the Karians, a mostly sacerdotal position in the Karian koinon with its center in the vicinity of Mylasa. He owed this position to the fact that he was the dynast at Mylasa, but strictly speaking the position did not belong inherently or exclusively to the Hekatomnid family. It had been and theoretically could again be held by another family. In addition, since his elevation as satrap in (probably) the 390s, Hekatomnos was also an elite Persian official. However, this too involved a power which was not inherent in the Hekatomnid family. What Hekatomnos may have sought was a way to claim and be seen to exercise power on a basis separate from that deriving from his Mylasan residence and that conferred from the outside by his satrapal appointment. That is, Hekatomnus may have sought to establish that Hekatomnid power came fundamentally from the family itself and that all family members shared it by virtue of their family membership—​in other words, to make blood the basis or source of power. This was more than simply creating a “dynastic identity”:  it aimed at creating a specifically royal dynastic identity. Adelphic marriage and shared rule and, if necessary, sole rule by a surviving sister-​wife would serve to present Hekatomnid authority as resting on a personal basis rather than on the Hekatomnid satrapal position or the male-​only sacerdotal kingship of the Karians. The fact that Hekatomnos’ putative plan could involve only two sets of adelphic couples, since there was no remaining sister for the last brother (Pixodaros), need not have been fatal to the plan. Hekatomnos may have anticipated that Maussollos and Artemisia and then Idrieus and Ada would exercise power long enough to establish perception of the family as a royal family, not just the pre-​eminent dynastic family in Karia. With the idea of Hekatomnid power based on “royal blood” well entrenched, it might be expected that Pixodaros’ offspring, even if not from two Hekatomnid progenitors, would be viewed as innately imbued with such power and thus legitimate bearers of Hekatomnid “royal” identity. Hekatomnos could not be certain that Maussollos and Artemisia or Idrieus and Ada would remain childless, but such offspring could be folded into the plan in some way. Where did Hekatomnos’ idea of adelphic marriage as a political tool come from? It was not a widely used practice, and certainly not a characteristic Persian practice. But it was not unprecedented locally. In late sixth-​to early fifth-​century Halikarnassos, Artemisia I and her brother-​husband had been an adelphic couple, a fact likely well known in Karia at the time and probably long remembered. 167

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Remarkably, thanks to recent discoveries in the vicinity of Mylasa, we have what appears to be the sarcophagus of Hekatomnos. Here is one recent description and interpretation:  the main side of the sarcophagus facing the entrance of the burial chamber depicts a banquet scene where members of his family surround the deceased. He may well be Hekatomnos reclining on a couch next to his seated wife (probably his sister Aba with features of a middle-​aged woman; behind her stand a boy and a girl in their teens; on the left, before the deceased and closer to him, stand a bearded young man and behind him an older man with a more finished beard. On either side of the couch stand two children. Although the general composition of this funerary banquet looks rather conventional, the detailed treatment given to each character by means of individual features makes it no ordinary scene… If this sarcophagus does indeed belong to Hekatomnos, one would be tempted to put names on each of these individuals, and the three older males may well be Maussollos (perhaps the elder one standing on the far left), Idrieus (young man carrying a Persian rhyton), and Pixodaros depicted as a teenager, behind whom may be standing Artemisia in grief.The infant holding a bird and a doll by Aba’s side is clearly a girl, the other looks like a boy. The girl may well be Ada, the sister-​ wife of Idrieus. The boy cannot be identified and may be missing from ancient sources available to us at this time or he might have died at an early age. All in all, the entire dynasty is gathered around the deceased and the long and well-​established funerary banquet theme gave what appears to be Hekatomnos an opportunity to make a forward statement of power through his progeny, all heirs to his ruling house.20 We may wonder who commissioned the sarcophagus and its sculptural program—​ Hekatomnos or Maussollos. But nothing could better depict the way in which Hekatomnid rule was envisioned as family project, initiated by Hekatomnos and continued by those who surround him here—​his numerous children. With this conjectured long-​term Hekatomnid aim in mind, let us look back at Hekatomnid activities and projects undertaken after Hekatomnos and ask if they do not seem like intentional efforts to present and perform kingship in the manner of various Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian kings: region-​wide patronage of sacred sanctuaries, regular participation in elaborate ceremonials at important “national” and local sanctuaries, transformation of sites into urban centers, creation of a splendid new capital city marked by great walls and a great palace, great display of luxury and pomp, long-​term patronage of artists and other cultural agents, and above all, literally and figuratively, the construction of a unique, spectacular monument celebrating human and divine lineage.21 In addition, there is Maussollos’ and later Idrieus’ sustained promotion of the cult of Zeus Labraundos, transforming this local deity into a pan-​Karian deity, and linking Hekatomnid power to this divine power, rather than to that of Zeus Karios, the deity of the Karian koinon. Hekatomnid building at the Labraunda sanctuary was second in importance only to that at Halikarnassos, comprising a great new temple, ritual banqueting halls (andrones), and a great processional way. When Maussollos moved to Halikarnassos, he joined Zeus Labraundos with his characteristic labrys to Halikarnassian Apollo on his coin issues. Clearly, all this aimed at claiming and advertising a new sacral basis for Hekatomnid kingship and differentiated it from the previous cultic kingship of the Karian League. Inscriptions provide glimpses of the display or affirmation of shared Hekatomnid identity. A  decree from Labraunda states that “it seemed best to Maussollos and Artemisia” to award proxeny to Knossians in all the land which Maussollos rules.” In an agreement with the city-​state 168

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of Phaselis, Maussollos and Artemisia together (by emendation) swear oaths. Another inscription records Erythrai’s award of a crown to Maussollos for his euergesia and dedication of statues of both Maussollos and Artemisia (albeit a smaller one for Artemisia).22 Given the fact that Maussollos also acted individually as satrap, contemporary observers and later writers were understandably uncertain about Maussollos’ identity. Aulus Gellius reports that two traditions existed: “Mausollos was, as M. Tullius [Cicero] says, king [rex terrae Cariae], or, as certain writers of Greek histories say, the prefect of the province, whom Greeks call the satrap” (Gell. NA 10.18.2). Those, such as the fourth-​century playwright Epigenes, who used the term “king” to designate one or another of the Hekatomnids, were certainly unaware of Hekatomnid kingship of the koinon of the Karians and must have had other reasons for viewing Hekatomnid rulers as kings (Athen. 472e–​f). Instances of opposition—​the defacing of a statue of Hekatomnos at Mylasa, complaints to the Persian king by a certain Arlissis, an envoy sent by “the Karians” (presumably the koinon of the Karians), and an attempted assassination while Maussollos was sacrificing at Labraunda23—​may point to the growing success of the Hekatomnid effort to create an independent basis of power in Karia and to the corresponding declining significance of other Karian dynastic families. The long-​term success of the putative Hekatomnid plan to establish a kingship based solely on blood depended on two eventualities: production of a son from one of the adelphic marriages or from Pixodaros’ marriage, and continued Persian willingness to let the Hekatomnids function as quasi-​independent rulers, displaying a royal identity while still performing satrapal functions. Neither happened. Pixodaros had only a daughter, Ada. And, following Artaxerxes III’s final reconquest of Egypt in 343/​342 (after more than 50 years of Persian attempts), the Persian king moved immediately to reassert strong control in western Anatolia, dispatching his Greek commander Memnon with a sizable army to deal with independent-​minded dynasts such as Hermias of Atarneus in northwestern Anatolia (Diod. 16.52.2–​8).24 The sources make no mention of the Hekatomnids as intended targets, but it may have been fear that Artaxerxes would ‘Persianize” administrative arrangements everywhere in Anatolia that prompted Pixodaros to “expel” Ada from power in Karia (Diod. 16.74.2; Strabo 14.2.17; 1.23.7–​8) and reassert Hekatomnid satrapal identity over Hekatomnid “royal” identity and thereby to emphasize subordination rather than independence. As basilissa, Ada had likely been performing satrapal functions but, strictly speaking, as a female, she was likely not officially a satrap. Ada removed herself to Alinda, north of Mylasa, evidently retaining much of her court staff. She was, after all, no less “royal” for her transfer of satrapal functions to Pixodaros.25 Artaxerxes III and many family members perished in a palace conspiracy in 338.The ensuing succession struggle produced very uncertain political conditions throughout the Persian Empire, just at the time when Philip of Makedon was taking control of the mainland Greek world and turning his sights eastward. In this situation, Pixodaros used the youngest and last Hekatomnid female, his daughter Ada, to secure the fortunes of the Hekatomnid family. In early 337, Pixodaros either responded favorably to a proposal from Philip or made the proposal himself that his daughter Ada marry Philip’s elder son Philip Arrhidaios (Plut. Alex. 10.1–​3). Nothing, however, came of this after Alexander, Philip’s younger son and prospective heir, independently offered himself as marriage partner to Pixodaros’ daughter. As reports came of renewed stability at the Persian court following the accession of Dareios III and with it the prospect of reversion to Artaxerxes III’s close attentiveness to the details of imperial administration, Pixodaros turned from attempted Makedonizing and instead “Persianized,” marrying his daughter Ada to a high-​ ranking Persian, Orontobates (Strabo 14.2.17; Arr. Anab. 1.23.8). Orontobates soon became Pixodaros’ successor as satrap of Karia—​certainly not the kind of outcome that Hekatomnos had hoped and planned for.26 169

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Ada, Pixodaros’ sister, remained at Alinda after Pixodaros’ death and Orontobates’ assumption of sole satrapal power. But, thanks to her use of family for political purposes, Ada ended up as the last Hekatomnid satrap of Karia. When Alexander advanced into Karia in late 334 on his way to Halikarnassos to attack Orontobates and Persian forces that had survived the Granikos River battle, Ada went out from Alinda to meet Alexander and proposed to adopt him as her son. Alexander accepted. After chasing Persian forces out of Halikarnassos (though without capturing the inner citadels), Alexander named Ada satrap, and directed her to continue operations against the Persian forces remaining in Halikarnassos (Arr. Anab. 1.23.8; Diod. 17.24.2; Plut. Alex. 22.7).27 With the assistance of a Makedonian commander, she did so (after temporary Persian reoccupation) and presumably resumed residence in Halikarnassos. In the end, then, unlike her older brothers Maussollos and Idrieus, Ada was not a satrap who became a royal figure, but, thanks to Alexander’s appointment, a royal figure who became a (Makedonian) satrap. In that way, Hekatomnos’ plan of making family the fundamental basis of Hekatomnid power finally succeeded, albeit briefly.28

Notes 1 All dates in this chapter are BCE. 2 Most treatments of Artemisia I are interested in what Herodotos’ treatment of her reveals about his methods and his and Greek views in general regarding gender, see e.g. Cuchet 2015: 228–​46. 3 Berve 1967: 1.120–​2, 2.589. 4 Suda s.v. “Pigres;” Jeppesen 2002: 173. The Suda further reports that Artemisia I had a brother Pigres. He never appears as tyrant/​dynast. Possibly, he predeceased Artemisia. 5 Translated after Piñol-​Villanueva 2017: 31. 6 Piñol-​ Villanueva 2017:  35–​ 9 refutes the notion that Salmakis was the Karian settlement and Halikarnassos the Greek center. 7 Hornblower 1982:  59–​62; Ruzicka 1992:  15–​16. Some scholars have suggested that Hekatomnos’ father Hyssaldomos may have been the first native satrap of Karia; Robert 1937: 572–​3. 8 On the koinon of the Karians, see Carstens 2009: 78–​9. 9 Hornblower 1982: 312; Carstens 2009: 80–​1. 10 Pedersen 1994: 12. 11 Carstens 2009: 65–​120 describes the Hekatomnid building program and patronage practices well; also Hornblower 1982: 294–​332; Pedersen 1994: 12–​15; Pedersen 2009: 315–​39. 12 Pliny NH 5.107, mistakenly attributing the synoikismos to Alexander; Hornblower 1982: 78–​97. 13 Konuk 2013: 107–​9. 14 Jeppesen 2002; Carstens 2009: 65–​74. On the pairing of Hekatomnid and Lygdamid family members, Jeppesen 2002: 178–​82; Carstens 2009: 71–​4. On Herakles and the labrys, Ruzicka 1992: 49–​50. 15 Isok. 5.101–​2; Ruzicka 2012: 154–​63. 16 On the historicity of this episode, Ruzicka 1992: 107–​11. 17 Ruzicka 1992: 90–​9. 18 As Carney 2005: 81–​3 has observed, “there has been almost no scholarly discussion of the reasons why the Hekatomnids chose to pursue brother–​sister marriage as a dynastic strategy;” Carney concludes that the Hekatomnids probably turned to brother–​sister marriage to elevate the status of and establish an identity for their new dynasty. I agree, but I want to take this inquiry further by asking exactly what kind of identity brother–​sister marriage might help to establish. 19 The question is complicated by uncertainty about the identity of Hekatomnos’ wife. Inscriptions provide the name Aba for a daughter of Hekatomnos’ father Hyssaldomos and thus likely a sister of Hekatomnos (Hornblower 1982: 36). A recently discovered inscription from Mylasa records the dedication of an offering to “the good daimones of Hekatomnos and Aba” by (according to restoration) an official of Maussollos, apparently originally placed on or near the tomb of Hekatomnos in Mylasa (Descat 2011: 195–​202). The pairing might suggest that Hekatomnos and Aba had a brother–​sister marriage. If that is the case, there is no evidence that Hekatomnos advertized such a marriage in any way. Hornblower 1982: 37 n. 9 rejects the possibility of a Hekatomnos–​Aba marriage in the belief that such a marriage could not produce the number of evidently healthy, normal children represented

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Karian royal women by Maussollos and his siblings. It is better to see the reference to the pairing of Hekatomnos and Aba in this dedication reflecting an effort by Maussollos to push the notion of shared and exclusive family identity back to Hekatomnos himself by linking him to his sister. The name of Hekatomnos’ wife and the mother of his children thus remains unknown. 20 Konuk 2013: 111–​12. Note doubts expressed in previous note for identifying Hekatomnos’ wife as his sister Aba. 21 Unseen and undocumented are the workmen who toiled at the basic construction work. There must have been a virtual army of these working for Maussollos and Artemisia almost continuously as a sort of permanent—​royal—​labor  force. 22 See Ruzicka 1992: 38–​9, 72–​3 for details of both inscriptions. 23 Tod, GHI 138. 24 Ruzicka 1992: 121–​3. 25 Pixodaros, using the familiar Apollo/​Zeus Labraundos type, did issue some small denomination gold coins, recently a practice of other kings including Philip of Makedon (Konuk 2013: 110). 26 See Ruzicka 1992: 130–​4 and Ruzicka 2010: 3–​11 for more detailed treatment of Pixodaros’ marital diplomacy. 27 Ruzicka 1992: 135–​55; Sears 2014: 211–​20 treats the adoption offer and Alexander’s acceptance of it in terms of Alexander’s perceptions and aims. 28 A tomb discovered at Bodrum/​Halikarnassos in 1989 includes a nearly complete skeleton, a gold myrtle leaf crown, much gold jewelry, and an oinochoe dating from the last third of the fourth century. Reconstruction of the head and comparisons with known sculptural depictions of Hekatomnid females have served to make a compelling case for identifying the remains as those of Ada. See Ozet 1994: 88–​96 and Prag and Neave 1994: 97–​109.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Berve, H. 1967. Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen. Munich. Carney, E.D. 2005. “Women and Dunasteia in Caria.” American Journal of Philology 126, 1: 65–​91. Carstens, A.M. 2009. Karia and the Hekatomnids: The Creation of a Dynastic Identity. Oxford. Cuchet,V.S. 2015. “The Warrior Queens of Caria (Fifth to Fourth Centuries BCE): Archaeology, History, and Historiography.” In J.F. Serris and A. Keith (eds.), Women and War in Antiquity. Baltimore: 228–​46. Descat, R. 2011. “Autour de la tombe d’Hékatomnos. Nouvelle lecture d’une inscription de Mylasa.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 178: 195–​202. Hellstrom, P. 2009. “Sacred Architecture and Karian Identity.” In F. Rumscheid (ed.), Die Karer und die anderen. Internationales Kolloquium an der Freien Universität Berlin 13. bis 15. Oktober 2005. Bonn, 267–​90. Hornblower, S. 1982. Mausolus. Oxford. Isager, J. (ed.) 1994. Hekatomnid Caria and the Ionian Renaissance. Odense. Jeppesen, K. 2002. The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos, vol. 5: The Superstructure. Aarhus. Konuk, K. 2013. “Coinage and Identities under the Hecatomnids.” In O. Henry (ed.), 4th century Karia: Defining a Karian Identity under the Hekatomnids. Paris, 101–​23. Ozet, M.A. 1994. “The Tomb of a Noble Woman from the Hekatomnid Period.” In J. Isager (ed.), Hekatomnid Caria and the Ionian Renaissance. Odense, 88–​96. Pedersen, P. 1994.“The Ionian Renaissance and Some Aspects of its Origin within the Field of Architecture and Planning.” In J. Isager (ed.), Hekatomnid Caria and the Ionian Renaissance. Odense, 11–​35. Pedersen, P. 2009. “The Palace of Maussollus in Halikarnassos and Some Thoughts on its Karian and International Context.” In F. Rumscheid (ed.), Die Karer und die anderen. Internationales Kolloquium an der Freien Universität Berlin 13. bis 15 Oktober 2005. Bonn, 313–​48. Piñol-​Villanueva, A. 2017. “Halikarnassos-​Salmakis: A pre-​Classical sympoliteia?” Klio 99, 1: 26–​50. Prag, A.J.N.W. and Neave, R.A.H. 1994. “Who is the ‘Carian Princess?’ ” In J. Isager (ed.) Hekatomnid Caria and the Ionian Renaissance. Odense, 97–​109. Robert, L. 1937. Études anatoliennes. Paris.

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Stephen Ruzicka Ruzicka, S. 1992. Politics of a Persian Dynasty: The Hecatomnids in the Fourth Century B.C. Norman, OK. Ruzicka, S. 2010. “The ‘Pixodarus Affair’ Reconsidered Again.” In E.D. Carney and D. Ogden (eds.), Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son, Lives and Afterlives. Oxford, 3–​11. Ruzicka, S. 2012. Trouble in the West: Egypt and the Persian Empire, 525–​332 BCE. Oxford. Sears, M. 2014. “Alexander and Ada Reconsidered.” Classical Philology 109, 3: 211–​21. Waywell, G.B. 1993. “The Ada, Zeus and Idrieus Relief from Tegea in the British Museum.” In O. Palagia and W. Coulson (eds.), Sculpture from Arcadia and Laconia. Oxford: 79–​86.

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15 SELEUKID WOMEN Marek Jan Olbrycht

Introduction This chapter explores the role of women belonging to the Seleukid dynasty and closely related to the kings of this house as mothers, wives, sisters, and concubines.1 The Seleukids drew on the heritage of Argead (Temenid) Macedonia, the practices of Alexander the Great, and Achaimenid heritage.2 Generally, the Seleukid kings were polygamous and lived in a milieu which featured different forms of hierarchizing female members of the ruling house. Polygamy undoubtedly prevailed in the royal houses in Asia in the Hellenistic period. In addition, different forms of next-​of-​kin marriages occurred. As a rule, the king had one wife of primary rank, who was by definition the mother of the heir to the throne. In commonly accepted legal terms, royal succession was male primogeniture. In the Seleukid House, from the very beginning the succession was secured by the co-​regency of the eldest son (“crown prince”) accompanied by his consort.

Apama, Seleukos I, and their progeny The founder of the dynasty, Seleukos I (born about 358 BCE)3 was the son of the Macedonian nobleman Antiochos and Laodike.4 Laodike’s background is not known. Seleukos is said to have founded five cities named in her honor.5 It is uncertain whether Seleukos had a sister named Didymeia.6 At the mass wedding at Susa in 324, Seleukos married the Iranian princess Apama, the daughter of Spitamenes, who was one of the most significant figures in the history of Central Asia.7 Spitamenes led the war against Alexander’s invasion of Baktria and Sogdiana in 329–​328. He may have been related to the famous Spitama clan.8 This implies the high status of the Spitamenes’ clan in Central Asia. The Achaimenid connection of Apama (1) may have been historical.9 As king, Seleukos maintained Apama in a position of honor. She died shortly before Seleukos married Stratonike.10 The union of Seleukos and Apama produced Antiochos I (Plut. Demetr. 31.5), designated as the eldest child (by a legal wife?).11 Antiochos was destined to be heir apparent and was appointed co-​regent of the Upper Satrapies in about 294.12 Apama and Seleukos had two well-​ attested daughters: Apama (2) and Laodike (1).13

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Apama played a pivotal role in establishing the dynasty of Seleukos. Her significance was appreciated: Seleukos I and Antiochos I named several cities after her.14 Apama proved a crucial figure in establishing the Seleukid authority in Central Asia.15 She did not sever links with her former homeland, as implied by a decree of the city of Miletos in her honor (299/​298), initiated by Demodamas:  “Queen Apama has previously displayed all goodwill and /​zeal/​for those Milesians who served in the army with king Seleukos.”16 One of these Milesians was surely Demodamas, who conducted military operations in Sogdiana (Plin. NH 6.49), where Apama came from, and reached the regions beyond the Syr-​darya (Uzbekistan). Apama also showed “no ordinary devotion” toward the construction of the temple of Apollon at Didyma. An inscription at Delos (dedication to Leto, Artemis, and Apollon) stressed Apama’s significance in the Greek religious sphere.17 Apama may also have supported a famous Bactrian temple at Takht-​e Sangin (also called the temple of the Oxos) in present-​day Tajikistan.18 Around 303 Seleukos concluded a treaty with the Indian king Sandrokottos. There are reports of a marital union included in this agreement, but we do not know if Seleukos married Sandrokottos’ daughter (perhaps as a lower-​ranking wife) or gave one of his daughters or nieces.19

Stratonike and Antiochos I After the battle of Ipsos (301), Seleukos was forced to change his politics and sought an agreement with the Antigonid king Demetrios Poliorketes. As a result, he married the daughter of Demetrios and Phila, Stratonike (around 298).20 Stratonike bore a daughter called Phila after her mother.21 Later, Phila married her uncle Antigonos II Gonatas (270s).22 Seleukos’ and Apama’s son, Antiochos I Soter (reign 281–​261), was appointed co-​regent in the Upper Satrapies around 294. His union with Stratonike was established under strange circumstances: the source tradition claims that Antiochos fell in love with his stepmother, and his worried father decided to give him his wife. 23 Some experts believe that such a romantic version is false.24 However, history knows of various love scandals that seem illogical and contrary to conventional expectations. The affair certainly had a political dimension:  giving Stratonike to Antiochos consolidated the empire and dynastic relations. Antiochos was the co-​ regent in the Upper Satrapies, and Stratonike, who received the title of “Queen of Upper Asia,” was to produce the heir to the throne of the whole empire. The marriage of Antiochos I with Stratonike gave birth to at least four children: Seleukos, Antiochos, Apama, and Stratonike. Queen Stratonike is named next to Antiochos in the famous building inscription from Borsippa dated to 268. She is called šarratu, “queen,” and hirtu, “principal wife.”25 This titulature, unique among the Seleukids, implies a polygamous relationship. Her name given in the text, Astartanikku, is a wordplay on the goddess Astarte (see also Chapter  16). Stratonike was included in the ruler cult:  she was associated with Aphrodite.26 According to Stephanos of Byzantion (s.v. Antiocheia), Antiochos named the city of Nysa “after his wife Nysa.” It seems, therefore, that Antiochos had a consort called Nysa. Epigraphic evidence suggests that Antiochos I  married a lady called “sister-​wife,” ἀδελφὴ βασίλισσα (OGI 219). Some scholars maintain that the title ἀδελφὴ βασίλισσα is honorific and refers either to Stratonike or to Nysa. A comparative case is Laodike (5), the wife of Antiochos III, called “sister-​wife,” although in fact she was a cousin of the king. Some consider the possibility that Antiochos I  actually married his half-​sister (Nysa or another wife).27 The idea of sibling-​marriage may have been borrowed from incestuous marriages practiced in Persia, Egypt, and Karia.28 174

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The clan of Achaios Achaios the Elder, the founder of a powerful dynastic house, is one of the most fascinating figures in Seleukid and Anatolian history. 29 An inscription discovered near Laodikeia on the Lykos names this Achaios as a local potentate around 267.30 He had two daughters, Antiochis and Laodike (2). Antiochis married Attalos of Pergamon (Strab. 13.4.2).This marriage produced Attalos (I), born around 269.31 Laodike (2) married Antiochos II by 267. The House of Achaios also produced Laodike (4), the wife of Seleukos II, and mother of Seleukos III and Antiochos III; Alexander, the brother of Laodike (2) and governor of Sardeis; and Andromachos and his son Achaios the Younger, who aspired to kingship in Anatolia at the time of Antiochos III and was executed in 213.32 The marriage of Laodike (2) to Antiochos II implies that Achaios the Elder must have been a power holder of highest rank, representing a dynastic house comparable to that of the main line of the Seleukids. Seleukos was 34 when he married Apama in 324. He almost certainly had a concubine before that marriage. Conceivably, this alleged union may have produced Achaios, and this would have made Antiochos I  and Achaios half-​brothers.33 The occurrence of the name Achaia among the cities founded under Antiochos I (App. Syr. 57; Strab. 11.10.1; Plin. NH 6.48; Solinus 48.4)34 implies that Achaios was one of the city founders. Some scholars assume that Achaios may have received the hand of the royal daughter, Laodike (1), born by Apama.35 This remains hypothetical. Polyainos (8.50) calls Laodike, the wife of Antiochos II, his sister from the same father, a statement that is difficult to explain.36

Laodike (2), Antiochos II Theos, and Berenike Phernophoros Antiochos II (281–​246), the second son of Antiochos I and Stratonike, became co-​regent in the Upper Satrapies in 267.37 His first wife was Laodike (2), the daughter of Achaios the Elder.38 This marriage, concluded before Antiochos’ co-​regency with his father, produced Seleukos II, Antiochos Hierax (the Hawk), Stratonike, and Laodike.39 Another child of Antiochos II was a certain ‘Apammu’; presumably this Babylonian form renders the male name Apames.40 This child stemmed from an unknown mother. Stratonike was married to Ariarathes III of Kappadokia (Diod. 31.19.5) in the 250s. Another daughter (presumed name Laodike) married king Mithridates II of Pontos in the late 240s and became the mother-​in-​law of Antiochos III.41 The Second Syrian War (ca. 260–​253) was concluded by a treaty including a dynastic union between Antiochos II and Berenike, the daughter of Ptolemy II.42 Antiochos repudiated his wife Laodike (2)  and married Berenike “Phernophoros” in 252. Laodike and her sons were generously provided with land in Asia Minor and Babylon during the separation.43 It seems that Antiochos returned to Laodike as his royal wife.44 Political intentions linked with the marriage of Antiochos II to Berenike were certainly numerous. Some scholars perceive the marital union of Berenike as “a spoiling operation against the Seleukids.”45 Berenike gave birth to a son whose name Antiochos became known through an inscription from Kildara (Karlen).46 Laodike’s relationship with Berenike was obviously hostile. The end of Antiochos II’s reign looks like a sensational story. Two queens dominated the political scene. Faced with Antiochos’ weakness and vacillation, Laodike decided to poison him.47 The latter’s role remains disputed. Ancient sources picture Laodike as a politically active and power-​hungry queen.48 Contrary to this, in recent scholarship Laodike’s role appears to be reassessed, and all “alleged crimes have to be discarded as mere fabrications.”49 Researchers are trying to soften Laodike’s image and are rejecting reports of her crimes. However, the most important sources give an unambiguous picture: Laodike paved the way to the throne for her son Seleukos at any price. On her orders, Berenike and her son were murdered.50 175

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Split in the dynasty—​the families of Seleukos II and Antiochos Hierax Ptolemy III, the king of Egypt, invaded the Seleukid state, thus starting a confrontation called the Laodikean War.51 Appian’s claim (Syr. 65) that Laodike was killed by soldiers of Ptolemy III (in 246) is not necessarily wrong (as some scholars maintain).52 During the War of the Brothers, the Seleukids split into two dynastic “camps” and actually two kingdoms under Seleukos II (the legitimate ruler of the empire) and Antiochos Hierax (de facto controlling parts of Asia Minor), respectively. Both brothers used the title of king (Just. 41.4.4). The Fraternal War erupted after Laodike’s death, probably in 245/​244. Hierax, aided by some members of the House of Achaios, claimed the rule over Asia Minor. For some time, he was presumably supported by Ziaelas, King of Bithynia, whose daughter he married.53 Justin (27.3.6) calls Ariamenes, king of Kappadokia, Hierax’s father-​in-​law, but nothing more is known of that alleged marital link to the Kappadokian dynasty. Seleukos II was married to Laodike (4),54 the daughter of Achaios the Elder. This union produced Seleukos III (original name Alexander), Antiochos III (born around 242/​241),55 and Antiochis (in fact the identity of her mother is not certain but Laodike (4)  is the most likely option). Antiochis was married by Antiochos III to Xerxes of Western Armenia in 212.56 Presumably another daughter of Seleukos was the mother of a Mithridates, who was intended to be placed on the Armenian throne in 212 (Polyb. 8.23.3–​5), but it is possible that Mithridates was the son of Antiochis.57 A lady called Mysta, referred to as the wife of Seleukos (Polyain. 8.61), was in fact Seleukos’ mistress (alongside a certain Nysa).58 Seleukos II married his sister to King Mithridates II of Pontos, providing her with Greater Phrygia as a dowry.59 This marriage must have been concluded after the battles of Ankyra and Kallinikon to neutralize the alliance of Hierax and Pontos. Polybios 8.20.11 states that “Achaios [the Younger, MJO], the son of Andromachos the brother of Laodike the wife of Seleukos, married Laodike the daughter of King Mithridates.” This suggests that the House of Achaios conducted its own marital policy in the 240s or 230s, in parallel to the main line of the Seleukids.60

Laodike (5), Antiochos III, and their progeny No wife or children of Seleukos III are attested to. The marriages of Antiochos III the Great (223–​187), born in about 242/​241, the younger brother of Seleukos III, were closely linked to his politics. In 222, Antiochos married his cousin Laodike (5), the daughter of Mithridates II of Pontos. She was proclaimed queen (βασίλισσα) in Antiocheia (Polyb. 5.43.1–​4). The mother of Laodike (5) was Antiochos III’s aunt Laodike (3), daughter of Antiochos II.61 This is the first time a Seleukid king from the main branch had married a princess representing an Asiatic kingdom. This marriage produced at least three sons and four daughters. Around 195, Antiochos III arranged the marriage of his children, Antiochos the Son and Laodike (6) (App. Syr. 4–​5), which produced a daughter called Nysa.62 In the spring of 193 Antiochos the Son was appointed co-​regent of the Upper Satrapies, but he died that same summer (Liv. 35.15).The second son of Antiochos III and Laodike (5), Seleukos (IV), born soon after 220, became co-​regent and assumed the throne in 187.63 Two younger sons of Antiochos III, Seleukos IV and Mithridates/​Antiochos IV were as rulers married to a Laodike.64 Presumably, this was the same Laodike (6), passed between brothers, as a case of levirate.65 Nysa married Pharnakes I of Pontos (ca. 185-155).66

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Antiochos III intended to create a stable system of dynastic succession. It was to be based on the marriages of the king and his appointed successor within the Seleukid clan. As Berenike’s example demonstrated, marriages of kings to princesses from foreign dynastic houses intended to be queens had lamentable results. Therefore, Antiochos III sought to “close” the dynastic succession within the next circle of relatives. This, in turn, caused unexpected problems: kings, queens, and their progeny became increasingly involved in clashes for power. Another practice was to give a royal daughter to a foreign king, with the goal of binding the vassals to the dynasty and forming alliances. In 206, Antiochos III offered the hand of an unnamed daughter to Demetrios, the son of the Baktrian king Euthydemos.67 Another daughter, Kleopatra, married Ptolemy V in winter 194/​ 193. She was in fact imposed on Ptolemy by Antiochos III.68 This marriage may be seen as a spoiling strategy with the goal of weakening a rival. A fragment from the Book of Daniel 11.17 implies that such operations were conducted on purpose:69 He will resolve to subjugate all the dominions of the king of the South, and he will come to fair terms with him, and will give him a young woman in marriage, for the destruction of the kingdom, but she will not persist nor serve his purpose. (Book of Daniel 11.17.Translation after New English Bible) In Egypt, the name of Kleopatra superseded Arsinoë and Berenike as the favorite and characteristic name of a Ptolemaic queen. Following the death of Ptolemy V in 182, Kleopatra became regent for her underage son, Ptolemy VI Philometor until 173.70 Another royal daughter of Antiochos III, Antiochis, married Ariarathes IV of Kappadokia in the 190s. In 164 she was murdered in Antiocheia.71 She bore Ariarathes V, Orophernes, and Mithridates. Antiochos III offered another daughter to Eumenes II of Pergamon in marriage, but this proposal was rejected (in 193).72 All these steps were taken by Antiochos III in the face of a planned war on Rome. Two presumed sons of Antiochos III and Laodike (5) appear in 197, Ardys and Mithridates.73 An inscription proves that Antiochos III and Laodike had three sons:  Antiochos (the eldest son), Seleukos, and Mithridates; the last assumed the name Antiochos IV.74 Mithridates was the name of the father of queen Laodike (5), so she must have been mother of Mithridates, son of Antiochos III. The name Ardys occurred in Lydia and may be ascribed to the house of Laodike as well.75 During his stay in Europe (191) Antiochos entered into a second marriage in Chalkis with Euboia, the daughter of the local noble citizen Kleoptolemos. The king took her with him to Asia. Her further fate is unknown.76 Laodike (5) was presumably still alive at that time.77 The beginnings of the Seleukid royal cult may be dated to the reign of Seleukos I. The ruler cult included chiefly the sovereigns, but their wives were usually involved as well. Thus, there were cults for a single king or royal couple, chiefly in cities but also in dynastic centers. Reliable evidence is available under Antiochos III: he apparently (around 209) appointed high priests, who were entrusted with the supervision of the cults in a part of the empire and presumably the care of dynastic cult, which was further developed at that time. In 193, Antiochos submitted letters to the governors, in which he supported the organization of the cult of “Our Ancestors and Our Self,” and “in the same districts” of the cult of his wife Laodike by senior priestesses; their attribute was a golden wreath with the image of the Queen.78 In fact, Antiochos III bestowed divine honors upon his wife Laodike (5), called “sister-​queen” (ἀδελφὴ βασίλισσα) in the inscriptions. A royal edict concerning a dynastic cult under Antiochos III is preserved in

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three copies: two were found in Iran (Nihavend and Kermanshah), and one was discovered in Turkey (Dodurga/​Eriza).79

Laodike (6) and (7): from Seleukos IV to Demetrios I (187–​150) After 187, the fundamental weaknesses of Antiochos III’s dynastic policies became apparent: the marriages of full siblings produced a number of children who fiercely competed for the throne. This time it was not the children of one king from different wives, but the children of different kings from one wife, Laodike (6). The dynastic lines of Seleukos IV and Antiochos IV were fighting each other. This latter line included Alexander Balas, Diodotos Tryphon, and the pretender Alexander Zabinas. The line of Seleukos IV (Demetrios I, Demetrios II), on the other hand, split into two branches initiated by the brothers Demetrios II and Antiochos VII. During this time politically strong queens appeared, especially Laodike (6) and Kleopatra Thea, who became a leading figure in the Seleukid state in 150–​121. It should also be added that the dynastic disintegration was fueled by foreign powers, Rome and Parthia, both of which held rulers in captivity and influenced the situation in the Seleukid state. Seleukos IV (187–​175) was married to his full sister Laodike (6), his only known wife. They had several children:  Antiochos Eupator, Demetrios I, and Laodike (7). Laodike (7)  married Perseus of Macedonia.80 Antiochos Eupator became heir to the throne. Antiochos IV adopted him and raised him to co-​regent, but then had him killed (around 170).81 Antiochos IV’s wife was Laodike (6), probably his full sister (OGI 252).82 Their son was Antiochos V.83 Following the death of Antiochos IV, Laodike (6) was murdered by Ammonios, an official of Alexander Balas (Liv. Epit. 50). Antiochos IV seems to have had another wife, called Antiochis, and referred to as παλλακή (“concubine”).84 Her name suggests that she was from the Seleukid house. She seems to have given birth to Alexander Balas and Laodike (8), although this supposition remains a hypothesis (cf. Polybios 31.2.2 and 4). Laodike (8)  was married to Mithridates V of Pontus (reigned 152/​151–​120) and was detained and possibly murdered by their son, Mithridates VI Eupator (born in 132). She had seven children by Mithridates V.85 Antiochos V (co-​regent from 170, king 164–​162) was murdered by Demetrios I Soter (161–​ 150), the son of Seleukos IV. Demetrios probably married his own sister Laodike (7), the widow of Perseus (Liv. Epit. 50).86 He had three sons: Demetrios (II), Antiochos (VII), and Antigonos.87 Demetrios I was killed by Alexander Balas.

Kleopatra Thea and her royal consorts (150–​121) In dynastic terms, the history of the Seleukid Kingdom between 150 and 121 was dominated by Kleopatra Thea, the wife and queen of three rulers:  Alexander Balas, Demetrios II, and Antiochos VII Sidetes. The competing candidates for the throne created an unstable system in which the role of queens increased enormously, becoming a stabilizing factor. This was partly because some male rulers died in battle or were taken into foreign captivity. Alexander I  Balas was probably a natural child of Antiochos IV Epiphanes, like his sister Laodike (8).The sources do not agree on the matter, but the tradition denying the royal descent of Balas seems to have been formed by the Romans for their own political interests in Syria.88 When it comes to queens, Kleopatra Thea (married three times), daughter of Ptolemy VI, was imposed on Balas as wife and queen in 150 and won a particular position. This royal couple minted coins with a double portrait of the rulers: Kleopatra is depicted in the foreground.89 Kleopatra bore Antiochos VI Dionysos, who became the ephemeral child puppet-​king of 178

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the usurper Tryphon. The sources ascribe the killing of Antiochos VI either to Tryphon or to Demetrios II.90 Alexander Balas was overthrown by Demetrios II. Ptolemy VI gave Balas no aid and handed over Kleopatra Thea to Demetrios II (145–​139/​138) as his wife.This new union produced three children: Seleukos V Philometor, Laodike (9), and Antiochos VIII Grypos. Demetrios tried to reclaim Babylonia but was defeated and captured by the armies of Mithradates I of Parthia (in the war of 139–​138). He spent nine years in honorable captivity in Parthian Hyrkania where he married Mithradates’ daughter Rhodogune.91 The Parthians intended to use Demetrios II in their policies toward the Seleukid state. Demetrios II’s marriage to Rhodogune, who gave birth to children, was a breakthrough event and symbolic landmark, with the Seleukids, the declining dynasty in Western Asia, becoming the pawns of the Arsakids. In diplomatic-​dynastic terms, the Parthians respected the Seleukids because of their high political reputation. Kleopatra Thea became regent of the kingdom in the absence of her husband Demetrios. She tried to strengthen her dynastic position and married her husband’s brother, Antiochos VII Sidetes. In this intelligent way, she eliminated the threat from Antiochos VII, who would surely have initiated a fight for the throne.92 Kleopatra did not forget that Demetrios had married Rhodogune, so jealousy played a role (App. Syr. 68). When Antiochos VII took over the throne alongside his powerful consort, the split in the Seleukid dynastic house deepened. Kleopatra Thea bore him five children, three of whom died of disease at a young age.The fourth, Seleukos, was probably detained by the Parthians in 129 after his father’s defeat. The youngest child was Antiochos IX Kyzikenos.93 Antiochus VII took his juvenile son Seleukos and the daughter of Demetrios II, Laodike, on a campaign. The latter became a wife of the Parthian king Phraates II.94 Seleukos was captured by king “Arsakes,” i.e. Phraates II, and was kept in royal style as a prisoner (Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.19 = Euseb. I 255–​7 Schoene).95 In the face of the invasion of Antiochos VII, Demetrios II was released from captivity by the Parthians (130) and made efforts to regain his kingdom (129–​125). In 125 he was defeated by Alexander II Zabinas. After Kleopatra Thea refused to help him, he was killed in Tyros.96 In the face of many coups and dynastic struggles, Kleopatra cleverly sent her two sons, Antiochos Grypos (the “hook-​nosed”), by Demetrios II, to Athens, and Antiochos Kyzikenos, by Antiochos VII, to Kyzikos to be educated (App. Syr. 68). Kleopatra turned out to be a ruthless ruler. Appian reports her atrocities when the infant Seleukos V proclaimed himself king (Syr. 68): “As soon as Seleukos assumed the diadem after his father’s death, his mother shot him dead with an arrow, either fearing lest he should avenge his father or moved by an insane hatred for everybody.” Kleopatra minted coins in her own name (126/​125).97 To strengthen her political position, she shared the throne (124–​121) with her son, Antiochos VIII Grypos (Just. 39.1.9). As with Alexander I, the coin portrait of Kleopatra is in the foreground.98 In 124/​123 Ptolemy VIII gave his grand-​nephew Antiochos VIII his daughter Kleopatra Tryphaina as wife.99 A conflict arose between the two ambitious queens, the queen mother and queen consort, i.e. Thea and Tryphaina.When Grypos became more independent, Kleopatra Thea decided to eliminate him, but Grypos killed her first (in 121).100

The epilogue—​in the shadow of Kleopatra Tryphaina and Selene Following a brief respite, Grypos (reigned 121–​ 96) was challenged by his half-​ brother, Antiochos IX Kyzikenos (116–​95), who returned to Syria to claim the throne.101 He ruled in Koilesyria (Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.24–​5 = Euseb. I 259–​60 Schoene) and married Kleopatra IV, the daughter of Kleopatra III, who fled her country in 113. One year later she was captured by Grypos and her full sister Tryphaina, and murdered (Just. 39.3.2–​12). Kleopatra IV bore 179

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Kyzikenos one son, Antiochos X Eusebes.102 In the meantime, this king married Brittane, daughter of the Arsacid king (John Malalas p. 208 Dindorf). She must have been the daughter of Mithradates II of Parthia (122–​87). Tryphaina bore five sons to Grypos:  Seleukos VI, Antiochos XI, Philip I, Demetrios III, and Antiochos XII. Their only daughter, Laodike Thea, was to marry Mithridates I Kallinikos of Kommagene.103 In 102, Grypos received another wife from Egypt, Kleopatra Selene, the daughter of Kleopatra III, who had been forced to divorce from Ptolemy IX (Justin 39.4.4).104 She produced no sons and upon the death of Grypos (in 96)  she gave herself to Antiochos IX Kyzikenos (App. Syr. 69). Then she married Antiochos IX’s son Antiochos X, whose reign hardly appears in the records. Possibly he died in 92. Kleopatra Selene went into hiding for some time while Syria was divided between the sons of Antiochos VIII, Philip I and Antiochos XII. After the death of Antiochos XII in 83/​82, she proclaimed Antiochos XIII Asiatikos, her son by Antiochos X, king in Antiocheia. However, foreign monarchs, namely Tigranes II of Armenia and Aretas III of Nabataea, took control of most of Syria. Kleopatra Selene preserved some independence and controlled several coastal cities. Tigranes II besieged her in Ptolemais and captured her (69). She was finally executed.105 The final period (95–​64) of Seleukid history is characterized by a thicket of intrigues, dynastic feuds, and foreign interventions (by Parthia, Rome, Armenia, and Egypt). In this twilight period of Seleukid history, Kleopatra Selene became a bearer of the Seleukid royal tradition and an expression of it at the time when most of Syria was conquered by Tigranes II. In 69, Syria, with Roman consent, fell to Antiochos XIII Asiatikos (69–​64). His reign was interrupted by Philip II, the son of Philip I. Asiatikos was dethroned by Pompey in 64 and soon eliminated by Samsikeramos. Syria became a Roman province.

Conclusion The role of women in the Seleukid dynastic system grew over time. Apart from the primary wife and queen, usually referred to as βασίλισσα in Greek sources, there were often secondary wives of inferior rank, concubines, and mistresses. Usually, the leading role was played by queen consorts, e.g. Apame (1) and Laodike (2), less often by queen mothers (we see Laodike (2) and Kleopatra Thea in both functions).The royal daughters and sisters played a major part in alliances. Through marriages, the Seleukids tried to establish peaceful relations with other rulers and dynasties, including those of the Antigonids, Ptolemies, Pontos, Kappadokia, Sophene, Kommagene, Atropatene, and Baktria.106 In this dynastic architecture, the House of Achaios played a pivotal role in the third century. The marital union of Antiochos II and Berenike from Egypt proved fateful for the Seleukids, though dynastic marriages with the Ptolemies became frequent from Antiochos III onwards. Relationships with the Antigonids did not last. After Antiochos III, the political position of the Seleukids fell sharply and marriages with minor dynasts became frequent. In Seleukid history after Antiochos IV, women played a pivotal role as active rulers or co-​rulers who had de facto control of the state. In particular, when representatives of different dynastic branches fought against each other, mothers and wives of the rulers played a dominant role as stabilizing factors (e.g. Kleopatra Thea and Kleopatra Selene). In the kingdoms of Asia, Seleukid political heritage became a token of particular value. Proper descent was the decisive pre-​condition for legitimacy of rule, and in this respect links with the Seleukids were often crucial, even after the dissolution of the Seleukid Empire.The same applies to Achaimenid connections: being an heir to the ancient Persian kings bestowed royal prestige. References to a double political heritage, namely to the Seleukids and Achaimenids, became common in the second to first centuries in Pontos, Kappadokia, and Kommagene.107 Queen 180

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Glaphyra, the daughter of Archelaos of Kappadokia, is a telling example. She married Alexander, one of Herod’s sons (about 17 BC) and was proud to trace her descent from Temenos (i.e. Alexander’s line, including the Seleukids, according to a commonly accepted genealogy) on one side and from Dareios the Persian on the other.108

Notes 1 On the power of women in terms of politics in the Hellenistic age, see Macurdy 1932; Vatin 1970; Müller 2009a; 2009b; 2013; Ogden 2010; Bielman Sánchez 2003; Carney 2011; D’Agostini 2016a; 2016b; SRW; McAuley 2017a; 2017b; 2018b. 2 On royal women in Argead Macedonia, see Carney 1995; 2019; Müller 2009a. On the role of women in Persia, see Brosius 1996. 3 All dates in this chapter are BCE. 4 There is no commonly accepted numeration for Seleukid queen consorts, especially for Laodikes. In this chapter, the system proposed by Ogden 2010: 158, n. 1, is used.The numbering of Laodikes begins with Laodike (1), the daughter of Seleukos I. 5 App. Syr. 57; Strab. 16.2.4; Steph. Byz. s.v. Laodikeia. Cf. Grainger 1990: 48–​50; Heckel 2006: 145–​6. 6 Heckel 2006: 111–​12. 7 Arr. Anab. 7.4.4–​6; Plut. Demetr. 31.5. On Apama, see Beloch 1927: 197;Tarn 1929; Macurdy 1932: 77–​ 8; Holleaux 1942; Robert 1984; Mehl 1986: 17–​19; Shahbazi 1987; Holt 1988: 64–​5; Heckel 2006, 39–​40; Olbrycht 2013, 169–​71; Harders 2016; Engels and Erickson 2016. Strabon (12.8.15) confuses her with Apama, the daughter of Artabazos (Plut. Artox. 27.7–​9). There are some flaws in sources concerning Apama. Stephanos of Byzantion (s.v. Apameia) mistakenly calls Apama the “mother of Seleukos,” while Livy 38.13.5 considers her the “sister” of Seleukos. 8 This old hypothesis may be right, see Mehl 1986: 18. 9 Tarn 1929. 10 John Malalas p. 198 Dindorf. See Ogden 2010: 119. 11 App. Syr. 61; OGI 213, lines 3–​4. 12 App. Syr. 62; See Plut. Demetr. 38. Cf. Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt 1993: 23–​4. 13 The daughters are mentioned by John Malalas 198, 202–​3 Dindorf; Laodike is attested to by Eustathius 915. Cf. Beloch 1927: 198 (who is skeptical about the evidence) and Grainger 1990: 12. 14 App. Syr. 57; Steph. Byz. s.v. Apameia; Strab. 16.2.4. Cf. Grainger 1997: 688–​9. 15 Olbrycht 2013: 169–​70. 16 IDidyma 480; SEG 26–​1234; Austin 2006: 51. 17 Müller 2013: 208. 18 Olbrycht 2013: 172. 19 Strab. 15.2.9; App. Syr. 55; Just. 15.4.21; Diod. 20.113.4; Oros. 3.23.46. See Beloch 1927:  198 and Ogden 2010: 120. 20 Plut. Demetr. 31–​ 32. On this marriage, see Bevan 1902:  I 62–​ 3; Mehl 1986:  223–​ 30; Grainger 1990: 132–​2; Ogden 2010: 120–​124; Almagor 2016; Engels and Erickson 2016. 21 John Malalas p. 198 Dindorf and Vita Arati apud Westermann 1964: 53. 22 OGI 216; IDidyma 114. Cf. Ogden 2010: 178. 23 Plut. Demetr. 38; App. Syr. 59–​61;Val. Max. 5.7 ext. 1. Cf. Brodersen 1985; 1989: 169–​75. 24 Ogden 2010: 122. 25 Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt 1993: 76, 83–​5; Kosmin 2014. 26 Inscription at Smyrna: OGI 229; Austin 2006: 174. 27 Ogden 2010: 124–​5. 28 See Müller 2009b: 85–​155; Brosius 1996: 36, 45–​6, 81, 205. Brosius believes that full sister marriage was not practiced in Persia, contra Ogden 2010:  126–​7. See also Chapters 7, 14, and 29 in this volume. 29 Beloch 1927: 204–​6; McAuley 2018a. 30 Wörrle 1975. 31 Beloch 1927: 204–​5; McAuley 2018a: 39. 32 McAuley 2018a: 37. 33 Beloch 1927: 204 assumes that Achaios was born around 320. In my view he may even have been born prior to 324. Beloch identifies Achaios as the son of Seleukos (1927: 204–​6). Ogden 2010: 119–​120

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Marek Jan Olbrycht n. 18 rejects this view. Grainger 1997: 5, 127–​8, rejects Beloch’s hypothesis, however, in 2010: 109, n. 43, he accepts it. 34 Olbrycht 1998: 42. 35 John Malalas p. 198, 202–​3; Eusthatius 915. See McAuley 2018a: 46; Ogden 2010: 120. 36 Ogden 2010: 124. 37 OGI 222; Trogus, Prol. XXVI. 38 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.6 = Euseb. I 251 Schoene. For Laodike (2), see Martinez-​Sève 2003; Ogden 2010: 124–​8 assumes that she was the paternal half-​sister of Antiochos II, referring to Polyain. 8.50 and to OGI 219 (decree of Ilion in honor of Antiochos I after his accession: Austin 2006: no. 162). 39 Diod. 31.19.6; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.6 = Euseb. I 251–​252 Schoene; Just. 28.5.3. 40 Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt 1993: 126 and Grainger 1997: 13, 38 opt for a female reading. For Antiochos II’s children see Beloch 1927: 200–​1 and Macurdy 1932: 83. 41 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.6  =  Euseb. I  251 Schoene; Just. 38.5.3 with Beloch 1927:  217. Seibert 1967: 56 rejects the belief that Laodike married a Pontic king. 42 App. Syr. 65; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F43 = Hieronymus In Danielem 11.6–​9. Cf. Pridik 1935–​6; Lehmann 1998: 85–​6. 43 Austin 2006: 173: sale to Laodike (without the title “Queen”) of a tax-​free estate at a rather symbolic price (IDidyma 492). Cf. Boiy 2004: 145–​6. 44 On the status of Laodike and Berenike in 246, see the different positions in Lehmann 1998; Coşkun 2016a; and Chrubasik 2016: 67. 45 Ogden 2010: 83, 128–​9. 46 Blümel 1992: 127–​33; SEG 42–​994. 47 Phylarchos BNJ 81 F24; App. Syr. 65; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F43 = Hieronymus In Danielem 11.6–​9. 48 This traditional picture of Laodike is, for example, given in Lehmann 1998: 86–​7. 49 On a new image of Laodike, see Coşkun 2016a: 132. Cf. Martinez-​Sève 2003; Chrubasik 2016: 67. 50 App. Syr. 65; Val. Max. 9.10 ext. 1; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F43  =  Hieronymus, In Danielem 11.6–​9; Polyaen. 8.50; Just. 27.1. 51 Beloch 1927: 536–​43; Lehmann 1998. 52 Appian’s information is, for example, rejected by Lehmann 1998: 87, n. 10. Coşkun 2016a: 133 assumes that the queen was killed in August 246. 53 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.6 = Euseb. I 251 Schoene. See Seibert 1967: 59. 54 Polyb. 4.51.4, 8.20.11. Cf. Ogden 2010: 132, n. 91. 55 Polyb. 20.8.1; Diod. 29.2; App. Syr. 16. Cf. Schmitt 1964: 4–​10 (he assumes the time span 243–​242). 56 Polyb. 8.23; cf. Ioann. Antioch. FHG IV p. 557 F53. 57 Schmitt 1964: 28; Ogden 2010: 132. 58 Phylarchos BNJ 81 F30. See Ogden 2010: 132. 59 Just. 38.5.3; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.6 = Euseb. Chron. I 251 Schoene. Details in Seibert 1967: 57–​8. 60 Cf. Beloch 1927: 202 (who assumes that Polybios’ evidence is mistaken); Seibert 1967: 57. 61 Macurdy 1932: 91; Schmitt 1964: 10; Seibert 1967: 60–​1; Ogden 2010: 133. 62 OGI 771; cf. Schmitt 1964: 15, 24. 63 Ogden 2010: 140–​1. 64 OGI 252; SEG  7–​17. 65 Ogden 2010: 135. 66 OGI 771; Grainger 1997: 52. 67 Polyb. 11.39. Cf. Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt 1993: 199 and Grainger 1997: 71. 68 App. Syr. 1; Liv. 33.40, 35.13. Cf. Seibert 1967: 65–​6; Ogden 2010: 82–​3. 69 Ogden 2010: 83. 70 Ogden 2010: 82–​3, 133–​40. 71 App. Syr. 5; Liv. 37.31.4; Diod. 31.19.7; Zonaras 9.18.7. Cf. Günther 1995; Grainger 1997: 8. 72 App. Syr. 4–​5. See Seibert 1967: 66–​7. 73 Liv. 33.19.9-​10. See Holleaux 1912; Coşkun 2016b. 74 Wörrle 1988: 451–​4. SEG 37–​859. 75 Polybios 8.23 mentions a Mithridates, son of Antiochis, for events in 212. Grainger 1997: 15, 22, 51 assumes that the Mithridates of 197 is Antiochos IV, while Ogden 2010: 139 sees in him the son of Antiochis. 76 Polyb. 20.8; Diod. 29.2; Liv. 36.11 (amoris causa).

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Seleukid women 77 Schmitt 1964: 11–​12; Ogden 2010: 137–​8. 78 For the terms ἀρχιέρεια and ἀρχιερεύς, see SEG 37–​1010. 79 Rougemont 2012: no. 66. 80 Polyb. 25.4.8; App. Mak. 11.2; Liv. 42.12.3–​4. Cf. Seibert 1967: 69; Grainger 1997: 49–​50. 81 Diod. 30.7.2; Ioann. Antioch. Fr. 58 (FHG IV p. 558). Cf. Grainger 1997: 23; Ogden 2010: 142. 82 Ogden 2010: 142. 83 App. Syr. 46 and 66; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.9 = Euseb. I 253–​4 Schoene. 84 2 Makk. 4.30. Ogden 2010: 143. 85 Memnon BNJ 434 F22, App. Mithr. 112, Sallust F II.54; Seneca, Controv. 7.1.15, 7.3.4. Cf. Ogden 2010: 143, 166, n. 152; Sullivan 1990: 36. 86 Common coin portraits: Gardner 1878, 50, 1–​2. 87 Grainger 1997: 39–​42. 88 Details offered by Ogden 2010: 145. Liv. Epit. 52 calls Balas a homo ignotus incertae stirpis. The Jewish tradition believes in his descent from Antiochos IV (1 Makk. 10.1; Jos. Ant. 13.2.1 and 13.4.1). 89 Houghton, Lorber and Hoover 2008: no. 1841. See www.cngcoins.com/​Coin.aspx?CoinID=94592 (accessed June 10, 2020). 90 Ogden 2010: 148. 91 Just. 36.1.1–​6 and 38.9.2–​10; Jos. Ant. 13.5.1; 1 Makk. 14.3; App. Syr. 67; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.16 = Euseb. I 255–​8 Schoene. 92 Just. 36.1.9; Jos. Ant. 13.7.1–​2; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.16 = Euseb. I 255 Schoene. Cf. Macurdy 1932: 97. 93 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.20 = Euseb. I 257 Schoene. Cf. Macurdy 1932: 99. Appian (Syr. 68) claims that Antiochos VII had one son. 94 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.20 = Euseb. I 257 Schoene; Just. 38.10.10; cf. Diodorus 34/​35.17. 95 Ogden 2010: 150 assumes that Eusebius/​Porphyrios confuses Seleukos V, the son of Demetrios II, with the son of Antiochos VII, also called Seleukos. Bellinger 1949: 59 n. 4, and Grainger 1997: 66 believe that this Seleukos was Antiochos VII’s own son. Bouché-​Leclercq 1913–​14: 386 claims that he was the son of Demetrios II. 96 Just. 39.1.1-​9; tortured to death: Jos. Ant. 13.13.9.3. Murder by Kleopatra: Liv. Epit. 60; App. Syr. 68–​9/​360); Porphyrios BNJ 260 F32.21  =  Euseb. I  257–​8 Schoene. Cf. Bellinger 1949:  63–​4, with n. 22. 97 Houghton, Lorber and Hoover 2008:  no.  2258. See Macurdy 1932:  98–​9; Bellinger 1949:  64; Houghton 1988. 98 Houghton, Lorber and Hoover 2008: no. 2271. 99 Diod. 34.28; Just. 39.2.1–​3 and 5–​9; Jos. Ant. 13.9.3; App. Syr. 69; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.23–​ 24 = Euseb. I 257–​8 Schoene. See Bevan 1902, II: 251; Macurdy 1932: 99–​101. 100 Just. 39.2.7–​8. See Ogden 2010: 151. 101 Bellinger 1949: 66–​7. 102 Jos. Ant. 13.13.4; Cf. Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.23–​5 = Euseb. I 259–​60 Schoene. 103 Jos. Ant. 13.13.4; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.23–​6 = Euseb. I 259–​62 Schoene. Cf. Bellinger 1949: 72 n. 62; Sullivan 1990: 65–​8, 356, n. 9. 104 Dumitru 2016. 105 Grainger 1997: 45. 106 Seibert 1967; Ogden 2010. Possible are more links of the Seleukids to Graeco-​Bactria (see Wenghofer and Houle in SRW, 191–​208) but they must be verified by new evidence. 107 D’Agostini 2016b. 108 Jos. Bell. 1.476–​477. Sullivan 1990: 185, 300.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). SRW Coşkun, A.  and McAuley, A.  (eds.) 2016. Seleukid Royal Women:  Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart.

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Bibliography Almagor, E. 2016. “Seleukid Love and Power: Stratonike I.” In SRW,  67–​86. Austin, M.M. 2006. The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest. Cambridge. Bartlett, B. 2016. “The Fate of Kleopatra Tryphaina, or: Poetic Justice in Justin.” In SRW, 135–​42. Bellinger, A.R. 1949. “The End of the Seleucids.” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 38: 51–​102. Beloch, K.J. 1927. Griechische Geschichte. Die griechische Weltherrschaft, 4, 2. Berlin and Leipzig. Bevan, E.R. 1902. The House of Seleucus. London. Bielman Sánchez, A. 2003. “Régner au feminin. Réflexions sur les reines attalides et séleucides.” In F. Prost (ed.), L’Orient méditerranéen de la mort d’Alexandre aux campagnes de Pompée. Rennes, 41–​64. Blümel,W. 1992.“Brief des ptolemäischen Ministers Tlepolemos an die Stadt Kildara in Karien.” Epigraphica Anatolica 20: 127–​33. Boiy, T. 2004. Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon. Leuven. Bouché-​Leclercq, A. 1913. Histoire des Séleucides. Paris. Brodersen, K. 1985.“Der liebeskranke Königssohn und die seleukidische Herrschaftsauffassung.” Athenaeum N.S. 63: 459–​69. Brodersen, K. 1989. Appians Abriss der Seleukidengeschichte (Syriake 45.232–​70, 369). Munich. Brosius, M. 1996. Women in Ancient Persia, 559–​331 B.C. Oxford. Carney, E.D. 1995. “Women and Basileia: Legitimacy and Female Political Action in Macedonia.” Classical Journal 90: 367–​91. Carney, E.D. 2011. “Being Royal and Being Female in the Early Hellenistic Period.” In A. Erskine and L. Llewellyn-​Jones (eds.), Creating a Hellenistic World. Swansea, 195–​220. Carney, E.D. 2019. Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power. Oxford. Chrubasik, B. 2016. Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men Who Would Be King. Oxford. Coşkun, A. 2016a. “Laodike I, Berenike Phernophoros, Dynastic Murders, and the Outbreak of the Third Syrian War (253–​246 BC).” In SRW, 107–​134. Coşkun, A. 2016b. “Philologische, genealogische und politische Überlegungen zu Ardys und Mithradates, zwei Söhnen des Antiochos Megas (Liv. 33,19,9).” Latomus 75, 4: 849–​61. D’Agostini, M. 2016a. “Representation and Agency of Royal Women in Hellenistic Dynastic Crises: The Case of Berenike and Laodike.” In A. Bielman Sánchez et  al. (eds.), Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome. Grenoble, 35–​59. D’Agostini, M. 2016b. “The Multicultural Ties of the Mithridatids.” Aevum 90: 83–​95. Dumitru, A.G. 2016. “Kleopatra Selene: A Look at the Moon and her Bright Side.” In SRW, 253–​71. Engels, D. and Erickson, K. 2016. “Apama and Stratonike: Marriage and Legitimacy.” In SRW,  39–​66. Gardner, P. 1878. Catalogue of Greek Coins: The Seleucid Kings of Syria (British Museum). London. Grainger, J.D. 1990. Seleukos I Nikator. London. Grainger, J.D. 1997. A Seleukid Prosopography and Gazetteer. Leiden. Grainger, J.D. 2010. The Syrian Wars. Leiden. Günther, L.-​M. 1995. “Kappadokien, die seleukidische Heiratspolitik und die Rolle der Antiochis,Tochter Antiochos’ III.” Asia Minor Studien 16: 47–​61. Harders, A.-​C. 2016. “The Making of a Queen: Seleukos Nikator and His Wives.” In SRW,  25–​38. Heckel, W. 2006. Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great: Prosopography of Alexander's Empire. Malden, MA and London. Holleaux, M. 1912. “Ardys et Mithridates.” Hermes 47: 481–​91. Holleaux, M. 1942. “Le décret des Milésiens en l‘honneur d’Apamé.” In M. Holleaux, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire grecques, vol. 3. Paris, 99–​110. Holt, F.L. 1988. Alexander the Great and Bactria. Leiden and New York. Hoover, O.D. 2002. “Two Seleucid Notes:  II. Laodice IV on the Bronze Coinage of Seleucus IV and Antiochus IV.” American Journal of Numismatics 14: 81–​7. Houghton, A. 1988. “The Double Portrait Coins of Alexander I Balas and Cleopatra Thea.” Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 67: 85–​93. Houghton, A., Lorber, C., and Hoover, O. 2008. Seleucid Coins II. New York. Kosmin, P. 2014. “Seeing Double in Seleucid Babylonia: Rereading the Borsippa Cylinder of Antiochus I.” In A. Moreno and R. Thomas (eds.), Patterns of the Past: Epitēdeumata in the Greek Tradition. Oxford, 173–​98.

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Seleukid women Lehmann, G.A. 1998. “Expansionspolitik im Zeitalter des Hochhellenismus:  Die Anfangsphase des ‘Laodike-​Krieges’ 246/​5 v.Chr.” In T. Hantos and G.A. Lehmann (eds.), Althistorisches Kolloquium aus Anlaß des 70. Geburtstages von J. Bleicken. Stuttgart, 81–​102. Macurdy, G.H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore. Martinez-​Sève, L. 2003. “Laodice, femme d’Antiochos II: du roman à la reconstruction historique.” Revue des Études Grecques 116: 690–​706. McAuley, A. 2017a. “Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and Their Nuptial Courts.” In A. Erskine and L. Llewellyn-​Jones (eds.), The Hellenistic Court. Swansea, 189–​212. McAuley, A. 2017b. “Mother Knows Best:  Motherhood and Succession in the Seleucid Realm.” In D. Cooper et al. (eds.), Motherhood in Antiquity. Basel, 79–​106. McAuley, A. 2018a.“The House of Achaios: Reconstructing an Early Client Dynasty of Seleukid Anatolia.” In K. Erickson (ed.), The Seleukid Empire, 281–​222 BC. Swansea, 37–​58. McAuley, A. 2018b. “The tradition and ideology of naming Seleukid Queens.” Historia 67, 4: 472–​94. Mehl, A. 1986. Seleukos Nikator und sein Reich. Leuven. Müller, S. 2009a. “Inventing traditions –​Genealogie und Legitimation in den hellenistischen Reichen.” In H. Brandt et al. (eds.), Genealogisches Bewusstsein als Legitimation. Bamberg, 61–​82. Müller, S. 2009b. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation:  Ptolemaios II.  und Arsinoë II. Berlin. Müller, S. 2013.“The Female Element in the Political Self-​Fashioning of the Diadochoi: Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus and Their Iranian Wives.” In V. Alonso Troncoso and E. Anson (eds.), After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi. Oxford, 199–​214. Ogden, D. 2010 [first published 1999]. Polygamy, Prostitutes, and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. Swansea. Olbrycht, M.J. 1998. Parthia et ulteriores gentes. Munich. Olbrycht, M.J. 2013. “Iranians in the Diadochi Period.” In V. Alonso Troncoso and E. Anson (eds.), After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi. Oxford, 159–​82. Pridik, A. 1935–​6. Berenice, die Schwester des Königs Ptolemaios III Euergetes. Dorpat. Robert, L. 1984.“Pline VI 49, Demodamas de Milet et la reine Apame.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 108: 467–​72. Rougemont, G. 2012. Inscriptions grecques d’Iran et d’Asie central. London. Schmitt, H.H. 1964. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Antiochos’ des Grossen und seiner Zeit. Stuttgart. Seibert, J. 1967. Historische Beiträge zu den dynastischen Verbindungen in hellenistischer Zeit. Stuttgart. Shahbazi, S.A. 1987. “Apama.” Encyclopaedia Iranica II: 150–​1. Sherwin-​White, S. and Kuhrt, A. 1993. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire. London. Sullivan, R.D. 1990. Near Eastern Royalty and Rome, 100–​33 BC. Toronto. Tarn, W.W. 1929. “Queen Ptolemais and Apama.” Classical Quarterly 23: 138–​41. Vatin, C. 1970. Recherches sur le mariage et la condition de la femme mariée à l’époque hellénistique. Paris. Westermann, A. 1964. Biographoi: vitarum scriptores Graeci minores. Amsterdam. Wörrle, M. 1975. “Antiochos I, Achaios der Ältere und die Galater. Eine neue Inschrift in Denizli.” Chiron 5: 59–​87. Wörrle, M. 1988. “Inschriften von Herakleia am Latmus I: Antiochos III, Zeuxis und Herakleia.” Chiron 18: 421–​76.

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16 APAMA AND STRATONIKE The first Seleukid basilissai Gillian Ramsey

Apama and Stratonike were the two founding female members of the Seleukid dynasty. They shared much in common, including a husband (Seleukos I), and yet they seem rather dissimilar in the ancient testimonies. Apama was the first wife, Stratonike the second and a generation younger, and never do they both feature in a story. In fact, considering them together is a fruitful exercise for uncovering early Seleukid women’s political engagement. This is something not often pursued by scholarship to date nor immediately apparent in the source material, since what ancient narratives that do exist about the two women’s lives focus on sex and wedlock and not their similarities or royal authority. In fact, their political agency not only helped create the Seleukid empire, but also set a template for future behavior by their descendants. The apparent difference between Apama and Stratonike lies mainly in the available literary sources. Classical authors mention Apama in passing; she is not the main subject of any passage, but is either part of a list or an ancillary detail. By piecing together those remarks we can glean a brief biography for her. She was married to Seleukos I, and was mother of Antiochos I and an eponym of one of his city foundations.1 She was also eponym for a few of Seleukos’ new cities.2 Her marriage was part of Alexander the Great’s grandiose mass-​ wedding at Susa in 324 BCE,3 where she and many other daughters of Persian leaders were paired off with Macedonian officers.4 In addition to her son, she had two daughters: Apama and Laodike.5 Stratonike receives a somewhat fuller treatment in classical literature, as one of the characters in a courtly romance. She married Seleukos I  c. 300/​299 BCE as part of his alliance with her father Demetrios the Besieger, and bore him a daughter, Phila, named after Stratonike’s mother.6 Over the next few years, her proximity to Apama’s son inspired in the youth an irresistible passion for her, which developed into morbid lovesickness. A  clever court physician diagnosed the problem and staged an intervention so that Seleukos gladly handed over his affecting young wife to his son, along with half his kingdom.7 She then had four more children with Antiochos: Seleukos, Antiochos (II), Apama, and Stratonike. Stratonike is a passive character in the romance, doing nothing except existing as an object of desire, which for our purposes here makes it not the most useful source on her personality and agency. Perhaps unsurprisingly, over the years, scholars of many disciplines, writers, and artists alike have been fascinated by the erotic and psychological drama, fixating especially on the bedroom scene, when Stratonike visits her stepson’s sickbed. Ingres’ 1840 La Maladie d’Antiochos 186

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immortalized the modern vision of the moment, and simultaneously fixed Stratonike’s role as the maddeningly lovely and yet innocent love interest. There is considerable material out there pertaining to this story, ranging from the medieval to postmodern. Its reception is particularly strong in the medical and psychological fields, for which it is cited as antiquity’s representative example of lovesickness.8 An additional erotic story about Stratonike surfaces in De Dea Syria. This time she is the lovesick one, and the hapless object of her passion is the gorgeous young courtier Kombabos. The main actor behind it all is the goddess Hera, who is punishing Stratonike for neglecting to build her a temple at Hierapolis; tied into the tale is an etiology for the Galli priests’ self-​ castration—​after the actions of Kombabos, who takes steps to preserve his innocence. For her part, Stratonike is totally incapable of self-​control toward Kombabos. The text presents two alternate endings, one where she calms down but Antiochos desires vengeance for the presumed adultery, and another where she condemns Kombabos herself.9 Scholars have discussed how this account gives us another chapter in the courtly Seleukid Romance, akin to the Alexander Romance, and drawing upon a host of Near Eastern romance motifs.10 This enriches our reconstruction of the courtly culture surrounding the historical Stratonike (and Apama), but does complicate efforts to unload the romantic baggage from these women’s capacity for Realpolitik.11 A further piece of ancient evidence testifies to Stratonike’s sexualized literary associations. This is the Antiochos Cylinder, a foundation inscription deposited by Antiochos I  in 268 BCE when he refurbished the Ezida temple in Borsippa. In it the king refers to “Stratonike, his consort, the queen” (faš-​ta-​ar-​ta-​ni-​ik-​ku hi-​rat-​su šar-​ra-​at).12 Her name as written here—​ Astartanikku—​is not an Akkadization of the Greek Stratonike. Rather, it seems to reference the goddess Astarte and one of the Akkadian words for sex, niku, and thus also Stratonike’s romantic reputation.13 That this was not a one-​time wordplay but more of an epithet is evidenced by her death notice in the Babylonian astronomical diaries, which report that in the autumn of 254 BCE “fAs-​ta-​rat-​ni-​qé queen died in Sardis.”14 As for the Cylinder’s title hirat, here translated “consort,” the Assyrian term hirtu (“wife of equal status with the husband”) arguably comes from the realm of literature, not family law. So when Sennacherib had used it for Tasmetum-​ sarrat he praised her as a beloved sexual partner, but as his wifely peer only in a fictive sense. This implies that when Antiochos called Stratonike hirtu he added an archaic romantic literary dimension to the cylinder’s text.15 Such a choice, combined with the spelling of her name, resonates with the sex-​obsessed classical literary tradition surrounding Stratonike. Scholars on the Cylinder as a whole, including the treatment of the queen in it, still debate what sort of royal ideology lies behind it, how involved the Seleukid court was in its making, and how exceptional it is as a royal production.16 The sexualization of a Hellenistic royal woman, however, whether by literary trope or cultic association, was not exceptional. Several early Hellenistic royal women received cultic honors in Greek cities linking them to Aphrodite. The Athenians honored Stratonike’s mother as “Phila Aphrodite,” and her father’s hetairai (courtesans) Lamia and Leaina also received cultic honors.17 Among the Ptolemies, Berenike I, Arsinoë I, and Ptolemy II’s hetaira Bilistiche were all associated with cultic honors for Aphrodite. At Delos, Stratonike herself received an agalma, understood as a cult statue, and perhaps also a sanctuary (temenos) during her life,18 and she had a posthumous cult as Stratonike Aphrodite at Smyrna.19 Neither is Apama’s story devoid of the possibility for romantic speculation. Grace Macurdy suggests that Seleukos I was “glad enough” to pass off his problematic young wife to Antiochos and return to beloved faithful Apama.20 Aside from the significance of assuming that Apama was still alive and Seleukos was polygamous, her comment alludes to the fact that of all the pairings Alexander made at Susa, only Apama and Seleukos’ lasted beyond a few years.There are 187

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clear pragmatic reasons for their enduring partnership, and it is quite possible to argue that the romance was a completely fictionalized explanation of otherwise sound decisions for empire-​ building,21 but the temptation to characterize their union in erotic terms is still strong.22 Though Stratonike plays the biggest part in the Seleukid courtly romance, she is by no means the only early Hellenistic woman to see herself represented with sexual connotations in literature and epigraphy, or to be suspected by modern scholars of having them.23 The question about her royal career then becomes: given that she carried this association with fabled sexual passion, not necessarily of her own choosing, did she or could she conduct any part of that career apart from this label? We have an example of Stratonike’s own self-​representation in religious dedications, in which her sex life features not at all, but her royal status and title do. Consideration of the titles for both Stratonike and Apama opens up a wider basis for comparing their status and agency.

Royal titles Temple treasury inventories from the island of Delos list Stratonike as a royal donor, noting that she dedicated numerous gold and silver items at least as early as 278 BCE,24 in particular two valuable jewelry collections. Some of the items she had engraved with the label “basilissa Stratonike daughter of basileus Demetrios and basilissa Phila.”25 Throughout the rest of the inventory the record-​keepers listed her dedications under the title and name basilissa Stratonike, in keeping with the way she identified herself.26 A separate early-​third-​century Delian inscription refers to cult statues (agalmata) of Asklepios and basilissa Stratonike.27 Apama had also appeared with the title basilissa earlier, when the Milesians decreed honors for her in 299/​298 BCE after meeting with her at the royal court28 and set up her statue at Didyma with an inscribed base, probably at the same time.29 The title basilissa is a feminine version of the masculine basileus, a title typically translated as “king.” Basilissa is commonly translated as the English “queen,” itself a problematic term since it connotes both a consort and (nowadays) a woman ruling in her own right.What basilissa originally meant to Apama, Stratonike, and the people who referred to them by that title seems about as flexible. There are a few angles to consider: first, the earlier usages of the title that provided the jumping-​off point for its Seleukid adoption; second, the contexts in which the title was employed, which give a sense of what benefit its use was seen to confer; third, the extent to which the title denoted a specific role or office among the early Seleukids.

Early usages Basilissa appears a few times in classical Athenian literature, in a mix of isolated references and slightly longer remarks which give a sense of the basilissa’s possible roles. For example, Alkaios, an Old Comedian, is said to have used the term in his Ganymede, but the fragment consists of that solitary term without any context.30 Similarly, Aristotle reportedly used the term in his commentary on Homer.31 Xenophon uses it as a simile for the well-​ordered housewife, who must be “like a basilissa” in how she metes out praise for good behavior and punishes bad.32 In an orthographic variation, Demosthenes reports that in ancient times the wife of the Athenian archon basileus was the basilinna, who conducted rituals forbidden to everyone else.33 In one of his comedies, Menander has a character who wishes to be made basilinna of the Attic deme Trikorythos as her wedding present.34 Xenophon’s usage gives a sense of the authority imagined for a basilissa, not so much to issue commands (for his housewife is carrying out the precepts of her economically-​wise husband), 188

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but to police moral conduct in the household. Demosthenes’ remark echoes this sense of the basilissa being helpmate to the leader and enforcer of his obligations. The association of basilissa with wifehood also comes through in Menander’s usage. One odd example of the title comes from Athenaios regarding Harpalos of Babylon, who reportedly favored two of his hetairai, Pythionike and Glykera, with cultic honors for Aphrodite and the title basilissa. Although writing centuries later, Athenaios cites Theopompos’ Letter to Alexander and Philemon’s The Babylonian, authors both contemporary to the episode in question.35 This may be the exception which proves the rule: Harpalos is such an outlier that his eccentricities confirm that the cohort of early Hellenistic dynasties had more traditional roles for a basilissa, especially the association with wifehood and the idea that she had authority and specific duties going along with it.36 On the other hand, the sexualization of basilissa Stratonike in Seleukid lands, including Babylon, means that we cannot rule out Harpalos’ treatment of his ladies as a lingering influence. It must be noted, however, that even though Stratonike had two basileus husbands, she only ever used the title for herself in her dedications by referencing her parents, giving the impression that for her personally the title basilissa primarily signified royal daughter, not consort.

The title’s benefits Once the various Hellenistic dynasties embraced the title basilissa at the end of the fourth century, the epigraphic instances of it became much more numerous, and after Apama and Stratonike’s generation it was de rigueur for many Hellenistic royal women. Early on, it was also the title for Phila, Stratonike’s mother; Stratonike’s dedicatory inscriptions did not introduce a posthumous title. A late fourth-​century Samian decree found on Kos mentions honors being performed for basilissa Phila, and a temenos assigned to her.37 Another decree found in the Heraion at Samos reports that a certain benefactor was spending time with basilissa Phila and thus serving as the Samians’ advocate at her court.38 Similarly and at about the same time, the Ephesians praised their own benefactor for his sojourn in the presence of basilissa Phila.39 Phila’s and Apama’s titulature come in the same way: other entities, here the poleis Miletos, Samos, Ephesos, and also Athens describe the women as basilissai, and always in honorific contexts. This raises the question of whether the cities chose to use this title to show their high esteem for the royal women, or were complying with demands from the royal courts or the women themselves. If it was the cities’ initiative, then the earlier Athenian context for the title suggests that civic leaders viewed these women as powerful wives with the authority and responsibility to enforce their husbands’ decrees and policies. They likely also saw that the women had significant ceremonial responsibilities, given that they interacted with both Phila and Apama through visiting the royal courts, and this would also have fit well with the connotations of the Athenian priestly and literary basilissa. As far as the evidence goes, if the new Hellenistic rulers were demanding the title basilissa for their wives and daughters, it was a very new notion and not rooted in older Macedonian tradition. It is possible that Adea Eurydike could have introduced the title for herself, given her royal ancestry and ambitions at obtaining ruling power, and thus gave the idea to the others.40 But Phila is the first attested Hellenistic basilissa, and Apama a close second.41 If the new dynasties came to require the title as a sign of respect, they probably got the idea from the cities and thought it fit nicely with their aspirations. The traditional language of the polis provided a lexicon for new monarchical power and dominance. Later, Stratonike clearly chose to use the title for both herself and her mother, since it appears in her own dedicatory inscriptions. But Stratonike belongs to the second generation 189

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of Hellenistic basilissai, Apama and Phila to the first. Having a previous generation who had regularly received the title likely gave her license to use it more assertively. For the first generation, the benefit of adopting basilissa lay in how it enhanced the early formation of Hellenistic rulership concepts. In a single word it articulated the women’s royal pedigree with allusions to religious prestige, and so conferred legitimacy on the men they married. When cities used the title and the women and their families responded positively, it increased the acceptance of royal dominance and facilitated a new political dynamic between cities and dynasties. Phila’s career provides some comparative insight for interpreting Apama as a first-​generation basilissa. Phila’s marriage to Stratonike’s father was at least her third, conducted in 320 BCE, when she must have been in her mid-​thirties. She had previously been married to Balakros the Persian satrap of Cilicia (in the 320s), and to Krateros (from c. 321–​320) with whom she had a son, Krateros.42 A possible first husband in the 330s was Macedonian nobleman Alexander of Lynkestis, who we know was married to one of Antipater’s daughters.43 The key figure orchestrating these marriages was Phila’s father Antipater, whose own escalation toward monarchical power mirrored hers and those of her last two husbands—​every major player of the late fourth century was aiming at monarchy. The years 306 and 305 BCE were the most significant, when all the self-​proclaimed male successors to Alexander the Great adopted the title basileus: not just Apama’s husband and Phila’s last husband, but also Phila’s brother (Kassandros), father-​in-​ law (Antigonos Monophthalmos), and two brothers-​in-​law (Nikaia’s husband Lysimachos and Eurydike’s husband Ptolemy I).44 Antipater was already dead by this period, but the marriages he arranged for his daughters wrought quite a legacy in early Hellenistic experiments with the legitimization of new monarchies.There is a strong impression here that marrying an Antipatrid woman brought with it the potential for greater royal legitimacy. The women carried high enough Macedonian status in themselves to give the necessary impetus for their spouses to identify as basileis. As noted above (p.  186), Apama’s marriage to Seleukos has the distinction of being the only Susa pairing which stood the test of time. Among the Persian wives at Susa, Apama was not unusual:  they were all daughters of Persian royalty or royally-​connected families with ancient claims to territorial authority. Even more than Phila, Apama could justifiably claim to be a basilissa on the basis of her ancestry. She was daughter of Spitamenes, who had ruled Sogdia for Darios III and led the Persian campaign against Alexander the Great after deposing Bessos in 329, making him a contender for the Persian kingship. She shares a name with earlier generations of Achaimenid women, suggesting that her mother, though unknown, may have come from that dynasty.45 Later, Curtius, probably using early Hellenistic and anti-​Seleukid propaganda, wrote how Apama’s mother betrayed Spitamenes and killed him herself. This may or may not have succeeded in making Apama, and consequently Seleukos, look bad; either way it was a clear characterization of her mother as a woman of decisive action.46 As a high-​status Persian woman, until Alexander intervened, Apama would have expected to inherit economic authority in her family’s territory. Arrian tells us that she and the other women married at Susa all received dowries from the conqueror. His playing out this paternalistic fantasy should not disguise the harsh reality that the money came from the women’s own family coffers, and that they undoubtedly received back a mere fraction of what was rightfully theirs.47 Apama was well-​equipped in terms of her social capital, though no longer had all her monetary capital, to pursue a queenly career, and she brought all this to her marriage with Seleukos. That he ended up claiming the Eastern regions—​her home territory—​as his portion of Alexander’s legacy was fortunate for both of them.48 This is the context for understanding the title basilissa: Apama and Phila, and later Stratonike, had inherited power and influence from their families and brought this to their careers as 190

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spouses of would-​be kings. Those men could justify their claims to rulership because they had married women who deserved the title basilissa. Stratonike’s marriages in the Seleukid dynasty were further steps in experimenting with legitimacy. Her role as an Antipatrid and Antigonid basilissa brought authority in the Mediterranean sphere, just when relationships between the royal families needed to be redefined after her father’s defeat and Seleukos’ victory at Ipsos in 301. Plutarch gives the account of her marriage, how Seleukos requested Stratonike in marriage because he needed an alliance with Demetrios to counterbalance other marriage-​alliances being forged by Ptolemy I. Phila joined her daughter and the two kings at Rhosos, Syria for several days of festivities before departing to handle a political dispute with her brother Kassandros, and then Seleukos helped the already polygamous Demetrios broker another marriage with Ptolemaïs, daughter of Ptolemy. Turmoil between the kings erupted almost immediately after; nevertheless it is clear that Stratonike’s first marriage fits into a complex sequence of inter-​state negotiations, for which the physical and familial movements of basilissai were integral.49 Stratonike’s second marriage was an experiment internal to the Seleukid family, laying the basis for the representation of dynastic cohesion and a stable succession. Setting aside the romantic reading of motivations, in purely political terms, Stratonike transferred all her weight as basilissa to Antiochos, bringing it to bear on his new responsibility for ruling the eastern Seleukid empire. This in itself is interesting: that the Seleukids at this time saw feasibility in dispatching a western basilissa to become a very successful Eastern leader. Stratonike had had approximately eight years already in which to grow into her role as a Seleukid dynasty founder. Her move to be with Antiochos perhaps represents the point when those years of work came to fruition for her own benefit, plus the benefit of both her husbands, and Apama too.

The basilissa’s duties? That early Hellenistic basilissai brought legitimacy to the male rulers with whom they associated works as a way to explain certain marital choices of the late fourth and early third centuries. Beyond the basilissa’s influence and connections, though, a perennial question for scholars is whether her title denoted a specific office and standard duties. It would make things easier to be able to state definitively that any basilissa who appears in the source material can be described with the same set of responsibilities and powers regardless of her context. This was not the case. In a technical sense, the title basilissa is best understood as a kinship term, denoting a royal woman who possesses that identity mainly as the daughter of royalty, and secondarily as a consort to a basileus. As a comparison, Phila’s slightly better documented queenly career provides at least some comparative basis for speculating what Apama and Stratonike did as basilissai. Already noted above (p. 192) are the inscriptions describing how Phila hosted ambassadors from Greek poleis, implying that she ran a court where they could visit her and that she had the resources to do them favors and intervene in any troublesome situations—​the usual responses by any Hellenistic monarch to civic embassies. This kind of setup is precisely the same as for male rulers, and the inscriptions give a sense of Phila’s independence in that work. Literary sources also provide episodes testifying to Phila’s acumen as an advisor to her father and husbands, as well as her responsibility for supervising the community in Demetrios’ military camp, akin to Xenophon’s housewife.50 Both Apama and Stratonike lived through situations similar enough to Phila’s for us to expect that they had plenty of opportunities to lead just like she did, if they wished. One item from Apama’s career does indicate that she took the initiative in making political interventions 191

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and orchestrating benefactions. In a decree dated to 299, the Milesian citizen and Seleukid general Demodamas instigated honors in gratitude for Apama’s “goodwill and zeal” (eunoia and prothymia) to Milesian soldiers under his command.51 The longstanding interpretation is that she must have helped this cohort during their deployment to her father’s old territories of Sogdia and Bactria during the years when Seleukos was consolidating his control there.52 Beyond the similarity to Phila’s leadership in the army camp—​even if that was all she had been doing, it would be enough to warrant the later gratitude—​Apama could also have been leveraging old family connections in the region to assist the soldiers. It is noteworthy that Apama is praised for her current enthusiastic support of Milesian ambassadors to court, a similar scenario seen with Phila, where the basilissa hosts embassies and presides over their presentation of requests.53 Concerning Stratonike, there is one reference to her in the Astronomical Diaries, stating that in 274 during the build-​up to the First Syrian War she was stationed at Sardis, one of the Seleukid royal capitals, with a high-​ranking general.54 She could have been playing a role in the wartime strategy, since the fight concerned territories in southern Anatolia.These two examples support the idea that a Seleukid basilissa had an obligation, if not an express duty, to aid the military ambitions and political undertakings of her dynasty. Stratonike evidently retained the Akkadian royal title used for her even after Antiochos’ death, since the astronomical diary entry identifies her as šarratu, in logograms GAŠAN, which means “queen.” In earlier centuries under previous regimes this title could not be used of a royal woman unless she also ruled.55 As suggestive as this is, there is no direct corroborating evidence for Stratonike exercising rulership, unless we credit her influence with her children (see p. 193) as a form of political dominance. The trope of the domineering dowager queen mother should be familiar enough from interpretations of other royal families throughout history. But the diary, normally fairly precise in noting royal family connections, does not call her “mother of the king,” meaning that at least some people remembered Stratonike as a queenly figure on her own, without reference to male relatives. This is an interesting hint at how these royal women could carry out their duties so as to be regarded as individual rulers in their own right. There is one clear early Hellenistic example of a regnant basilissa:  Amastris, who ruled Herakleia Pontika after the death of her husband, its tyrant Dionysios. She eponymously founded the neighboring city of Amastris c. 300 BCE, and from there issued coins bearing the legend “of basilissa Amastris” (ΑΜΑΣΤΡΙΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΣΣΗΣ).56 Like many other women ruling as monarchs, Amastris came into direct power because her husband had died and her sons were under age. She brought her own royal credentials to the situation, however, as a niece of Dareios III (daughter of his brother Oxyathres). Like Apama, Alexander had married her to one of his generals (Krateros).57 After 323 Krateros swapped her for Phila, and she moved to Herakleia to live with Dionysios, who, as Memnon tells us later (probably after 306), began to call himself basileus.58 Although supervising the regency for her sons, Amastris faced interventions by Antigonos Monophthalmos, ostensibly on the children’s behalf, to control Herakleia, and then by Lysimachos, who also married her.59 By 300 she was solo again with no outside interference, and her foundation of Amastris marks the point when she fully embraced the role of a regnant basilissa. Although her sons soon came of age, she maintained this role until they assassinated her c. 284.60 Memnon relates that her sons ruled at Herakleia,61 while Amastris’ coin issues point to that city as her own base. Like Apama and Stratonike, Amastris had royal pedigree in her own right from at least one of her parents, and she was also heavily involved in the early Hellenistic marriage circuit as different leaders tested possible alignments with each other. Unlike those women, she managed to side-​step all this after a few years and set up almost two decades of independent rule. This came, however, at the cost of establishing a political legacy, since (other than Lysimachos’ 192

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conveniently too-​late recollection of his dear, deceased wife)62 she had no successors who valued her career or queenly identity as the basis for their future rule—​something which Apama and Stratonike did have.

Apama and Stratonike’s legacy An important aspect of Apama and Stratonike’s careers as basilissai for the Seleukids is their creation of the dynasty. In a basic sense, they established the succession through childbearing, and, for Stratonike, through marriage to the heir. As well as the production of sons, both women also had daughters, and we know for certain that Stratonike’s daughters and granddaughters married into the other Hellenistic royal families, taking with them their own Seleukid basilissa status and legitimacy, as well as lessons learned about how to rule. To return to the sexualization of Stratonike, there is no evidence that her particular identifications were perpetuated by later generations either in references to her or anyone else, other than the cult for her at Smyrna (see p. 187). Fixations on sexual (mis)behavior by ancient writers are common enough that we could not attribute such to her specific influence.We should note, however, that her daughter Apama, who married Magas of Kyrene, was involved in a scandal after his death when she made plans for her daughter to marry an Antigonid prince (Demetrios “the Fair”) instead of Ptolemy III and promptly started an affair with her new son-​in-​law.63 Here succession politics, inter-​dynasty alliances, and courtly romance all tie together in a familiar way. Arguably, Apama of Kyrene’s preference for an Antigonid connection might be attributed to her mother’s birth-​family loyalties, especially since her sister Stratonike married Demetrios II around the same time, c.  260–​255.64 These actions could represent some the last of their mother’s policies before her death in 254 (see p. 192). Shortly after it, Antiochos II made a new marriage with a Ptolemaic princess, an attempt at realigning his alliances which might have been a reaction to being out from under his mother’s domineering leadership. As a specific policy headed up by Stratonike, one clear example concerns Delos and Stratonike’s ongoing cultivation of a good reputation in the islands’ records. Her own dedications and the honors paid her there were echoed in honors paid to her daughter Phila on the occasion of her marriage, and, perhaps, in dedications by her eldest son.65 Having a particular focus on the Aegean actually dovetails with the question of Antigonid or Ptolemaic alliances among her children, since those dynasties also rivaled one another in donations to the island’s temples.66 It is no surprise that Stratonike encouraged Seleukid links to the western political scene; after all, this was her mission as basilissa from day one of her first marriage. That she favored her own birth-​family makes sense: she was basilissa because of her parents. For a specific policy belonging to Apama, the Milesian connection offers one possibility. Again, the image of the basilissa encouraging her children in emulating her behavior appears, since shortly before Demodamas praised Apama for her goodwill, her son Antiochos made a grand donation for a new stoa.67 Seleukid attention to Miletos and Didyma is most often connected to Seleukos I, since he is remembered for returning the cult statue of Apollo taken by Xerxes,68 but clearly it was a family affair, and Apama’s regard for the project was just as important. It is only speculation, but there is nothing to say that it was not Apama who had the idea of returning the statues. The only impediment is the convention of attributing all the great actions of a king to him and him alone, without consideration of the various advisors, including his wife, who encouraged his decisions. (Unless, of course, those advisors are manipulating an exotic and scandalous story like Stratonike with young Antiochos; then commentators do take note.)

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One area where Apama’s activity at Miletos compares to Amastris as regnant basilissa is that of managing royal territory and the interactions with local groups, an absolutely crucial element of Seleukid authority, just as her city foundation underpinned Amastris’ claim to rulership. Amastris had Persian royal heritage, but was adrift in the early Hellenistic scene, without a clear relationship to a land, until she established a new connection with her eponymous city. Apama was also uprooted, but by good fortune could revisit old family ties in the East once Seleukos began campaigning there. Through the presence of Milesian soldiers in that venue, she could then transmute political advantages throughout the East into new favors and acceptance in the West. The practice of a Seleukid basilissa cultivating good relationships with cities ruled by the dynasty was maintained throughout later generations.69 The eponymous naming is another comparison with Amastris as a ruler, mostly in the way that founding and naming cities created the basis for a relationship between dynastic and civic identities, and gave opportunity for the basilissa’s memory to endure. Amastris the city was the basilissa Amastris’ only real legacy. Apama had several eponymous cities throughout the Seleukid empire, either known or assumed to have been founded by Seleukos, although one source says Apamea-​Pella was named after Apama her daughter.70 It is worth asking the question:  how involved could Apama senior have been in the creations of the various Apameas? Sherwin-​ White and Kuhrt observe that, generations later, the romance of the joint foundations Apamea and Seleukeia at Zeugma on the Euphrates provided a suitably fabled venue for Antiochos III’s wedding ceremony to Laodike.71 It is quite within the realm of possibility that the first-​ generation royal couple had also staged a grand spectacle, including the instrumental presence of Apama herself, at the two cities’ foundation. Such an event would then establish the significance between the pair of cities and a royal marriage, to be recalled and echoed almost a century later.

Conclusion What we know about Apama and Stratonike’s careers as founding Seleukid basilissai is perhaps not surprising, if one really thinks through the history of constructing and categorizing women’s ruling power. They are remembered through their relationships with husbands and sons, and the accomplishments of those men. Looking at the details of these two women’s lives, and extrapolating from contextual information about them and comparisons with some of their contemporaries, however, reveals opportunities for many more direct actions in the empire-​ building and consolidation of the early Hellenistic period. These actions were configured as queenly presiding over court visitations and embassies, expressing concern for certain causes, and quietly receiving accolades, but they were no less significant for the political viability of Seleukid ambitions than kingly military conquest. There are also ways in which the women’s impact upon the dynasty’s character and representation to the wider world can be seen. City foundations and donations to desirable recipients had an important economic impact, though one easily forgotten while scandalous romances took a much firmer grip of memories and imaginations.

Notes 1 Strab. 12.8.15: Strabon confuses her with the daughter of Artabazos, a Persian leader. 2 App. Syr. 57; Livy 38.13.5: Livy here calls her his “sister.” 3 All dates in this chapter are BCE except if otherwise indicated. 4 Arr. Anab. 7.4.6: her father is listed as Spitamenes. 5 Malalas §10. 6 Plut. Dem. 31.3–​32.2.

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Apama and Stratonike 7 App. Syr.  59–​61. 8 As a sample of the literature, see: Stechow 1945; Mesulam and Perry 1972; Beecher 1990; Hatfield and Rapson 2009. 9 Lukian de dea Syria  19–​27. 10 Ogden 2017; Engels and Erickson 2016: 55–​8. 11 For examinations of the entire Stratonike romance cycle and its political implications, see Almagor 2016; Plischke 2016. 12 col. ii, 26–​7. 13 Kosmin 2014: 187–​8. 14 AD -​253 obv. B16’. 15 Melville 2004: 52, n. 78. 16 For example: Sherwin-​White 1991; Stevens 2014. 17 Ath. 6.253a–​b, 254a, 255c. 18 IG XI,4 514; Carney 2000b: 216, 219. 19 OGI 229, 12; Carney 2000a: 32–​3. 20 Macurdy 1932: 79. 21 Plischke 2016: 341–​343. 22 Engels and Erickson (2016: 56–​57) even suggest reading Firdausi’s Shahnahme version of the Kombabos story as evidence for a tradition that Apama, not Stratonike, was the lovesick queen. 23 For example, the various women already noted who had Aphrodite cults in their name. Regarding modern scholarship on women associated with royal power, the line of questioning typically concerns types of licit or illicit sexual relations with male leaders, whether as wife or courtesan, as though categorizing this can explain who the women really were. 24 IG XI,2 161, B 15. 25 The less fragmentary copies of the inventory describing the inscriptions date to the early second century, eg. ID 421, 61; 439, A 31; 442, B 33. 26 Ramsey 2016: 98–​9. 27 IG XI,4 514. 28 IDidyma 480. 29 IDidyma 113. 30 Alk. Com. 6; Kock 1880: 757. 31 Arist. Fr. 179 (ed. Rose 1886). 32 Xen. Oik. 9.15. 33 Dem. Against Nearia 74. 34 Men. Fr. 907 35 Ath. 13.595a–​e. 36 See Carney 2000a: 30–​1. 37 IG XII,6 1,150. 38 IG XII,6 1,30. 39 IEph. 2003.There are debates over the dating of these inscriptions, whether they belong to the late 300s or early 200s, although most scholars prefer the earlier dating: Carney 2020. 40 Carney 1991: 156–​7; Carney 2020. 41 Carney 2000b: 225–​7; Carney 2011: 202. 42 Plut. Dem. 14.2; Badian 1988. 43 Curt. 7.1.6-​7. 44 Plut. Dem. 18.1–​2: for Antigonos, Demetrios, Ptolemy, Lysimachos, and Seleukos; everyone then also referred to Kassandros as basileus, although according to Plutarch he did not claim the title. Based on epigraphic evidence, however, he did so soon after: Hatzopoulos 1996: no. 23. 45 Ramsey 2016: 90–​1. 46 Curt. 8.2.1–​16; Müller 2013: 207. 47 Arr. Anab. 7.4.8; Ramsey 2016: 90–​1. 48 As attractive as it is to suppose that Seleukos wanted the eastern regions in order to utilize Apama’s political connections there, Antipater assigned him to be satrap of Babylonia in 320, while Stasanor of Soli received Baktria and Sogdia: Diod. 18.39.6. 49 Plut. Dem.  31–​33. 50 Diod. 19.59.4. 51 IDidyma 480.

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Gillian Ramsey 52 Robert 1984: 471–​2. 53 Ramsey 2016: 88–​9,  94–​5. 54 AD -​273 B rev. 29’. 55 Melville 2004: 51. 56 Strab. 12.3.10; Head 1911: 505–​6; Cohen 1995: 383. 57 Arr. Anab. 7.4.5. 58 Memnon BNJ 434 F4.6–​9. 59 Diod. 20.109.6–​7. 60 Burstein 1974: 93–​4. 61 Memnon BNJ 434 F5.1–​2. 62 Müller 2013: 210. 63 Just. 26.3.2–​7. 64 McAuley 2016: 184. 65 IG XI,4 1098 and IG XI,2 161 B 15, 77–​78; 162 B 13; 199 B 8–​10. 66 Ramsey 2016: 100–​1. 67 IDidyma 479. 68 Paus. 1.16.3. 69 Ramsey 2011; 2019. 70 See Ogden 2017: 104, 169. 71 Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt 1993: 15. Ogden 2017: 217, n. 24 extrapolates from Sherwin-​White and Kuhrt’s observation here that “Seleukos had a penchant for making grand public gestures with his womenfolk.”

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Almagor, E. 2016. “Seleukid Love and Power: Stratonike I.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women:  Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart,  67–​86. Badian, E. 1988. “Two Postscripts on the Marriage of Phila and Balacrus.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 73: 116–​18. Beecher, D.A. 1990. “Antiochus and Stratonike: The Heritage of a Medico-​Literary Motif in the Theatre of the English Renaissance.” The Seventeenth Century 5, 2: 113–​32. Burstein, S.M. 1974. Outpost of Hellenism: The Emergence of Heraclea on the Black Sea. Berkeley. Carney, E.D. 1991. “‘What’s in a Name?’ The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period.” In S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History. Chapel Hill, 154–​72. Carney, E.D. 2000a.“The Initiation of Cult for Royal Macedonian Women.” Classical Philology 95, 1: 21–​43. Carney, E.D. 2000b. Women and Monarchy in Macedonia. Norman, OK. Carney, E.D. 2011. “Being Royal and Female in the Early Hellenistic Period.” In A. Erskine and L. Llewellyn-​Jones (eds.), Creating a Hellenistic World. Swansea, 195–​220. Carney, E.D. 2020. “The First Basilissa: Phila, Daughter of Antipater and Wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes.” In G. Tsouvala and R. Ancona (eds.), New Directions in the Study of Women in Antiquity. Oxford. Cohen, G.M. 1973. “The Marriage of Lysimachus and Nicaea.” Historia 22, 2: 354–​6. Cohen, G.M. 1995. The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor. Berkeley. Engels, D. and Erickson, K. 2016. “Apama and Stratonike –​Marriage and Legitimacy.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 39–​65. Hatfield, E. and Rapson, R.L. 2009. “The Neuropsychology of Passionate Love and Sexual Desire.” In E. Cuyler and M. Ackhart (eds.), Psychology of Relationships. Hauppauge, NY, 519–​43. Hatzopoulos, M.B. 1996. Macedonian Institutions under the Kings, vol. 2: Epigraphic Appendix. Athens. Head, B.V. 1911. A Manual of Greek Numismatics, new and enlarged edition. Oxford. Kock, T. 1880. Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta,Vol. I. Leipzig.

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Apama and Stratonike Kosmin, P. 2014. “Seeing Double in Seleucid Babylonia: Rereading the Borsippa Cylinder of Antiochus I.” In A. Moreno and R. Thomas (eds.), Patterns of the Past: Epitēdeumata in the Greek Tradition. Oxford, 173–​98. Macurdy, G.H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore and London. McAuley, A. 2016. “Princess & Tigress: Apama of Kyrene.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women:  Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 175–​89. Melville, S.C. 2004. “Neo-​Assyrian Royal Women and Male Identity: Status as a Social Tool.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, 1: 37–​57. Mesulam, M.-​M. and Perry, J. 1972. “The Diagnosis of Love-​Sickness: Experimental Psychophysiology without the Polygraph.” Psychophysiology 9. 5: 546–​51. Müller, S. 2013.“The Female Element in the Political Self-​Fashioning of the Diadochoi: Ptolemy, Seleukos, Lysimachos and Their Iranian Wives.” In V.Troncoso and E. Anson (eds.), After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi (323–​281 BC). Oxford, 199–​214. Ogden, D. 2017. The Legend of Seleucus: Kingship, Narrative and Mythmaking in the Ancient World. Cambridge. Plischke, S. 2016. “Apame und Stratonike—​Die seleukidische Königin als Bindeglied zwischen West und Ost.” In C. Binder et al. (eds.), Diwan: Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Duisburg, 325–​45. Ramsey, G. 2011. “The Queen and the City:  Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities.” Gender & History 23, 3: 510–​27. Ramsey, G. 2016. “The Diplomacy of Seleukid Women:  Apama and Stratonike.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 87–​104. Ramsey, G. 2019. “Seleukid Land and Native Populations: Laodike II and the Competition for Power in Asia Minor and Babylonia.” In R. Oetjen (ed.), Seleukeia: New Perspectives in Seleucid History, Archaeology and Numismatics: Studies in Honor of G. M. Cohen. Berlin, 243–​63. Robert, L. 1984.“Pline VI 49, Demodamas de Milet et la reine Apame.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 108: 467–​72. Rose,V. 1886. Aristotelis Qui Ferenbantur Librorum Fragmenta. Leipzig. Sherwin-​White, S. 1991.“Aspects of Seleucid Royal Ideology: The Cylinder of Antiochus I from Borsippa.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 111: 71–​86. Sherwin-​White, S. and A. Kuhrt. 1993. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleukid Empire. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Stechow, W. 1945. “‘The Love of Antiochus with Faire Stratonica’ in Art.” The Art Bulletin 27, 4: 221–​37. Stevens, K. 2014. “The Antiochos Cylinder, Babylonian Scholarship and Seleucid Imperial Ideology.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 134: 66–​88.

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17 SELEUKID MARRIAGE ALLIANCES Monica D’Agostini

Despite Daniel Ogden’s and Alex McAuley’s work in collecting, organizing, and rationalizing the often contradictory information delivered by the ancient sources,1 the Seleukid genealogy still appears to be the most complex and chaotic maze of marital relations in the Hellenistic world. This chapter offers a fresh look at the matter by approaching the royal dynasty holistically as an ensemble of familial forces, which fluidly interacted with diverse geographical and chronological contexts, rather than as a line of rulers hypothetically matched with concurrent consorts. In so doing, I  will use the term dynastic politics as embracing the alliances—​and ruptures—​created through marriage and all that royal marriage implies: inheritance, legitimation, regency, interdynastic blood relationships, and dynastic continuity. By considering the circumstances of betrothals and weddings, I distinguish three phases in the management of the network surrounding the Seleukid basileia (monarchy). 1. The first phase comprises the political marital choices following a variation of levirate marriage (whereby one succeeds to a dead male relative’s position by marrying his widow) specific to the first generation of Seleukid rulers2 2. With Antiochos I  and Stratonike I  began a second phase of blending of the main royal bloodline with minor Anatolian dynasties (281–​223 BCE) 3. During Antiochos III’s and Laodike III’s reign the basileia entered into the third phase of Seleukid marital politics. This was marked both by the adoption in the main royal bloodline of sibling marriage and by extending of the second-​phase intermarriage policy to the whole Seleukid Empire and Egypt. By focusing on the period when marriage alliance was most popular as a diplomatic strategy in Seleukid politics (281–​223 BCE), I  will explore the short-​and long-​term impact of this practice on the structure and fortune of the dynasty itself within the polygamist Hellenistic marriage system.

Antiochos I and Stratonike I As mentioned, the first four rulers used a peculiar as well as foundational dynastic arrangement. The Macedonian princess Stratonike I, daughter of the Antigonid Demetrios I Poliorketes and 198

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the Antipatrid Phila, first married Seleukos I Nikator of Syria and subsequently Seleukos’ son and successor, Antiochos I.3 This policy engendered a new interpretation of royalty. The semi-​ levirate marriage shaped an image of the basileia, which expressed itself through more than one voice. Looking at the terminology used in the epigraphic evidence, Widmer argues that: The three embodiments, at most, of the royal authority (kings and queen) carried self-​sufficient voices, owing to the legitimacy that gave the royal title to them, and coherent voices, owing to the sharing of a common royal title whether in the masculine or the feminine. (Widmer 2019a: 32–​41)4 The Seleukid power thus expressed itself through distinct voices, including the basilissa’s (queen), who shared regality with the basileus (king), or with the basileis (kings). With the reign of Antiochos I and Stratonike I, the Seleukids diversified their marital practice, involving both major Hellenistic royal families and local Anatolian dynasties (Porphyry BNJ 260 F 32.5).5 The eldest daughter of Antiochos I and Stratonike I, Apama, likely born at the beginning of the third century BCE, married into the family of one of the Diadochoi (Successors). The marriage of Ptolemy II of Egypt with Lysimachos’ daughter Berenike I and then with his own sister Arsinoë II Philadelphos prevented Antiochos I from infiltrating the main Ptolemaic dynasty. The Seleukid king instead gave Apama to Ptolemy II’s stepbrother and the governor of Kyrene, Magas (Iust. 26.3.1–​8).6 It is unclear whether Apama’s arrival at Magas’ court directly inspired her husband’s rebellion against his brother Ptolemy II and his assumption of the title of basileus, or whether the rising was already in motion before her advent.7 Nevertheless, the pro-​ Ptolemaic tradition (Paus.1.7.1–​3) links Apama’s marriage to the outbreak of the First Syrian War: Magas supposedly encouraged his father-​in-​law Antiochos I to wage war against Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ Egypt.8 Magas’ Syrian alliance (acquired by wedding Apama) was arguably aimed at weakening his half-​brother’s rule. The Seleukid princess’s arrival in the Kyrenaian court was central to an eastern Mediterranean anti-​Ptolemaic military and political agenda.9 The Seleukid rulers married their other daughter, Stratonike, into another dynasty of Alexander’s Successors (Diadochoi, the generals of Alexander who became kings), on the opposite side of the Mediterranean Sea. She married Demetrios II of Macedonia before he had taken the throne, during his father’s reign. Stratonike would join her aunt/​half-​sister Phila, daughter of her mother Stratonike I and her grandfather Seleukos I, at the Antigonid court. This marriage was supposed to strengthen the Seleukid presence in the Macedonian family and Phila herself was probably not opposed to it, since she had been the basilissa since c. 276 and was the mother of the heir Demetrius II. Something, however, did not go as planned, and Stratonike went back to Syria before Demetrios II’s ascension to the throne, and she never bore the title of basilissa, as demonstrated by the epigraphic sources.10 These female representatives of the Seleukid first generation served as infiltrators or diplomatic agents. They enhanced the sphere of influence of the main dynasty, on both sides of the Mediterranean, beyond spear-​won land, to create an international axis between Antiocheia, Kyrene, and Pella and to isolate Ptolemaic power. Conversely, the male heir, Antiochos II married within the Seleukid basileia. Antiochos II’s first wife,11 Laodike I, was a representative of an influential Anatolian family.12 She was the daughter of Achaios, a local Macedonian dynast, a contemporary of Antiochos I.13 Laodike’s siblings were Alexander, the governor of Sardeis during the 240s,14 and Antiochis, the mother of Attalos I of Pergamon.15 During the reign of Antiochos I, Achaios was a Macedonian philos (“friend” –​a term used for those close to the king, or courtiers) of the basileus, in charge of 199

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the administration and military defense of Lydia and Phrygia. Achaios and his friends had been benefactors to the people of the area, by funding their war against the Galatians and by paying the ransom for the release of prisoners of war.16 Thus, rejecting his own marriage policy for his daughters, Antiochos I chose to marry his heir, Antiochos II, not only within the Seleukid basileia, but within his own philoi, in order to reinforce the connection between the main dynastic line and the Macedonian establishment managing the empire along with the king. When Antiochos I did not look for a foreign princess to join the Seleukid dynasty, he chose not to reciprocate Demetrios II of Macedonia’s and Magas of Kyrene’s dynastic blend. On the contrary, by emancipating himself from the Diadochoi’s practice of intermarriage, he distanced himself from the other Hellenistic dynasties, confirming his political prominence in the marriage network he was building.

Antiochos II and Laodike I Antiochos II rejected his father’s marital political system. In 253/​252 BCE, at the end of the Second Syrian War between Antiochos II and Ptolemy II Philadelphos, the Seleukid ruler welcomed the Egyptian princess Berenike “Syra” into his dynasty and into the capital Antiocheia, as part of the peace agreement. She arrived in the Seleukid Tetrapolis with an impressive dowry, escorted by a mercenary guard, and there she installed herself for the following six years.17 Although polygamy was not unusual among the Hellenistic royal houses, the arrival of the Egyptian princess in the Seleukid dynasty, which had avoided intertwining with the other Successors’ dynasties for at least two decades, deeply impacted the basileia. At the time of Antiochos’ second wedding, Laodike had already had two children who are attested as the successors to their father Antiochos II.18 When Berenike arrived in Antiocheia, Laodike established herself in Asia Minor, with her philoi, in her familial sphere of influence. There she already had her own properties and resources, which she managed through an administrator, her philos Arridaios.To these she added some lands she had purchased from her husband in Hellespontine Phrygia, near Kyzikos19 (with authority over the local inhabitants), and likely some lands on the Euphrates River.20 Laodike had full political and economic authority over this area, as she was exempt from paying any tribute to Antiochos, and could freely manage or sell these lands. In fact, Laodike established herself in Anatolia as a local partner of her husband, in an area where royal control needed to be strengthened. Beyond the powerful city of Byzantion, allied with the Ptolemies, the Galatians also threatened the Seleukid position in western Hellespontine Phrygia. Following their crossing into Asia Minor in 278/​277, they mainly stayed in north-​central Anatolia, although their raids impacted the whole region. The Galatian tribes were indeed involved in the Anatolian political landscape, either by raiding the countryside or by fighting as mercenaries for anyone willing to hire them, thus engendering dangerous instability across the northern Seleukid territories.21 Antiochos took advantage of the truce with Ptolemy and, after 252, campaigned in eastern Thrace, acquired the Thracian Chersonese (and with it control on both sides of Hellespont), and moved his army from Kyzikos, where Laodike’s new lands were, to Lysimacheia.22 By localizing and empowering the authority of his first wife in the Anatolian area, he counteracted the Ptolemaic pressure on the Macedonian-​Seleukid network in Asia Minor and used her lands as a base for the offensive against the Galatians.23 However, the presence of Berenike Syra in the Tetrapolis region embodied the prominent Egyptian influence in the Koilesyrian and Syrian areas, and caused the outbreak of the Third Syrian War in 246, after Antiochos II’s death.Two years later the area went back to Seleukid control, during the reign of Seleukos II, son of Antiochos II and Laodike; thus Asia Minor recovered 200

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its crucial role in the dynastic succession to the throne. The marriage system developed by Antiochos II, and, after his sudden death, also employed by his widow Laodike should be placed in this political context. This network grew throughout the Anatolian area and involved several local dynasties. Porphyry (BNJ 260 F 32.6) says that the daughters of Antiochos II and Laodike married Ariarathes III of Kappadokia and Mithridates II of Pontos. They were the last representatives of two satrapal houses of Persian origins. From 301 onward the former Persian satrapy of Kappadokia was in the Seleukid sphere of influence. The dynast Ariamnes (or Ariaramnes) made a marriage deal with Antiochos II, welcoming the Seleukid princess Stratonike into his dynasty by marrying her to his eldest son Ariarathes III.24 He also associated his son with himself on the throne, as a co-​reigning recognized successor, giving him the diadem and the royal honors around 255–​250 BCE. Although Ariamnes had already minted bronze coins with his name,25 it was only with his son Ariarathes III that the title of basileus appeared on the issues.26 These satraps had already reinforced their local authority and had proved themselves precious allies to the Seleukids, since they had pushed back the Galatian raids. It was, however, the marriage with Stratonike that officially bound Kappadokia to the Seleukid kingdom and granted the satraps the title of basileis, identifying Stratonike not only as a delegate of familial authority, a representative and carrier of royal legitimacy, but also bringing Seleukid identity and Hellenistic traditions into the Persian house.27 Justin (38.5.3) alludes to the wedding of Mithridates II with a Seleukid princess. He claims that Seleukos II, son of Antiochos II and Laodike I, gave Phrygia to the princess as a dowry.28 Pontos, unlike other local Anatolian political systems, had been a Hellenistic basileia since the beginning of the third century. In the mid-​third century, the kingdom struggled with frequent Galatian raids, during one of which King Ariobarzanes was killed, leaving as heir to the throne Mithridates II, an infant.29 Once of age, c. 250, Mithridates II, troubled by the Galatian threat, needed to secure his basileia: it is in such a context that the Seleukid marriage can be placed. Welcoming the royal princess, likely named Laodike,30 Mithridates obtained support to counteract the Galatian threats, yet tied his basileia to the Seleukids. Notably, with the reign of Mithridates II, the dynasty became increasingly engaged in western Hellenistic politics.31 Both these marriages took place before April–​May 246. The two elder princesses, Stratonike and Laodike, were absent from the April ceremony of the New Year held in Babylonia. Since the dynasty renewed the engagement with the institutions of Babylonia through celebrating the traditions of the city, it was fundamental for Antiochos’ descendants and heirs to take part in the ritual as Seleukid representatives.32 In 246, the princesses’ mother Laodike I, their brothers Seleukos II and Antiochos Hierax, and their sister Apama attended the New Year ceremony, but not Stratonike of Kappadokia and Laodike of Pontos: both were likely already married.33 Information on the dynastic politics, in terms of the male heirs of Antiochos II, is more difficult to interpret. The sources on Seleukos II do not preserve his wife’s name, whereas the anecdotal tradition only records a concubine, named Mysta.34 The sole extant source on Seleukos II’s marriage is Polybios. He claims the king married a niece of his mother, another representative of the Anatolian family descended from Achaios the Elder. This royal wife was the sister of one of his generals and philoi, Andromachos, who had fought for Seleukos II during the 230s–​220s, together with his son Achaios the Younger.35 The information about Hierax’ wedding is also rather scattered, yet closely related to his and his mother’s family’s territorial interests. During the conflict between Seleukos II and Hierax, Laodike I with her brother Alexander of Sardis and likely her son-​in-​law Mithridates II supported Antiochos’ secession. Hierax and his mother based themselves in the area of the Hermos valley, as far as the Hellespont and into parts of Phrygia,36 areas tied to Laodike’s family 201

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and lineage.37 Like his father, Antiochos Hierax also attempted to control the Bosphorus in this way, and managed to rule, if unsteadily, central and northern Asia Minor, despite the conflict with his brother, the changing relations with the Galatian tribes, and the rivalry with the Attalids.38 In order to strengthen his support, Hierax wed a daughter of Ziaelas of Bithynia, the northern Anatolian king who had hitherto escaped the Seleukid wedding network.39 However, while describing the ups and downs of Achaios the Younger in the 210s, Polybios offers some further details on Hierax alliances via female agents in the 220s. According to the historian, Hierax entrusted one of his philoi, from Pisidia in Asia Minor, with the protection and tutelage of Laodike, the daughter of Mithridates II and the Seleukid princess Laodike. After Hierax’s death in the mid-​220s, the Pontic princess became the wife of Achaios the Elder’s last heir and namesake, Achaios the Younger.40 Although the existence of an epigamia between Hierax and Mithridates II can only be conjectural, the two did make some kind of deal in the 230s involving the Pontic princess. The transfer of the young Laodike from Pontos to her uncle Hierax’ Anatolian court increasingly ties mid-​third-​century Seleukid politics to Asia Minor and to Laodike I’s daughters.41 Starting from the last phases of the Second Syrian War against the Ptolemies, Antiochos II and Laodike I further developed the Anatolian familial network begun with their own marriage. While militarily intervening in Asia Minor and Thrace, they made at least three epigamiai with Kappadokia, Pontos, and Achaios. On the one hand they infiltrated the local dynasties through the daughters of Laodike I, on the other hand they further involved the family of Achaios in the main dynastic line with Seleukos II’s wedding. The children of Laodike I were the glue to contain the troublesome Anatolian situation caused by the arrival of the Galatians in the area. The instances of the Pergamene ruler Philetairos and the Anatolian governor Achaios the Elder had already showed that the Seleukids were unable to neutralize the Galatians’ raids.The attacks were threatening the stability of the basileia and the Seleukid authority in Asia Minor; hence the royal family not only acted militarily, but also enacted a dynastic strategy to stabilize the area. With these weddings the Seleukids initiated a diplomatic phase which further isolated them from the other Hellenistic dynasties, and, as far as Asia Minor was concerned, partially vitiated their royal identity by linking more closely to the local Anatolian ruling families.42

Antiochos III and Laodike III This Anatolian dynastic policy resumed with the double wedding of the two daughters of Mithridates II of Pontos with Antiochos III and his cousin, general and philos Achaios the Younger, the last descendant of the Anatolian family.43 Notably both women took the dynastic name of Laodike, the name of their Seleukid mother. However, shortly after Antiochos III assumed the diadem, Achaios the Younger rebelled against the king. After having ruled the area for Seleukos III and Antiochos III, he established his own kingdom in Asia Minor for eight years, in the ancestral domains of his family, by virtue not only of his lineage and his militarily successes, but also of his kinship with the main Seleukid line.44 With the third-​century blended dynastic policy the Seleukids gained the support of the local rulers, but they also fueled their aspirations. Although the marriages between the Seleukids and the Anatolian families were useful to counteract the explosive impact of the Galatian migration on the Seleukid basileia, they also offered grounds for the claims of usurpers coming from the newly created cadet branches of the royal family. Antiochos III’s reign marked the end of this Anatolian infiltration in the ruling dynasty. The reign began with the wedding between Antiochos III and Laodike III, which is described by Polybius (5.43.1–​4).45 In 223 the princess was met by the admiral and philos of the king 202

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Diognetos and brought to Antiochos III, near Seleukia on the Zeugma. Once Laodike arrived in the presence of the Seleukid king, they immediately celebrated the nuptials with great ceremony. Thereafter they went to Antiocheia, where he publicly proclaimed her basilissa, his queen.46 Antiochos III thus renewed the marriage alliance with Mithridates II, established by his father Seleukos II, continuing the Anatolian dynastic policy, which went back to his grandfather Antiochos II.47 Nevertheless, the decision to officially proclaim Laodike basilissa with a ceremony in Antiocheia differentiated her from the previous Anatolian royal wives of Seleukids. All these brides were members of a prestigious Asia Minor family, yet this distinctive ceremony in the capital of the empire projected Laodike III’s value beyond her father’s and familial one, beyond her diplomatic value and her Anatolian roots.48 Polybios analyzes the universal meaning of the double ceremony, arguably preserving traces of the promotional image of the wedding broadcast by the Seleukid court itself. Rather than emphasizing the kinship and the previous political relation between Mithridates II and Antiochos III, the historian stresses the Achaimenid lineage of the queen, progeny of the seven Persian houses via the Mithridatid house.49 He represents the wedding as uniting the two royal heritages of the empire, the Macedonian and the Iranian. This description links the wedding to the one of the founding Seleukid couple, Seleukos I and Apama,50 retrieving a “pan-​Seleukid” discourse on power that had been abandoned by the main dynasty during the reigns of Antiochos II and his progeny. By choosing Antiocheia for Laodike’s enthronement Antiochos III also stressed the privileged status of the city, and of Syria, in the renewal of the Seleukid basileia. Such a pan-​ Seleukid discourse embodied by the Seleukid ruling couple would be one of the markers of the royal documents establishing the cult of queen Laodike III throughout the empire in the early second century.51 The royal documents, consistent with Polybius’ description of the wedding, repeatedly stress the uniqueness of this royal couple, setting their marriage apart from the other Anatolian marriage alliances, and establishing them as a new founding couple of the reunited Seleukid Empire. Henceforth, for the next 70 years the Seleukids would not ever again welcome members of local dynasties into the main dynastic line. On the contrary, Antiochos III, for the first time, introduced sibling marriage into the Seleukid dynasty: he betrothed his daughter Laodike to his own children Antiochos, and, after the latter’s death, Seleukos IV. This policy persisted until the defeat of the main bloodline by the usurper Alexander Balas in 150 and the arrival in the dynasty of the Ptolemaic princess Kleopatra Thea. The latter’s marrying three kings, and enacting a fraternal polyandry, transformed the Seleukid dynasty, bonding it ineluctably to the Ptolemaic family (223–​150 BCE).52

Conclusion The geography of the Hellenistic basileiai on Mediterranean shores changes color and shape when taking into account the movements of the royal women and their courts. Although the interconnectedness of the Hellenistic cultural and political geography has largely been shown by most of the scholarship mentioned in this chapter, the context and impact of the epigamiai on military, economic, and diplomatic relations has until recently eluded the modern historical debate. By approaching the dynastic marriage as one of the most relevant political expressions of the Hellenistic age it has been possible to single out the main features of a phenomenon which crossed seas, connected cultures, and fragmented identities. Looking at the Seleukids, the employment and change of marriage practices shows a periodization of the phenomenon. The dynastic politics answered to the historical predicaments experienced by the dynasty: Antiochos I and Stratonike considered it a priority to strengthen 203

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their partnerships on both shores of the eastern Mediterranean via their daughters’ marriage, hence securing their position against the growing Ptolemaic power. Later, Antiochos II and Laodike I were urged to contain the Galatian threat in those areas crucial for the wealth and support of the ruling class of the basileia. The stability of Asia Minor was the motor of the Seleukid marriage policy of the mid-​third century; the epigamiai were an answer to a sudden and unwelcomed military migration. At the end of the century, the usurpation attempts of the Asia Minor local dynasties drove Antiochos III and Laodike III to a firm policy of theoretical and practical separation of the royal house from the other dynasties on Seleukid land. Following each new wedding arrangement, the dynastic politics re-​oriented the flow of economic and military interests of the royal house and of the ruling class. Antiochos I and Stratonike opened the possibility for a stronger Seleukid involvement in the basileiai of Macedonia and Kyrene, through the princesses’ future offspring. In the early third century context, it was indeed not uncommon for royal daughters to marry back into their mother’s house.The Seleukid rulers fostered the connection between houses throughout space and time, attempting to preserve the clannish system. Conversely, Antiochos II and Laodike II’s multiple Anatolian epigamiai against the Galatian expansion not only diluted the dynasty, but localized it, temporarily transforming Asia Minor into the ruling core of the empire and blurring the theoretical edges between the royal house and the local Anatolian dynasties. Moreover, the Seleukid contingent and unsteady ability to forestall the Galatians together with the watering down of their dynastic claim opened the path to the demand of royal legitimacy by local rulers. Consequently, Antiochos III and Laodike III, to counteract the third century Anatolian secession and usurpation attempts, started to orient the Seleukid basileia toward a new idea of dynasty, where the royal couple was set apart from the other families of the ruling establishment. However, sibling marriage isolated the Seleukids even further from the Mediterranean marriage alliance system. With this, they broke the familial network that had marked the first century and a half of the Hellenistic leadership of the Mediterranean.While the Antigonids as well as the Attalids emancipated themselves from the marriage network,53 Antiochos contributed to the fragmentation of the web of kinship among the Hellenistic basileiai, allowing only the infant Ptolemy as their (weaker) wedding partner among the royal houses. In so doing, he furthered the collapse of the fourth–​third-​ century Hellenistic marriage network, and eventually fatefully hindered, if not prevented, the creation of effective alliances in the eastern Mediterranean against the dark clouds arising in the western Mediterranean.

Notes 1 Ogden 1999; McAuley www.seleucid-​genealogy.com/​Home.html (accessed June 11, 2020). 2 I am using Ogden’s definition, who does not use the term levirate in its strictest sense to denote widow marriages by the brothers alone of the dead men. Ogden 1999: xix–​xx. 3 On Seleukos’ marriage: Plut. Demetr. 31.5; John Malalas, Chronographia, 198. On Antiochos’ marriage: Plut. Demetr. 38.2–​12; App. Syr. 59–​62;Val. Max. 5.7.1; Lucian Syr. D. 17–​18; Julian. Mis. 347–​58; John Malalas, Chronographia, 204–​5 (Dindorf). See also Chapter 15 in this volume. 4 See also Ramsey 2016: 87–​104; Widmer 2016: 17–​34; 2019b: 264–​79. 5 Porphyrios’ fragments are delivered via the Armenian version of the Chronicon by Eusebios of Caesarea, see Primo 2009a: 289–​303. 6 Justin mistakenly calls her Arsinoë. 7 On these events and Magas, see McAuley 2016:  175–​90. See also Laronde 2007:  285–​8; Marquaille 2003: 25–​42; 2008: 39–​64; Grainger 2010: 87. 8 On Pausania’s chronology see Musti 1997:  284. On Kyrene see Laronde 1987; Luni, Asolati, and Venturini 2006–​14; Rosamilia 2010: 289–​95.

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Seleukid marriage alliances 9 This agenda is likely also behind Apama’s later attempt to bind Kyrene to the Macedonian dynasty in 258. See Just. 26.3.2–​7 and McAuley 2016: 175–​90. 10 On the marriage: BNJ 260 F 32.6. On Stratonike’s return to Syria: Just. 28.1; Agatharchides BNJ 86 F 20a, 205–​207. On Phila, the king’s mother: Vita Arati 53.60 Westermann; Suda s.v. “Aratos.” Agora XVI, The Decrees 194 also mentions Phila as the Macedonian basilissa in 239, in the first year of Demetrius II’s reign: see D’Agostini 2019a: 13–​21. 11 Polyainos 8.50 claims that Antiochos II married a stepsister on his father’s side, but the passage has several errors. Primo 2009a: 125 n. 82; 2010: 63–​80. Cf. Ogden 1999: 124–​5 on Stephanos of Byzantion s.v. Ἀντιόχεια 100, 4 Meineke. 12 On Achaios’ family see D’Agostini 2013: 87–​106; 2014: 37–​60; 2018: 59–​82; McAuley 2018: 37–​58. On Laodike I, wife of Antiochos II, see D’Agostini 2016a: 35–​60. See also Bielman Sánchez 2003: 41–​ 61; Martinez-​Sève 2003: 690–​706; Savalli-​Lestrade 2015: 187–​219. 13 BNJ 260 F 32.6–​8. See Capdetrey 2007: 149; Grainger 2010: 68, 109; McAuley 2018: 37–​58. 14 BNJ 260 F 32.8. Syll.3 426 = I. Iasos 608; OGI 229 = I. Magnesia am Sipylos 1; SEG 4.422 = I. Tralleis 25. On Alexander of Sardis see D’Agostini 2013: 87–​106. 15 Strabon 13.4.2 (624). See Chrubasik 2016:  26–​34. See also Kosmetatou 2003:  159–​74; Mitchell 2005: 521–​30; Marcellesi 2012: 65–​114. On Antiochis see also Billows 1995: 96; Ogden 1999: 132. 16 IK. Laodikeia am Lykos 1. On the Galatians and the Anatolian politics in the third century see Chrubasik 2016:  69–​72. See also Strobel 1996; Darbyshire, Mitchell, and Vardar 2000:  75–​97; Savalli-​Lestrade 2001: 39–​78; Mitchell 2003: 280–​93; 2005: 521–​530; Capdetrey 2010: 17–​36; Coşkun 2011: 87–​97; Paganoni 2016: 83–​98. 17 Jerome, based on Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 43.10–​14. See D’Agostini 2016a: 35–​60. 18 AD II 245A–​ES 66 Ro. See Ramsey 2019: 243–​63. See also Ed. prim. Lehmann 1892: 330–​2. Sherwin-​ White and Kuhrt 1993: 128–​9; Kuhrt 1996: 41–​54; Del Monte 1997: 43–​8;Virgilio 2003: 154–​5; van der Spek 2019. 19 I. Didyma 492. See D’Agostini 2019a: 26–​33 and Ramsey 2019: 243–​263. 20 AD II 245A–​ES 66 Ro. 21 Memnon BNJ 434 F 11, 2–​ 11, 7; Apollonios of Aphrodisias BNJ 740 F 14. See Chrubasik 2016: 66–​72. 22 SC: 166; Polyainos 4.16; Memnon BNJ 434 F15. See Will 1979: 246–​8; Chrubasik 2016: 32. 23 On the Ptolemaic pressure on Asia Minor see Chrubasik 2016: 66–​9. See also Heinen 1984: 412–​45; Meadows 2012: 113–​33. 24 Diod. Sic. 31.19.6. On Hellenistic Kappadokia see Michels 2009. See also Sullivan 1990: 51–​8, 174–​85. 25 Simonetta 2007: no. 6. 26 ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΡΙΑΡΑΘΟΥ. Simonetta 2007: no. 5. 27 On cultural transfers, the role of Hellenistic royal women and “Philhellenistic” practices see also Michels 2009: 31–​4; McAuley 2017: 189–​212. 28 Del Monte 1997: 228–​30; Erciyas 2006: 13–​15. 29 Memnon BNJ 434 F 9.4 and 16.1–​3. 30 The name is inferred from that of the mother and the daughters. See also Mehl “Laodike.” [II.4] Brill’s New Pauly. 31 See D’Agostini 2016b: 83–​95. On Pontos see McGing 1986: 248–​59; Petrović 2009: 378–​83; Primo 2006:  307–​31 (Plutarch. Demetr. 4; Appian. Mith. 9 and 112). See also Santi Amantini 1995:  326; Goukowsky 2001: 133. 32 Capdetrey 2007: 35–​38. See also van der Spek 1987: 57–​74; Lendering 2019. 33 AD II 245A  –​ES 66 Ro. ll. 12–​13. In the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries (AD) of 246, month of Nisannu SE 66 (April 4–​May 3), soon before Antiochos II’s death, it is said that the children of Antiochos II and Laodike—​Seleukos, Antiochos and Apama (Apammu)—​were in the temple of Babylonia, the Esagila, to attend a ceremony, likely the Akitu (New Year) of 246. Ramsey 2019: 243–​63. See also Coloru 2010: 273–​80. 34 Phylarchos BNJ 81 F 30; Polyainos 8.61. 35 Polyb. 4.51.3–​6; 8.22.11. Polyainos 4.17. See D’Agostini 2018: 59–​82. On Polybios on the Seleukids see Primo 2009a: 126–​59. 36 Boehringer 1993: 37–​47; Houghton and Lorber 2002: 291–​6. 37 Their properties are mentioned in I. Didyma 492 and I. Labraunda 8, which might be attributed either to Laodike I or to Laodike the wife of Seleukos II, both members of the family of Achaios the Elder. See Crampa 1969: 52–​67;Virgilio 1993: 29–​52; 2003: 153.

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Monica D’Agostini 38 Trogus Prol. 27; Just. 27.2.6-​3.8; Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.8–​9. On the Brothers’ War see Grainger 2010: 171–​94; D’Agostini 2013: 87–​106; Chrubasik 2016: 72–​81; Kosmin 2019: 75–​90. Cf. Coşkun 2018: 197–​252. 39 Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.8. On Bithynia see Michels 2009. See also Virgilio 2003: 134–​5; Paganoni 2016: 83–​98. 40 Polyb. 5.74.4–​6; 8.21.7–​23.9. On Laodike wife of Achaios the Younger see D’Agostini 2014: 37–​60. 41 See also Just. 27.3.7–​8 (Cf.Trog. Prol. 27).At the end of the war Hierax sought refuge at the Kappadokian court, i.e. at his sister Stratonike’s side, where he was at first kindly received, but then allegedly betrayed. See Primo 2009b: 541–​6. 42 Cf. Chrubasik 2016: 40–​3 on the Seleukid satraps Diodotus of Bactria and Andragoras of Parthia. On the Seleukid basileia see Capdetrey 2007: 122–​40, 193–​222; 2010: 17–​36; Kosmin 2014: 93–​126. 43 See D’Agostini 2018: 59–​82. See also Ager 2012: 421–​9; Chrubasik 2016: 81–​90. 44 Polyb. 8.20.9-​12. See also Houghton and Lorber 2002: 347–​50. 45 On Laodike III see Widmer 2008:  63–​92; Ramsey 2011:  510–​27; Widmer 2019a:  32–​41. See also Bielman Sánchez 2003: 41–​61; Virgilio 2003: 95–​100, 234–​6, 239–​41; Ma 2004: 375–​82; Iossif and Lorber 2007: 63–​88. 46 Polyb. 5.43.1–​4. On Laodike III’s wedding and her dowry see D’Agostini 2016b:  83–​95. On the Hellenistic nuptial ceremony see Ager 2017: 165–​88. 47 Just. 38.5.3 and Porphyrios BNJ 260 F 32.6. 48 Antiochos III after his sudden ascension to kingship thought it crucial to consolidate his relations with the civic elite that had undermined his father’s rule by rebelling twice:  BNJ 160 coll. II–​IV. Agatharchides BNJ 86 F 20a 205–​7. 49 Mithridates is introduced as the heir of the Seven Persians who assisted Darius I in re-​founding the Persian kingdom (Hdt. 3.61–​88): D’Agostini 2016b: 83–​95. See also McGing 1986: 248–​59; Billows 1995: 82–​4; 104–​8; Bosworth and Wheatley 1998: 155–​64; Primo 2009a: 410–​25. 50 Apama married Seleukos I in 324. Her identity as an Iranian noble woman was crucial to the foundation of the Seleukid basileia as continuation and renewal of the Achaimenid rule; see Ramsey 2016: 87–​ 104 and her Chapter 16 in this volume. 51 See Widmer 2008: 63–​92; 2019a: 32–​41. 52 On the Ptolemaic infiltration of the Seleukid dynasty see Ager 2019: 183–​201; D’Agostini 2019b: 42–​68. 53 Not only did the Attalids avoid engaging with the Seleukids during the whole third century, but in 194 Eumenes II remarkably rejected Antiochos III’s daughter as wife. App. Syr. 5.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ager, S.L. 2012. “The Alleged Rapprochement between Achaios and Attalos I  in 220 BC.” Historia 61: 421–​9. Ager, S.L. 2017. “Symbol and Ceremony:  Royal Weddings in the Hellenistic Age.” In A. Erskine, L. Llewellyn-​Jones and S. Wallace (eds.), The Hellenistic Court:  Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra. Swansea, 165–​88. Ager, S.L. 2019. “ ‘He Shall Give Him the Daughter of Women…’ Ptolemaic Queens in the Seleukid House.” In R. Oetjen (ed.), New Perspectives in Seleucid History, Archaeology and Numismatics: Studies in Honor of G.M. Cohen. Berlin, Munich, and Boston, 183–​201. Bielman Sánchez, A. 2003. “Régner au féminin. Réflexions sur les reines attalides et séleucides.” In F. Prost (ed.), L’Orient méditerranéen de la mort d’Alexandre aux campagnes de Pompée. Cités et royaumes à l’époque hellénistique. Rennes, 41–​61. Billows, R.A. 1995. Kings and Colonists, Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism. Leiden. Boehringer, C. 1993. “Antiochos Hierax am Hellespont.” In M. Price, A. Burnett, and R. Bland (eds.), Essays in Honour of R. Carson and K. Jenkins. London, 37–​47. Bosworth, A.B. and Wheatley, P.V. 1998. “The Origins of the Pontic House.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 118: 155–​64.

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Seleukid marriage alliances Capdetrey, L. 2007. Le pouvoir séleucide. Territoire, administration, finances d’un royaume hellénistique (312–​129 avant J.-​C.). Rennes. Capdetrey, L. 2010. “Espace, territoires et souveraineté dans le monde hellénistique: l’exemple du royaume séleucide.” In I. Savalli-​Lestrade and I. Cogitore (eds.), Des Rois au Prince. Pratiques du pouvoir monarchique dans l’Orient hellénistique et romain (IVe siècle avant J.-​C. –​IIe siècle après J.C.). Grenoble, 17–​36. Chrubasik, B. 2016. Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men who would be King. Oxford and New York. Coloru, O. 2010. “Themison, nipote di Antioco III.” Studi Ellenistici 24: 273–​80. Coşkun, A. 2011. “Galatians and Seleukids: A Century of Conflict and Cooperation.” In K. Erickson and G. Ramsey (eds.), Seleukid Dissolution: Fragmentation and Transformation of Empire. Wiesbaden,  87–​97. Coşkun, A. 2018. “The War of Brothers, the Third Syrian War, and the Battle of Ankyra (246–​241 BC): A Re-​Appraisal.” In K. Erickson (ed.) The Seleukid Empire, 281–​222 BC: War within the Family. Swansea, 197–​252. Crampa, J. 1969. Labraunda. Swedish Excavations and Researches, III/​1: The Greek Inscriptions. Part I: 1–​12 (Period of Olympichus). Lund. D’Agostini, M. 2013. “La strutturazione del potere seleucidico in Anatolia: il caso di Acheo il Vecchio e Alessandro di Sardi.” Erga/​Logoi 1: 87–​106. D’Agostini, M. 2014. “The Shade of Andromache:  Laodike of Sardis between Homer and Polybios.” Ancient History Bulletin 28: 37–​60. D’Agostini, M. 2016a. “Representation and Agency of Royal Women in Hellenistic Dynastic Crises: The Case of Berenike and Laodike I (the Year 246 and the Third Syrian War).” In A. Bielman Sanchez, I. Cogitore, and A. Kolb (eds.), Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome. Grenoble, 35–​60. D’Agostini, M. 2016b. “The Multicultural Ties of the Mithridatids: Sources, Tradition and Promotional Image of the Dynasty of Pontos in 4th–​3rd centuries B.C. With an Appendix on The Earliest Issues of Pontic Coins and Laodice III’s Dowry.” Aevum 90: 83–​95. D’Agostini, M. 2018. “Asia Minor and the Many Shades of a Civil War:  Observations on Achaeus the Younger and his Claim on the Kingdom of Anatolia.” In K. Erickson (ed.), The Seleukid Empire, 281–​ 222 BC: War within the Family. Swansea, 59–​82. D’Agostini, M. 2019a. The Rise of Philip V: Kingship and Rule in the Hellenistic World. Alessandria. D’Agostini, M. 2019b. “A Change of Husband: Cleopatra Thea, Stability and Dynamism of Hellenistic Royal Couples (150–​129 BCE).” In A. Bielman Sánchez (ed.), Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives. London, 42–​68. Darbyshire, G., Mitchell, S., and Vardar, L. 2000. “The Galatian Settlement in Asia Minor.” Anatolian Studies 50: 75–​97. Del Monte, G.F. 1997. Testi della Babilonia Ellenistica, I: i testi cronografici. Pisa and Roma. Erciyas, D.B. 2006. Wealth, Aristocracy and Royal Propaganda under the Hellenistic Kingdom of the Mithradatids in the Central Black Sea Region in Turkey. Leiden. Goukowsky, P. 2001. Appien, Histoire Romaine,Tome VII, Livre XII, La Guerre de Mithridate. Paris. Grainger, J.D. 2010. The Syrian Wars. Leiden. Heinen, H. 1984.“The Syrian-​Egyptian Wars and the New Kingdoms of Asia Minor.” In F.W.Walbank, A.E. Astin, M.W. Frederiksen, and R.M. Ogilvie (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. VII part 1: The Hellenistic World. Cambridge, 412–​45. Houghton, A. and Lorber, C. 2002. Seleucid Coins –​A Comprehensive Catalogue, Part I. New York. Iossif, P. and Lorber, C. 2007. “Laodikai and the Goddess Nikephoros.” L’Antiquité classique 76: 63–​88. Kosmetatou, E. 2003. “The Attalids of Pergamon.” In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 159–​74. Kosmin, P.J. 2014. The Land of the Elephant Kings:  Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA and London. Kosmin, P.J. 2019. “Remaking a City: Sardis in the Long Third Century.” In A.M. Berlin and P.J. Kosmin (eds.), Spear-​won Land: Sardis from the King’s Peace to the Peace of Apamea. Madison, 75–​90. Kuhrt, A. 1996. “The Seleucid Kings and Babylonia:  New Perspectives on the Seleucid Realm in the East.” In P. Bilde, T. Engberg-​Pedersen, L. Hannestad, and J. Zahle (eds.), Aspects of Hellenistic Kingship. Aarhus,  41–​54. Laronde, A. 1987. Cyrène et la Libye hellénistique:  Libykai historiai de l’époque républicaine au principat d’Auguste. Paris. Laronde, A. 2007. “Les débuts du culte royal à Cyrène au IIIe s. av. J.-​C.” Karthago 27: 285–​8. Lehmann, C.F. 1892.“Noch einmal Kaššul.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 7: 330–​2.

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Monica D’Agostini Lendering, J. 2019. Akitu Festival. www.livius.org/​articles/​religion/​akitu (accessed June 11, 2020). Luni, M., Asolati, M., and Venturini, F. (eds.) 2006–​14. Cirene: Atene d’Africa, 8 vols. Rome. Ma, J. 2004. Antiochos III et les cités de l’Asie Mineure occidentale. Paris. Marcellesi, C.M. 2012. Pergame. De la fin du Ve au début du Ier siècle avant J.-​C. Pratiques monétaires et histoire. Pisa. Marquaille, C. 2003. “Ptolemaic Royal Cult in Cyrenaica.” Libyan Studies 34: 25–​42. Marquaille, C. 2008. “The Foreign Policy of Ptolemy II.” In P. McKechnie and P. Guillaume (eds.), Ptolemy II Philadelphus and His World. Leiden, 39–​64; Martinez-​Sève, L. 2003. “Laodice, femme d’Antiochos II: du roman à la reconstruction historique.” Revue des études grecques 116: 690–​706. McAuley, A. 2016. “Princess & Tigress: Apama of Kyrene.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 175–​90. McAuley, A. 2017. “Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and Their Nuptial Courts.” In A. Erskine, L. Llewellyn-​Jones, and S. Wallace (eds.), The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra. Swansea, 189–​212. McAuley, A. 2018. “The House of Achaeus: Reconstructing an Early Client Dynasty of Seleukid Anatolia.” In K. Erickson (ed.), The Seleukid Empire, 281–​222 BC: War within the Family. Swansea, 37–​58. McGing, B.C. 1986. “The Kings of Pontus: Some Problems of Identity and Date.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 129: 248–​59. Meadows, A. 2012. “Deditio in Fidem:  The Ptolemaic Conquest of Asia Minor.” In C. Smith and L.M. Yarrow (eds.), Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius. Oxford, 113–​33. Michels, C. 2009. Kulturtransfer und monarchischer “Philhellenismus.” Bithynien, Pontos und Kappadokien in hellenistischer Zeit. Göttingen. Mitchell, S. 2003. “The Galatians: Representation and Reality.” In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 280–​93. Mitchell, S. 2005. “Anatolia between East and West:  The Parallel Lives of the Attalid and Mithridatid Kingdom in the Hellenistic Age.” Studi Ellenistici 16: 521–​30. Musti, D. 1997. Pausania, Guida della Grecia. Libro I. L’Attica. Rome and Milan. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes, and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. Swansea. Paganoni, E. 2016. “Bithyniaka. Lost Memories.” Politica Antica 6: 83–​98. Petrović, Ž. 2009. “Mithridates II and Antiochos Hierax.” Klio 91: 378–​83. Primo, A. 2006. “Mitridate III: problemi di cronologia e identità nella dinastia pontica.” Studi Ellenistici 19: 307–​31. Primo, A. 2009a. La storiografia sui Seleucidi: da Megastene a Eusebio di Cesarea. Pisa. Primo, A. 2009b. “Antioco Ierace ‘ucciso dai Galli’? Nota su Trog., Prol. XXVII.” Localización: Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale 51: 541–​46. Primo, A. 2010. “Fondazioni di Antioco I Soter in Caria (St. Byz. s.v. Antiocheia).” Electrum 18: 63–​80. Ramsey, G. 2011. “The Queen and the City:  Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities.” Gender & History 23, 3: 510–​27. Ramsey, G. 2016. “The Diplomacy of Seleukid Women:  Apama and Stratonike.” In A. Çoskun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 87–​104. Ramsey, G. 2019. “Seleucid Land and Native Populations:  Laodike II and the Competition for Power in Asia Minor and Babylonia.” In R. Oetjen (ed.), New Perspectives in Seleucid History, Archaeology and Numismatics: Studies in Honor of G. M. Cohen. Berlin, 243–​63. Rosamilia, E. 2010. “Un’iscrizione inedita da Cirene nell’Archivio Breccia.” Studi ellenistici 24: 289–​95. Santi Amantini, L., Carena, C., and Manfredini, M. (eds.) 1995. Plutarco. Le Vite di Demetrio e di Antonio. Milan. Savalli-​Lestrade, I. 2001. “I Greci e i popoli dell’Anatolia.” In S. Settis (ed.), I Greci. Storia Cultura Arte Società, III: I Greci oltre la Grecia. Turin,  39–​78. Savalli-​Lestrade, I. 2015. “Les adieux à la basilissa. Mise en scène et mise en intrigue de la mort des femmes royales dans le monde hellénistique.” Chiron 45: 187–​219. Sherwin-​White, S. and Kuhrt, A. 1993. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire. London. Simonetta, A.M. 2007. “The Coinage of the Cappadocian Kings:  A Revision and a Catalogue of the Simonetta Collection.” Parthica 9: 9–​152.

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Seleukid marriage alliances Strobel, K. 1996. Die Galater. Geschichte und Eigenart der keltischen Staatenbildung auf dem Boden des hellenistischen Kleinasien. 1. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und historischen Geographie des hellenistischen und römischen Kleinasien. Berlin. Sullivan, R.D. 1990. Near Eastern Royalty and Rome, 100–​30 BC. Toronto, Buffalo, and London. Van der Spek, R.J. 1987. “The Babylonian City.” In A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-​White (eds.), Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-​Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander. London,  57–​74. Van der Spek, R.J. 2019. BCHP 11 (Invasion of Ptolemy III Chronicle). www.livius.org/​sources/​content/​ mesopotamian-​chronicles-​content/​bchp-​11-​invasion-​of-​ptolemy-​iii-​chronicle/​ (accessed June 11, 2020). Virgilio, B. 1993. Gli Attalidi di Pergamo. Fama, Eredità, Memoria. Pisa and Rome. Virgilio, B. 2003. Lancia, diadema e porpora. Il re e la regalità ellenistica. Pisa and Rome. Widmer, M. 2008. “Pourquoi reprendre le dossier des reines hellénistiques? Le cas de Laodice V.” In F. Bertholet, A. Bielman Sánchez, and R. Frei-​Stolba (eds.), Egypte –​Grèce –​Rome. Les différents visages des femmes antiques. Bern, 63–​92. Widmer, M. 2016. “Apamè. Une reine au cœur de la construction d’un royaume.” In A. Bielman Sánchez, I. Cogitore, and A. Kolb (eds.), Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome, IIIe s. av. J.-​C. –​Ier s. ap. J.-​C. Grenoble, 17–​34. Widmer, M. 2019a. “Looking for the Seleucid Couple.” In A. Bielman Sánchez (ed.), Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives. London, 32–​41. Widmer, M. 2019b. “Translating the Seleucid ΒΑΣΙΛΙΣΣΑ: Notes on the Titulature of Stratonice in the Borsippa Cylinder.” Greece & Rome 66, 2: 264–​79. Will, É. 1979. Histoire politique du monde hellénistique. Nancy.

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18 ROYAL MOTHERS AND DYNASTIC POWER IN ATTALID PERGAMON Dolores Mirón

The modest origins of Pergamon and the Attalids were an oddity among the great Hellenistic kingdoms and their ruling dynasties. Whereas Antigonids, Seleukids and Ptolemies originated from the Macedonian aristocracy, the first Attalid ruler, Philetairos, was a man from a non-​noble family who began his career under the service of the Diadoch Lysimachos, and later seized independent power, though under the Seleukid sphere of influence, in the modest site of Pergamon and the surrounding territory. The third ruler, Attalos I, took the title basileus and, thus, converted the Pergamene state into a kingdom, but this did not imply a significant territorial expansion (Strab. 13.4.1–​2). It was his son, Eumenes II, who ultimately made it one of the major powers in the eastern Mediterranean, thanks mainly to his fruitful alliance with Rome in the wars against Macedonia and the Seleukid Empire. The Pergamene state and the Attalid dynasty lasted for barely a century and a half, and comprised six rulers.1 Although they crafted a dynastic power from the beginning, the Attalids showed an apparent disregard for biological reproduction. Most of them had no known offspring; in fact, Philetairos was said to be a eunuch, and the last king, Attalos III, died childless and bequeathed the kingdom to Rome. They also tended to delay marriage. Whether it was the result of an accidental situation or of a conscious policy, the prevailing pattern of succession was from uncle to nephew; only once did succession pass directly from father to son. Thus, it might seem that female Attalids had little room to play a relevant public role within the logic of the transmission of power, as happened in other dynasties. One would expect that politically active, powerful women, as in other kingdoms, would not be found. Nonetheless, unusually, the names of all the Attalid rulers’ mothers are known. Most of them had a geographical and social background far different from that of the Macedonian noble women who usually served as influential Hellenistic royal women. Despite this, Attalid women played an essential role in the creation of the dynastic image and, mainly from the late third century BCE onward, enjoyed public prestige and influence.2 Attalid mothers were publicly visible from the very beginning of the dynasty. Philetairos (283–​263 BCE) was not atypical simply because he was presumably a eunuch.3 He came from Tieion, a modest city on the Black Sea between the regions of Bithynia and Paphlagonia, and was the son of Attalos (possibly a Macedonian),4 and Boa, a Paphlagonian woman, said to be a flute-​player and a hetaira by Karystios of Pergamon.5 She was publicly honored by her sons 210

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Philetairos and Eumenes, who dedicated to her a temple and an altar of Demeter at Pergamon, thus associating her with a goddess linked to citizen wives and mothers (the mirror image of courtesans).6 Probably the hetairism of Boa was a spurious story created by an anti-​Attalid faction,7 but the modest and partially non-​Greek origins of Philetairos seem to be certain, although the Attalids did try to claim aristocratic, even divine origins.8 Motivated, therefore, by affection for Boa apart from and independent of her social condition, her sons vindicated their mother through this magnificent tribute monument, Hellenizing her and increasing her prestige and, thus, that of the entire family. This dedication also demonstrates that, from an early stage, the Attalids were interested in constructing a dynastic image where the mother played a significant role. Philetairos was succeeded by his nephew, Eumenes I  (263–​241 BCE), son of his brother Eumenes. Of his mother we only know her name, Satyra, and that she was the daughter of Poseidonios, a man unknown elsewhere. It is also remarkable that this information comes from a statue base from Delos dedicated to Eumenes I, where he is identified through both patronymic and matronymic, and that this statue was associated to another statue of King Attalos I, Eumenes’ successor, named as son of Attalos and Antiochis.9 Moreover, these dedications were part of an ensemble that included statues of Mysian eponymous heroes, whose fathers and mothers, also eponymous heroes and heroines of the region, were named.10 Erected at the heart of the Greek world, this dynastic monument thus linked the royal genealogy to mythical local genealogies, including both the male and the female line, as a way to give prestige both to the Pergamene state and its ruling family.11 Antiochis, the mother of Attalos I (241–​197 BCE), supplied the Attalids with royal blood, by relating them to the Seleukids, as she was the daughter of Achaios and granddaughter of King Seleukos I and Apama, and thus the sister of Laodike I, King Antiochos II’s wife.12 Since Attalos was born in 269 BCE (Liv. 33.21.1; Polyb. 18.41.8), the wedding of his parents was held no later than 271/​270 BCE, at a time when Pergamon was a client state of the Seleukid Empire and the Seleukid kings were implementing a marriage policy that linked them to dynasties and notable people under their sphere of influence, as a way to create loyal family ties.13 Antiochis was honored by her husband with a statue in Mamurt-​Kaleh, in the temple of the Mother of the Gods, built by Philetairos, the same place where some years later a priestess of the cult dedicated a statue of Attalos I, already called king and Soter, titles he acquired after his victory over the Gauls in the Kaikos.14 Although Antiochis had the potential to increase the genealogical prestige of the dynasty, no other honors for her are known. Apart from the Delian monument, her son did not seem very interested in using her figure in the construction of his self-​representation. Granted that no brothers of Attalos are known, Antiochis may have died at an early age, and consequently her influence within the family and over her son could have been limited. But, above all, perhaps she recalled too much the family tie with the Seleukids, against whom Attalos ultimately struggled, an effort not easily reconciled with the image of family harmony vaunted by the Attalids. Conversely, Attalos’ marriage in his late forties entailed a noticeable transformation in the public profile of Attalid women. Incorporating Apollonis of Kyzikos,15 the mother of the kings Eumenes II (197–​159 BCE) and Attalos II (159–​138 BCE), into the Attalid family not only involved a more extensive use of the mother in royal ideology, but also the development of a more active public role for royal women. Apollonis had no royal blood and was, in general, an unusual bride within the trends of Hellenistic royal marriages, particularly considering the lineage of Attalos’ mother and the fact that he had only recently been proclaimed king (basileus). Apollonis was as a citizen of Kyzikos, a plebeian (demotes: Polyb. 22.20.1–​2); because of her status modern historians have tended to 211

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disregard the possible political implications of this marriage.16 However, at the time it happened (c. 223 BCE), Attalos I was trying to turn the Pergamene state into a kingdom able to compete with Macedonia and the Seleukid Empire. In addition to his proclamation as a king, he was involved in the politics of territorial expansion and in trying to win the support of the cities in Asia Minor. In this sense, the prosperous city of Kyzikos, in the region of Mysia in the Propontis, was not only relevant for gaining access to the Black Sea, but also for its strategic position regarding the Attalid struggles against Macedonia, Bithynia, Pontos, the Gauls, and the Seleukids.17 In fact, Philetairos had already sought its friendship.18 Therefore, the marriage of Attalos I and a woman from an elite family of Kyzikos19 would have helped to strengthen friendship bonds between the two powers, and likely, from the very beginning, to establish a war alliance.20 In any case, it was a useful, lasting friendship that involved collaboration in war and intensive personal relationships between the Attalids and the leading families of Kyzikos, an essential part of Hellenistic diplomacy.21 Furthermore, the marriage between a king and a citizen, even a posteriori, could have had positive impact on the relationship of Pergamon with the Greek cities in terms of propaganda and diplomacy. It could also have given more credibility to the self-​representation of the Attalids as epitomizing the traditional family values of the Greek polis, even though they were kings and acted as such, and even though Apollonis was proclaimed basilissa (a title that, in the context of the usage of this particular dynasty, signifies the king’s wife and will here be translated as “queen.”) This title was probably conferred upon her at her wedding or in the early years of her marriage, and it indicates that, although Attalos presented himself as a citizen ruler, he had as referent the great Hellenistic monarchies—​the Ptolemies and especially the Seleukids—​where the figure of the basileus was accompanied by the figure of the basilissa.22 The title also signaled a formal public position for Apollonis, whatever her specific role, and taking into account that each dynasty developed its own ways of being basilissa.23 In any case, when the title appeared in Pergamon, the first holder could profit from the previous experience of other monarchies when creating a particular “queenship,” one which, in this case, was constructed around motherhood. As a mother, Apollonis’ fertility was exemplary. In seven years, she gave birth to four male children:  Eumenes, Attalos, Philetairos, and Athenaios,24 breaking with the prior (even traditional) low fertility of the Attalids. Consequently, Apollonis was a successful queen who fulfilled her fundamental mission of ensuring the easy transmission of royal power by providing the dynasty with heirs. But she would also become a model of motherhood in the context of Greek ideology, where having male offspring was the vital goal of every free woman. This fruitful motherhood would have been significant both in terms of her prestige within the royal family and in the construction of her public image. At the same time, it elevated the whole dynasty and its self-​representation as a paradigm of family virtues. Ancient sources usually praise her virtues as a wife and mother. Polybios (22.20.1–​ 3) considered her worthy of memory, since, being a plebeian, she became a queen, “and preserved this dignity until the end not by using the arts of seduction of a hetaira,” but “by the virtue and integrity of her conduct.” He also remarks the “perfect affect and love” in her relationship with her four children until the last day of her life. Plutarch (Mor. 480C) states that she “always congratulated herself and gave thanks to the gods, not because of wealth or empire,” but because of the harmony and trust among her four sons. This positive image of Apollonis in Roman sources reflected the good relationship between Rome and the Attalids, and generally matched expectations of the Roman matron, but it also reflected Attalid propaganda. In the sanctuary of Athena at Pergamon, Apollonis’ son Attalos celebrated her affection (philostorgia) toward him (IPergamon 169). In a decree from Hierapolis, she is praised for her “reverence toward her parents,” her “distinguished” life with her husband, and, above all, her harmonious 212

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relationship with her children (OGI 308). After her death, her sons built her a temple in her native city, Kyzikos, and decorated it with mythological scenes related to love between mother and son, and brotherly love.25 She also appeared publicly and formally as an essential part of the royal family and was granted public honors in and outside of Pergamon, alone or with other family members.26 Her name was present in some public documents through her sons’ filiation.27 A city in Mysia was named after her (Strab. 13.4.4), as well as an Attic demos (Suda s.v.“Apollonieis”). After her death, she was declared a goddess and received cult in and outside of Pergamon.28 She is present symbolically in the Great Altar of Pergamon, a monument that summarizes Attalid royal ideology, exalting both the ruling dynasty and the city of Pergamon.29 In the outer façade, the famous frieze of the Gigantomachy has significantly more female than male figures, and repeatedly depicts children fighting cooperatively alongside their mothers.30 Thus, family unity, especially of mother and children, is exalted. Although this allusion to family cooperation and motherhood could comprehend the entire dynasty, it is undeniable that it especially referred to the quintessential Attalid mother: Apollonis. This is confirmed in the inner frieze that represents the myth of Telephos, ancestor of the Pergamenes, where Apollonis is symbolically identified with the hero’s mother, Auge.31 In this version of the myth Auge plays one of the main roles, essential to the seizure of the Mysian throne by Telephos. One of the principal panels of the frieze depicts Auge’s apotheosis, clearly referring to Apollonis’ deification. Likewise, in her temple at Kyzikos the apotheosis of Semele and Alcmene through their sons evokes the one of Auge/​Apollonis. Also, the scene of the wedding night, where Telephos is recognized as her son by Auge, is depicted in both monuments. To sum up, Apollonis was a key figure in the Attalid image. In this respect, modern historians have usually noted how her sons used the mother figure to highlight their own family virtues.32 True, but Apollonis was not a mere passive symbol. Evidence exists of her authority within the family, her public agency, and her active participation in the construction of the dynastic self-​ representation as well as of her own image. There are two noteworthy aspects of Apollonis’ public agency: her role in the relationship of the Attalids with the Greek cities and her activity as public benefactress. Concerning the former, she may have acted in dealings between the Attalids and Kyzikos, beyond merely the marriage alliance itself: her visit to Kyzikos with Attalos and another of her sons c. 183/​182 BCE offers proof.33 During the visit, she toured all the monuments and temples of the city, always with the help of her sons, who placed her between them and took both her hands.This display of respect and affection toward their mother was applauded by the Kyzikenes, who recalled the story of the brothers Kleobis and Biton helping their mother to reach the temple (see Hdt. 1.31), and this mythological story was finally depicted in the temple of Apollonis as a direct evocation of this visit. The construction of such a place of memory in her native city demonstrates that Apollonis was a compelling figure—​a distinguished citizen—​in Kyzikos, in addition to symbolizing loyalty and unity within the royal family as well as between Kyzikos and Pergamon. It is also probable that she visited Teos.This city had maintained unstable, conflicted relations with the Attalids in the past, but finally became a major center of Pergamene ruler cult.34 After her death, the city decreed divine honors for her, among them the erection of an altar of Thea Apollonis Apobateria. The epiklesis Apobateria (“who disembarks”) was associated with deities protective of seafaring, but was also related to royal or imperial visits in the context of ruler cult.35 Certainly, her sons used Apollonis as a powerful token that linked them to the Greek cities, particularly the Ionian ones like Kyzikos and Teos.36 The iconographic program of the Kyzikene temple went further by including myths from around the Greek world and even Rome, as a 213

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material symbol of the harmony within the family and in international relations, under a cosmic order embodied by the Attalid mother.37 In so doing, Apollonis’ sons resumed the practice, especially developed in the context of territorial expansion or regional influence, of linking mythic genealogies with the royal lineage. With Apollonis, this practice attained the highest degree of elaboration and centrality of the mother. Apollonis’ participation in royal visits not only reinforced the image of monarchy as the power of a family, but also materialized the union of king and poleis through a living symbol. Furthermore, as royal visits were themselves diplomatic acts, it can be concluded that Apollonis collaborated actively in the internal and external politics of the Attalids, regardless of her specific activities in their course. Undoubtedly she was not there simply to be exhibited as a token. We have no evidence of a more direct diplomatic role on her part, like corresponding with cities or receiving embassies, as did Laodike III, Antiochos III’s wife, with whom Apollonis is sometimes compared.38 But it is possible that Apollonis was recognized at an international level as an individual and significant member of the royal family, and thus a potential interlocutor.39 Apollonis could also have been internationally known as benefactress,40 but her euergesia (“benefaction”) is only documented for Pergamon. Apart from a votive offering in the royal palace (IPergamon 170), her most remarkable action was her renovation of the above-​mentioned sanctuary of Demeter (see p. 211). She enlarged it, encircled it with stoas, and equipped it with other facilities, transforming it into one of the principal architectural structures of the city.41 Significantly, she dedicated it as a thank-​offering to Demeter and Kore Thesmophoroi. Her dedication connected the building to the Thesmophoria, a festival known around the Greek world in which only female citizens participated. It celebrated the fertility of the earth and motherhood, principles closely linked in Greek ideology, and essential for the prosperity and continuance of the city. Thus, Apollonis associated herself, symbolically and materially, with the Pergamene mothers, linking up the continuity of royal power with the continuity of the city. Her thanksgiving to the goddesses could be a celebration of her own success as a mother. In this sense, it has been suggested that her intervention in the sanctuary can be dated back to the late third century BCE, and, consequently, that it antedated the great building programs of her sons, maybe when they were still little children.42 Therefore, Apollonis may have been participating, from an early date, in the construction of the dynastic self-​representation and the creation of a powerful image of herself as a royal mother. All these benefactions were religious. Her visits also involved an agency of this kind. This is implicit in the narration of her visit to Kyzikos. Teos was a notable religious center, even before the development of Attalid royal cult there, since it held an important festival of Dionysos and was the headquarters of the influential Association of Dionysiac Artists of Ionia and the Hellespont.43 In fact, her piety toward the gods (eusebeia) was one of the essential virtues that embellished her public image and, consequently, she received the epithet Eusebes, perhaps after her death.44 Thus, she completely satisfied the Greek ideal of a female citizen, which included domestic virtues as a wife and mother as well as religious devotion, mirroring the traditional model. However, religion was also traditionally the only public sphere where female Greek citizens could formally participate and even hold power through priesthoods. Even in the Hellenistic period, when feminine presence and action in the formal public realm beyond religion increased, many female citizens and royal women—​including those who exercised political power—​often employed religion in their public agency, resorting to an area where their public participation was more acceptable to a strongly patriarchal society.45 The public visibility of Apollonis would certainly not have been possible had she not had important clout within the family. As stated above (p. 212), the mothering of four male children could have endowed her with prestige, respect, and authority in the domestic realm. She showed 214

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public pride in it, as seen in the sanctuary of Demeter.There were fertile royal mothers in other dynasties, like Laodike III, but even when their status as mothers was present in their public image, motherhood did not play the central role observable for Apollonis, nor was affection between mother and children so highly emphasized.46 Apollonis could actually have had strong personal influence on her children, a possibility favored by some family circumstances, as well as by her own personality. First, she was directly involved in her sons’ education, as implied by an Athenian decree, where both Attalos and Apollonis were praised for their excellence as educators (OGI 248). Since this sort of praise was not usually addressed to a woman (citizen or royal), this public acknowledgment could certainly reflect an actual situation. Second, she had the opportunity of continuing and even reinforcing her maternal authority during her lifetime. When Attalos I died, although his children were already adults, they were still young. Conversely, Apollonis had a long life and, thus, a long widowhood.47 During her almost 30 years as a widow, she was also the only female figure—​at least the only relevant one—​in the family, so that the bonds of mother–​child affection and her maternal/​domestic authority remained unchallenged for decades. Therefore, her family authority would have been translated into public presence and influence. When Eumenes II married, the new basilissa joined the family image by directly relating to her mother-​in-​law. The Hierapolitan decree states that Apollonis “always behaved with goodwill in all circumstances toward Queen Stratonike, believing that the woman who shared her son also shared her own affection.” Stratonike was included in the honors to the royal family,48 particularly in association with Apollonis and her cult.49 In this way, the figure of the new queen was shaped by the model of the queen mother, in solidarity and continuance with her. Nevertheless, Stratonike was in essence a very different kind of woman from Apollonis, a much more controversial one. Firstly, she was the daughter of a king,Ariarathes IV of Kappadokia, and her royal blood descended from the Seleukids. The ancient sources tell that, on the eve of Antiochos III’s war with Rome, the Syrian king offered Eumenes one of his daughters’ hand, as he did with other kings, including Ariarathes himself, who married Antiochis. The Pergamene king declined, since he thought this marriage implied enmity with Rome and submission to Antiochos (App. Syr. 1.5). But, in the context of the Treaty of Apamea (188 BCE), Eumenes was betrothed to Ariarathes’ daughter, and, as a result, the Kappadokian king was partially forgiven by the Romans (Liv. 38.39.6) and a lasting alliance was established between Pergamon and Kappadokia (Polyb. 24.8–​9; 25.2). This fiancée was most probably Stratonike. Notwithstanding this early betrothal, she does not appear in official documents where members of the Attalid family, particularly Apollonis, are mentioned, prior to 174 BCE, but she was certainly already married by 172 BCE (see p. 215-216). This means that, most probably, Stratonike’s mother was Antiochis, Antiochos III’s daughter, and that she was therefore likely betrothed while still a little child, but that the wedding happened more than 15 years after the engagement, and that the groom was around 50 years old when he married. Although other explanations have been suggested, there is nothing extraordinary about such a situation.50 Betrothals of little girls and wide age gaps between spouses were not unusual in antiquity. As for the groom, he followed his father’s example in marrying at a mature age, demonstrating no rush to have offspring, even though his brother Attalos was still a bachelor, and no spouses of his other two brothers are certain.51 In any event, granted that Stratonike lived with her mother-​in-​law for some years, it is not improbable that she joined the Pergamene court sometime before her marriage. Stratonike had a more eventful marital life than her mother-​in-​law. When, in 172 BCE, Eumenes II was attacked at Delphi and was believed dead, his brother Attalos assumed royal power and seemingly married—​or intended to—​his “widow.” When Eumenes reappeared, 215

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Attalos loyally returned both power and Stratonike to his brother, and ultimately the fraternal relationship did not seem damaged (Diod. 19.34.2; Liv. 42.16; Plut. Mor. 184A–​B; 489E–​F). After Eumenes’ actual death in 159 BCE, Attalos assumed the throne on the expectation of being succeeded by Attalos III, who was still a child, and married the widowed basilissa, by whom no offspring of his is known.52 The marriage of the dead king’s brother with the widow and mother of the heir confirmed the legitimacy of Attalos’ accession to the throne, and also contributed to preserving both the harmonious family image and the alliance with Kappadokia. Such a marital practice was not exceptional in Greek and Macedonian monarchies. Since all epigraphic evidence and almost all of the literary evidence53 state that Attalos III (138–​133 BCE) was the son of Eumenes and Stratonike, modern scholars have generally agreed. Some authors, however, consider him a son of Attalos54 or even son of Eumenes and a woman other than Stratonike.55 The important fact is that Attalos III was recognized officially, without doubt, as Eumenes’ son, and that he publicly displayed his affection for his mother, Stratonike. Attalos praised her religious piety, as well as her love toward him and his father (OGI 331; RC 67). He himself assumed the epithet Philometor (“who loves his mother”) (OGI 332). His great love for Stratonike has also been remarked by authors like Justin (Epit. 36.4), who affirms that the suspicion that his mother was murdered led Attalos to a terrible outburst of rage and that he died of sunstroke while he was busy attending in person the building of a monument for her. Although caution is advisable when dealing with Justin’s assertions, this story seems to reflect the lasting fame of Attalos as a devoted son, even in the works of authors fiercely hostile to him. In any event, Stratonike’s persona seems to have been modeled on that of Apollonis. Her mother-​in-​law would have been her main reference concerning image as well as agency. Like Apollonis, she also showed herself to be pious toward the gods and introduced in Pergamon the cult of Zeus Sabazios, which was located in the temple of Athena.56 Likewise, references to her eunoia (“goodwill”) toward the Pergamenes and the Athenians could indicate some action as benefactress both at the local and the international level.57 Motherhood was the very essence of Attalid royal women’s image and agency. It also affected their public visibility, since, of Attalid women, only the names of kings’ mothers are known.58 They were subsumed as mothers into the lineage they entered through marriage, and linked up with other mythical and real mothers. Here, myths and religion played a crucial role. We have already seen how statues of Satyra and Antiochis were placed in Delos among mythological mothers, but the link reached its most perfect expression with Apollonis and her identification with Greek mythic mothers, especially Auge, ancestor of the Pergamenes. As for Stratonike, she was not associated with figures of early times, but with the new goddess Apollonis, who was once a mortal. The Attalids transformed or created religious spaces as places of dynastic memory where both men and women of the family were included, such as the sanctuary of the Mother of de Gods at Mamurt-​Kaleh, the temple of Apollonis at Kyzikos, or the Great Altar at Pergamon. But there was a place where royal mothers’ presence and agency were most powerfully expressed: the sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon. As already noted, Philetairos and his brother Eumenes dedicated to their mother the temple and the altar of the goddess, which became places of memory of Boa. What is more, it has been suggested that Boa was herself the sponsor of these constructions.59 Later, Apollonis made this space more monumental and comfortable for visitors, thus favoring the cults of the citizen mothers, dialoguing architecturally with the temple and the altar, and transforming the sanctuary into a place of memory of herself and her successful motherhood, as she memorialized her dedication at the entrance propylon. Finally, Stratonike’s memory was also recorded there, as it was the place appointed by the demos of Pergamon to dedicate a statue

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of her because of her arete (“excellence”) and eunoia (“goodwill”). The absence of any mention of their husbands, and thus, to Attalid dynastic fathers, is noteworthy, in all three cases. Boa is mentioned as a mother, Apollonis identifies herself as basilissa only, and Stratonike is named as basilissa and daughter of King Ariarathes.60 Whereas in other dynastic places of memory their presence was just one among the other members of the family, here they were the sole actors. These three mothers were also closely related with religious piety, following the model of other women—​royals or citizens—​who focused their public agency on religion, especially with practices such as the foundation of cults and the construction of cultic structures.61 Boa could have appeared as the founder or refounder of the sanctuary of Demeter, and Apollonis as a second refounder, to some extent. Stratonike introduced into Pergamon the cult of Zeus Sabazios, established in the temple of Athena, linking herself with Auge, who was said to have introduced the cult of Athena, patron goddess of the city (IPergamon 156), an action also represented in the Telephos’ frieze of the Great Altar. Significantly, the sanctuary of Athena was one of the most conspicuous places of dynastic remembrance, and included individual honors to Apollonis and Stratonike, along with other members of the royal family.62 It was surely not accidental that the line which united the temple of Athena with the temple of Demeter passed through the Great Altar, thus associating the war victories of Attalid kings with the motherly successes of Attalid women.63 In the context of this dynastic scenery, undoubtedly dominated by the powerful figure of Apollonis, who summed up all feminine aspects of Attalid power, the public image and agency of Attalid women always unfolded within the standards of traditional gender roles. Nevertheless, since royal families themselves were political institutions, their actions can be understood as political acts, even ones that did not contradict the gender norms. In this context, Attalid women were comparable to other Hellenistic women who gained increasing presence and action in the public realm, thus transforming the ways of being in public, but without subverting the gender order.

Notes 1 On the Attalids and the Pergamene state, see Allen 1983; Hansen 1971; Kosmetatou 2003; Evans 2012; Thonemann 2013. 2 On the Attalids’ image, see, among others,Virgilio 1993; Gruen 2000; Kosmetatou 2003; Thonemann 2013: 30–​4. 3 See Ogden 2015: 172–​3 for discussion and references on the issue of whether he was actually a eunuch, or whether such descriptions were merely propagandist slurs. 4 Strab.12.3.8; 13.4.1; Mela, 1.93; Paus. 1.8.1; OGI 748–​749. See Beloch 1967: 207–​8; Hansen 1971: 17; Allen 1983: 182–​4; Kosmetatou 2003: 159–​61. 5 Ath. 13.577b = FHG IV p. 358 F12. 6 Anatolische Mitteilungen 35, 1910: nos. 22–​3. 7 Hansen 1971:  15; Virgilio 1993:  13–​15; Piok Zanon 2009:  10, n.  35. A  fictive genealogy from the second century CE is known (OGI 264). 8 Gruen 2000; Kosmetatou 2003: 159–​61, 166–​8. 9 IG XI, 4 1107-​1108.The father of Attalos I was probably a first cousin of Eumenes I (Allen 1983: 181–​9). 10 IG XI, 4 1206–​8. 11 On the sculptural ensemble and its meanings, see Robert 1973:  478–​85; Schalles 1985:  127–​35; Bringmann and von Steuben 1995: 218–​19; Scheer 2003: 221–​2. 12 Strab. 13.4,2; Beloch 1967: 209–​11; Grainger 1997: 149. This Achaios has generally been identified as a son of Seleukos I and Apama (Beloch 1967: 204–​6; Grainger 1997: 47), but recently it has been suggested that he was a Macedonian general, influential in the court of Seleukos I, who had probably married a daughter of the king and Apama (McAuley 2018).

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Dolores Mirón 13 McAuley 2018: 46–​7. 14 Conze and Schazmann 1911 (inscription in Antiochis’ statue base: 38–​9; dedication in the architrave of the temple: 10, 20; Attalos I’s statue: 6–​7). On the sanctuary and the Attalids, see also Schalles 1985: 26–​ 31; Bringmann and von Steuben 1995: 293–​5. 15 On Apollonis and her image, see van Looy 1976; Virgilio 1993:  44–​52; Bielman Sánchez 2003; Mirón 2015. 16 This marriage has been labeled as a “love-​match” or “bourgeois marriage” (e.g. van Looy 1976: 153; Ogden 1999:  201; Thonemann 2013:  38), but this view has been convincingly refuted by Sève 2014: 154–​7. 17 See Hansen 1971: 39; Allen 1983: 58; Sève 2014. 18 OGI 748; Robert 1937: 201. 19 Van Looy 1976: 154; Sève 2014. 20 Sève 2014: 155–​7. 21 See Mirón 2018a: 33–​5. 22 On Hellenistic royal women, see especially the synthesis of Carney 2010. On Seleukid women, Coşkun and McAuley 2016. 23 As can be observed in the different contributions in the present volume. 24 Cf. van Looy 1976: 155–​6. 25 Anth. Pal. 3. See, among others, Massa-​Pairault 1981–​2; Queyrel 2003: 24–​7; Sève 2014: 157–​62. 26 Telmessos (Allen 1983: no. 7); Aitolia (IG IX,12 1:179); Athens (OGI 248); Kolophon Nova (Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 30, 1906: 349–​58); Lydia (TAM V, 1 690); Pergamon (OGI 292); hinterland of Pergamon (Müller and Wörrle 2002). 27 IG II2 3171; IIasos 6; IOlympia 312; Hesperia 23, 1954: 252–​3. 28 In addition to the temple of Kyzikos:  Hierapolis (OGI 308); Metropolis (IEph 3408); Pergamon (Anatolische Mitteilungen 33, 1908:  375–​9); hinterland of Pergamon (Müller and Wörrle 2002); Teos (OGI 309). 29 There is an extensive literature on the Great Altar. See, among others, Stewart 2000; Queyrel 2005. 30 Fehr 1997; Queyrel 2005: 126–​8. 31 Queyrel 2005: 79–​100. 32 Virgilio 1993: 44–​52; Ogden 1999: 201–​2; Stewart 2000; Thonemann 2013: 30–​44;. 33 Polyb. 22.20.4-​8; Suda, s.v. “Apollonias.” This visit and its implications have been more amply analyzed in Mirón 2018a: 34–​5. 34 Hansen 1971: 460–​3; Allen 1983: 148–​53. 35 OGI 309. See Robert 1937: 314–​16; Mirón 2018a: 35–​6. 36 E.g. Eumenes II’s mention of his kinship with Miletos through its colony, Kyzikos (OGI 763; RC 52). 37 Massa-​Pairault 1981–​2: 189. 38 Mirón 2018a: 36. 39 E.g. individual mailing to her of a copy of an Athenian decree concerning honors to the Attalid family (OGI 248, l. 56–​7). 40 IIasos 6; RC 49. See Mirón 2018a: 36–​7. 41 Anatolische Mitteilungen 35, 1910: no. 24. On the sanctuary and Apollonis’ intervention, see Kohl 2009; Mirón 2016. 42 Kohl 2009:148–​50; Piok Zanon 2009: 136–​44. 43 See Strang 2007. 44 IEph 3408; OGI  308–​9. 45 Kron 1996. 46 See Mirón 2018b. 47 She survived her husband for a long time (Polyb. 22.20.3). She was certainly alive in 175/​174 BCE (OGI 248, l. 56–​7) and certainly dead in 164 BCE (Müller and Wörrle 2002). Probably, she was still alive in 166 BCE (IG XII Suppl. 250; cf. Queyrel 2003: 35). 48 E.g. the sanctuary of Athena at Pergamon (OGI 291–​6); Bisanthe-​Panion, Thrace (OGI 302–​4; SEG 49,876–​7); Magnesia on the Meander (IMagnesia 83, 86, 87). Also dedications to her alone: Pergamon (OGI 313); Delos (OGI 350). 49 Apart from Hierapolis (OGI 308), joint mention of both basilissai in Andros (IG XII Suppl. 250), and shared priesthoods in Teos (OGI 309) and Pergamon (Anatolische Mitteilungen 33, 1908: 375–​379).

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Royal mothers and dynastic power 50 Allen (1983: 200–​6), among others, proposed that Stratonike was much older, and, thus, her mother could not have been Antiochis. Müller 1991: 396–​405 convincingly rejected this view. 51 Diod. 32.15.5 mentions a Kallippa, former concubine of King Perseus of Macedonia, as the wife of Athenaios of Pergamon, maybe Apollonis’ youngest son (Kosmetatou 2003: 164). 52 Plutarch (Mor. 489F-​490A) affirms that Attalos did not legitimate the many children he had with Stratonike in order to not threaten his nephew’s succession to the throne. 53 Among others, Polyb. 33.18.1–​2; Strab. 13.4.2; Plut. Mor. 489F–​490A. 54 In late and not always reliable sources (Just. 36.4; Lukian, Ikaromenippos 15). The possibility that Attalos III was the result of the supposed brief marriage of Attalos II and Stratonike in 172 BCE, or of a later adulterous relationship between them, has been convincingly refuted by, among others, Delorme 1967; Allen 1983: 189–​94. 55 Ogden 1999: 202–​7, against all evidence. 56 OGI 331; RC 67. 57 Pergamon:  Bulletin Épigraphique, 1971, no.  538. Athenian dedication in Delos:  OGI 350. Both dedications are similar, and they were surely parallel and contemporary. See Müller 1991. 58 It is difficult to trace the existence of other Attalid women, such as possible daughters of rulers or wives of men who did not become rulers. Kallippa, Athenaios’ possible wife, has been mentioned. Justin references a Berenike (Epit. 36.4) as wife of Attalos III (Arsinoë in Vitr. 4.1.4), a name that suggests a Ptolemaic princess, but we do not have more specific and credible information. On possible Attalid progeny from the female line, but without certitude, see Ogden 1999: 208–​10. 59 Kohl 2009: 141–​7. 60 Bulletin Épigraphique, 1971, no. 538.The same epigraphic formula in Delos (OGI 350). Both dedications are dated after 167 BCE, i.e. after Attalos III’s birth. See Habicht 1990: 571, and especially Müller 1991, who analyzes this filiation’s meaning at length. In any case, the identification of a married royal woman only through the patronymic was not unusual, and denoted that her kinship with her birth family was as important as the one with her husband (Carney 2010: 200–​1). 61 Kron 1996; Mirón 2017. 62 OGI  291–​6. 63 The imprint of Attalid women, particularly Apollonis, in the urban landscape of Pergamon is analyzed at length by Mirón 2016.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). IEph  Engelmann, H., Wankel, H., and Merkelbach, R.  (eds.) 1979–​ 1984. Die Inschriften von Ephesos. Bonn. IIasos Blümel, W. (ed.) 1985. Die Inschriften von Iasos. Bonn. IMagnesia Kern, O. 1900. Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander. Berlin. IOlympia Dittenberger, W. and Purgold, K. 1896. Die Inschriften von Olympia. Berlin. IPergamon Fränkel, M. 1890–​5. Die Inschriften von Pergamon. Berlin.

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Dolores Mirón Conze, A. and Schazmann, P. 1911. Mamurt-​Kaleh. Ein Tempel der Göttermutter unweit Pergamon. Berlin. Coşkun, A. and McAuley, A. (eds.) 2016. Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart. Delorme, J. 1967. “Sur la filiation d’Attale III, dernier roi de Pergame.” Pallas 14: 113–​21. Evans, R. 2012. A History of Pergamon: Beyond Hellenistic Kingship. London. Fehr, B. 1997. “Society, Consanguinity and the Fertility of Women: The Community of Deities on the Great Frieze of the Pergamum Altar as a Paradigm of Cross-​cultural Ideas.” In P. Bilde et al. (eds.), Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks. Aarhus,  48–​66. Grainger, J.D. 1997. A Seleukid Prosopography and Gazetteer. Leiden. Gruen, E. 2000. “Culture as Policy: The Attalids of Pergamon.” In T. Grummond and B.S. Ridgway (eds.), From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context. Berkeley, 17–​31. Habicht, C. 1990. “Athens and the Attalids in the Second Century B.C.” Hesperia 59: 561–​77. Hansen, E.W. 1971. The Attalids of Pergamon. Ithaca. Kohl, M. 2009. “Le sanctuaire de Déméter à Pergame et son culte.” Numismatica e antichità classiche 38: 139–​67. Kosmetatou, E. 2003. “The Attalids of Pergamon.” In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 159–​74. Kron, U. 1996. “Priesthoods, Dedications and Euergetism: What Part Did Religion Play in the Political and Social Status of Greek Women?” In P. Hellström and B. Alroth (eds.), Religion and Power in the Ancient Greek World. Uppsala, 139–​82. Massa-​Pairault, F.H. 1981–​2. “Il problema degli stilopinakia del templo di Apollonis a Cizico. Alcune considerazioni.” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia. Perugia 19: 147–​219. McAuley, A. 2018. “The House of Achaios: Reconstructing an Early Client Dynasty of Seleukid Anatolia.” In K. Erickson (ed.), The Seleukid Empire, 281–​222 BC: War Within the Family. Swansea, 37–​58. Mirón, D. 2015. “La reina Apolonis y Afrodita:  divinidad, poder y virtud en la Grecia helenística.” In E. Ferrer and A. Pereira (eds.), Hijas de Eva. Mujeres y religión en la Antigüedad. Sevilla, 69–​95. Mirón, D. 2016. “Maternidad, poder y arquitectura: la impronta de la reina Apolonis en el urbanismo de Pérgamo.” In C. Martínez and F. Serrano (eds.), Matronazgo y Arquitectura. De la Antigüedad a la Edad Moderna. Granada, 27–​64. Mirón, D. 2017. “Arqueologías del género y la memoria: Acción y conmemoración de las mujeres en la arquitectura helenística.” Arenal, 24: 31–​71. Mirón, D. 2018a. “From Family to Politics: Queen Apollonis as Agent of Dynastic/​Political Loyalty.” In C. Dunn and E. Carney (eds.), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Cham, 31–​48. Mirón, D. 2018b.“The Queen and her Children: Royal Motherhood in Hellenistic Greece.” In M. Sánchez and R. M. Cid (eds.), Motherhood and Infancies in the Mediterranean in Antiquity. Oxford, 159–​72. Müller, H. 1991. “Königin Stratonike, Tochter des Königs Ariarathes.” Chiron 21: 393–​424. Müller, H. and Wörrle, M. 2002. “Ein Verein im Hinterland Pergamons zur Zeit Eumenes’ II.” Chiron 32: 191–​235. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Ogden, D. 2015. “What did Arsinoe tell Lysimachus about Philetaerus?” In T. Howe, E.E. Garvin, and G. Wrightson (eds.), Greece, Macedon and Persia. Oxford, 172–​80. Piok Zanon, C. 2009. The Sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon: Architecture and Dynasty in the Early Attalid Capital. PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Queyrel, F. 2003. Les portraits des Attalides. Paris. Queyrel, F. 2005. L’Autel de Pergame. Images et pouvoir en Grèce d’Asie. Paris. Robert, L. 1937. Études anatoliennes. Amsterdam. Robert, L. 1973. “Sur les inscriptions de Délos.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique suppl. 1: 435–​89. Schalles, H.J. 1985. Untersuchungen zur Kulturpolitik der pergamenischen Herrscher im dritten Jahrhundert vor Christus. Tübingen. Scheer, T.S. 2003. “The Past in a Hellenistic Present: Myth and Local Tradition.” In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 216–​31. Sève, M. 2014. “Cyzique et les Attalids.” In M. Sève and P. Schlosser (eds.), Cyzique, cité majeure et méconnue de la Propontide antique. Metz, 151–​65. Stewart,A. 2000.“Pergamo Ara Marmorea Magna: On the Date, Reconstruction, and Functions of the Great Altar at Pergamon.” In N.T. Grummond and B.S. Ridgway (eds.), From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context. Berkeley, 32–​57.

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Royal mothers and dynastic power Strang, J.R. 2007. The City of Dionysos: A Social and Historical Study of the Ionian City of Teos. PhD Dissertation, State University of New York. Thonemann, P. 2013. “The Attalid State, 188–​ 133 BC.” In P. Thonemann (ed.), Attalid Asia Minor. Oxford,  1–​47. Van Looy, H. 1976. “Apollonis reine de Pergame.” Ancient Society 7: 151–​65. Virgilio, B. 1993. Gli Attalidi di Pergamo. Fama, eredità, memoria. Pisa.

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19 HASMONEAN WOMEN Julia Wilker

The Hasmoneans belonged to those minor dynasties that emerged in the second century BCE from the shadows of the large Hellenistic Empires, empowered in particular by the manifold difficulties of the Seleukids. The rise of the Hasmoneans originated in the Maccabean revolt against Antiochos IV Epiphanes that began in 168 BCE. The family’s patriarch, Mattathias, established himself as the leader of the resistance movement and was, upon his death, succeeded by his son Judas Maccabaeus.1 Under Judas’ command, the Maccabean movement celebrated its most significant victory with the conquest of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Jewish Temple in 164 BCE. Judas’ brother and successor, Jonathan (c. 160–​142 BCE), proved to be a skillful politician and used intra-​Seleukid rivalries to his advantage. In 152 BCE, Alexander Balas appointed him as the first Jewish high priest of the Maccabean family.2 The highest religious office would remain the basis of power for all future generations of Hasmonean rulers. Full political independence was eventually reached in 140 BCE under Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers, who governed as high priest (ἀρχιερεύς), commander (στρατηγός), and political ruler (ἡγούμενος).3 The Hasmoneans ruled Judea until 37 BCE and their reign is, in comparison to other regional dynasties, well attested in the primary sources. In particular, the First Book of Maccabees, which describes the story of the revolt and the rise of the Hasmoneans until the death of Simon, and the historical works of Flavius Josephus allow us to reconstruct the history of the dynasty and the structure of its rule. However, tracing the role of Hasmonean women proves more difficult. Female family members are almost completely absent from the accounts of the early Hasmonean period, and the evidence remains scarce even for later generations.4 Nonetheless, several stories have survived that mention Hasmonean women. Many of these accounts are anecdotal in character, and the historical accuracy of the narrative is doubtful.Yet as these stories appear to have emerged close to the events, their very existence gives testimony to the growing prominence of dynastic women in second-​and first-​century Judea. Female Hasmoneans thus played an increasingly important role in the representation of the dynasty and the power structure that ensured its rule. These dynamics culminated in 76 BCE, when Salome Alexandra assumed the throne after the death of her husband, Alexander Jannaios, and ruled in her own right for nine years as one of the few queens regnant in the Hellenistic world.5 Interpreting the role of women in the Hasmonean dynasty thus poses a conundrum, as the primary sources do not explicitly address their significance, nor explain what prompted Alexander Jannaios to 222

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favor his wife as successor over one of his adult sons.Yet analyzing the main events and stories involving Hasmonean women allows us to trace the main steps in the history of the dynasty and its female members. The women of the Hasmonean family are notoriously absent from accounts of the dynasty’s rise to power, and the scarcity of information does not allow us to determine whether they played any significant role during the revolt. However, there are some indications that the mother of the Maccabees, the wife of Mattathias, assumed greater importance in the self-​ presentation of the emerging dynasty. In 142 BCE, Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers, assumed the leadership and the high priesthood after his brother Jonathan was captured and killed by the Seleukid impostor, Diodotos Tryphon.6 One of Simon’s first actions was to collect his brother’s remains, bury them in the Maccabean hometown Modein, and erect a monument above the family tomb.To our knowledge, this was the first monument of this kind in Judea, and 1 Maccabees offers a detailed description: And Simon built upon the tomb of his father and of his brothers and made it high enough to be seen with hewn stone on the back and on the front. He also set up seven pyramids, each one opposite another, for his father and his mother and his four brothers. (1Macc 13.27–​8)7 As a funeral monument, Simon’s mnemeion first and foremost signaled family unity. It honored all of his fallen brothers, together with their parents, and the number of pyramids indicates that Simon intended to be buried alongside his family as well. In this context, the seventh pyramid, dedicated to the mother, is of major importance. This is the first and only time that the mother of the Maccabees is mentioned in any of the primary sources. It is possible that she played a significant role during the revolt and that her heroic deeds have fallen out of the historical record. However, she seems to have primarily been honored as the mother of the five Maccabean brothers. By honoring his mother in the same way as his father and brothers, Simon turned the family tomb into a dynastic monument.8 The integration of the mother into the monument at Modein thus indicates the beginning of dynastic self-​representation. It also highlights one of the essential tasks that determined the roles of women in every dynastic system: to ensure the continuity of the line.Yet the women of the Hasmonean family soon enough took over other tasks as well, and they assumed even greater public visibility. Several stories demonstrate that the wife of Simon was widely known in Judea. In contrast to his brothers, Simon did not die in the fight against the Seleukids; he fell victim to a treacherous plot. 1 Maccabees reports that around 135 BCE, Simon, together with two of his sons, undertook a tour of inspection around the country. Their stops included the fortress of Doq, which was the seat of Ptolemy, the son of a certain Aboubos, who served as governor of the region around Jericho. Ptolemy is also introduced as Simon’s son-​in-​law, the only implicit reference to the ruler’s daughter. She is never explicitly mentioned, yet the marriage shows that the Maccabees used marital matches to ensure the loyalty of local elites, while keeping the most prestigious and powerful positions in the emerging Hasmonean state within the family.9 However, Ptolemy did not content himself with being the ruler’s son-​in-​law. 1 Maccabees describes that in the evening, when the guests had become inebriated, Ptolemy signaled to his men and had his in-​laws assassinated.10 Flavius Josephus’ historical works confirm the basic narrative of events. Yet according to Josephus, only Simon was killed on the spot. His two sons and their mother, whose presence is not noted at all in 1 Maccabees, were taken hostage by Ptolemy. When John Hyrkanos, 223

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Simon’s third son and successor, advanced with his troops against Doq and besieged the treacherous brother-​in-​law, Ptolemy had the three captives brought onto the wall and tortured, and threatened to have them killed. Whereas in Josephus’ account John Hyrkanos struggles with the choice between avenging his father and saving the remaining members of his family, the mother is described as constantly encouraging him, expressing her willingness to die as long as the rule of the family is preserved and Ptolemy punished. In the anticlimactic ending of the story, John Hyrkanos eventually abandoned the siege, Ptolemy killed his hostages and escaped.11 Regardless of the historicity of the account’s details, it is of importance that the outstanding hero of the story is not John Hyrkanos but his mother. She remains anonymous, yet she is the one who withstands torture and, even in the face of death, defends and ensures the rule of the dynasty. That a story like this emerged after her death demonstrates that she must have assumed a considerable public profile during her husband’s reign and been regarded as a favorable figure among supporters of the Hasmonean dynasty.12 The wife of Simon also figures largely in another story. In a famous episode from the reign of her son, John Hyrkanos, Josephus records that the ruler once hosted a dinner for leaders of the religious group of the Pharisees. When John Hyrkanos asked if they had any complaints about his government, a certain Eleazar requested that he content himself with political power and relinquish the office of the high priest, “for we have heard from the elders that your mother was a captive in the reign of Antiochos Epiphanes.”13 This was a serious allegation. The sons of former female war captives were excluded from priestly honors, because it was assumed that their mothers had been raped.14 Eleazar thus challenged not only John Hyrkanos’ but the whole dynasty’s legitimacy as high priests. In the context of Josephus’ narrative, the story is meant to explain the break of the Hasmonean dynasty with the Pharisees. However, its very existence underscores that Simon’s wife, the mother of John Hyrkanos, was a prominent figure in contemporary Judea. The two stories briefly discussed here form the only evidence we have for Simon’s wife and her role at her husband’s side. Both episodes are anecdotal in character; yet the very fact that such stories emerged and were spread widely enough that they were still known more than 200 years later, when Josephus composed his works, signals that Simon’s wife was considered a representative of the dynasty. The story of the standoff at Doq paints her in a glaringly positive light, presenting her as the steadfast heroine of Hasmonean rule. In contrast, the episode about Eleazar’s charges uses her alleged past as a Seleukid war captive to delegitimize Hasmonean rule. Whereas the first story must have originated among supporters of the Hasmonean dynasty, the latter was spread by opponents.15 Despite their opposite agendas, both factions used the wife of Simon, mother of John Hyrkanos. Over the course of the centuries, her name fell into oblivion; yet the anecdotes prove that Hasmonean women gained greater traction and played an increasingly significant role in the representation of the dynasty. The growing importance of Hasmonean women in the public perception of the dynasty mirrors developments in other kingdoms and realms in the eastern Mediterranean in the second century BCE. Beyond such general trends, certain features emerged due to local traditions. In Hasmonean Judea, the Jewish identity of the vast majority of the population and the ruling family was most influential. The Maccabees had gained power through resistance against Seleukid rule and in a fight that was fervently presented as a defense of Jewish religion. At the same time, a redefined priestly hierarchy formed the backbone of Hasmonean power since Jonathan had assumed the high priesthood in 152 BCE. The combination of political power and religious authority remained the foundation of Hasmonean power and identity, with major consequences for the women of the family. The allegations against the mother of John Hyrkanos, mentioned above, highlight one aspect:  the requirements of priestly purity. 224

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According to the biblical regulations, the high priesthood was patrilineal, but the mother of a high priest also had to stem from a priestly family. Since it was in the interest of the dynasty that all male members were eligible for the high priesthood, these prescriptions significantly narrowed down the potential choices of marital partners. Although these limitations did not apply to the daughters of the family, they were also required to marry Jews. The Hasmoneans thus could not form marital alliances with other dynasties and had to forfeit one of the most prominent tools of Hellenistic diplomacy.16 Based on the Second Commandment, the dynasty also did not use any form of visual representation of rulers or their relatives.17 As an additional differentiation from other Hellenistic dynasties, the epigraphic habit never firmly took root in Hasmonean Judea. The absence of inscriptions contributes to the scarcity of information we have about Hasmonean women, considering that much of our information about dynastic women elsewhere is derived from epigraphic evidence. The Jewish identity of the Hasmoneans and their subjects also meant that other avenues of female representation open to royal women in the Hellenistic world did not exist in Judea. A dynastic cult could not be established, and Jewish tradition did not allow women to assume religious positions, let alone the priesthood. As a dynasty emerging out of the resistance against the Seleukids, the early Hasmoneans did not assume the kingly title but ruled as high priest, ethnarch, and strategos. Whereas the combination of religious, political, and military power endowed the respective ruler with all the authorities needed, none of these titles carried a derivative for his wife. The position of female Hasmoneans thus remained undefined until 104 BCE. Although its Jewish identity set the Judean dynasty apart from others in the Hellenistic world, Judaism and Hellenism should not be seen as fundamentally opposed binaries. Instead, the Hasmoneans combined more generic Hellenistic elements with cultural features that were specific to the Jews; like other dynasties in the eastern Mediterranean they conformed with the local traditions and thus created their own, locally specific forms of Hellenistic kingship. This also applied to the roles assigned to and assumed by dynastic women. In Hasmonean Judea, the restrictions discussed above limited the official status and, to some extent, the public visibility of the women of the ruling family. However, such limitations did not prevent an increasingly more prominent and even influential position for female Hasmoneans.These dynamics are difficult to trace in the sources that have survived, but they came to the fore when John Hyrkanos died in 104 BCE. According to Josephus, the ruler did not designate one of his five sons as his successor, but instead chose his wife to succeed him on the throne.18 The background of this unprecedented arrangement is unknown. At the time of John Hyrkanos’ death, at least two of his sons had already reached maturity and gained reputation as military commanders. No conflicts between them and their father are reported.19 That John Hyrkanos nonetheless decided to leave political power to his wife was a signal of trust in her political capabilities.The details of his plans remain unknown because, immediately after his father’s death, Aristoboulos, the eldest son of John Hyrkanos, revolted and imprisoned his mother and three of his brothers.20 Yet the precedent was set and would be taken up again three decades later by Alexander Jannaios. Aristoboulos was also the first Hasmonean ruler to adopt the royal title, and he thus ruled as high priest and king.21 The official change to monarchy did not affect the political hierarchies in Judea and might have been motivated primarily by the desire to interact with neighboring kings on a par, but it also had significant implications for the women of the family.With Aristoboulos’ designation as king, his wife became basilissa—​the first Hasmonean woman to be adorned with an official title and position. No further details about her public role and presentation are known, yet the title is confirmed by Flavius Josephus, who consistently calls her basilissa.22 It also may not be a coincidence that Salina Alexandra is also the first Hasmonean woman whose name 225

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has been preserved. In fact, the combination of a Hebrew and a Greek name mirrored the practice among male Hasmonean rulers and indicates that the new queen interacted with different ethnic groups and potentially embassies from outside of Judea.23 Salina Alexandra’s prominence also shines through in the story Josephus records about her husband’s end. Aristoboulos only ruled for one year and was severely ill for a considerable part of his tenure. While he was indisposed, his brother Antigonos, the only one he had not imprisoned, performed some royal tasks and was, in all likelihood, perceived as the designated heir to the throne. According to Josephus, several courtiers and Salina Alexandra conspired against the prince and convinced Aristoboulos that Antigonos wanted to topple him. Eventually, the king was convinced, and Antigonos was killed in an elaborate ruse.24 The historicity of the account is doubtful, yet regardless of the actual historicity of the story, the queen is presented as an integral part of court society who conspired with high-​ranking members of her husband’s administration to interfere in succession matters. This image is further confirmed by the following events. When Aristoboulos died shortly after his brother’s demise, there was no heir to the throne immediately available. In this crucial moment, Salina Alexandra “released his brothers […] and appointed as king Jannaios, also known as Alexander, who was best fitted for this office by reason of his age and his evenness of temper.”25 Josephus’ laconic statement does not give any further details, but it emphasizes that in the absence of a male candidate, the basilissa stepped up and was perceived as holding enough authority to free her imprisoned brothers-​in-​law. It is also indicated that she held the authority to decide which of the three remaining Hasmonean brothers was to succeed her late husband on the throne. This chain of events suggests that Salina Alexandra and her circle had planned these measures beforehand, and her role in Alexander Jannaios’ assumption of power presumably gave credence to the story about her involvement in Antigonos’ death. However, it remains unclear why she did not attempt to maintain power for herself. Instead, the release and appointment of Alexander Jannaios is the last action reported for her; afterwards, she vanishes from the historical accounts. Alexander Jannaios ruled Judea as high priest and king for 27 years, a tenure second in length only to that of his father, John Hyrkanos. Speculations in modern scholarship that Salome Alexandra is identical to Salina Alexandra and that Alexander Jannaios married his brother’s widow are unsubstantiated and based on name similarity alone. In fact, no primary source prior to Eusebius hints at such a match.26 According to Josephus, the couple’s eldest son, Hyrkanos II, was born before Aristoboulos ascended the throne.27 Furthermore, the biblical regulations for Levirate marriage explicitly excluded the high priest, and it is hard to believe that Alexander Jannaios would have begun his reign with such a blatant act of transgression.28 The homonymy might thus be a coincidence or indicate that royal women also adopted throne names as soon as they assumed their new position of honor. Salome Alexandra served as basilissa at Alexander Jannaios’ side for the entire length of his reign, yet Josephus’ relatively extensive report on his tenure does not mention her once before the very end of the king’s life. Stories preserved in Rabbinic literature reference the king and queen entertaining guests together. Their historical background is difficult to discern, but they reflect the prominent position that Salome Alexandra assumed during Alexander Jannaios’ reign.29 When the king died in 76 BCE, he established Salome Alexandra as successor to the throne. Alexander Jannaios thus followed the precedent set by his father, John Hyrkanos; yet this time, the unusual succession proved successful. Salome Alexandra acceded to the throne smoothly and ruled successfully as queen in her own right until her death in 67 BCE. The reasons for this unique arrangement—​in which a king was succeeded on the throne by his widow despite having two adult sons—​remain unclear. In Hasmonean Judea, the reign of a queen proved even more complicated, because women were excluded from the high priesthood. Salome Alexandra appointed her eldest son, Hyrkanos II, 226

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as high priest, effectively subjugating the highest religious authority to her political command. Despite this deviation from the Hasmonean norm, no conflicts or widespread opposition against Salome Alexandra are reported. Instead, the primary sources describe her reign as a remarkably peaceful and prosperous time for Judea.30 Salome Alexandra’s strong and stable position on the throne is further indicated by her major political decisions. Whereas her foreign policy seemed to have largely followed the paths laid out by her predecessors, internally she shifted favor from the religious group of the Sadducees to the Pharisees, who had been fervently oppressed under Alexander Jannaios.31 Such a significant change, with major impacts on the administration and composition of the elite, underlines that the queen pursued her own agenda and was capable of enforcing it even against oppositional factions among her late husband’s supporters. Nonetheless, several of the stories preserved in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities firmly employ common gender stereotypes. For instance, the account of Alexander Jannaios’ death presents Salome Alexandra as a lamenting woman who is fearful for her own future and that of her children.32 According to this story, the political shift toward the Pharisees was an idea of Alexander Jannaios, who advised his soon-​to-​be widow to show favor to the religious faction that was most popular among his subjects. The anecdote is hard to believe, and its plot is unlikely given the relentless suppression of the Pharisees throughout Alexander Jannaios’ reign. As such, the story presumably constitutes an attempt to legitimize the political changes in the eyes of the late king’s loyal supporters, yet it also employed common gender constructs. Salome Alexandra is presented as a weak and frightened woman who only follows her husband’s advice and has no agenda of her own—​not as a queen regnant who pursued her political goals even if they were in disagreement with the policies of her late husband. The shift in favor toward the Pharisees and the ensuing restructuring of the elite caused concern among the more traditional factions, but the underlying conflicts only escalated after Salome Alexandra’s death. When she fell fatally ill in 67 BCE, she handed political power to Hyrkanos II, who thus reunited political and religious authority in his hands and re-​established the Hasmonean norm. It was only then that her second son, Aristoboulos II, dared to launch a revolt, backed by large parts of the traditional elite.33 Salome Alexandra remained the only Hasmonean queen to rule legitimately over Judea in her own right. She was also the last ruler of the Hasmonean house who managed to maintain a stable and successful rule. After her death, the dynasty and the country were torn apart in a civil war that lasted for three decades. Thanks to widespread support among the army and the administration, Aristoboulos II quickly gained the upper hand against Hyrkanos II and claimed the high priesthood and kingship.34 However, Hyrkanos soon challenged Aristoboulos again, spurred on by his right-​ hand man, Antipater, the father of Herod the Great. The revived conflict between the two Hasmonean brothers was brought to a temporary halt by a new power arriving in the East: the Roman Republic. Both warring parties appealed to Pompey, who eventually decided in favor of Hyrkanos. When Aristoboulos resisted, the Roman general conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, the beginning of Roman hegemony over Judea. Hyrkanos was re-​established as high priest, yet he had to relinquish the royal title and ruled as ethnarch instead. Aristoboulos was taken prisoner and brought to Rome with his children, but the conflict between the two branches of the family would soon escalate again.35 The women of the dynasty are rarely mentioned in the accounts of the civil war, but they played a significant role in attempts to move beyond the fracture within the family. As a reconciliatory measure, Hyrkanos’ daughter Alexandra and Aristoboulos’ son Alexander were married around 55 BCE.36 But even the endogamous match could not prevent a new outbreak of hostilities. Alexander, who revolted again against his uncle and father-​in-​law, was captured by the Roman general Gabinius. At the same time, his mother (left anonymous in Josephus’ reports) also negotiated with Gabinius and convinced two rebel 227

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fortresses to surrender in exchange for the promise that her children would be released from Roman captivity.37 The details of these negotiations are left unclear, yet Aristoboulos’ wife, a former basilissa of Judea, apparently held enough clout to bargain with a Roman general. In turn, the rebels followed her orders while her husband and sons were absent.38 Whereas the marriage of Alexander and Alexandra did not succeed in reuniting the dynasty, another marital match proved even more consequential for the future of Judea. Under the pressure of the rival branch of the family, now led by Aristoboulos’ second son, Antigonos, Hyrkanos II relied increasingly on Antipater and his offspring. Antipater had formed strong ties to whoever represented Roman power in the region and enjoyed Roman trust and support. His sons, Phasael and Herod, followed in their father’s footsteps and maintained power and influence even after Antipater’s death in 43 BCE. To secure the Antipatrids’ loyalty, Hyrkanos betrothed his granddaughter Mariamme, daughter of Alexandra and Alexander, to Herod.39 Such a marital strategy was not uncommon in the Hasmonean dynasty, but the political dynamics took an unexpected turn. In 41 BCE, Antigonos invaded Judea again, now with Parthian military support. Hyrkanos and Herod’s brother Phasael were taken captive, leaving Herod as the sole leader of Hyrkanos’ party in freedom. After a narrow escape from Jerusalem, he fled to Rome to ask for help. It is unlikely that Herod harbored any plans to obtain the royal title for himself. Instead, he might have planned to rally Roman support for Mariamme’s younger brother, Aristoboulos (III), the only male relative of Hyrkanos’ line. In 40 BCE, Aristoboulos was barely a teenager, and Herod could have presented himself as a suitable regent for his future brother-​in-​law. However, Rome’s strategic interests differed. With the support of Mark Antony and Octavian, the Roman Senate declared Herod as King of Judea.40 In 37 BCE, the Roman army captured Jerusalem again to establish the new ruler on the throne. However, before the final conquest of the capital, Herod made sure to marry Mariamme, who had by now reached marital age. He thus entered Jerusalem not only as a military victor but also as somebody who belonged to the traditional dynasty, although only by marriage.41 Herod thus assumed power backed by and on behalf of Rome, and he ruled Judea as a Roman client king for more than three decades, his tenure effectively ending the Hasmonean period. However, his marriage to Mariamme constituted—​at least for the first years of his reign—​a major pillar of his legitimacy, for his subjects and, in all likelihood, his Roman overlords. Mariamme was thus the last Hasmonean and the first Herodian queen consort. Her time as queen was marred by bitter conflicts between the old and the new dynasties. In Josephus’ lengthy accounts of rivalries and infighting at the court, Mariamme and her mother, Alexandra, are described as the leading forces behind the opposition against Herod, fighting with words and intrigues to re-​establish Hasmonean glory. In the end, they lost this fight and were executed by Herod in 29 and 28 BCE, respectively.42

Conclusion The scarcity of evidence makes it difficult to reconstruct the role of Hasmonean women, but the few sources that have been preserved show the increasing significance of the female members of the dynasty. As wives and mothers, they ensured the continuity of the line and had to guarantee that the regulations of priestly purity were observed. The marriages, especially of the daughters of the family, were employed to strengthen ties and ensure the loyalty of high-​ranking officials, while in times of crisis endogamous matches were meant to calm tensions and rivalries within the dynasty. The role of Hasmonean women in representation is not directly attested, yet anecdotal evidence points at a growing prominence and public visibility. Against this background, 228

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the political interference reported for several Hasmonean women of the third and fourth generation appears particularly striking. John Hyrkanos designated his wife to succeed him on the throne, and even though her attempt to assume power was thwarted by her son Aristoboulos, John Hyrkanos’ will had set a precedent. Salina Alexandra, the first Hasmonean basilissa, was rumored to have conspired against her brother-​in-​law and briefly wielded power after her husband’s death. Alexander Jannaios also appointed his wife as successor, and Salome Alexandra ruled successfully for nine years, one of the few queens regnant in the Hellenistic world. That a dying king designated his wife as successor was already extraordinary; that he would choose her over his adult sons rendered the decision of John Hyrkanos and Alexander Jannaios unique. The reasons for such a deviation from both Hellenistic and Hasmonean norms are unknown, especially since no severe conflicts between the rulers and their male offspring are known. However, it should be noted that neither John Hyrkanos nor Alexander Jannaios excluded their sons from the line of succession; instead, the next generation’s assumption of power was only to be postponed for the duration of the mother’s tenure. Although nothing is known about either woman during the reigns of their respective husbands, it might not be a coincidence that the two were consorts of the Hasmonean rulers with the longest tenures. Both wives lived for more than 25 years at the court, experienced political crises, and must have gained intimate knowledge of governmental affairs. Both John Hyrkanos and Alexander Jannaios trusted that their wives would be more capable and successful rulers than any of their sons, indicating that they had discussed issues of the state with them and that the women had served as their advisors, perhaps even in a semi-​official capacity. In turn, to make a bid for power feasible, Hasmonean consorts must have developed a public profile and reputation.To gain official recognition, they had to count on supporters at the court and among the elites. The succession plans of John Hyrkanos and Alexander Jannaios thus also allow us to draw conclusions about their wives’ roles during the rulers’ lifetimes. In the historical context of the second and first century BCE, the preference for a widow over her adult sons remains puzzling, especially because the Hasmoneans did not promote or employ any ideology of queenship. The Hebrew Bible and later Jewish traditions did not provide any role model or modes of legitimation for queens.43 During the Hasmonean period, several stories emerged or gained popularity that center around a heroine. However, the female protagonists of signature novels such as Judith and Greek Esther cannot be read as reflecting Hasmonean queens; they feature prominent female figures, yet they are far from depicting a woman taking power permanently and legitimately.44 The lack of Jewish models for queenship has led many scholars to characterize the increasing significance and power of Hasmonean women such as Salome Alexandra as a particularly “Hellenistic” trait of the Judean dynasty. This interpretation is in part correct; the growing influence and visibility of the female members of the ruling family cannot be adequately understood without consideration of similar developments in the Hellenistic empires and kingdoms around Judea. However, it would be simplistic to identify the unique features and particularities of the Hasmonean system—​and the role assumed by Hasmonean women within this system—​ as generically “Hellenistic.” Whereas Hellenistic dynasties shared certain central features and a common language of power, they all also displayed distinctive characteristics, often based on local traditions and cultural traits. The Hasmoneans adopted elements used by other monarchies, from titles and symbols of royalty to the administrative structure. Yet  although the second and first century BCE saw a general increase in prominence, influence, and even power for royal women across the Hellenistic world, there was no precedent for widows succeeding their husbands on the throne over their adult sons. This feature of Hasmonean succession was thus a result of specific circumstances and a specific Hasmonean interpretation of dynastic rule. 229

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Despite the case of John Hyrkanos’ will and Salome Alexandra’s reign, the assumption of formal power by a woman was not considered the norm in Hasmonean Judea either. Yet it was an option that could be activated to prevent a crisis or if the succession of the ruler’s widow was perceived as preferable in a particular historical situation. This is even more remarkable because the combination of religious and political power lay at the core of Hasmonean ideology and legitimacy. With a woman at the top of the political hierarchy, the Jewish high priesthood was automatically subordinated to the authority of the queen. That this fragile system still worked successfully during the reign of Salome Alexandra speaks to her reputation and the strength of the dynasty. To maintain the rule of the Hasmonean family, even commonly held gender constructs were disregarded. Similar dynamics, although with a less successful conclusion, are shown again in one of the latest stories known about a Hasmonean woman. Josephus reports that more than six years after Herod had been established on the throne by Roman forces, the king finally conquered the last stronghold of his enemies, the fortress Hyrkania in the Judean desert.45 This band of rebels was led by a sister of Antigonos, who remains anonymous. We do not know when she gained control over Hyrkania, how she and her followers managed to survive there, or what happened to her after the conquest. However, her loyal supporters acknowledged her as their leader and, we should assume, legitimate heir to the throne, even though she eventually had to succumb to Herod’s military superiority. The Hasmonean dynasty lost its power through internal rivalry, civil war, and Roman intervention. The marriage to Mariamme paved the way for Herod’s assumption of the throne, but it also marked the transition from one dynasty to the next.The family line and heritage continued through Mariamme’s descendants, including Agrippa I, the last king of Judea (37–​44 CE), and his daughter Berenike, the famous lover of the Roman emperor Titus. Personal names associated with the Hasmoneans, such as Salome and Mariamme, remained prominent among Jewish women in Judea and the diaspora long after the demise of the dynasty.46 However, Judea would never be ruled by a queen again.

Notes 1 The name Maccabees is commonly used for Mattathias and the generation of his sons; later generations are called the Hasmonean dynasty. For overviews of Maccabean and Hasmonean history see, for instance, Goldstein 1989; Sievers 1990; Rajak 1994; Dabrowa 2010; Regev 2013. 2 1Macc 10.18–​21; Joseph. AJ 13.43–​6. Sievers 1990: 83–​6;Vanderkam 2004: 251–​70. 3 1Macc 14.27, 35, 41–​2, cf. 1Macc 14.47. 4 Cf. Sievers 1988; Schwentzel 2011; Wilker 2016. 5 Liebowitz 2011; Atkinson 2012. Josephus calls the queen only by her Greek name Alexandra; the Rabbinic sources refer to her as Shelamtzo/​Shelamtzi/​Shelmatza. References in two fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm that the queen’s Hebrew name was Shelamzion; 4Q331 1 ii.7; 4Q332 2.4 (ed. DJD 36); Ilan 2006: 57–​8. The combination Salome Alexandra used here follows scholarly convention. 6 1Macc 12.39–​48, 13.12–​23; Joseph. BJ 1.49–​50; AJ 13.191–​209. 7 Cf. Joseph. AJ 13.211–12. Fine 2001. 8 Wilker 2016: 234–​5. 9 1Macc 16.11–​12; Joseph. BJ 1.54; AJ 13.228. Sievers 1990: 131; Wilker 2017: 1–​4. 10 1Macc 16.11–​22. 11 Joseph. BJ 1.54–​60; AJ 13.228–​35. For discussion of the character and probable origin of the story, see Sievers 1990: 130–​1; Ilan 2001: 99–​100; Wilker 2017: esp. 7–​13. 12 Wilker 2017: 16–​18,  22–​3. 13 Joseph. AJ 13.292, for the entire episode see AJ 13.289–​96. 14 Lev 21.7, 14; Joseph. Ap. 1.30–​5; AJ 3.276–​7; see also MKetubot 2.9; 4.8. Josephus reports that similar allegations were raised against John Hyrkanos’ son Alexander Jannaios (Joseph. AJ 13.372). A  story

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Hasmonean women preserved in the tractate Qiddushin of the Babylonian Talmud (bQiddushin 66a) ascribes a similar story also to Alexander Jannaios. However, it seems most plausible that the various stories that circulated originally emerged during the time of John Hyrkanos and targeted the past of his mother, the wife of Simon. For a comparison between Josephus’ accounts and the Talmudic story see Noam 2014: esp. 34–​9, 46–​58;VanderKam 2004: 298–​304; Ilan and Noam 2017: 255–​85; Noam 2018: 76–​116. 15 Wilker 2017: 17–​18. 16 Lev 21.13–​14, cf. Joseph. AJ 3.277; Philo spec.leg. 1.110–​11. The only known exception is Alexandra, daughter of Aristoboulos II, who was married to both Philippion and Ptolemy of Chalkis. However, this match was a product of the civil war, Joseph. BJ 1.185–​6; AJ 14.126. 17 Ex 20.4–​6. The only attested statue of a Hasmonean ruler was erected in Athens in honor of John Hyrkanos (Joseph. AJ 14.153). 18 Joseph. BJ 1.71; AJ 13.302. 19 According to Joseph. AJ 13.322, John Hyrkanos was particularly fond of his two eldest sons,Aristoboulos and Antigonos, and he allegedly even sent his son Alexander Jannaios away to ensure the succession of the two. In 108/​107 BCE, Aristoboulos and Antigonos served as commanders in the successful campaign against Antiochos IX Kyzikenos; cf. Jos. BJ 1.64–​6 (with wrong identification of the Seleukid king as Antiochos VIII Grypos); AJ 13.276–​83. 20 Joseph. BJ 1.70–​1; AJ 13.301–​2. Josephus also states that whereas Aristoboulos only imprisoned his brothers, he let his mother starve to death in prison, although this is presumably a malicious rumor. 21 Joseph. BJ 1.70; AJ 13.301. 22 Joseph. BJ 1.76; AJ 13.308. 23 In AJ 13.320, Josephus introduces her as Σαλίνα […] λεγομένη δὲ ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων Ἀλεξάνδρα. 24 Joseph. BJ 1.72–​7; AJ 13.303–​9. 25 Joseph. AJ 13.320; cf. BJ 1.85. 26 Salina is either an erroneous rendition of Salome or an independent Semitic name, Ilan 1993: 185–​6; Ilan 2006, 55–​6 (interpreting Salina and Salome as two different names). Euseb. Chron. (ed. Schoene) 1.130, cf. Jer. Chron. 1941. A similar identification is made, inter alia, by Sievers 1988: 135–​6; Goldstein 1989: 334; Saulnier 1990; Geiger 2002: 4–​5; with some caution Vanderkam 2004: 304, 318 n. 210; Dabrowa 2010: 85–​6; Schwentzel 2011: 233–​4. For arguments against this identification see Ilan 1993; Ilan 2006: 50–​8; Atkinson 2012: 63; Wilker 2016: 245–​6. 27 Joseph. AJ 15.178; cf. Ilan 1993: 187. 28 Deut. 25.5–​10; Lev 21.13–​14; cf. Philo spec. leg. 1.105–​108; mYebamot 6.4; mSanhedrin 2.1–​2. Ilan 1993: 182. 29 yBerakhot 7.2, 11b; yNazir 5.5, 54b; Scholion O on Megillat Taanit, 28 Tevet (ed. Noam 2003, 107); cf. also bBerakhot 48a; bShabbat 16bb; Genesis Rabbah 91.4; Qohelet Rabbah 7.24. 30 See esp. Joseph. AJ 13.409, 429, 432; Sifre Deut. 42b. Josephus’ account also includes severe criticism of the queen (see esp. Joseph. AJ 13.417, 430–​1). However, these passages rather appear as reflecting his own objection against female rule. For the contemporary opposition against the queen’s endorsement of the Pharisees see Joseph. AJ 13.411–​17. 31 Joseph. BJ 1.110–​13; AJ 13.408–​10. 32 Joseph. AJ 13.398–​404; cf. Goldstein 1989: 343–​4; Dabrowa 2010: 120. 33 Joseph. BJ 1.117–​20; AJ 13.422–​8. 34 Joseph. BJ 1.120–​2; AJ 14.4–​7. 35 Joseph. BJ 1.152–​3, 157–​8; AJ 14.69–​73, 79. 36 Joseph. BJ 1.241; cf. AJ 14.300, 15.23. The other clearly attested endogamous marriage was between Aristoboulos II and the daughter of Absalom, a son of John Hyrkanos, Joseph. AJ 13.323, 14.71. 37 Joseph. AJ 14.89–​90, cf. BJ 1.167–​8. 38 Josephus never uses the title basilissa for her, but we can assume that she used it at least during the reign of her husband. 39 Joseph. AJ 14.300, 325; cf. BJ 1.240–​1 (with erroneous dating). Baltrusch 2012:  66–​7; Richardson 2018: 109–​10. 40 Joseph. BJ 1.281–​5; AJ 14.381–​7. Schalit 2001: 81–​8; Baltrusch 2012: 74–​82; Richardson 2018: 114–​17. 41 Joseph. BJ 1.344; AJ 14.467. 42 Joseph. BJ 1.443–​4; AJ 15.222–​30, 251. 43 The biblical tradition presents powerful queens such as Jezebel (1Kings 16.31, 18.3–​4, 13, 19.1–​4, 21.5–​16; 2Kings 9.7–​10, 30–​37) and Athaliah (2Kings 11.1–​3, 13–​20; 2Chron 22.3, 10–​12, 23, 12–​21) in a distinctively negative light. Influential queen mothers, such as Bathsheba (1Kings 1.11–​31, 2.19)

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Julia Wilker or Maacah (1Kings 15.2, 13, 2Chron 11.20–​2, 15.16), could not serve as precedent either. Cf. Solvang 2003. Kiesow 2000, esp. 135–​85. Only Deborah might have been called upon as a positive role model (Judges 4.4–​10, 5.7, 12), yet there is no evidence that any Hasmonean women ever referred to her in their self-​presentation. For a contrary view see Schwentzel 2011: 231–​4. 44 For the interpretation of Esther and Judith as advocating for Salome Alexandra, cf. Ilan 2001: esp. 127–​53. 45 Joseph. BJ 1.364. 46 For the popularity of Hasmonean names from the Hellenistic period to around 200 CE, see Ilan 2002: 6–​9.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Atkinson, K. 2012. Queen Salome:  Jerusalem’s Warrior Monarch of the First Century B.C.E. Jefferson and London. Baltrusch, E. 2012. Herodes. König im Heiligen Land. München. Dąbrowa, E. 2010. The Hasmoneans and their State: A Study in History, Ideology, and the Institutions. Krakow. Fine, S. 2001. Art and Identity in Later Second Temple Period Judaea: The Hasmonean Royal Tombs at Modiʻin. Cincinnati. Geiger, J. 2002. “The Hasmonaeans and Hellenistic Succession.” Journal of Jewish Studies 53: 1–​17. Goldstein, J.A. 1989. “The Hasmonean Revolt and the Hasmonean Dynasty.” In W.D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 2: The Hellenistic Age. Cambridge, 292–​351. Ilan, T. 1993. “Queen Salamzion Alexandra and Judas Aristobulus I’s Widow.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 24: 181–​90. Ilan, T. 2001. Integrating Women into Second Temple History. Peabody. Ilan, T. 2002. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–​200 CE. Tübingen. Ilan, T. 2006. Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and other Jewish Women. Tübingen. Ilan, T. and Noam,V. 2017. Josephus and the Rabbis. Jerusalem [Hebrew]. Kiesow, A. 2000. Löwinnen von Juda. Frauen als Subjekte politischer Macht in der judäischen Königszeit. Münster. Liebowitz, E. 2011. Queen Alexandra: The Anomaly of a Sovereign Jewish Queen in the Second Temple Period. PhD Dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Noam,V. 2003. Megillat Taʻanit: Versions, Interpretation, History. Jerusalem [Hebrew]. Noam,V. 2014. “The Story of King Jannaeus (b. Qiddušin 66a): A Pharisaic Reply to Sectarian Polemic.” Harvard Theological Review 107: 31–​58. Noam, V. 2018. Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans: Second Temple Legends and Their Reception in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature. Oxford and New York. Rajak, T. 1994. “The Jews under Hasmonean Rule.” In J.A. Crook, A. Lintott, and E. Rawson (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. IX: The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 274–​309. Regev, E. 2013. The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity. Göttingen. Richardson, P. and Fisher, A.M. 2018. Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, 2nd ed. Abingdon and New York. Saulnier, Chr. 1990. “L’Aîné et Le Porphyrogénète. Recherche Chronologique Sur Hyrcan II et Aristobule II.” Revue Biblique 97: 54–​62. Schalit, A. 2001. König Herodes. Der Mann und sein Werk, 2nd ed. Berlin and New York. Schwentzel, Chr.-​ G. 2011. “Les Fonctions des Souveraines Hasmonéennes, Herodiennes et Nabatéennes: Etude Comparative.” Studi Ellenistici 11: 231–​49. Sievers, J. 1988. “The Role of Women in the Hasmonean Dynasty.” In L.H. Feldman and G. Hata (eds.), Josephus, the Bible and History. Tokyo and Detroit, 132–​46. Sievers, J. 1990. The Hasmoneans and Their Supporters: From Mattathias to the Death of John Hyrcanus I. Atlanta. Solvang, E. 2003. A Woman’s Place is in the House: Royal Women and their Involvement in the House of David. Sheffield. VanderKam, J. C. 2004. From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after Exile. Minneapolis.

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Hasmonean women Wilker, J. 2016. “The Hasmoneans between Jewish and Traditions and Hellenistic Influence.” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 231–​52. Wilker, J. 2017. “Noble Death and Dynasty: A Local Tradition from the Hasmonean Period in Josephus.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 48: 1–​23.

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20 WOMEN AT THE ARSAKID COURT Irene Madreiter and Udo Hartmann

Introduction In around 247 BCE the Arsakid dynasty arose in the landscape of Parthyene, southeast of the Caspian Sea in northeastern Iran, and founded the Parthian Empire. Especially after conquering the Seleukid capital Seleukeia-​Ktesiphon in 141 BCE, the Arsakids were the leading force in the ancient Near East for the next three centuries.1 Modern research views the Arsakids in a tradition starting with the earlier Achaimenid kingdom and, in some aspects, also that of the Seleukids,2 from whom the Arsakids took elements of royal ideology, administration, economy, and art. Therefore it is likely that court society was also similar to that of the earlier kingdoms. Since Arsakids were the archenemies of the Roman Empire, one would expect that extant Greek and Latin sources to provide a vivid picture of life at the Arsakid court, similar to surviving descriptions of the Achaimenid court. In fact, contemporary information about Parthian women is sparse, not only in Western tradition but also in indigenous sources like the Avrōmān parchments3 and cuneiform tablets. In addition, women are almost totally absent from official Parthian art. This cannot be explained by a lack of source material alone; rather, it is a result of the Arsakid concept of the male ruler. The Arsakid king of kings, his power, and his magnificence were all-​important, whereas female aspects of royalty were subordinate. For long periods of Parthian history, especially in the third and second centuries BCE and again the second and early third century CE, we know of (almost) no royal women to speak of. Most of the sources confine themselves to a bare naming of a royal woman without any further detail. Chinese sources as well as later Arabic and Persian historiography totally neglect Arsakid “queens.”4 The description by the Jewish historian Josephus of Mousa, whose husband king Phraates IV (38–​32 BCE) allegedly did everything she demanded (AJ 18.39–​43), is a welcome exception, although the historical worth of the source is debatable. The absence of evidence has consequences for historical interpretations. In 1983, Heleen Sancisi-​Weerdenburg demonstrated how much Western views on Achaimenid women are distorted by classical sources.5 Nevertheless, precisely these Western sources continue to provide the basis for historical reconstructions. The same holds true for the Arsakid dynasty. As it was difficult for Roman authors to provide their readers with authentic information about the only people daring to challenge Rome’s supremacy, they often simply repeated or expanded on well-​known Greek topoi focusing on Arsakid kings’ excessive sexual appetites (e.g. Just. 41.3.1; Plut. Crass. 21.7) and 234

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on intrigues at the royal court. These literary tropes were closely connected with the supposed traditional political instability and decadence of Eastern kingdoms in general.6 Because of the difficulties within the sources, our main concern relates to the question of whether we may draw conclusions about the roles of Arsakid royal women beyond the literary discourse. This chapter first gives an overview of the female hierarchies at court and then tries to trace the political influence of royal women in internal affairs and within Arsakid bilateral marriage policy. Due to the bias of Western material, we will mainly concentrate on indigenous material and documentary sources. First, we need to discuss terminology. We use the term “queen” only when a woman at court received the official title of a “queen” (e.g. when the Greek title basilissa or the Akkadian GAŠAN/​šarratu are attested in the sources); all other women at court will be called “royal women.” Similar to Seleukid practice, these royal women were part of an officially promoted image of a nuclear royal family consisting of king/​husband, “queen,” i.e. the principal wife, and the male heir to the throne.7 In contract to Seleukid times, this nuclear family at the Arsakid royal court was often enlarged by the inclusion of the mother of the king and additional wives with or without the official title “queen,” sometimes identical with (half-​)sisters of the king. Following a definition suggested by Alex McAuley for the Seleukid court,8 we also refer to “secondary women” (considered “secondary,” because they were not part of the path of “primary” succession), as a term for daughters of the Arsakid kings married into other dynasties who had important roles to play at their nuptial courts. Besides references to “queens,” Western authors often refer to the allegedly large number of “concubines” who lived in a secluded area of the palace (“harem”). According to Lucan’s tendentious report, the Arsakid king had more than 1,000 women (8.397–​401; 8.410–​411). In Western sources,9 eunuchs and concubines in the Parthian “harem” are frequently described as part of a narrative of an exotic Oriental life at court, characterized by luxury and abundance, by the lustfulness and the cruelty of the king, by intrigues and patricide.10 According to Justin (41.3.2), women were not allowed to take part in the men’s banquets, though archaeological evidence indicates that women entertained the king with singing and dancing during his banquets.11 So far, there is neither archaeological evidence for a separate women’s quarter in Parthian palaces, nor reliable documents for the large numbers of these extramarital relationships of the kings. Therefore the term “harem” has to be used with the utmost caution or avoided entirely, because it smacks of Orientalism.What might have been true for the later Ottoman era need not necessarily also be true for the Arsakid court.

Titles and ranks of Arsakid royal women and hierarchies at court Indigenous sources from the Parthian empire shed some light on the multiple titles for women at the court.12 Especially the parchments from Avrōmān and some cuneiform tablets testify to a differentiation between the principal wife of the king, his mother, and other legitimate wives beside the principal wife. The obvious importance of the royal family as a group differs from Achaimenid times, when royal ideology stressed the sole power of the king. It could also explain why female members of the royal family were offered as hostages in diplomatic relations (although they were never used as wives by their captors). Even though we know that wives, daughters, and the mother of the ruling king of kings had a crucial importance at court, a clear hierarchy of court women cannot be discerned today.13 It is remarkable, moreover, that no indigenous Parthian word for “queen” is attested (yet), only foreign terms in Greek or Babylonian language. The earliest reference for the Parthian title comes from the trilingual inscription of Sassanid king Shapur I (240–​272 CE) at Naqš-​i Rustam near 235

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Persepolis (ŠKZ), where the Middle Persian title M L K TA (bāmbišn), “queen,” is equated with the Parthian title MLKTE and Greek title basilissa (βασίλισσα).14 According to Zoroastrian law, the king could marry several women.15 Usually, all of them held the Greek title “basilissa” (“queen”).This title is known from Greek parchments, Parthian coins, and Western sources.16 Thus, it can be found in the date formulas of the two Greek Avrōmān parchments, in which several names of royal women are mentioned. The first document from Avrōmān in Kurdistan written in November 88 BCE names, after king Mithradates II (124/​ 23–​88/​87 BCE), “the “queens” (basilissai), Siake, his “sister from the same father” (homopatria) and wife, Aryazate surnamed Automa, daughter of the Great King Tigranes and his wife, and Azate, his “sister from the same father and wife” (Avrōmān I, ll. 2–​5).17 This document already illustrates some of the intentions behind the different marriage connections: Mithradates, like many Arsakids, cultivated the particularly prestigious Zoroastrian consanguineous marriage (Middle Persian:  xvēdōdah).18 On the one hand, incestuous and close-​kin marriages were considered as particularly pure and sacred. King Mithradates married his half-​sisters Siake and Azate. On the other hand, the marriage with the Armenian princess Automa, who received the Parthian name Aryazate, was a dynastic connection with foreign policy objectives. Around 95–​88 BCE Mithradates II married the daughter of Tigranes II of Armenia to strengthen the alliance with this neighboring kingdom. The second Greek Avrōmān parchment from 22/​ 21 BCE, in the date formula, mentions several females after the king Phraates IV, namely the “queens” Olennieire, Kleopatra, Baseirta, and Bistheibanaps (Avrōmān II, l.  2).19 Since Kleopatra is a Greek name, she was presumably a Hellenistic princess. Therefore, it is likely that this king also had wives with different origins to serve political and sacred aims. Another example of close-​kin marriage in the Arsakid house can be found in the date formulas of seven more cuneiform texts. According to those texts, Orodes I (81/​80–​76/​75 BCE) was married to his sister Ispubarzā.20 The title “queen” is also attested in Babylonian cuneiform documents.21 For instance, Asi’abaṭar who was the wife of the king Gotarzes I  (91/​ 90–​ 81/​ 80 BCE), was especially mentioned in several cuneiform texts from 90, 89, 88, 87 and 87/​86 BCE.22 Those cuneiform texts used the term GAŠAN, which is a Sumerogram (a group of Sumerian cuneiform characters as an ideogram in the Akkadian text) and meant “princess” or “lady” originally. In this context, this ideogram is equal to the Akkadian word šarratu (“queen”).23 Besides the fact that women married to the king were considered as “queens,” the queen mother also held an apparently important position. For instance, a cuneiform document written in Uruk in August 132 BCE mentions “Arsakes and Rī […]-​nu, his mother both kings” (LUGALMEŠ).24 This refers to king Phraates II (139/​138–​128 BCE) and his mother, who formerly was a wife of Mithradates I (171–​139/​138 BCE). Rī […]-​nu was probably not a regent for a minor king,25 but her inclusion into the male (!) title LUGAL may indicate an honorary mention for a dowager queen. Furthermore, one can assume that at the court of Phraates III (71/​70–​58/​57 BCE) were at least three women, namely […]-​Ištar who was the “mother of the king and GAŠAN (“queen”),”26 Piriwuštanā his “(legitimate) wife (DA M) and G A ŠA N (“queen”),27 and a Hellenistic princess named Teleonike. Because of the fragmentary condition of the text it is uncertain whether the last held a title too.28 A woman with the title “queen of the queens” (Middle Persian: bāmbišnān bāmbišn), as it was referred to at the later court of the Sassanids,29 is not testified for the Arsakids. Nevertheless, there must have been a formal hierarchy of the ladies at the court, which consisted of the mother of the king, the wives of the king with the title “queens” and the legitimate wives of the king without a title; the “queen” and sister-​wife in sibling marriage had perhaps in this ranking a greater dignity than other Parthian or “foreign” Hellenistic wives. The role of women in the 236

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court hierarchy was probably determined both by the importance of her family (Arsakid family, Parthian nobility, or Hellenistic origins) and by their personality and success in the court competition. Because only one woman is mentioned in the date formula of the Parthian documents, it is likely that this woman was the principal queen and wife at the court, although a title “principal queen” is not attested. This prominent position could be occupied by a legitimate wife, a (half-​)sister, or the mother of the king. Depending on the actual personal influence of a woman on the king, there was certainly an informal, fluid hierarchy of the court ladies and wives of the “harem.” Besides the above-​described women at the court (see pp. 234–235), Western sources often refer to a “harem” with an allegedly large number of concubines, among them many Parthian slaves, but also Greek hetairai from Ionia (Plut. Crass. 32.6). Even though these concubines were mainly used to entertain the king, they had the chance to exercise de facto political influence at the court if they reached the position of a favorite of the king. However, neither the primary documentary nor the secondary sources inform us about details concerning the way of life of the women.Their everyday lives and their education remain almost completely unknown.What is known is that royal women and the women of the “harem” probably accompanied the king on his travels through the kingdom (Isidoros of Charax, FGrH 781 F 2.1; Tac. Ann. 6.43.1; cf. Cass. Dio 63.2.3). For instance, the Parthian noble Surenas was allegedly accompanied on his travels by 200 wagons full of concubines, but this report by Plutarch may just be a topos about an Eastern nobleman (Crass. 21.7).30

Political influence of Arsakid royal women As was shown in the previous section, not only the principal wife of the king had a prominent position at court but also the king’s mother. This tradition is well documented in Achaimenid times and in the former Assyrian empire, but also a known element in Seleukid dynastic ideology.31 We can be certain about the informal influence of these women, but what about their formal influence? Official political influence is very rarely testified in the Parthian period. There is also no secure evidence of a guardianship of a “queen” over a minor Parthian king. A certain form of actual co-​rulership can only be assumed for Mousa, who was mother and wife of Phraates V Phraatakes (2 BCE–​4 CE). In the date formulas of the parchments and cuneiform texts from the Parthian Empire published so far, women at court are exclusively mentioned in the period of 141 to 22/​21 BCE. However, being mentioned is not necessarily a reason to assume that they actually had political influence.32 Moreover, being mentioned in the date formula was, in this period, by no means obligatory, but rather an exception. Since the relation between being mentioned and having political influence is not straightforward, there is no reason to infer from one to the other.Therefore, the omission of women from the date formulas from the first century CE onwards cannot be taken as a reason to accept Wolski’s claim that they had less political influence.33 Even though royal women and concubines used their position at the court for the benefit of their children and influenced the king, this political influence was only behind the scenes. For any claimant to the throne (at least patrilineal) consanguinity to the royal Arsakid clan was a prerequisite for legitimacy (e.g. Strab. 16.1.28; Amm. Marc. 23.6.6). As there was no strict rule that the oldest prince would inherit the throne after his father’s death, even children from concubines could gain kingship. Therefore, there was a competition among all wives and concubines at the court for the position of mother of the heir (Just. 42.4.15–​16). Besides the famous example of Mousa, Tacitus (Ann. 12.44.2) refers to a certain “Greek concubine” (paelex Graeca) of Vonones II who was the mother of king Vologeses I (51–​76/​80 CE). 237

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In contrast to Achaimenid practice, principal wives could also be of foreign descent from non-​Iranian dynasties.34 At least three examples will be mentioned here. The earliest one goes back to the late second century BCE, when Phraates II married Laodike, daughter of Demetrius II Nikator and Kleopatra Thea (Porphyrios FGrH 260 F 32.20; anonymous in Just. 38.10.10).35 The Arsakid king had captured her in the entourage of Antiochos VII Sidetes in 129 BCE. The frequency of the name Laodike at the Seleukid court36 makes it hard to discern, if she is identical with a certain “queen/​lady Laodike” mentioned in a fragmentary cuneiform tablet from 140 BCE, the wife of a certain Antiochos, probably Antiochos VI Epiphanes, rival king to Demetrios II.37 In this case, the union did not originate from a bilateral agreement, but was the result of the imposition of the Arsakids’ will. The intermarriage was the groundwork for future relations and also a sign of growing Parthian strength in the era of declining Seleukid power in the ancient Near East. Sometime in the mid-​first century BCE, Orodes II (58/​57–​38 BCE) married another Laodike, daughter of Antiochos I Theos of Kommagene. According to a memorial inscription from Karakuş in Kommagene set by her brother Mithridates II (king of Kommagene 36–​30 BCE), Laodike bore the title “queen” (SEG 33.1215, Kb. 3–​5): “queen Laodike, sister of the king [Mithradates II] and wife of Orodes, king of kings” (βασίλισσης | Λαοδίκης, βασιλέ[ως ἀ]δελφῆς καὶ βασιλέως | βασιλέων ᾿Ορώδ[ου γυν]αικός).38 That Laodike’s sons were murdered by Phraates IV in 38 BCE is evidence for the repeated amphimetric strife39 between potential heirs—​often sons from different mothers to the throne—​but also for the endangered position of royal women. Cassius Dio (49.23.3–​4; cf. also Just. 42.5.1) explains that her sons were killed because they had a higher position at court through their virtue and their maternal lineage than Phraates. In fact, their murder could have easily been justified because of their lesser descent as being only half Arsakids. Phraates himself continued a tradition of exogamy, when he chose a certain Kleopatra as one of his four wives and “queens” (Avrōmān II, l. 2/​B), probably stemming from a Hellenistic dynasty. Unfortunately, we do not know if they had children at all or what status their children might have had. Royal women from non-​Iranian dynasties provided for legitimate offspring, but in times of throne disputes, lack of “pure” Arsakid bloodline was an easy excuse to exclude their children from the throne. An example of more direct political influence by a “secondary woman” at her nuptial court is recorded by Josephus (AJ 18.353–​66).40 Probably referring to a folk tale, he asserts that Artabanos II married his daughter to one of his relatives named Mithradates, a certain Parthian noble from Babylonia, who was probably at least a landlord or local satrap.This Mithradates was captured by a Jewish Babylonian rebel around 35 CE and later released by him when the rebel recognized the high position of his captive. After returning home, his wife forced Mithradates to take revenge on the Jews. As he hesitated, the Arsakid princess threatened him with divorce. Besides the long-​known topos of the weak “Oriental” who acts only when his wife compels him, the story illustrates the potential female influence at a local or vassal court. It indicates that members of the Arsakid clan could (and sometimes did) intervene in the political affairs of their nuptial houses.

Mousa: an example of political influence? In the sources, only one royal woman with an official position of power is testified. This was “queen” Mousa who was first the principal wife of king Phraates IV and then mother and wife of king Phraates V Phraatakes. She held, for the Parthian empire, an unusual position.41 As Josephus reports (AJ 18.39–​43), Augustus had given king Phraates IV a beautiful Italian slave 238

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girl named Mousa as a gift, apparently in the context of the return of the Roman standards by the Parthian king in 20 BCE.42 At first, she was one of the concubines in the “harem” of the king, but the beautiful slave quickly won his heart. After the birth of her son Phraatakes, the king raised her to his favorite, although he already had several legitimate wives and sons. From that point on, Mousa had a significant influence on the king and was able to displace the other “queens,” presumably the above-​mentioned Olennieire (p. 236), Kleopatra, Baseirta, and Bistheibanaps. She also tried to make her son heir to the throne and persuaded Phraates to send his other legitimate sons to Rome as hostages in 10/​9 BCE.43 Thus, Mousa had not only strengthened her position at court, but had also cleared the way to the Parthian throne for her son Phraatakes. Josephus reports, that Phraatakes, together with his mother, then murdered king Phraates and, moreover, had a sexual relationship with her. Josephus adds, with outrage, that the Parthians hated him for incest and patricide, which is why he was quickly overthrown. However, Josephus’ description of the assumption of power in the year 2 BCE and the short reign of Phraatakes is problematic. It is unclear whether the report that Mousa and her son murdered the old king of kings in a “harem’s intrigue” is correct. On the other hand, Josephus’ report of the marriage according to Zoroastrian law presumably corresponds to the facts. From the year 1/​2 CE on, coins were minted with the portrait of Phraates V Phraatakes on one side and his mother on the other side (see Figure 20.1). Presumably that was the time when son and mother got married. The Greek legend on the reverse of tetradrachms from Seleukeia on the Tigris and drachms from Ecbatana and Rhagae qualify her as “Thea Ourania Mousa basilissa” (goddess Urania44 Mousa queen). Mousa not only received the title of “queen,” but is also provided with divine attributes, for which there is no parallel in Parthian history. The coins show Mousa wearing a three-​tiered tiara richly decorated with pearls and a diadem with long ribbons falling on her back.45 Such a joint coinage of king and royal woman is very unique for the Parthian Empire: Mousa is even the only Parthian “queen” to be shown on coins. Normally, “queens” did not play any

Figure 20.1  Silver coin of Phraates V Phraatakes and Mousa (drachm from Ekbatana; Sellwood 1971: 177, no. 58.6); on the obverse the diademed bust of the king with two flying Nikai left and right crowning him; on the reverse the bust of the queen wearing a tiara and a beaded necklet, the Greek inscription: ΘΕΑΣ ΟΥΡΑΝΙ[ΑΣ] –​[Μ]ΟΥΣΗΣ ΒΑΣ[ΙΛΙΣΣΕΣ] and a monogram Source: © Classical Numismatic Group

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role in the Parthian representation of power, as demonstrated by few rock reliefs of the Arsakid kings.46 Their non-​appearance cannot be explained by a lack of source material. Rather, it is a result of the Arsakid idea of the male ruler. He, his power, and his magnificence were all-​ important, whereas female aspects of royalty were subordinate and almost invisible. This unusual coinage demonstrates that Mousa possessed the influential position of a queen mother and principal wife at the court of the very young king.47 She had probably also participated in the government of the realm, even if we cannot speak of a “joint government.” Thus, it was not so much the rumors of incest and patricide or even the socially inferior, foreign background of Mousa, but rather her strong position at the court and the failures in foreign policy of the new king that led to a conspiracy of the Parthian nobility and to the expulsion of king Phraatakes in 4 CE.48 Phraatakes probably fled to the Roman Empire (Augustus, res gestae 32). The fate of Mousa remains uncertain.

Arsakid marriage policy Despite the sparse extant sources, it is evident that the Arsakids adopted strategies for the survival of the dynasty similar to those of the Seleukids. This is especially clear in the case of Arsakid marriage policy.49 Dąbrowa has studied these relationships extensively,50 so a few words will suffice here. Arsakid princesses and their counterparts from Hellenistic kingdoms played an important role in the relations between Parthia and its neighboring kingdoms in the second and first centuries BCE. Arsakid kings married princesses from other dynasties and gave their own daughters in marriage to neighboring or vassal kings (e.g. Seleukids, Artaxiads of Armenia, or rulers of Kommagene). The intended aims of this marriage policy were manifold: to form and strengthen alliances, to increase influence at the foreign court, to strengthen a vassal, make peace with former enemies, or obtain their support in defense against common threats.51 Especially the Hellenistic princesses enhanced the influence of Greek culture at the Arsakid court.52 Arsakid “secondary women,” married into foreign courts, on the other hand, served to realize short and long-​term objectives of Arsakid policy, but also as steady reminders of Arsakid suzerainty over their vassals.53 In analogy to Seleukid times, they probably also played an active role at their nuptial courts, as was indicated in the tale about Mithridates and the Arsakid princess (see p. 238). During the 200  years after Augustus, when the Roman emperors became the major opponents of Parthia at their western border, dynastic marriages played no role in their bilateral relationships. The Arsakids were regarded as equal opponents, but at the same time as an inferior, “barbaric” people of the East. No Roman emperor ever gave his daughter in marriage to an Arsakid king. The Arsakids also felt no desire to marry their daughters to an emperor, as the example of Caracalla’s failed wedding plan shows. According to Cassius Dio (78.1.1, cf. also Herodian. 4.10–​11),54 the Roman emperor asked king Artabanos IV (213–​224 CE) for his daughter’s hand. Herodian adds as Caracalla’s motive that he intended to unite the two empires. The Arsakid refused by arguing that such a “barbarian” wedding would not befit a Roman emperor and that the two cultures were too different to be united (Herodian. 4.10.2). In fact, the description of Cassius Dio is more realistic, when he interprets the failed marriage as a Roman pretext to invade Parthia. With the Roman Empire another special kind of diplomatic relationship emerged. A few instances indicate that not only princes but also Arsakid royal women played an important role as Roman hostages. In general, Arsakid–​Roman hostage submission was not reciprocal:  the Parthians never demanded Roman hostages. Hostage policy held a different significance than diplomatic marriages: whereas marriages were instruments to impose imperial order, hostages 240

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furthered the interests of their former captors. As married women they could intervene in the affairs of their nuptial houses,55 whereas their role as female hostages was more passive. Arsakid royal women—​as well as their captured husbands or children—​often became tools of disruption in their homeland, used by the Roman side to influence Arsakid internal affairs. Without a request from Augustus, Phraates IV handed over his four sons together with two of their wives and some of their children to Marcus Titius, governor of Roman Syria in 10/​9 BCE.56 These members of the Arsakid clan were brought to Rome, where they lived as guests of Augustus. Phraates intended to preserve his friendship with Rome and avoid Roman aggression or even a potential invasion at the western border of his empire. At the same time, he secured his own position as king by depriving his political enemies in Parthia of a suitable Arsakid rival who might supplant him. Whether he also responded to demands of his wife Mousa, who wanted her son Phraatakes to be the next king and to get rid of the (older) sons of her rivals, is debatable but not impossible. The royal Arsakid women were part of Augustan political staging, a means to proclaim Rome’s supremacy over the Parthian empire in absence of a military success. Suetonius (Aug. 43.3–​4) records that the hostages were publicly exhibited at one of the emperor’s many spectacles, when he led them through the middle of the arena and then seated them prominently above him, in the second row. Probably clad in Parthian costume, the women served as living proof of “Oriental” exoticism otherwise only known from Roman art or coins. The Roman sources also record an example of forced hostageship of a royal woman. Around 116 CE, emperor Trajan took the daughter of king Osroes (108/​09–​127/​28 CE) as a prisoner on his Parthian campaign. She was not returned until 129 CE by emperor Hadrian, during the peace negotiations between Rome and Parthia (SHA Hadr. 13.8).57 Again, a royal woman served as a visible sign of Roman power and of success on a faraway battlefield. The probable exhibition of such prisoners in Rome enhanced the prestige of the emperors who captured them and strengthened their domestic position. In all, these examples show that royal women, as part of the Arsakid royal household, served both Roman political propaganda and internal Parthian politics.

Conclusion Reconstructing the political roles and social status of Arsakid royal women is possible only in broad outline. Many facets of their daily lives at court, of their education, of their possibilities to actively engage in economic enterprises (as evident in Achaimenid Persian sources) remain obscure. Nevertheless, some facts can be deduced from the ancient sources with some certainty: the mother of the king, his other legitimate wives, his daughters, and sisters (some from the Arsakid but also from neighboring dynasties) lived at the court. That they all could bear the title “queen” (basilissa) does not prove that a clear hierarchy existed. Based on Zoroastrian law, polygamy and close-​kin marriage are well attested. Beside the royal women, concubines were also present at the court. Western sources exaggerated their actual number because the “Oriental harem” was part of the cliché about Eastern monarchies. Nevertheless, concubines could (at least in exceptional cases) be a political factor in Parthian history:  the example of Mousa demonstrates that even women of low origin could become principal wives, and that their sons could be elevated to the throne by the king. In general, the actual political influence of royal women was exceptional; the real prominence of “queens” as ruling figures rather minimal. The dynastic importance of the principal wife and of the mother of the king is evident by their inclusion into the dating formulas of some cuneiform texts and the Avrōmān parchments. Their inclusion might reflect the ideological importance of the royal family as a group, but 241

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their appearance in the texts is perhaps largely to draw attention to the legitimacy and power of the kings, because no further details about these women are given. In contrast to Seleukid queens, their public role seems noticeably more restricted. As we lack indigenous sources for later centuries, it remains open if the prominence of the principal wife and the mother of the king declined in these periods. In any case, female members of the Arsakid court played an important role in bilateral relations with vassal kingdoms, and sometimes in diplomatic relations between Parthia and Rome, on occasions when Arsakid royal women were submitted as hostages. In contrast to relations with the Seleukid kingdom, Arsakids never gave their daughters in marriage to the Romans, as Rome showed no interest in exogamy. Networks resulting from marriage diplomacy were a stabilizing factor in Parthian history. Analysis has proven once more that there are clear lines of tradition between the Achaimenid, Arsakid, and Sassanid dynasties in terms of the polygamy of the monarchs, close-​kin marriage, and concubinage. Despite the sparse and often problematic indigenous source material, a privileged position of royal women seems to be clear, and the role of the royal family as such seems more important than in former Achaimenid times. This can be seen as a Seleukid legacy. The issue of royal Arsakid women once more proves that Iranian cultures were not monolithic entities, as sometimes suggested, but were open to diverse cultural influences.

Notes 1 For overviews of Arsakid political and social history, see Wiesehöfer 1996:  115–​49; Brosius 2006, 79–​138; Dąbrowa 2012; Gregoratti 2017: 125–​53. 2 The Achaimenid legacy has been extensively studied:  see Shayegan 2011:  39–​331; see also Wolski 1966: 65–​89; Sonnabend 1986: 280–​8; Spawforth 1996: 233–​47; Makhlaiuk 2015, esp. 315–​17. 3 Minns 1915. 4 The Chinese dynastic history Hanshu (96A, 3889–​90) from the first century CE only mentions that the silver coins in the realm of Anxi (i.e. Parthia) show the image of the king’s face on the obverse and the image of a woman on the reverse (Hulsewé 1979: 116). These may be the silver coins of Phraates V Phraatakes and “queen” Mousa (see ­figure 20.1); Posch 1998: 361 n. 49. 5 Sancisi-​Weerdenburg 1993:  20–​33; see also Safaee 2016/​17; for literary tropes about Achaimenid Persia in Ktesias of Knidos, see Madreiter 2012. 6 Lerouge 2007. 7 Carney 2011: 205; McAuley 2011: 18–​36; 2017: 190. 8 McAuley 2017b. 9 E.g. Plut. Crass. 32.5; Lucian. Icar. 15; Philost. V. Apoll. 1.33; 1.37. Huber and Hartmann 2006: 497–​9, 506–​8; Lerouge 2007: 339–​49. For these topoi, see Madreiter 2012. 10 Lerouge 2007: 262–​4. 11 For the archaeological evidence of the court life of the Arsakids see Kaim 2016. 12 Huber and Hartmann 2006; Bigwood 2008; Huijs 2014. See also Wolski 1954:  64–​72; Wiesehöfer 2000: 712–​13; Shahbazi 2003: 1; Jacobs 2010: 82–​4. 13 Bigwood 2008 points to the connection existing between their titles and their status. 14 E.g. Xōrānzēm, the “queen of the realm” (šahr bāmbišn) of Shapur I: ŠKZ § 36, Middle Persian l. 25, Parthian l. 20 (hštr MLKTE), Greek ll. 46–​47. Bigwood 2008: 253–​4. 15 Lerouge 2007: 339–​45. 16 Huber and Hartmann 2006: 486–​94; Bigwood 2008: 237–​59. 17 Minns 1915: 28. According to Huijs (2014: 619–​21) the king in Avrōmān I is Gotarzes I, according to Bigwood 2008: 244–​5, 267 another son of king Mithradates and a rival of Gotarzes. 18 Boyce 1979: 97; Lerouge 2007: 340–​5. 19 Minns 1915: 30 20 Del Monte 1997: 178, 181, 255. 21 Huber and Hartmann 2006: 488–​90; Bigwood 2008: 237–​44; Huijs 2014: 607–​18.

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Women at the Arsakid court 22 Del Monte 1997: 251–​4. 23 Huber and Hartmann 2006:  492; Bigwood 2008:  250–​ 3; but see Del Monte 1997:  41; Huijs 2014: 617–​18. 24 Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan II no. 53, rev. 28. Del Monte 1997: 245–​6. 25 Bigwood 2008: 240. According to Huijs 2014: 610–​13 she was “co-​ruler with Phraates II, because he was still too young to rule” (612). 26 Astronomical Diaries V No. 30, av. 2–​3 (66 BCE). 27 She is attested in the dating formulae of 69/​68 and 68/​67 BCE; Del Monte 1997: 256. 28 Astronomical Diaries III No.-​62, av. 1 (62 BCE); Del Monte 1997: 257. 29 Cf. Ādur-​Anāhīd, the “queen of the queens” and daughter of Shapur I: ŠKZ § 33, Middle Persian l. 23, Parthian l. 18, Greek ll. 39–​40; § 36, Middle Persian l. 25, Parthian l. 20, Greek l. 47. 30 For the image of the Parthians in Plutarchus see Hartmann 2008. 31 For Assyrian and Achaimenid analogies, see Kuhrt 1995: 528. Brosius 1996: 21–​4, 186–​7 suggests that the mother of the king had the highest position among royal women. For the centrality of motherhood in Seleukid ideology, see McAuley 2017a. 32 Huijs (2014: 636) interprets the appearance of Parthian “queens” in the dating formulas as evidence for a “recognized and potentially influential position” of these women at court. 33 Wolski 1954: 66. 34 According to the attested personal names there were also royal women of Sogdian or Babylonian descent, i.e. from within the Parthian empire, see Bigwood 2008: 264–​6. 35 Debevoise 1938: 34–​35; Grainger 1997: 48–​9; Huber and Hartmann 2006: 500. 36 The Seleukid genealogy of McAuley 2011 lists 16 Laodikes. On the function of names like Laodike as quasi-​titles see McAuley 2018. 37 Astronomical Diaries III No.-​ 140 (July/​ Aug. 140 BCE):  [lA]n-​ti-​ʾu-​uk-​su fLu-​di-​qé-​e GAŠAN […], “Antiochos, Laodike, the queen.” Debevoise 1938: 22 n. 99, 24 n. 105; Del Monte 1997: 103. 38 Wagner 1983: 209, fig. 8 and tab. 52.3–​4; Huber and Hartmann 2006: 502. 39 For the Seleukid dynasties see Ogden 1999: 117–​70. 40 Rajak 1998: 314–​17; Fowler 2017: 372–​3. 41 Bigwood 2004; Huber and Hartmann 2006:  492–​5; Strugnell 2008; Roller 2018:  123–​7; see also Karras-​Klapproth 1988:  95–​6; Gregoratti 2012:  184–​6; Olbrycht 2018:  389–​90. For the image of Mousa in Josephus, see Fowler 2017: 371–​2. 42 Strugnell 2008:  283; Huijs 2014:  621; in 23 BCE according to Bigwood 2004:  39–​40; Olbrycht 2018: 389. 43 See p. 241. 44 The goddess Urania probably corresponds to the Persian goddess Anāhitā. 45 Sellwood 1971: 176–​8, no. 58.1–​10; Bigwood 2004: 47–​56; Strugnell 2008: 286–​7. 46 For the Parthian rock reliefs see Kawami 1987. 47 Cf. Wolski 1993:  149; Strugnell 2008:  286–​7, 292–​5; Gregoratti 2012:  185. Bigwood 2004:  43–​7, 56–​62 argues against the historicity of the marriage of Phraatakes and Mousa. According to her, there is no evidence for Mousa’s supposed political role as regent or co-​ruler. 48 Hauser 2005: 189–​90. 49 Huber and Hartmann 2006: 499–​505; Bigwood 2008: 259–​65; Dąbrowa 2018: 73–​83. 50 Dąbrowa 2018. 51 Dąbrowa 2018: 81. 52 Alliances with the Hellenistic courts: Wiesehöfer 2000: 712–​13. 53 These marriages are mostly in the context of actions undertaken to protect the boundaries of the vast empire: Huber and Hartmann 2006: 502–​3; Dąbrowa 2018: 82. 54 Herodian enlarges the facts given by Cassius Dio into a romantic tale without any additional historical worth; Huber and Hartmann 2006: 503–​4. 55 For analogies in Seleukid marriage policy see McAuley 2017b. 56 Strab. 6.4.2; 16.1.28;Vell. Pat. 2.94.4; Joseph. AJ 18.42; Suet. Aug. 21.3; Just. 42.5.12; see also Augustus, res gestae 32; Tac. Ann. 2.1.2; 6.31.2; Cass. Dio 58.26.2; CIL VI 1799. Ziegler 1964: 51–​2; Sonnabend 1986: 221–​2, 258; Dąbrowa 1987: 63–​71; Lerouge 2007, 110–​13; Strothmann 2012; Nabel 2017, 27–​8, 34–​7; Olbrycht 2018. 57 Debevoise 1938: 233, 242; Birley 1997: 220; Huber and Hartmann 2006: 505. Doležal 2017: 121–​3 suspects that the daughter of king Osroes was allowed to return shortly after 117.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). ŠKZ trilingual inscription of Šābuhr I at the Ka‛ba-​i Zardušt in Naqš-​iRustam, near Persepolis (Res Gestae Divi Saporis)

Bibliography Bigwood, J.M. 2004. “Queen Mousa, Mother and Wife (?) of King Phraatakes of Parthia: A Re-​evaluation of the Evidence.” Mouseion ser. 3, 4: 35–​70. Bigwood, J.M. 2008. “Some Parthian Queens in Greek and Babylonian Documents.” Iranica Antiqua 43: 235–​74. Birley, A.R. 1997. Hadrian: The Restless Emperor. London and New York. Boyce, M. 1979. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London. Brosius, M. 1996. Women in Ancient Persia (559–​331 BC). Oxford. Brosius, M. 2006. The Persians: An Introduction. London and New York. Carney, E.D. 2011. “Being Royal and Female in the Early Hellenistic Period.” In A. Erskine and L. Llewellyn-​Jones (eds.), Creating a Hellenistic World. Swansea, 195–​220. Dąbrowa, E. 1987. “Les premiers ‘otages’ parthes à Rome.” Folia Orientalia 24: 63–​71. Dąbrowa, E. 2012. “The Arsacid Empire.” In T. Daryaee (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History. Oxford, 164–​86. Dąbrowa, E. 2018. “Arsacid Dynastic Marriages.” Electrum 25: 73–​83. Debevoise, N.C. 1938. A Political History of Parthia. Chicago. Del Monte, G.F. 1997. Testi dalla Babilonia ellenistica, vol. 1: Testi cronografici. Pisa and Rome. Doležal, S. 2017. “Did Hadrian Ever Meet a Parthian King?” Acta Universitatis Carolinae  –​Philologica 2: 111–​25. Fowler, R. 2017. “Cyrus to Arsakes, Ezra to Izates: Parthia and Persianism in Josephus.” In R. Strootman and M.J.Versluys (eds.), Persianism in Antiquity. Stuttgart, 355–​79. Grainger, J.D. 1997. A Seleucid Prosopography and Gazetteer. Leiden. Gregoratti, L. 2012. “Parthian Women in Flavius Josephus.” In M. Hirschberger (ed.), Jüdisch-​hellenistische Literatur in ihrem interkulturellen Kontext. Frankfurt am Main, 183–​92. Gregoratti, L. 2017. “The Arsacid Empire.” In T. Daryaee (ed.), King of the Seven Climes. Irvine, 125–​53. Hartmann, U. 2008. “Das Bild der Parther bei Plutarch.” Historia 56: 426–​52. Hauser, S.R. 2005. “Die ewigen Nomaden? Bemerkungen zu Herkunft, Militär, Staatsaufbau und nomadischen Traditionen der Arsakiden.” In B. Meißner, O. Schmitt, and M. Sommer (eds.), Krieg –​ Gesellschaft –​ Institutionen. Berlin, 163–​208. Huber, I. and Hartmann, U. 2006. “‘Denn ihrem Diktat vermochte der König nicht zu widersprechen …’ Die Position der Frauen am Hof der Arsakiden.” In A. Panaino and A. Piras (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europæa, vol. 1. Milan, 485–​517. Huijs, J. 2014. “Images of Parthian Queens.” In L. Marti (ed.), La famille dans le Proche-​Orient ancien. Réalités, symbolismes, et images. Winona Lake, 605–​42. Hulsewé, A.F.P. 1979. China in Central Asia: The Early Stage: 125 B.C.–​A.D. 23. Leiden. Jacobs, B. 2010.“Herrscherhaus und Hof.” In U. Hackl, B. Jacobs, and D.Weber (eds.), Quellen zur Geschichte des Partherreiches, vol. 1. Göttingen, 77–​84. Kaim, B. 2016. “Women, Dance and the Hunt: Splendour and Pleasures of Court Life in Arsacid and Early Sasanian Art.” In V.S. Curtis, E.J. Pendleton, M. Alram, and T. Daryaee (eds.), The Parthian and Early Sasanian Empires: Adaptation and Expansion. Oxford, 90–​105. Karras-​Klapproth, M. 1988. Prosopographische Studien zur Geschichte des Partherreiches auf der Grundlage antiker literarischer Überlieferung. Bonn. Kawami, T.S. 1987. Monumental Art of the Parthian Period in Iran. Leiden. Kuhrt, A. 1995. The Ancient Near East c. 3000–​331BC, vol. 2. London and New York. Lerouge, C. 2007. L’image des Parthes dans le monde gréco-​romain. Stuttgart. McAuley, A. 2011.The Genealogy of the Seleucids: Seleucid Marriage, Succession, and Descent Revisited. www.seleucid-​genealogy.com (accessed June 11, 2020).

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Women at the Arsakid court McAuley, A. 2017a. “Mother Knows Best:  Motherhood and Succession in the Seleucid Realm.” In D. Cooper and C. Phelan (eds.), Motherhood in Antiquity. Cham, 79–​106. McAuley, A. 2017b. “Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and Their Nuptial Courts.” In A. Erskine, L. Llewellyn-​Jones, and S. Wallace (eds.), Hellenistic Court Society. Swansea, 189–​212. McAuley, A. 2018. “The Tradition and Ideology of Naming Seleukid Queens.” Historia 67: 472–​94. Madreiter, I. 2012. Stereotypisierung  –​ Idealisierung  –​ Indifferenz. Formen der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Achaimeniden-​Reich in der griechischen Persika-​Literatur. Wiesbaden. Makhlaiuk, A.V. 2015. “Memory and Images of Achaemenid Persia in the Roman Empire.” In J.M. Silverman and C. Waerzeggers (eds.), Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire. Atlanta, 299–​324. Minns, E.H. 1915. “Parchments of the Parthian period from Avroman in Kurdistan.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 35: 22–​65. Nabel, J. 2017. “The Seleucids Imprisoned:  Arsacid-​Roman Hostage Submission and Its Hellenistic Precedents.” In J.M. Schlude, B.B. Rubin (eds.), Arsacids, Romans, and Local Elites:  Cross-​ Cultural Interactions of the Parthian Empire. Oxford and Philadelphia, 25–​50. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Olbrycht, M.J. 2018. “Augustus versus Phraates IV: Some Remarks on the Parthian-​Roman Relations.” In K. Ruffing and K. Droß-​Krüpe (eds.), Emas non quod opus est, sed quod necesse est. Wiesbaden, 389–​97. Posch, W. 1998. “Chinesische Quellen zu den Parthern.” In J. Wiesehöfer (ed.), Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse. Stuttgart, 355–​64. Rajak, T. 1998. “The Parthians in Josephus.” In J. Wiesehöfer (ed.), Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse. Stuttgart, 309–​24. Roller, D.W. 2018. Cleopatra’s Daughter and Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era. Oxford. Sachs, A. and Hunger, H. 1996 (eds.) Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, vol. III: Diaries from 164 B.C. to 61 B.C.Vienna. Safaee,Y. 2016/​17. “Achaemenid Women: Putting the Greek Image to the Text.” Talanta 48–​49: 101–​32. Sancisi-​Weerdenburg, H. 1993. “Exit Atossa: Images of Women in Greek Historiography on Persia.” In A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity. London, 20–​33. Sellwood, D. 1971. An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia. London. Shahbazi, S.A. 2003. “Harem I.” Encyclopaedia Iranica XI: 671–​2 and XII.1: 1–​3. Shayegan, M.R. 2011. Arsacids and Sasanians. Cambridge. Sonnabend, H. 1986. Fremdenbild und Politik. Vorstellungen der Römer von Ägypten und dem Partherreich in der späten Republik und frühen Kaiserzeit. Frankfurt am Main. Spawforth, A. 1996. “Symbol of Unity? The Persian-​ Wars Tradition in the Roman Empire.” In S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography. Oxford, 233–​47. Strothmann, M. 2012. “Feindeskinder an Sohnes statt. Parthische Königssöhne im Haus des Augustus.” In P. Wick and M. Zehnder (eds.), The Parthian Empire and its Religions. Gutenberg, 83–​102. Strugnell, E. 2008. “Thea Mousa, Roman Queen of Parthia.” Iranica Antiqua 43: 275–​98. Wagner, J. 1983. “Dynastie und Herrscherkult in Kommagene. Forschungsgeschichte und neuere Funde.” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 33: 177–​224. Wiesehöfer, J. 1996. Ancient Persia: From 550 BC to 650 AD. London and New York. Wiesehöfer, J. 2000. “‘Denn Orodes war der griechischen Sprache und Literatur nicht unkundig …’ Parther, Griechen und griechische Kultur.” In R. Dittmann et al. (eds.), Variatio delectat. Iran und der Westen. Gedenkschrift für P. Calmeyer. Münster, 703–​21. Wolski, J. 1954. “Remarques critiques sur les institutions des Arsacides.” Eos 46 (1952/​53): 59–​82. Wolski J. 1966. “Les Achéménides et les Arsacides. Contribution à l’histoire de la formation des traditions iraniennes.” Syria 43: 65–​89. Wolski, J. 1993. L’empire des Arsacides. Louvain. Ziegler, K.-​H. 1964. Die Beziehungen zwischen Rom und dem Partherreich. Wiesbaden.

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21 WOMEN OF THE SASSANID DYNASTY (224–​6 51 CE) 1 Josef Wiesehöfer

Introduction In the history of ancient Iran, we come across outstanding women who sometimes reached the highest positions in the country. For example, in the Sasanian era, two queens, Pourandokht and Azarmidokht, ruled in their own right. […] We must not of course conclude from this evidence that women were the equals of men in ancient Iran, because society in those days did not feel this to be necessary. (Pahlavi 1967: 93) I came and knelt at the king’s feet, and when he put the crown on my head, I felt that he had just honored all the women of Iran. […] this crown wiped out centuries of humiliation; more surely than any law, it solemnly affirmed the equality of men and women. (Pahlavi 2004: 157) Farah Pahlavi’s coronation as regent in October 1967, a position which, in the event of the Shah’s death, empowered her to act in place of the Crown Prince until he came of age, was meant, as the second quote demonstrates, to be obvious proof of the social modernizing efforts of the Pahlavi dynasty. The person honored perceived it as such, not just as proof of love. Like many of the Shah’s measures, however, this action also had an explicitly emphasized historical dimension of depth:  the assignment of socially and politically relevant roles to the modern Iranian woman (and not least to the Shahbanu, the queen consort) was staged on the one hand as a break with a centuries-​long phase of female humiliation, and on the other hand it was related to the allegedly last crowned female heads in Iranian history, the Sassanid queens Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt. Apart from the problem of what connects a contemporary regent ideologically, factually, and de iure, to a ruler of late antiquity, the question remains as to the relationship between the appointment and coronation of a female regent and female aspirations toward emancipation at the national level; but this is not our topic. Instead, the following problems will be the focus of this chapter: what do we know about the two Sassanid rulers and about the female members of this dynasty in general? How are their position and status to be

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described—​in the light of the evidence that has to be analyzed critically—​and how relevant were developments in the course of the history of the Sassanid Empire? Finally, how was it possible that the less successful and short-​lived female rulers Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt could be given such an afterlife in the twentieth century?2

The sources To the female members of the Sassanid House applies what has already been stated for the ladies of the Arsakid dynasty: “The small and often problematic source material permits the reconstruction of the social and political position of women […] only in outlines.”3 More detailed literary coverage of their respective positions and their actions and measures is extremely rare, and where it exists, foreign or non-​contemporary traditions are often enough involved. This is not surprising in a society in which for a long time—​apart from administrative contexts—​the spoken word preceded the written one in importance, and in which a real indigenous literature only exists for the late period. The secondary tradition of Greek, Latin, Arabic, New Persian, Christian-​Syriac, Armenian, and Manichaean literature is under special suspicion because of its view from outside or its retrospective or thematic orientation, of transmitting facts only by passing them through the filter of one’s own intentions beforehand. In addition, the early and late periods of the history of the Sassanians are clearly over-​represented in this tradition compared to the periods of the fourth and fifth centuries, for which only a few detailed literary testimonies are available. The local primary material from the Sassanid period is correspondingly significant:  the inscriptions and reliefs of the kings of the third century, the coins, seals, gems, and precious vessels of the entire period of the dynasty, and the legal tradition of late Sassanian times. This material, too, has its pitfalls, for, apart from the legal books, it mostly owes its existence to male royal or aristocratic desires to emphasize, secure, and represent their own position and social and/​or political distinction. Even the royal measures and institutions affecting the women of the dynasty, for example the rituals and the ceremonial of the court, aim, where they appear in the primary tradition at all, at presenting (except in the cases of Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt) the social, religious, military, and political authority of the ruler and his efforts to maintain peace and order in the empire. Late Sassanian literature related to the court, such as the famous text “Xusrō ud rēdag,”4 focuses above all on the physical qualities of women at court; however, we also get to know learned women from Pahlavi literature.5 The situation is somewhat different with the legal sources from the late Sassanian period, which not only provide information on the legal status of women, but also on forms of marriage and on women’s power of disposal over property and inheritance.6 In this context, it has rightly been stressed that a distinction must be made a) between the social and legal status of a woman, and b) within the legal tradition, between orthodox regulations and reformist views in legal matters.7 As for the women of the royal house and not least Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt, it remains to be asked whether or not they were under the guardianship (Middle Persian sālārīh) of a man while at court or during their accession to the throne. It should be noted here that polygamy, which was otherwise rather rare in Iran, was the rule within the royal family (and in aristocratic circles): it was regarded as proof of the wealth and dignity of a ruler. Endogamous and exogamous connections both offered political and economic advantages, and political marriage alliances beyond the borders of the empire or with non-​Zoroastrian families were quite common in Sassanian Iran.

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The women of the early days of the dynasty Of quite extraordinary importance for the reconstruction of the position of women at the early Sassanid court are the so-​called “Res Gestae Divi Saporis,” which not only, as the name suggests, represent a report of the deeds of the second Sassanian king Šābuhr I, but also describe him as a ruler who, like his father Ardašīr I and his grandfather Pābag, has his own, now considerably extended, court where members of the royal house, dignitaries, and officials are staying, and who is concerned with the cultivation of the cult of the gods and the welfare and memory of the living and deceased members of the dynasty.8 In this trilingual inscription a total of 16 women is listed, women who are placed in relation to the rulers and partly even characterized by titles and hierarchical ranks. Among these persons the daughter of Šābuhr, Ādur-​Anāhīd, occupies a special position: like Ardašīr’s sister Dēnag (see below), she is the only one who bears the title “Queen of the Queens” (Middle Persian bāmbišnān bāmbišn). She appears—​beside Šābuhr himself—​at the beginning of the inscription (ŠKZ mpI 23/​paI 18/​grI 40), before the three most important sons of the ruler (the crown prince Ohrmezd-​Ardašīr, Šābuhr, the king of Mēšān, and Narseh, the king of Hindestān, Sagestān, and Tūrān up to the seashore).9 It is only for these five persons that Šābuhr founds a fire temple for their souls and their posthumous fame. All other family members and dignitaries at the courts of Pābag, Ardašīr, and Šābuhr are only given a daily sacrifice. It has been assumed that Šābuhr and his daughter were married—​by a so-​called xwēdōdah marriage among blood relatives10—​and that the crown prince was the fruit of this marriage, but there is no proof of this.11 The first three kings were also born of women who probably had no outstanding position: Dēnag, the mother (mād) of king Pābag (ŠKZ 28f./​23/​56), and Rōdag, the mother of Ardašīr I (ŠKZ 29/​23/​56), are mentioned in ŠKZ without a title, and Murrōd, the mother of Šābuhr I (ŠKZ 26/​21/​49), is only given the title of a “Lady” (Middle Persian bānūg). Apart from Ādur-​Anāhīd, only Dēnag, the sister of Ardašīr I, has the title “Queen of Queens” (ŠKZ 29/​23/​ 56). “Accordingly, the highest-​ranking title […] was not necessarily associated with the status of a first-​rate wife. Decisive for her position in the genealogy and at court […] was rather the social rank and not the family status.”12 It should be emphasized, however, that the title “Queen of Queens” does not necessarily refer to the coronation of the First Lady of the empire, nor to the fact that these women de iure had political power. It has been argued, from the fact that the female figures on Ardašīr I’s investiture relief from Naqš-​i Raǧab look away, that in the early Sassanid empire women were explicitly excluded from the coronation ceremony of the ruler.13 Xwar(r)ānzēm, called the “Queen of the Empire” (šahr bāmbišn), a title that can only be found in ŠKZ and clearly stands out from the other titles “Queen” (bāmbišn), “Princess” (duxš/​ wisduxt) or “Lady” (bānūg), was apparently also of high social rank. Xwar(r)ānzēm was identical with the wife of Ardašīr I, who had already died at the time of the setting of the inscription and who had been awarded a special title by her husband at the beginning of his reign.14 Later, the same king could have intended to give the more distinctive title bāmbišnān bāmbišn to his sister Dēnag, the daughter of king Pābag. Moreover, Xwar(r)ānzēm had a daughter, Warāzduxt (see below, p. 249), who is ranked 19th in the genealogy of ŠKZ. I will list further female members of the three royal courts presented in ŠKZ in alphabetical order: Anōšag, the mother of the “Princess” (duxš) Rōdduxt, perhaps a wife of Ardašīr I (ŠKZ 26/​ 21/​49f.) the “Lady” (bānūg) Čašmag, perhaps another consort of Ardašīr or a member of the family of the King of the Sacae, Narseh (ŠKZ 26/​21/​49) 248

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Dēnag (possibly identical with the “Queen” (bāmbišn) Dēnag, probably a daughter or wife of Šābuhr I (ŠKZ 25/​20/​47), the “Queen” (bāmbišn) of Mēšān, the dastgerd of Šābuhr, a woman who presumably (after the death of Šābuhr, the King of Mēšān?) became regent in Mesene and was awarded an additional honorary title (dastgerd) by the “King of Kings” (ŠKZ 30/​25/​60) Dēnag, the “Mother” (mād) of king Pābag (ŠKZ 28f./​23/​56) the “Lady” (bānūg) Murrōd, the wife of Ardašīr I and “Mother” (mād) of Šābuhr I (and his possible brothers Pērōz and Narseh) (ŠKZ 26/​21/​49) Narsehduxt, the “Lady (bānūg) of the Sacae” (ŠKZ mpI 26), probably a wife of the later “King of Kings” Narseh Ohrmezd(d)uxtag, probably the daughter of Narseh and granddaughter of Šābuhr I (ŠKZ 27/​22/​51f.) Rōdag, the “Mother” (mād) of Ardašīr (ŠKZ 29/​23/​56) the “Princess” (duxš) Rōdduxt, the daughter of Anōšag (see above, p. 248; ŠKZ 26/​21/​49f.) Šābuhrduxtag, the daughter of Šābuhr, the King of Mēšān, and granddaughter of Šābuhr I (ŠKZ 27/​21/​51) Šābuhrduxtag, the “Queen” (bāmbišn) of the Sacae and wife of Narseh (ŠKZ 25/​20f./​48f.), who probably also appears in the Manichaean text M3 as “Queen of the Sacae” and who, according to this text, is embraced by Narseh at the audience of Mani with one arm (with the other, Narseh embraces Kerdīr, the son of Ardawān)15 Šābuhrduxtag, the “Daughter” (duxtar) of Šābuhr, the king of Mēšān, and granddaughter of Šābuhr I (ŠKZ 27/​21/​51) the “Queen” (bāmbišn) Staxryād (ŠKZ 26/​21/​50), probably a wife of Šābuhr I with a special relationship to the city of Staxr Warāzduxt, the “Daughter” (duxt) of Xwar(r)ānzēm (SKZ 26/​21/​50)16 Members of the royal family of the early Sassanid period can also be found in the numismatic and archaeological sources. Wahrām II is the first Sassanian to be depicted on the obverse of his coins together with his wife and crown prince. He appears in this way not only on coins, but also on his reliefs from Naqš-​i Rustam and Sar Mašhad, where the king protects his wife, unknown by name, from a symbolic lion attack. In a similar scene on a silver vessel from Sarvegši in Georgia, this lady is marked above all by specific headgear (crown cap with diadem and animal head cap) and a necklace consisting of thick round pearls and earrings. On the other hand, the female persons on the reliefs of Barm-​i Dilak and Tang-​i Qandīl, who receive or present a flower, are ultimately impossible to identify in terms of their position and individual identity.17 On the relief of King Narseh from Naqš-​i Rustam, which probably refers to the recovery of the xwarrah (“glory”), a divine mystical force or power, after the return of the family members from Roman captivity after the Treaty of Nisibis (298), the ruler is probably depicted together with his wife Šābuhrduxtag.18 We also find high-​ranking female members of the early Sassanid house in the secondary tradition. The Manichaean Homilies mention a recently deceased sister of King Wahrām I in connection with the meeting between Mani and the king in Bēlāpāṭ (Hom 46,26 Pedersen). A Syriac manuscript of the British Library (Add. 12142, ff. 104a-​107b), the so-​called martyr acts of Qandīdā from the sixth century CE (see also a reference in the so-​called chronicle of Se‛ert (I, chapter IX Scher)), refers to the martyr and (probable) wife of Wahrām II with the name Qandīdā.19 Ḥamza al-​Iṣfahānī (49,18 Gottwaldt) gives as mother of Hormezd I a woman named Kurdzād. The queen (basilissa) Arsane is mentioned by John Malalas (308,6ff.) in the context of the warlike conflicts between the Great King Narseh and the Roman Caesar 249

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Galerius. In the framework of the final battle the large entourage of the Persian king, including his wives and children, had got into Roman hands. All authors who provide information about this Sassanid catastrophe (Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Festus, Jerome, Orosius, Pawstos Buzandaci, Petrus Patricius, Jordanes, Theophanes, Cedrenus, and Zonaras) unanimously report that numerous male and female members of the royal house—​along with many Persian aristocrats and the treasury—​fell into the hands of the Romans. This capture of women and children is also referred to in frieze A I 2 of the Galerius Arch from Thessaloniki, on the back of the bronze medallion from Siscia, and probably also on the relief of Narseh from Naqš-​i Rustam.20 The Manichaean Turfan text M3 also refers to the spatial proximity of ruler and wife and thus to the non-​seclusion of the royal wives and children, which a term like “harem” suggests.21

Women of the fourth and fifth centuries From this time, with few sources available, only a few females stand out. Dēnag was the wife of Yazdegerd II (439–​457) and mother of the royal sons Hormezd III (457–​459) and Pērōz (459–​ 484) who went to war against each other. Possibly as a kind of regent, this woman, whose name suggests that she was probably a member of the Sassanid clan, temporarily held the power in Ctesiphon in her hands (Ṭabarī 2, 872, 19f. de Goeje). We may also have a diademed portrait of her on a gem of amethyst, but it should be mentioned that this work of glyptic art is attributed by many to Dēnag, the sister of Ardašīr I.22 The legend reads: dynky ZY MLKT’n mḥysty PWN tny š’pstn (dēnag ī bāmbišnān bāmbišn mahist pad tan šabestān: “Dēnag, Queen of Queens, the first in the inner sanctum (of the shah)”). The last part of the title may refer to the fact that the First Lady of the court was also in charge of the eunuchs and the (female) staff. According to the Babylonian Talmud (and the commentaries), the mother of Šābuhr II, Ifra Hormizd, had already acted as a kind of regent for her underage son.23 An exceptionally finely crafted seal of sardonyx, on which the elaborate portrait of a queen with many signs of her dignity can be seen, calls this prominent woman “Yazdān-​Friy-​Šābuhr, “the most beloved (wife)” of Šābuhr III (383–​388).24 If we can trust Ṭabarī or his sources, then Pērōzduxt, the daughter of Pērōz, along with other women, fell into enemy (Hephthalite) hands, similar to the case of Narseh. She was only released after the Sassanid general Sūxrā had started ransom negotiations with the Chaqan (Ṭabarī 2, 879, 16ff.). More successful than Pērōz was, according to the same author, Xusrō II, who took his wives and children to a place secure from his rival Wahrām Čōbīn (Ṭabarī 2, 994, 16). The fact that female members of the royal family possessed their own functional, not merely decorative seals, is proof of their authority at least in personal affairs. High-​ranking women, but also musicians and dancers (the latter probably in banquet contexts), are also depicted on silver vessels of that time, items which replaced the reliefs (and inscriptions) as a medium of (royal) self-​portrayal.25

The women of the Late Sassanian Period As already mentioned, at the very end of the history of the Sassanid dynasty, two female members of the royal family, two daughters of Xusrō II Parwēz, the half-​sisters Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt, were able to ascend the throne of Ērānsahr. A number of issues render analysis of their careers difficult: problems associated with the accession of the two women to the throne; the question of the extent of their political authority; the problematic source situation; and the associated difficult reconstruction of the events that led to the rise and fall of the two protagonists. Panaino’s discussion of this web of problems is fundamental.26 250

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There is much to suggest that after the death of Kawād II Šīrōy (628), the assassination of Ardašīr III (628–​629), the son of Kawād who was fostered by the xwān-​sālār (“Master of the Royal Table”) Māh-​Ādur-​Gušnasp, and the fall and assassination of the non-​Sassanian murderer and usurper Farroxān Šahrwarāz (629) after only 40 days of reign, Bōrān was placed on the throne by high officers and noblemen. She was the eldest daughter of Xusrō II and full sister (and wife?) of Šīrōy; both had been born of the alleged daughter of the Emperor Maurice, Maria.27 Bōrān became ruler contrary to tradition, but remained on the throne for at least a year and four months (629–​631).28 On a gold coin of the ruler the legends Bōrān xwarrah abzūd (“Bōrān has increased the glory”) on the obverse and, according to P. Huyse, on the reverse gēhān az xwarrah nēw kardar (“(Bōrān), who has made the world good through glory”) can be found. The crown of the queen on the coins also shows striking peculiarities.29 If we are to believe some of our sources, this energetic queen made an effort to secure peace, both internally and externally. The reason for her death (murder or natural end) remains unclear.30 After an interregnum of one month, Bōrān’s half-​sister Āzarmīgduxt,31 a daughter of Xusrō II and the Christian Šīrīn,32 came to the throne. In a part of the Arabic tradition, she is said to have possessed special beauty and intelligence. After a short time (six months), she was arrested, blinded, and killed by Rustam, the son of the spāhbed of Xorāsān, Farrox-​Ohrmezd. Allegedly, the queen had not only rejected Farrox-​Ohrmezd’s marriage request, but even had the applicant killed. This act certainly reflects Āzarmīgduxt’s efforts to preserve her political independence from the interests of a powerful member of the upper class; at the same time, however, like the accession of the sisters themselves to the throne and the murder of the usurper Šahrwarāz, it is proof of the fact that membership of the Sassanid house or marriage to a Sassanid princess remained a basic prerequisite for accession to the throne or for political influence by non-​Sassanians.33 This queen’s coins show that she, like her sister and in contrast to Kawād II, intended to succeed her father Xusrō. Āzarmīgduxt’s refusal to marry has been seen, like the fact of Bōrān’s widowhood, as an indication that both women acted as legally independent persons (or only under more formal guardianship) and wanted to preserve their special position as descendants of Xusrō II in family disputes and vis-​à-​vis the nobility and military.34 The emphasis on xwarrah in the coin legends may be interpreted as a further indication of this effort.The situation of these queens has been described as “fruit of a compromise between a compelling need and tradition.”35 “Need” may be defined as the lack of Sassanid princes, not least because of the usual physical elimination of competitors, as it had been practiced e.g. by Šīrōy, as well as the defense against usurpers of non-​Sassanian origin. The secondary tradition knows further political marriages, through which foreign women came to the late Sassanid court. For example, Wahrām V Gōr (420–​438) is said to have married an Indian princess (Ṭabarī 2, 868, 9f.), Kawād I Nēwānduxt, a daughter of the Chaqan of the Hephthalites, who then became the mother of his famous son Xusrō (Ṭabarī 2, 884, 1f.). The latter himself married a daughter of the Turk Chaqan, who gave birth to the heir to the throne Hormezd (IV).36

Conclusion: the position and scope of action of women of the Sassanid royal house Although our small and often problematic source material allows only outlines to be made of the social, legal, economic, and political role of women in the Sassanid royal house, it leaves no doubt that these women were decidedly living and acting “in public” and by no means in secrecy (not secluded behind “harem walls”). Similar to the case of the women of the Arsakid house, we can only rarely make statements about the personality of women of the Sassanid 251

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dynasty, but we do know more about female members of the family who, partly in a royally induced hierarchical order, are located at court and in the vicinity of the ruler as queen mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters. Especially from the late period we also know about women who had not grown up at court but had arrived there as part of a marriage alliance. Polygamy and blood marriage are well attested, but we should beware of prematurely accepting the xwēdōdah-​ marriage as the rule. A female member of the court, in many cases probably the mother of the heir to the throne, seems to have been elevated from the group of women of the court as “Queen of Queens” (bāmbišnān bāmbišn); this resembles earlier Achaimenid (521–​330 BC) practice. As ŠKZ proves, however, daughters of the ruler could also be awarded this title.Title hierarchies were thus ultimately linked to social rank, not family status. We know a “Queen of the Empire” (šahr bāmbišn), if our assumption concerning Xwar(r)ānzēm is correct, only from the time of Ardašīr. The title “Queen” (bāmbišn) was given to sisters and daughters of the ruler, but also to some of the wives of regional kings. The title “Princess” (duxš) may have been given to very young, still unmarried women. In addition, there is the title “Lady” (bānūg), which was also given to wives of rulers and regional kings. The sources also award special rank and special dignity to persons who appear as “Mother” (mād) of a šāhān šāh or “Daughter” (duxt[ar]) of a ruler or regional king. Rank and honor for royal women can also be seen in the royal foundation of fire temples or the endowment of sacrifices for the salvation of the souls of living and deceased members of the dynasty. As far as the political influence of women is concerned, our testimonies are much more meaningful than those for the Parthian Empire. The Manichaean tradition for the early period holds that a wife, here the Queen of the Sacae, was able to give an audience together with the king, and the reliefs of the early period also locate the wife of the ruler near the king. The regency of Dēnag, in the fourth century, and the reigns of the half-​sisters Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt, testify to political influence beyond the unofficial or informal female influence of a woman on a son or husband. Like Parysatis in Achaemenid times, the women of the Sassanid house, for example, will have tried, not de iure but in practice, to achieve political and/​or social advantages for their eligible (for kingship) sons, for their marriageable sons and daughters due for marriage, or for their spouses. Even if the rule of Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt came about because of the absence of serious male candidates for the throne among the members of the Sassanid clan, female succession to the throne was not excluded on principle; indeed, parts of the elite of the empire in that period regarded it as politically correct and even opportune. The secondary tradition also describes these two women as politically active and treats their actions positively. A number of other aspects of the role of Sassanid women are clear. That the Sassanid court, similar to the Achaemenid one, was an “itinerant court” can be seen from the fate of the family members of Narseh and Pērōz, who fell into the hands of Galerius and the Hephthalite chaqan, respectively, and were used as political leverage. Political marriages were common among the Sassanids, and especially in the late period; as the marriages of Kawād and Xusrō as well as the queens Maria and Šīrīn prove, they can also be recognized as evidence of politically useful considerations in foreign or domestic affairs. We are hardly informed about female everyday life at court, but here, too, Dēnag and the two female rulers are indirect proof that the princesses must have enjoyed excellent education and must have been made familiar with political practice, which enabled them to make decisions of the greatest significance themselves. The prominent position of women at court is also evident in their images on coins, seals, and reliefs, where their crowns (Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt) and/​or other headgear (crown cap with diadem, animal head cap) as well as necklaces, earrings, and elaborate costumes37 identify them as persons of dignity and rank. 252

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Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that a ruler of modern times who was addicted to legitimation tried to use the Sassanid queens and women at court (alongside mythical female figures) to provide historical support for his efforts to “emancipate” women. These skewed references, however, may have persuaded his Islamist opponents to discredit such emancipatory endeavors by referring to the gender relations of the early days of the Islamic community, which likewise can only be historically transferred to the present time to a very limited degree.38

Notes 1 I would cordially like to thank R.  Schulz (Bielefeld) and U.  Weber (Paderborn) for their help in obtaining literature. 2 For women in Pre-​Islamic Persia, see Brosius 2000/​2010. 3 Huber and Hartmann 2006: 509. 4 Azarnouche 2013. 5 Macuch 2009. 6 Shaki 1999/​2012; Macuch 1981; 1993; 2007. 7 Shaki 1999/​2012: 184. 8 Huyse 1999. 9 For the women of the royal family mentioned in ŠKZ, see the excellent prosopographic articles by Weber in her “Prosopographie des frühen Sasanidenreiches” (www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​). 10 Macuch 2010. 11 Weber 2018a. 12 Weber 2018b: 4. 13 Daryaee 2018. 14 Huyse 1999: 2, 116. 15 Gardner 2015: 178. 16 See, for all these women, Weber 2018e. If not stated otherwise, I follow her interpretations. 17 Weber 2018b: 44–​66, with citations for the older literature. 18 Weber 2012; 2016. 19 For Qandīdā, see Weber 2018c. 20 For the sources and their interpretation, see Weber 2012; 2016. 21 Weber 2018d: 9; for the identification of the royal protagonists in this text (Narseh rather than Wahrām I), see Gardner 2015: 177–​9. 22 Borisov and Lukonin 1963, no.  979; Overlaat et  al. 1993:  280 cat. 147; see most recently Ritter 2017: 287. 23 Neusner 1969: 35–​9. 24 Gyselen 2006: 207, cat. 156; cf. Gignoux and Gyselen 1989: 882–​3. 25 Harper 1971; Harper 1974; Harper and Meyers 1981; Kouhpar 2006. 26 Panaino 2006. 27 For Maria, see Jones, Martindale, and Morris 1992. 28 For Bōrān, see Daryaee 2008: 35–​6; Daryaee 2014; Emrani 2009. 29 Panaino 2006: 230; Huyse 2006: 188. For the coins of Bōrān, see Malek and Curtis 1998; Daryaee 1999. 30 Panaino 2006: 231–​6. 31 For Āzarmīgduxt and her coins, see Panaino 2006; Daryaee 2014; Akbarzadeh and Schindel 2017: s.v. “Āzarmīgduxt.” 32 For Šīrīn, see Baum 2003. 33 Panaino 2006: 236–​7. 34 Daryaee 2014 would like to see the fight between Āzarmīgduxt and Rustam ī Farroxzādān as part of Arsakid–​Sassanian conflicts. 35 Panaino 2006: 239. 36 Shahbazi 2004/​2012. 37 Goldman 1997. 38 For women and politics in contemporary Iran, see Sedghi 2007; Ansari 2019, s.v. “women’s emancipation.”

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). ŠKZ

trilingual inscription of Šābuhr I at the Ka‛ba-i Zardušt in Naqš-iRustam, near Persepolis (Res Gestae Divi Saporis)

Bibliography Akbarzadeh, D. and Schindel, N. 2017. A Late Sasanian Hoard from Orumiyeh. Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum. Iran and Vienna. Ansari, A.M. 2019. Modern Iran since 1797: Reform and Revolution, 3rd ed. London. Azarnouche, S. 2013. Husraw ī Kawādān ud rēdag-​ē. Khosrow fils de Kawād et un page: Texte Pehlevi édité et traduit, Cahiers de Studia Iranica 49. Leuven. Baum, W. 2003. Shirin. Christian –​Queen –​Myth of Love. A Woman of Late Antiquity: Historical Reality and Literary Effect. Piscataway, NJ. Borisov, A. and Lukonin,V.G. 1963. Sasanidskie Gemmy. Leningrad. Brosius, M. 2000/​2010. “Women, i:  In Pre-​Islamic Persia.” Encyclopaedia Iranica [online edition]. www. iranicaonline.org/​articles/​women-​i (accessed June 12, 2020). Daryaee,T. 1999. “The Coinage of Queen Bōrān and Its Significance for Late Sāsānian Imperial Ideology.” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 13: 77–​82. Daryaee, T. 2008. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. International Library of Iranian Studies 8. London. Daryaee, T. 2014. “The Last Ruling Woman of Ērānšahr: Queen Āzarmīgduxt.” International Journal of the Society of Iranian Archaeologists 1: 77–​81. Daryaee, T. 2018. “Queen Dēnag at the Royal Investiture.” www.thehollyfest.org/​index.php/​touraj-​ daryaee (accessed June 12, 2020). Emrani, H. 2009. “Like Father, like Daughter:  Late Sasanian Imperial Ideology & the Rise of Bōrān to Power.”  e-​Sasanika  5:  1–​16.  https://​sites.uci.edu/​sasanika/​files/​2020/​01/​e-​sasanika5-​Emrani.pdf. (accessed October 9, 2019). Gardner, I. 2015. “Mani’s Last Days.” In I. Gardner, J. BeDuhn, and P. Dilley (eds.), Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 87. Leiden, 159–​208. Gignoux, P. and Gyselen, R. 1989. “Sceaux de femmes à l’époque sassanide.” In L. De Mayer and E. Haerinck, E. (eds.), Archaeologia Iranica et Orientalis. Miscellanea in honorem L. Vanden Berghe, vol. 2. Gent, 877–​96. Goldman, B. 1997. “Women’s Robing in the Sasanian Era.” Iranica Antiqua 32: 233–​300. Gyselen, R. 2006. “L’art sigillaire: camées, sceaux et bulles.” In Les Perses sassanides. Fastes d’un empire oublié (224–​642). Exposition Musée Cernuschi, Musée des Arts de l’Asie de la Ville de Paris, 15 septembre  –​30 décembre 2006. Paris, 199–​213. Harper, P.O. 1971. “Sources of Certain Female Representations in Sasanian Art.” Atti del convegno internazionale sul tema: La Persia nel Medioevo. Problemi attuali di scienza et di cultura: quadurno. Rome, 503–​15. Harper, P.O. 1974. “Sasanian Medallion Bowls with Human Busts.” In D.K. Kouymijan (ed.), Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles. Beirut, 61–​80. Harper, P.O. and Meyers, P. 1981. Silver Vessels of the Sasanian Period, vol. I: Royal Imagery. New York. Huber, I. 2004. Review of Baum 2003, H/​Soz/​Kult, June 14. www.hsozkult.de/​publicationreview/​id/​ reb-​5543 (accessed June 12, 2020). Huber, I. and Hartmann, U. 2006. “‘Denn ihrem Diktat vermochte der König nicht zu widersprechen …’ Die Position der Frauen am Hof der Arsakiden.” In A. Panaino and A. Piras (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europæa held in Ravenna, 6–​11 October 2003, vol. I: Ancient & Middle Iranian Studies. Milan, 485–​517. Hutter, M. 1998. “Shirin, Nestorianer und Monophysiten. Königliche Kirchenpolitik im späten Sassanidenreich.” In R. Lavenant (ed.), Symposion Syriacum VII. Rome, 373–​86. Huyse, P. 1999. Die dreisprachige Inschrift Šābuhrs I. an der Ka‛ba-​i Zardust (ŠKZ), 2 vols. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, Pt. III. London.

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Women of the Sassanid dynasty Huyse, P. 2006. “Die sasanidische Königstitulatur: Eine Gegenüberstellung der Quellen.” In J. Wiesehöfer and P. Huyse (eds.), Ērān ud Anērān. Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen dem Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt. Oriens et Occidens 13. Stuttgart, 181–​201. Jones, A.H.M., Martindale, J.R., and Morris, J. 1992. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. III.1. Cambridge. Kouhpar, S.M.M. 2006. “An Overview of the Depiction of Female Figures on Sasanian Silverwork.” The International Journal of Humanities 13: 83–​94. Macuch, M. 1981. Das sasanidische Rechtsbuch Mātakdān i hazār Dātistān, Teil II. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 55, 1. Wiesbaden. Macuch, M. 1993. Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis zu Beginn des siebenten Jahrhunderts in Iran:  Die Rechtssammlung des Farroḫmard i Wahrāmān. Iranica 1. Wiesbaden. Macuch, M. 2007. “The Pahlavi Marriage Contract in the Light of Sasanian Family Law.” In M. Macuch, M. Maggi, and W. Sundermann (eds.), Iranian Languages and Texts from Iran and Turan: Ronald E. Emmerick Memorial Volume. Iranica 13. Wiesbaden, 183–​204. Macuch, M. 2009. “Gelehrte Frauen: ein ungewöhnliches Motiv in der Pahlavi-​Literatur.” In D. Durkin-​ Meisterernst, C. Reck, and D. Weber (eds.), Literarische Stoffe und ihre Gestaltung in mitteliranischer Zeit. Colloquium anlässlich des 70. Geburtstags von Werner Sundermann. Beiträge zur Iranistik 31. Wiesbaden, 135–​51. Macuch, M. 2010. “Incestuous Marriage in the Context of Sasanian Family Law.” In M. Macuch, D.Weber, and D. Durkin-​Meisterernst (eds.), Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies. Proceedings of the 6th European Conference of Iranian Studies, held in Vienna, 18–​22 September 2007. Wiesbaden, 133–​48. Malek, H.M. and Curtis, V.S. 1998. “History and Coinage of the Sasanian Queen Bōrān (AD 629–​631).” The Numismatic Chronicle 158: 113–​29. Neusner, J. 1969. A History of the Jews in Babylonia IV: The Age of Shapur II. Studia Post-​Biblica 14. Leiden. Overlaet, B. et al. 1993. “Catalogus.” In B. Overlaet (ed.), Hofkunst van de Sassanieden: Het Perzische Rijk tussen Rome en China (224–​642). Brussels, 143–​300. Panaino, A. 2006. “Women and Kingship:  Some Remarks about the Enthronisation of Queen Bōrān and Her Sister Āzarmīgduxt.” In J. Wiesehöfer and P. Huyse (eds.), Ērān ud Anērān. Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen dem Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt. Oriens et Occidens 13. Stuttgart, 221–​40. Pahlavi, F. 2004. An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah: A Memoir. New York. Pahlavi, M.R. 1967. The White Revolution in Iran. Teheran. Ritter, N.C. 2017. “Gemstones in Pre-​Islamic Persia: Social and Symbolic Meanings of Sasanian Seals.” In A. Hilgner, S. Greiff, and D. Quast (eds.), Gemstones in the First Millennium A.D.: Mines,Trade,Workshops and Symbolism. International Conference, October 20th–​22nd, 2015, Römisch-​Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz. RGZM–​Tagungen 30. Mainz, 277–​92. Sedghi, H. 2007. Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling. Cambridge. Shahbazi, A.S. 2004/​2012.“Hormozd IV.” Encyclopaedia Iranica XII, 466–​7, revised ed. 2012; [online edition] www.iranicaonline.org/​articles/​hormozd-​iv (accessed June 12, 2020). Shaki, M. 1999/​2012. “Family Law I.” Encyclopaedia Iranica IX, New York, 184–​9, revised ed. 2012; [online edition] www.iranicaonline.org/​articles/​family-​law (accessed June 12, 2020). Weber, U. 2012. “Narseh, König der Könige von Ērān und Anērān.” Iranica Antiqua 47: 153–​302. Weber, U. 2016. “Narseh.” In Encyclopedia Iranica [online edition]. www.iranicaonline.org/​articles/​narseh-​ sasanian-​king (accessed June 30, 2020). Weber, U. 2018a. “Ādur-​Anāhīd.” www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​web/​viewer.php?file=Adur_​ Anahid.pdf (accessed June 12, 2020). Weber, U. 2018b.“Wahrām II.” www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​web/​viewer.php?file=Wahram_​ II.pdf (accessed June 12, 2020). Weber, U. 2018c. “Qandīdā.” www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​web/​viewer.php?file=Qandida_​ Frau_​Wahrams_​II.pdf (accessed June 12, 2020). Weber, U. 2018d. “Wahrām I.” www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​web/​viewer.php?file=Wahram_​ I.pdf (accessed June 12, 2020). Weber, U. 2018e. Prosopographie des frühen Sasanidenreiches. www.dr-​ursula-​weber.de/​Prosopographie/​ (accessed June 12, 2020).

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22 ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA Lucinda Dirven

Introduction Zenobia, who ruled (268–​272 CE) from Palmyra in the Syrian desert over the greater part of the eastern Roman provinces, in the name of her minor son Wahballath, is one of the most illustrious “queens” of the ancient world, equal to legendary predecessors like Kleopatra VII, Dido, and Semiramis.1 Zenobia’s fame is largely due to her biography in what is by far the most elaborate source on her life and reign, the Historia Augusta (henceforth abbreviated SHA), a compilation of the lives of the Roman emperors from the second and third centuries CE. Her biography is one of the last and most substantial biographies in the so-​called “Lives of the Thirty Pretenders,” a book that discusses 32 unsuccessful usurpers between the reigns of the emperors Gallienus (253–​268) and Aurelian (270–​275). Here, the queen is described as a young and exotic, stunningly beautiful widow, with a range of extraordinary, masculine qualities that made her a righteous ruler and strong military leader who claimed the imperial purple for her son. Eventually, she was defeated by Aurelian, an emperor who happened to be even more powerful than she was.2 Since the early Renaissance, this highly favorable description of Zenobia’s life has served as inspiration for novelists, composers, and painters and it was, until quite recently, the starting point of most historical research.3 The SHA is, however, highly problematical as a historical source and ill-​ suited to reconstructing  and explaining the rise to power of this intriguing queen. Not only was it written more than a century after the events, but it is full of anachronisms, false documents (speeches, poems, letters), doubtful anecdotes, and non-​existent sources.4 This holds true especially for the second part of the SHA, in which Zenobia’s biography is situated. Much of what we read here about the personality of the queen is contradicted elsewhere in the SHA, especially in the Life of Aurelian.5 It is an established fact that this inconsistent picture is the result of the political agenda of its author, who aims to downgrade Gallienus and magnify Aurelian. Gallienus is scorned because he was unable to keep the Roman Empire together and even had to tolerate women rulers. Aurelian is praised because he unified the empire again. In order to acclaim this victory, the defeated queen had to be exceptional.6 The result is an atypical, positive portrait of a belligerent queen. It is well-​nigh impossible to check the account of Zenobia through other literary sources. They are all dated later than SHA, are frequently short, and contradict both the information from the SHA as well as each other.7 256

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There is a lot about Zenobia in the SHA that we cannot possibly know for certain. Such issues will not be discussed here. A small part of the historical narrative may, however, be verified and complemented by primary sources and this picture can in turn be supplemented with more general historical information on the period. It is along these lines that we hope to find an answer to the question of why a young woman from a city on the edge of the Roman world challenged mighty Rome—​or why Rome challenged her. In a search for an answer we shall first focus on the train of events and subsequently proceed with the historical context and the social position of women in the oasis. But first, a few additional comments on the complementary sources are in order. A small number of inscriptions from Palmyra and its immediate surroundings as well as papyri from Egypt mention Zenobia and her direct kin.8 Like many Palmyrenes, Zenobia had a Greek as well as an Aramaic name; Septimia Zenobia in Greek, and Bathzabbai daughter of Antiochus in Aramaic. Coins from Antiocheia and Alexandria struck during her reign provide additional information on her titulature and that of her son.They are the only representations of Zenobia known to date, but instead of being real portraits they are modeled on portraits of other imperial and royal women. Most common is the portrait type modeled on Salonina, Gallienus’ wife.9 Combined with the literary sources, these primary sources enable a reconstruction of the events in the years 268–​272 and throw light upon Zenobia’s political aspirations. Additional information on Zenobia and her possible motives is provided by the rich archaeological record from Palmyra or Tadmor, as it is called in Aramaic sources. Remains from this city are primarily dated to the first three centuries of the Common Era, when the city thrived as a result of the caravan trade between the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian empire in the east.10 Because of its intermediate position and role, a very distinctive culture developed in the oasis, one that cannot easily be pinned down to one of the two superpowers, and is therefore best described as distinctively Palmyrene. A rich source of information on its economic, political, social, and cultural history are the great number of inscriptions that have been recovered in the oasis. Typical for its cultural position between East and west are the bilingual texts in Greek and Palmyrene, a local dialect of Aramaic, that are characteristic of Palmyra’s public domain. Equally well known are Palmyra’s funerary monuments and the religious buildings with their architectural decoration and sculptured monuments. Domestic architecture has received less attention, but is certainly not unknown and provides interesting information on the cultural preferences of Palmyra’s elite. Equally fundamental for a proper understanding of Zenobia’s ascent is the social organization in the oasis and the position of women in its society. All in all, we have a multifaceted picture of third-​century Palmyra, one that enables us to understand Zenobia in her cultural and social context.11 Particularly interesting is the way the Palmyrene elite related to the elites in other Syrian cities, Rome and the Parthian and Sassanian east.12 Last but not least, information on the historical situation in the third century has to be taken into account. This is not an easy matter, since the period between the reign of Severus Alexander (d. 235) and Diocletian (285–​305) is one of the most obscure periods of Roman history.13 This time was characterized by great instability in which the Roman Empire witnessed a series of civil wars, frontier breaches, and imperial usurpations. In the lapse of central Roman authority, local dynasts exercised governance in the frontier regions of the Roman Empire. Among these were Zenobia and her husband Odainath.

The events: a summary Now all shame is exhausted, for in the weakened state of the commonwealth things came to such a pass that, while Gallienus conducted himself in the most evil fashion, 257

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even women ruled most excellently. 2 For, in fact, even a foreigner (peregrina), Zenobia by name, about whom much has already been said, boasting herself to be of the family of the Cleopatras and the Ptolemies, proceeded upon the death of her husband Odainathus to cast about her shoulders the imperial mantle; and arrayed in the robes of Dido and even assuming the diadem, she held the imperial power in the name of her sons Herennianus and Timolaus, ruling longer than could be endured from one of the female sex. 3 For this proud woman performed the functions of a monarch both while Gallienus was ruling and afterwards when Claudius was busied with the war against the Goths, and in the end could scarcely be conquered by Aurelian himself, under whom she was led in triumph and submitted to the sway of Rome. (SHA TT 30, 1–​3)14 Thus begins Zenobia’s biography in the SHA. Whereas what follows is largely fictitious, these lines—​that indeed mostly repeat what has been said about Zenobia earlier in the SHA15—​may be confirmed, supplemented, and corrected by the primary sources, and thus enable a fairly accurate reconstruction of the events that took place during the years 268–​272.16 Somewhere between late 267 and early 268, Zenobia’s husband Odainath, who must have been at least twice her age, was murdered, together with his eldest son Herodian or Hairan, born from Odainath’s first marriage.17 Both in the SHA and in later literary sources we find different and contradictory information on the motives and perpetrator of this double murder, and it is unlikely that this mystery will ever be solved. Since he was killed with his eldest son Herodian/​ Hairan, it may well be that dynastic issues triggered the killing. Following the murder, Zenobia continued Odainath’s young dynasty and claimed her husband’s power and titles for their minor son. As his mother, she ruled on his behalf. It is clear from contemporary primary sources that this boy was called Wahballath (Vahballathus in Latin)18 and that Herennianus and Timolaus are a figment of the imagination of the author of the SHA.19 We have no additional information on the first two years of Zenobia’s reign; she probably ruled over the same region as her husband. But late in the reign of Claudius, in the summer of 270, the Palmyrene army first invaded Arabia and subsequently occupied Egypt, regions that had never been part of Odainath’s territory.20 Notwithstanding her aggressive and expansionist politics (the Palmyrenes slaughtered a Roman commander), Zenobia did not claim imperial power on the coins she issued in name of her son. Coins minted in Antiocheia and Alexandria from November 270 to March 272 picture Aurelian on the obverse and Wahballath on the reverse. Unlike Aurelian,Wahballath does not have the imperial titles Augustus or Caesar and the young and clean-​shaven king (basileus) is not represented wearing the radiate crown, traditionally associated with the senior emperor.21 Several milestones found spread over the region honor Wahballath as vir consularis, rex, imperator, and dux Romanorum, a range of titles that apart from imperator, he inherited from his deceased father.22 In August 271, Zabdas and Zabbai, two of Zenobia’s generals, honored both the deceased Odainath and his widow Zenobia with a statue in the great colonnade, the main street of the city.23 As with most honorary statues from Palmyra, these statues have been lost, but the accompanying inscriptions remain. In the bilingual Greek–​Aramaic inscription Zenobia is called “most illustrious pious queen” (basilissa or mlkt’) instead of Augusta. But even though Zenobia framed her dynasty as subordinate to the Roman imperial court, Rome did not accept her claim to rule its Eastern provinces. Initially, Rome had been too weak and busy to react. This changed when Aurelian, who took the purple in the summer of 270, had managed to pacify Italy. In the winter of 271/​272, his army moved East in order to defeat the Palmyrenes and reclaim their part of the Roman empire. It was probably in early 258

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272, in response to the threatening invasion of Aurelian, that Zenobia claimed the imperial title for herself and Wahballath.24 On coins minted at Antiocheia and Alexandria that probably circulated between February and June of 272, Zenobia bore the title Augusta in Latin and Sebaste in Greek.25 Coins from Alexandria are misleadingly dated to her regnal year 5, thereby suggesting she held the imperial throne from the beginning of her rule. Actually, her imperial career started in the spring of 272 and was very short-​lived. Aurelian defeated the Palmyrenes in a battle near Antiocheia and Emesa in the summer of 272, after which he conquered Palmyra and took Zenobia captive.The sources are in discord about Zenobia’s final fate. She may or may not have lived.26 Again, it is best to admit ignorance.

Zenobia in context We may conclude from the primary sources that the sequence of events as described in the SHA is correct, but that there are some major flaws in the way these events are presented. First and foremost, the SHA presents Zenobia’s rise to power as a usurpation, whereas the primary sources indicate that she only claimed the imperial title for herself and her son when attacked by Aurelian. Zenobia’s submissive policy is, however, difficult to reconcile with the Palmyrene invasion of the Roman provinces of Arabia and Egypt in the summer of 270. As a consequence, there has been, and still is, a lot of discussion about the objectives of Zenobia’s actions in Egypt. Opinions about her intent vary from an Eastern, separatist movement, usurpation of Roman imperial power, or—​more precisely—​an abortive claim to empire,27 to an independent dynasty that was still loyal to Rome, a so-​called “Teilreich.”28 In order to choose between these options, it is imperative to know more about Zenobia’s cultural and historical context, Palmyra and its relationship with Rome. The SHA describes Zenobia as regina orientis (“queen of the East”) or peregrina (“foreigner”) and Palmyra as an Eastern, foreign power that revolted with other barbarian powers against Rome.29 Similar descriptions can be found in Zosimos and other Byzantine writers and consequently this outlook has long determined modern interpretations of the conflict as an “Oriental” rebellion against Roman rule. There can be no doubt that both qualifications are largely the result of an East versus West antagonism that dominated most of the fourth century CE, during which the SHA was written.30 In fact, we can be certain that Zenobia, who bore the gentilic Septimia, was a Roman citizen, as were other local members of the elite both in Palmyra and the remainder of Roman Syria, and that Palmyra was a Roman colony.31 But it is not at all clear-​cut how we should understand this Romanness in Palmyra. Not only was Palmyrene culture fairly ambiguous, we also have to reckon with the possibility that it varied according to the social group and circumstances in which it manifested itself and developed over the course of time. Since the first century CE, Palmyra had been part of the Roman Empire. The city owed its riches to its organizing role in the caravan trade between the Roman Empire and its eastern, Parthian neighbors. Palmyra’s contacts with the East are clear from a number of cultural influences such as clothing, sculptural styles, and titulature that in Palmyra are interpreted in a unique, local way and that develop into an independent and distinctive material culture.32 In addition to these “Oriental” influences, however, we may note strong Hellenistic and Roman influences, especially among members of the Palmyrene elite who felt at home in a Graeco-​ Roman culture that was shared by other members of elites in cities in Roman Syria.33 Again, these Graeco-​Roman elements changed in a Palmyrene context. Politically, these elites were strongly connected to Rome, a relationship that intensified over the course of the third century. A major change for Palmyrene society occurred when the city was granted the status 259

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of colonia with ius italicum by Caracalla in 212.34 As a result, the frame of reference of Palmyra’s elite changed; in addition to their position within Palmyrene society and their role in the long distance trade, loyalty to Roman imperial rule, engagement in Roman imperial service, and participation in imperial aristocracy became crucial to their identity and self-​perception.35 The Roman connection partly replaced the caravan trade in the civic career of Palmyrene aristocrats, not least because this trade diminished in importance due to the war between Gordian III and the Sassanian king Shapur I. The aggressive foreign policy of this new Persian dynasty not only hampered the caravan trade to which Palmyra owed its wealth, it also constituted a permanent threat to Syria’s eastern borders. It is in the context of this precarious situation that we have to understand the rise to power of Zenobia’s husband Odainath, whose career is firmly rooted in the Roman domain. In the SHA and other classical accounts, Zenobia receives far more attention than her husband. Udo Hartmann has rightly pointed out that Zenobia’s rise to power can only be understood in the light of Odainath’s military accomplishments and his affiliation with Rome.36 Odainath’s career can be reconstructed by means of references in the classical sources as well as Palmyrene inscriptions that mention him, information that needs to be interpreted in the light of the crisis of the middle of the third century.37 Odainath was one of the new local dynasts exercising governance in the frontier regions of the Roman Empire in the lapse of central Roman authority. But unlike many of his contemporaries, Odainath remained loyal to Rome, a loyalty for which he was handsomely rewarded. To the east, the Sassanian Empire loomed large and it is in the battle against this new superpower that Odainath and Palmyra rose to power. By 251 he was a Roman senator with the status of “most illustrious.” He was also identified as Palmyra’s exarch (in Greek) or “Head of Tadmor” (in Palmyrene) and as such he had unprecedented authority over Palmyra.38 No doubt Rome sanctioned Odainath’s status, but “Head of Tadmor” was not an official Roman title. By 258, in reaction to Persian invasions, the imperial court promoted him to consular rank.39 But his real rise to power happened in 260, after Shapur I had conquered and captured the emperor Valerian. In the chaos that followed, Odainath secured Syria for his emperor and was subsequently made its effective governor, “mtqnn’ (corrector) of all the East.”40 As such, Odainath and the Palmyrenes kept fighting the Persians and it was after one of his victories that he claimed for himself the title “King of Kings,” a title normally born by Parthian and Sassanian kings. The title is only attested posthumously for Odainath, but since it was employed by his son Herodian/​Hairan, we may assume it was Odainath’s as well. The titles “King of Kings” and “Restorer of the East” that Odainath bore in the 260s raise vexing issues. Historians strongly disagree about the exact meaning of these titles and who granted them.41 Be that as it may, most historians today argue that Odainath remained faithful to the Roman court and was a Roman official, a temporary representative of the Roman emperor.42 It may very well be that this is how Rome intended the relationship, but it is by no means certain whether Odainath interpreted his jurisdiction correctly. In fact, in many respects he behaved like a dynast, a viceroy in Roman territory. For the Romans, this must have been a contradiction in terms and it may well be at the root of the conflict between Palmyra and Rome.43 The status conferred by the holding of an office might be passed on, but not the office itself.44 Even if the titles themselves did not overrule Roman authority, the fact that they were inheritable may have been enough to suggest the contrary. In Palmyra, on the other hand, such dynastic behavior was deeply rooted in the oasis’ social organization and the traditional behavior of aristocratic families.45 This is clear from the fact that Herodian/​Hairan, Odainath’s eldest son, held the same titles as his father from at least 251 onwards.46 Not only did he share the title exarch of Palmyra, but he also carried his father’s Roman titles and offices and even the title “King of Kings.”47 Odainath’s dynasty and his son’s claim to the throne are also clear from 260

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a lead tessera that pictures Herodian/​Hairan wearing a tiara.48 Interestingly, this royal headdress resembles the tiara of the Parthian King of Kings and is distinct from that worn by the Sassanian King Shapur. This suggests the Palmyrene title “King of Kings” emulates the Parthian and not the Sassanian king. Seen in this light, the title “restorer of the Orient” expresses the ambition to restore the situation in the West, but also in the East.49 The fact that both Claudius II and Aurelian adopted the title “Parthicus Maximus” to celebrate their victory over the Palmyrenes may therefore mirror the restorative, Eastern ambitions of Odainath’s Palmyrene dynasty.50 Odainath also expressed his royal ambitions in a Roman way; from 262 onwards he conferred his gentilicium on people in his entourage, something only emperors used to do.51 Thus, this too was most unusual for a Roman magistrate and testifies to Odainath’s royal ambitions. After the lives of Odainath and his heir and successor Herodian/​Hairan were cut short, Zenobia took office for her minor son Wahballath, in order to continue the dynasty. In so doing, she clearly acted in accordance with her late husband’s dynastic ambitions. The Roman central authorities did not accept her dynastic claim and considered her attempt a rebellion or even a usurpation. A mother serving as guardian for her son was simply illegal according to Roman law.52 It may well be that Zenobia only wanted to maintain the status quo, but the fact that she used the royal title for her son and herself,53 and eventually invaded Roman territory,54 suggest she envisioned an independent, royal dominion within the Roman empire.55 To the Romans, this certainly was a constitutional monstrosity. The extension of this royal dominion at the cost of Roman territory will certainly have been interpreted by them as usurpation. From their point of view, it is indeed difficult to interpret it otherwise.56 At the heart of the whole conflict, therefore, lies a cultural miscommunication about dynastic legitimacy.

Zenobia and the women of Palmyra Zenobia was one of the few female rulers in classical antiquity who was effectively sole ruler.57 Nominally, her young son Wahballath was co-​ruler, which makes her sole power situational rather than absolute, but actually she governed alone. How are we to explain this extraordinary situation? What was it about Palmyra that enabled a woman to become that powerful? Our main sources for the position of women in Palmyra are inscriptions, information that may be supplemented with representations of women, primarily from the funerary realm. In order to interpret this evidence correctly, both inscriptions and iconographic material have to be interpreted in the context of other inscriptions and representations. Palmyra has yielded a great many inscriptions that provide a great deal of information on its social organization. Foremost is the study by Jean-​Baptiste Yon who uses the inscriptional material to reconstruct the social, economic, and cultural position of the most important Palmyrene families.58 In the first and second centuries, such families were parts of clans and tribes, but in the third century, Palmyrene society largely lost its tribal aspect and individual families became more important. Among these, the family of Odainath was paramount. Yon also establishes the position of women from the inscriptions. Through what they say, but mostly through what they do not say, the texts show that women in Palmyra were socially and economically inferior to men. Usually, names and genealogies were patrilineal. After their marriage, women became part of their husband’s family and were buried in the family tombs of their husband. Priestesses, rather common elsewhere in the Graeco-​Roman East, are not attested in Palmyra.59 Women are known primarily from funerary inscriptions, thus from a semi-​private environment. In addition to the names inscribed in loculi plates (plates on burial chambers or niches) that picture the deceased, women figure relatively often in so-​called “cession texts” that record 261

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the buying and selling of funerary property.60 Yon suggests many of the women who acted independently in such inscriptions were widows, or acted in the absence of their husband, with a witness.61 Of particular interest with respect to Zenobia’s role as regent for her son, are the legal terms mprnsny and mrbyk that testify to the ability of Palmyrene women to act as legal guardians or tutors of their children.62 In contrast, Palmyrene women are virtually absent from inscriptions from the public sphere.63 This is particularly telling in view of the richness of the Palmyrene epigraphic record. Inscriptions that testify to the erection of female statues by the senate or boule of the city, particularly numerous for males, are missing altogether.The five or six exceptions in which women do figure in a public context can be explained by their family setting. These are either statues of women that were set up by fathers, husbands, or brothers, or statues that were set up by daughters for their parents: they served to (re)affirm their family’s presence in public. In addition, we know of three inscriptions that testify to independent women contributing to the building of temples or other buildings. These unusual women were the sole remaining heirs of their family’s wealth.64 As the only representatives of aristocratic families, they were allowed a man’s role and to meet the demands of the city when there were no men available. The social status of Palmyrene women conveyed by inscriptions is confirmed by iconographic material from the oasis.65 Honorary statues of women are extremely rare, but many portraits of women are known from the semi-​private sphere, especially from graves. Loculi plates embellished with sculptured busts of the deceased have been found in very large numbers in Palmyrene burial towers and hypogea and date from the first three centuries of the Common Era. Whereas representations of men follow Graeco-​Roman fashion, the hairstyle, clothing, and jewelry of women are mostly local and borrowings from Graeco-​Roman fashion are rare.66 The spindle with which Palmyrene women are frequently represented, as well as the children who accompany them, all stress their roles as housewives and mothers and underline their important role in maintaining the family. In light of the social position of women in Palmyra, Zenobia’s prominent public role becomes even more unusual. But it is also clear that the exception proves the rule. Like the other widows mentioned in Palmyrene inscriptions, Zenobia was the last representative of a prominent family. She owed her position to her powerful husband and to the fact that there was no suitable man available (yet) to continue the family line. Her effort to secure this line, as the guardian of her young son, is in perfect accord with the patrilineal character of Palmyrene society and does not necessarily reflect the general position of Palmyrene women.67 The honorary statue that was set up for Zenobia by two of her generals at the summit of her power in 271 CE is one of a pair and is accompanied by an honorary statue for her deceased husband. Whereas the queen is simply called basilissa, her husband is “King of Kings” and “Restorer of the Orient.” Erected almost four years after Odainath died, this monument makes the origin of her authority quite clear. The second public inscription in which she is mentioned, a milestone with a bilingual inscription in Greek and Palmyrene, found several kilometers from Palmyra, is dedicated to her son “Septimius Wahballath Athenodorus, King of Kings, son of Septimius Odainath, King of Kings and to Septimia Zenobia, queen (basilissa/​mlkt’), mother of the King of Kings.”68 Again, the inscription presents the queen in the context of her family, now as the mother of the heir to the throne. Zenobia’s position is best understood in the light of a patriarchal society. Yon corroborates his theory by referencing two women rulers from tribal cultures, Queen Boudicca in Britannia in the first century CE and Queen Mawia in Mesopotamia in the fourth century CE, both widows of prominent tribal leaders.69 In similar vein, Andrade argues that Zenobia’s favorable position is possibly due to Arabian traditions, as can still be found in contemporary Bedouin society.70 It 262

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is, however, extremely unlikely that Zenobia’s role should be understood in the light of a tribal society; the tribal aspect was no longer paramount in Palmyra in the third century. The city and its elite now existed in the context of a cité grecque.71 In the Roman East, it was rather common for women to act as guardians (epitropoi) of their fatherless children.72 Furthermore, Riet van Bremen has pointed out that women holding important offices or liturgies in cities in Asia Minor were frequently the last heirs of prominent families or acted as guardians for underaged children.73 Hence the situation in the Roman East is not very different from that in Palmyra. Palmyra’s relationship with the Graeco-​Roman world brings us back to the introductory lines of Zenobia’s biography in the SHA quoted above (p. 258), in which it is stated she claimed descent from Kleopatra VII.74 In fact, the SHA frequently compares Zenobia to Kleopatra, and sometimes even calls her by this name.75 Scholarship usually rejects descent from Kleopatra and any possible connection to her or other Hellenistic queens as either a literary topos,76 or a product of the Orientalism of the fourth-​century author of the SHA (who presents Zenobia as an Eastern rebel queen, modeled upon Kleopatra).77 The author of the SHA probably interpreted Kleopatra VII along these lines. However, one should doubt the verdict of a fourth-​ century Roman male author: it is reasonable to suppose that in third-​century Roman Syria, the Egyptian queen was seen quite differently. Projecting the Roman assessment of Kleopatra onto Zenobia disconnects her from the Hellenistic world to which she definitely belonged and wrongly characterizes her as an Arab queen. Although we have no firm evidence from Roman Syria that Zenobia emulated Hellenistic queens,78 such a role model would have suited her political objectives very well. After all, women obtained unprecedented power in the Seleukid and Ptolemaic dynasties and not only acted as regents, but also as kingmakers, co-​rulers, and sole rulers.79 The conscious imitation of a Hellenistic queen also accords with the contemporary cultural and intellectual fashions at the Palmyrene court. Like Hellenistic queens and her near-​contemporaries Julia Domna and Julia Mamaea, Zenobia interested herself in the intellectual life of the age and she is reported to have gathered a distinguished group of literary figures around her. Best known among these was the legendary Greek philosopher Longinus, but she was also in contact with Bishop Paul of Samosata, Jewish rabbis, and Manichaean missionaries.80

Conclusion Zenobia challenged Rome by conferring the titles and authority of her deceased husband on their minor son Wahballath and governed as a queen in his place. Both actions were illegal in Roman eyes but were in perfect accord with Palmyrene traditions. As a woman ruler, she perpetuated Odainath’s dynasty and as such she lived up to the cultural and social expectations of her fellow citizens. It is questionable whether her actions were ever meant to be offensive. When Rome attacked, she had no choice but to claim the imperial purple. Her true story is captivating and lively, but a long way from the usurpation described by the ancient literary sources.

Notes * I thank Udo Hartmann for sharing his vast knowledge of Zenobia with me. Of course I am solely resposible for the views expressed herein. 1 The literature on Zenobia is vast. See Equini-​Schneider 1993; Kotula 1997; Bleckmann 2002; Sartre and Sartre 2014; Andrade 2018. More popular accounts are Stoneman 1992; Southern 2008;Winsbury 2010; Zahran 2010. 2 SHA Tyr.Trig. 30. Cf. Paschoud 2011: 37–​41 (text), 177–​96 (commentary).

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Lucinda Dirven 3 On the legendary Zenobia, see Sartre and Sartre 2014: 191–​258. 4 On literary techniques in the SHA generally, see Paschoud 1997; on Zenobia in the SHA: Paschoud  2011. 5 SHA Aurel. 25–​28. Zenobia is also mentioned in the biographies of five other Palmyrenes who claimed the imperial purple:  SHA Tyr.Trig. 15–​17, 27–​8. She is also briefly mentioned in the biography of Gallienus (SHA Gal. 1. 2–​3), Claudius (SHA Clod. 4.4 and 7.5) and Probus (SHA Prob. 9, 5). 6 Bleckmann 2002. 7 See Dodgeon and Lieu 1991:  79–​111 for literary sources on Zenobia and Odainath, the most important (and trustworthy) of which is Zosimus’ account of Aurelian’s campaigns against Zenobia (c. 500 CE). 8 A compilation of these sources can be found in Sartre and Sartre 2014:  265–​ 76 and Andrade 2018: 235–​43. 9 Equini Schneider 1993. Zenobia’s portraits on mints from Antiocheia and Alexandria differ, but the portraits of Salonina from both cities are different too. 10 For an introduction to the scholarship on Palmyra, see Gawlikowski 1985; Will 1992. 11 On the (material) cultural context: Dirven 2017. On the intellectual context: Andrade 2013. On the religious context: Kaizer 2002, and on the social context Yon 2002. 12 Andrade 2013. 13 Dodgeon and Lieu 1991 and Potter 2004 are fundamental. 14 Translation from Magie 1932. 15 For the parallels, see Paschoud 2011: 177–​8. 16 Hartmann 2001. 17 The dates of birth of all major players can only be ascertained approximately on the basis of inscriptions. Odainath’s oldest son Herodian/​Hairan was sharing in his father’s titles by 251 and was certainly mature by the 260s, when he was proclaimed “King of Kings.” This suggests a date of birth for Herodian/​ Hairan around 235–​240 and for Odainath in around 215: Gawlikowski 2010: 467. Zenobia was probably born around 240. Her oldest son Wahballath was of minor age in 268 and still was in 272, and she probably got married in her late teens. This implies she was far closer in age to Herodian/​Hairan than to Odainath. For the reconstruction of the date Odainath was killed, based on the regnal years of Claudius II, Wahballath and Aurelian, see Hartmann 2001: 231–​41. 18 PAT 0317 (= CIS 2.1, no. 3791); IGRom. 3.1065 (= CIG 4503b = OGI 647); Bauzou 1998: no. 95; ILS 8924 = Bauzou 1998: no. 98; RTP 736. Andrade 2018: 240–​2. 19 In SHA Aurel. 38.1-​2, we are told she governed for Wahballath. To Herennianus and Timolaus is devoted a small biography in SHA Tib.Trig. 27–​8, whereas the biography of Wahballath is missing. 20 Potter 2004: 266–​8; Bland 2011: 140–​1. 21 For the coins, see Bland 2011: 141–​2. 22 Sartre and Sartre 2014: 275–​6 list four milestones from the years 268–​271.Their hypothesis (Sartre and Sartre 2014: 91–​2) that the Roman senate would have granted the title of consul to Wahballath, while still a child, is in my view most unlikely. I follow Hartmann 2001: 468. 23 IGLS 17.1.57 (Zenobia); IGLS 171.56 (Odainath) 24 ILS 8924, a milestone between Bosra and Amman (n.d.). 25 The coins that proclaimed Wahballath and Zenobia Augusti: Bland 2011: esp. 142 and 175–​76. 26 See Sartre and Sartre 2014: 182–​7. 27 Millar 1993: 335. 28 Hartmann 2001: 430–​3 and 439–​40 provides a summary of scholarship. 29 SHA Aurel. 27,3; 28,4. 30 Hartmann 2001: 430–​31. Cf. also Sommer 2019. 31 Stressed by Andrade 2018: 52–​4. 32 Dirven 2017. 33 Sartre 1996;Yon 2002. 34 Hartmann 2016: 54, with note 6. 35 Hartmann 2016: 60–​2. 36 Hartmann 2001, especially the summary. 37 All references can now be found in the second edition of PIR, S 492. 38 IGLS 17.1.54, 58. PAT 2753. 39 IGLS 17.1.55; 17.1.56; 17.1.143. 40 On mtqnn’, see Andrade 2018: 135–​36. On Odainath’s titles see also Paschoud 2009. 41 Overview in Andrade 2018: 133–​8.

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Zenobia of Palmyra 42 Hartmann 2001: 440, 444. 43 Similar is Gawlikowski 1985: 261, who suggests this may have been the reason for Gallienus to kill Odainath and his son. To the contrary, Hartmann 2001: 445 argues Odainath’s royal titles were only honorific and without political consequences. 44 Potter 2004: 267. Cf. Sommer 2018: 159. 45 Yon 2002: 43–​51. 46 IGLS 17.1.58. Cf.Yon 2002: 148–​9. 47 IGLS 17.1.61 (date unknown; between 260–​1 and 267–​8 AD) =Inv. III, 3. 48 Gawlikowski 2016: 128, fig. 3. 49 Will 1992:  180; Young 2001:  237–​8; Gnoli 2000:  149–​53; Hartmann 2001:  146–​61. Argued by Gawlikowski 1985; 2007: 307–​9; Sartre and Sartre 2014: 61. 50 These victory titles may also be read as an attempt to externalize the conflict between Rome and Palmyra: they represent the conflict as an external assault instead of a civil war.This implies the frictions between West and East well preceded the fourth century. 51 Sartre and Sartre 2014: 72 list the relevant inscriptions. 52 Although mothers acting as guardians for their minor children were a widespread phenomenon in the Hellenistic and Roman East, the practice was forbidden by Roman law: Cod. Just. 2.12.18, 5.35.1, 5.31.6. These rescripts may have been directed to women in the eastern provinces: Evans Grubbs 2002: 257. 53 Contra Sartre and Sartre 2014: 57, who claim the title “King of Kings” is just honorary with no judicial significance, thus arguing (Sartre and Sartre 2014: 11, 89–​90) that Zenobia was only a queen because her husband and son were “King of Kings.” It is clear from the above that Odainath behaved like a dynast. So did Zenobia. Consequently, her title “queen” should be taken seriously. 54 Those arguing that Zenobia remained loyal to Rome till the very end (i.e. until Aurelian attacked her), have great difficulty explaining this bold Palmyrene move. 55 This is what Udo Hartmann has called a “Teilreich” and Fergus Millar “an abortive claim to empire.” Millar 1993: 335; Sartre and Sartre 2014: 103. 56 Sommer 2018: 161–​2 goes to great lengths to prove this was not usurpation in the traditional sense.The argument that the Palmyrenes did not challenge a weak emperor is made in hindsight; in the summer of 270 they could not possibly foresee the future emperor Aurelian would be a strong emperor. It is more probable that the Palmyrene decision to attack was opportunistic: Sartre and Sartre 2014: 103. 57 Other examples largely from Ptolemaic Egypt: Kleopatra I, II and VII, as well as Berenike III and IV. 58 Yon 2002. 59 Yon 2009: 202. 60 Cussini 2005; 2016; 2019. 61 In addition,Yon 2002: 174–​81; 2019: 186. 62 Cussini 2016: 50–​1. 63 Yon 2002/​2003; 2019. 64 See Yon 2002: 43–​51, 166–​7 on the inscriptions and the role of notable families in Roman Palmyra. 65 Yon 2019: 188–​9. 66 Klaver 2019. 67 Contra Andrade 2018: 166–​70, who contrasts this with the legal position of women in Roman law. Although the situation is indeed different, this is due to the fact that under Roman law, the property of husband and wife is rigorously separated and women stay connected to their family of birth. In Palmyra, as elsewhere in the ancient Near East, women belonged to the family of their husband. I thank Emily Hemelrijk for her help with legal matters in the western empire. 68 PAT 0317 = CIS 3971 = OGI 649 69 Yon 2002/​2003; 2019. 70 Andrade 2018: 170, 193. Although Bedouin women are crucial to the conservation of the family, it does not follow that they hold a favorable position in this society, as Andrade suggests. In fact, it can be shown that even today they are considered to be non-​entities who have a deplorable social position. 71 Hartmann 2016. 72 Evans Grubbs 2002: 254–​7. 73 Van Bremen 1994; 1996. 74 SHA Tib.Trig. 30,2. 75 Cf. also SHA Tib.Trig. 27. 1; SHA Prob. 9. 4–​5. 76 Burgersdijk 2005: 144; Sartre and Sartre 2014: 81, 109 suggest the comparison with Kleopatra may date from the time the Palmyrenes conquered Egypt.

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Lucinda Dirven 77 Hartmann 2001: 430; Sommer 2019. 78 A rhetor from Petra named Callinicus may have addressed a ten-​book history of Alexandria to Zenobia, in the guise of Kleopatra: FGrH 281 T1. Based on this, Bowersock 1983: 134–​6 stresses the Graeco-​ Roman character of Zenobia’s court. 79 On the rise of women-​power in Ptolemaic Egypt, see Pomeroy 1984: esp. 23. See Chapters 7 and 11. 80 Sartre and Sartre 2014: 144–​60 on culture and religion at Zenobia’s court.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). CIS  Corpus Inscriptionum ab Academia Inscriptionum et Litterarum Humaniorum conditum atque Digestum. 1881–​1962.  Paris. IGLS Jalabert, L. et al. (eds.) 1939–​. Les inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (IFPO). Paris. PAT Hillers, D.R. and Cussini, E. (eds.) 1996. Palmyrene Aramaic Texts. London. RTP Ingholt, H., Seyrig, H., and Starcky, J. (eds.) 1955. Recueil des tessères de Palmyre, suivi de Remarques linguistiques, par André Caquot. Paris.

Bibliography Andrade, N.J. 2013. Syrian Identity in the Graeco Roman World. Cambridge. Andrade, N.J. 2018. Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra. Women in Antiquity. Oxford. Bland, R. 2011. “The Coinage of Vabalathus and Zenobia from Antioch and Alexandria.” The Numismatic Chronicle 171: 133–​86. Bauzou, T. et  al. (eds.) 1998. Fouilles de Khirbet es-​Samra en Jordanie 1.  La voie romaine. Le cimetière. Les documents épigraphiques. Turnhout. Bleckmann, B. 2002. “Zenobia von Palmyra:  ein Mythos der spätromischen Geschichtsschreibung.” In H. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Theodora. Munich, 317–​32. Bowersock, G.W. 1983. Roman Arabia. Cambridge. Bremen, R. van. 1994. “A Family From Syllion.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 104: 43–​56. Bremen, R. van. 1996. The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Amsterdam. Burgersdijk, D. 2005. “Zenobia’s Biography in the Historia Augusta.” Talanta 37: 139–​52. Cussini, E. 2005. “Beyond the Spindle: Investigating the Role of Palmyrene Women.” In E. Cussini (ed.), A Journey to Palmyra: Collected Essays to Remember Delbert R. Hillers. Leiden, 26–​43. Cussini, E. 2016. “Reconstructing Palmyrene Legal Language.” In Kropp and Raja 2016: 42–​52. Cussini, E. 2019. “Daughters and Wives, Defining Women in Palmyrene Inscriptions.” In Krag and Raja 2019: 67–​81. Dirven, L. 2017.“Palmyrene Sculpture in Context: Between Hybridity and Heterogeneity.” In J. Aruz (ed.), Palmyra: Mirage in the Desert. New York, 110–​19. Dodgeon, M.H. and Lieu, S.N.C. 1991. The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars (AD 226–​363): A Documentary History. London. Equini Schneider, E. 1993. Septimia Zenobia Sebaste. Rome. Evans Grubbs, J. 2002. Women and the Law in the Roman Empire:  A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood. London and New York. Gawlikowski, M. 1985. “Les princes de Palmyre.” Syria 62: 251–​61. Gawlikowski, M. 2010. “The Royalty from Palmyra Once Again.” In B. Bastl,V. Gassner, and U. Muss (eds.), Zeitreisen: Syrien, Palmyra, Rom: Festschrift für Andreas Schmidt Colinet zum 65. Geburtstag.Vienna,  67–​72. Gawlikowski, M. 2016. “The Portraits of Palmyrene Royalty.” In Kropp and Raja 2016: 126–​34. Gawlikowski, M. and Starcky, J. 1985. Palmyre, Édition revue et augmentée des nouvelles découvertes. Paris. Gawlikowski, M. 2007. “Odainath et Hérodien, ‘rois des rois.’”  Mélanges de l’Université Saint-​ Joseph 60: 289–​311. Gnoli, T. 2000. Roma, Edessa e Palmira nel III sec. d. C. Problemi istituzionali. Uno studio sui papiri dell’Eufrate. Pisa and Rome.

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Zenobia of Palmyra Hartmann, U. 2001. Das Palmyrenische Teilreich. Stuttgart. Hartmann, U. 2016. “What was it like to be a Palmyrene in the Age of Crisis? Changing Palmyrene Identities in the Third Century AD.” In Kropp and Raja 2016: 53–​69. Kaizer, T. 2002. The Religious Life of Palmyra. A Study of the Social Patterns of Worship in the Roman Period. Stuttgart. Klaver, S. 2019. The participation of Palmyrene women in the Religious Life of the City.” In Krag and Raja 2019: 157–​67. Kotula, T. 1997. Aurélien e Zénobie: l’unité ou la division de l’Empire? Wroclaw. Krag, S. and Raja, R. (eds.) 2019. Women, Children and Family in Palmyra. Palmyrene Studies, vol. 3. Copenhagen. Kropp, A. and Raja, R. (eds.) 2016. The World of Palmyra. Palmyrene Studies, vol. 1. Copenhagen. Magie, D. (trans.) 1932. Historia Augusta,Volume III: The Two Valerians.The Two Gallieni.The Thirty Pretenders. The Deified Claudius. The Deified Aurelian. Tacitus. Probus. Firmus, Saturninus, Proculus and Bonosus. Carus, Carinus and Numerian. Cambridge, MA. Millar, F. 1993. The Roman Near East 31 BC–​AD 337. Cambridge, MA and London. Paschoud, P. 1997. “L’inventio dans l’Histoire Auguste.” Cassiodorus 3: 117–​30. Paschoud, P. 2009. “Imperator Odenatus Augustus? Titres d’Odénat, pièges d’une documentation trilingue et perversité de l’Histoire Auguste.” Museum Helveticum 66: 141–​9. Paschoud, P. 2011. Histoire Auguste 4.3: Vies des trente tyrans et de Claude. Paris. Pomeroy, S.B. 1984. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit. Potter, D.S. 2004. The Roman Empire at Bay: AD 180–​395. London. Sartre, A. and Sartre, M. 2014. Zénobie. De Palmyre à Rome. Paris. Sartre, M. 1996. “Palmyre, cité grecque.” Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes (special issue: Palmyra and the Silk Road) 42: 385–​405. Sommer, M. 2018. Palmyra: A History. London. Sommer, M. 2019. “Through the Looking-​Glass—​Zenobia and ‘Orientalism’.” In D. Boschung et al. (eds.), Reinventing the ‘Invention of Tradition? Leiden, 113–​25. Southern, P. 2008. Empress Zenobia: Palmyra’s Rebel Queen. London. Stol, M. 2012. Vrouwen van Babylon:  Prinsessen, Priesteressen, Prostituees in de Bakermat van de Cultuur. Amsterdam. Stoneman, R. 1992. Palmyra and Its Empire: Zenobia’s Revolt against Rome. Ann Arbor, MI. Will, E. 1992. Les palmyréniens. La Venise des sables. Paris. Winsbury, R. 2010. Zenobia of Palmyra: History, Myth, and the Neo-​Classical Imagination. London. Yon, J.-​B. 2002. Les notables de Palmyre. Beyrouth. Yon, J.-​B. 2002–​3. “Zénobie et les femmes de Palmyre.” Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes 45–​6: 215–​20. Yon, J.-​B. 2009. “Personnel cultuel féminin au Proche-​Orient hellénistique et romain.” Topoi Orient–​ Occident suppl. 10: 197–​214. Yon, J.-​B. 2019. “Femmes de Palmyre.” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne suppl. 18: 183–​203. Young, G.K. 2001. Rome’s Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy 31 BC–​AD 305. London and New York. Zahran,Y. 2010. Zenobia, Between Reality and Legend. London.

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PART IV

Greece and Macedonia

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23 “ROYAL” WOMEN IN THE HOMERIC EPICS Johannes Heinrichs

Homeric epics and Homeric society Both Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, result from long processes of oral formation.2 They belong to the so-​called cyclic epics, otherwise lost, but familiar to the original audience.3 For that audience, brief allusions to persons and events sufficed, whereas our information, often derived from fifth-​century Athenian tragedy whose plots were concerned with problems of that period, differs substantially from the basics that we learn about the Homeric plots.4 The Homeric narratives are fictitious, though the Greeks regarded them as history.5 A Trojan War in the form that is staged in the epics, including numerous interventions of gods, never occurred, nor did Odysseus’ adventures and liaisons with goddesses during his return journey, nor the murders of the 108 suitors of his wife Penelope. Elements from the social contexts, however, are consistent within the epics. We cannot expect one homogeneous Homeric society,6 at Troy and on Ithaka, or in the palaces at Pylos and Sparta (which reflect a feudal past), nor in the utopic polis of Scheria, nor yet again on Achilleus’ shield (Il. 18.497–​508), which opens perspectives for the future. On the other hand, realistic aspects of culture in the seventh and even sixth centuries BCE (the period when the epics took their final shape) do appear, as well as, according to the rules of heroic poetry, material from the period two or three generations earlier.7 Without them, the plots would have appeared as mere fiction. The poems became fundamental to Greek thinking,8 and some epic portraits of women enjoyed wide popularity during many centuries to come. As a rule, the epics deal with elites. Common people play a role only when they come into contact with elite heroes, thus enabling them to express their perspectives, as is the case for the two Phrygian women awarded to Greek “kings” as plunder. Chryseïs and Briseïs were captured from well-​to-​do families, though inferior to “kings.”9 Usually they have no voice and may only lament heroic warriors killed in action (Il. 19.282–​302), as women were generally expected to do (Od. 8.523–​7).10 The terms basileus and basileia are usually translated as “king” and “queen,” but not correctly so, if “royal” persons from dynasties are understood. In the epics, a dynastic context applies only to Priamos in Troy (Il. 20.215–​41) and, in Greece, at most to Nestor (Od. 11.241–​54, 281–​6) and Agamemnon (Il. 2.100–​8), whereas the majority of the basileis, like Achilleus, Diomedes, 1

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and Odysseus, hold their positions as a result of personal efforts, capacities, and wealth. They are best in war and in council and they maintain networks with other basileis outside of their own realms. Within those realms, they are not the only “kings.” Other leading men hold the same title, though they are personally inferior.11 The idea of a ruling dynasty seems so insignificant, say on Ithaka, that Odysseus’ son is not even a candidate for the leading position at first (Od. 1.394–​8). So the term basileus does not assume our concept of monarchy but depends on the ideology of the “best” man.12 Terms like “queen” or “royal woman” require even more caution. Still, we cannot do without them, since alternative options such as “elite” or “aristocracy” apply to social groups, not to individuals in the highest positions. The epithet “royal” is employed here only for convenience, with quotation marks, to refer to the leading “best” men and their wives, although women were usually without public or even political competence.13 Generally we must keep in mind that the term basileia, often applied to Penelope and Arete,14 is not a title but an adjectival epithet, meaning “kingly” wife or woman (daughter, in Nausikaa’s case, consequently “princess”).15 Without their husbands, “queens” can generally direct their households,16 but have no influence outside. Arete is an exception because her land is utopian, whereas the situation on Ithaka conforms to the general rule: Odysseus’ “kingly” household is managed by his wife Penelope in full independence, but a public assembly in the marketplace or an official council has not met since Odysseus departed for Troy (Od. 2.25–​7). “Royal” women are introduced in different stages of their lives:  childhood, adolescence, marriage, and maturity, whereas old age—​as so often—​is illustrated for males only. Each case is individual: Helena is entirely a literary construction, Arete an outright socio-​political utopia, and Penelope, closer to reality, may at times turn into a projection for discussing legal and political problems. Hence we are far from a consistent concept of “royal” women.

Before marriage: Polykaste and Nausikaa In the epics, unmarried “royal” girls play no major roles. At Pylos, Nestor’s youngest daughter Polykaste, apparently quite young, bathes Telemachos (Od. 3.464–​9), a special honor for the highly esteemed guest since normally this service falls to handmaidens in the house.17 Was this sort of task consistent with the status of a “princess”? It was, as illustrated by the case of her young brother Peisistratos who drives Telemachos in a chariot to Menelaos at Sparta (Od. 3.481–​7). It is true that he was acquainted with the horses and also with the rather extended route that necessitated an overnight stay at a friend of his father’s. Moreover, driving chariots is a most distinguished service in the Iliad, but a service all the same.18 Peisistratos can be charged with it because he is still a youth, as is his sister Polykaste. Irrespective of gender, Nestor’s children are employed for more or less ordinary services; these services, however, were elevated by the persons doing them rather than contradicting their “royal” status. Another example of young girls is the “princess” Nausikaa, who had just reached the age of marriage.19 Reminded of her new status by Athena in a dream (Od. 6.15–​40), she becomes sensitive about the condition of her dresses and asks her father, the “king” of Scheria, for permission to take a mule-​cart to transport them to the river, taking along some handmaids. It seems that she herself is involved in the washing; afterwards all play ball, without any social distinction. Since Nausikaa is an unmarried girl, not yet at the head of her own household, there is no problem in all this. But after marriage, it would no longer be consistent with her “royal” status.

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Inverted cases? Eumaios and Eurykleia Two slave children acquired by Laertes were born in basileus-​rank families.20 Both were kidnapped in their early childhood and sold for high prices, ones indicative of their rank.21 As long as they are children and young adults, they are treated as privileged, and only as adults do they become servants, albeit in prominent positions. Eumaios, no longer a companion of Laertes’ youngest daughter Ktimene, leaves the house for a leading post in pig-​breeding (Od. 15.363–​70), and young Eurykleia, during her youth esteemed by Laertes ‟not less than a faithful wife” (Od. 1.432), works as a wet-​nurse first and then becomes the highest-​ranking servant within Penelope’s household. Both lose their affiliation to their original class, but keep a high standing:  in the epics, the origin from a basileus-​family is inalienable, even after the loss of personal freedom.

Marriage: paternal decisions, marital presents, dowries Marriage is a crucial moment in the lives of all “royal” youths. For daughters, the epics are more explicit: as a rule, they are promised by their fathers as wives of partners they do not yet know. Some examples are Odysseus’ mother Antikleia (cf. Od. 19.410–​12) and—​not in the epics—​Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia.22 In the Greek camp at Troy, one of Agamemnon’s daughters is offered to Achilleus (Il. 9.144–​7) and Menelaos’ daughter Hermione is promised to Achilleus’ son Neoptolemos (Od. 4.5–​9). As ever, fathers use the marriages of “princesses” to pursue family strategies. In Nausikaa’s case the initiative seems to come from the girl (Od. 6.244–​5),23 but her father must take the first step (Od. 7.312–​15).24 He even offers a house and possessions on Scheria to the prospective bridegroom Odysseus, an exceptional offer since a rich man’s daughter normally received bride presents from her suitor, as does Odysseus’ sister Ktimene (Od. 15.367). Penelope can even demand presents from her suitors, receiving precious jewelry from all of them (Od. 18.275–​301). Rarely is a girl’s hand in marriage achieved without bride presents, although something may be given:  Agamemnon offers one of his daughters to Achilleus to appease his wrath (Il. 9.144–​6.), and the Trojan “princess” Kassandra is demanded, free of charge, as a price for military assistance (Il. 13.365–​6). In turn, the bride’s father gives his daughter an appropriate dowry (Il. 6.395: Andromache; Od. 1.275–​8: Penelope), which she brings into her new household, usually located in her husband’s home.25 Her family, however, can demand it back when she leaves her marital house: that is what Telemachos is worried about in case his mother should remarry (Od. 2.132–​3).

Maturity: four literary heroines Conglomerate identities: Helena In the epics, “royal” women usually mirror their husbands. Not so Helena.26 Though she has four husbands (Menelaos, Alexandros, Deiphobos, and Menelaos again), a real match for her does not and cannot exist:  though a mortal woman, she is superhuman. In the epics, she is introduced as a daughter of Zeus by (mortal) Leda.27 Since she is Zeus’ means to bring about the Trojan War, she personally cannot be blamed: she is just Zeus’ tool.28 The most important characters on both sides are aware of this: the Trojan “king” Priamos (Il. 3.164–​5, cf. 24.770) and his son Hektor (Il. 24.767–​75), as well as the Greeks Menelaos,29 Penelope (Od. 23.218–​24), and Klytaimnestra.30 As the most beautiful woman of her day, Helena is a strong character who

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can oppose even Aphrodite, though she is also her tool (Il. 3.383–​420) and ultimately must give in to the goddess. Sure of herself, Helena praises, from the city wall of Troy, the virtues of some Greek “kings” most frankly (Il. 3.161–​235); at Sparta she listens with a smile when Menelaos tells Telemachos about her ruse at Troy to unmask the deceptive wooden horse (Od. 3.271–​89), even though it nearly cost the lives of the leading Greek commanders concealed within it. Even young Telemachos (whose father Odysseus had been among those hidden in the horse) is strongly impressed, as is her husband Menelaos who had been at Odysseus’ side. Helena is typical only in respect to minor aspects of the Homeric world, like spinning wool—​although in purple, from a silver basket with a golden rim (Od. 4.130–​5)—​or weaving most artful clothes. In all things she does she surpasses the efforts of other women. Apart from the epics, Helena has another identity that may contribute to our understanding of her lack of marital fidelity. Her name is pre-​Greek, associated with an old Lakonian goddess of vegetation, and cannot be explained as yet.31 The nature of such deities is shifting and shifty. Part of the time they stay on the surface of the earth, stirring plants to grow and produce fruit, but then they leave and make vegetation cease in winter. Being of just that nature, in another myth, Helena, as the daughter of the Spartan “king” Tyndareos, is kidnapped by the Athenian “king”Theseus and recovered by her brothers, the Dioskouroi.32 Then she is married to Menelaos who, because of the marriage, becomes “king” of Sparta,33 and her numerous suitors swear an oath to recover her should she be kidnapped again.34 This eventuality actually happens when the Trojan “prince” Alexandros/​Paris takes her to Troy, triggering the great war in which nearly all Greek heroes of the time participate. After nearly a decade, Helena is once more brought back home to Menelaos’ palace. These are the ways of a vegetation deity, leaving and returning. In order to play her role in the epic plots, she had to turn into Zeus’ daughter, though she was older in origin than her alleged father. Doric Sparta retained the memory of her and Menelaos. The Menelaion, a temple for the Homeric couple near the village of Therapne, overlooked the polis from the eastern foothills of Mount Parnon.35 Referring to this sanctuary, Herodotos (6.61) reports a Spartan anecdote. A high-​ranking local family had a baby daughter, so ugly that her nurse would not let her be seen by anyone outside the house, so she covered the little girl up whenever she took her to Helena’s temple (no more mention of Menelaos!) at Therapne, to pray to the goddess that she might have pity on the child. One day, when leaving the temple, a strange lady asked the nurse to show her the child. She yielded to the insistent stranger, who smiled at the little girl, caressed her forehead, and announced that she would be the most beautiful woman in Sparta, and exactly that happened. The pre-​Greek Lakonian goddess had returned for good, under the form of the Homeric “queen.”36

A background for Penelope: Klytaimnestra Another daughter of Leda, not by Zeus but her human husband Tyndareos, is Klytaimnestra (then Klytaimestra: “she who reaches her decision in an infamous way,” one of the few significant names in the epics).37 Already Helena’s half-​sister, she also became her sister-​in-​law when she was married to Menelaos’ brother Agamemnon, the “king” of Mykene.38 During her husband’s absence, she governed the oikos (household) as Penelope did that of Odysseus, but unlike Penelope, she betrayed and murdered her husband on his return (Od. 3.265–​75, 11.409–​ 39, 24.199–​202).39 Since Klytaimnestra functions as a negative foil for Penelope (Od. 441–​56, 24.192–​202), one must underline a further difference that is not explored in the epics. Having transferred Agamemnon’s “kingdom” to her alleged lover Aigisthos, Klytaimnestra is far less important 274

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than Penelope is to Odysseus’ position. Whereas the “queen” of Ithaka was absolutely free to choose from her 108 suitors, Klytaimnestra could only follow, or not, the initiative of Aigisthos, who had strong dynastic claims to the scepter of the Atrids. Her feelings about her husband Agamemnon may be inferred from what this “king” states in the Trojan camp about Chryseïs, whom he had received from the Greek plunder (Il. 1.113–​15): “I prefer her to my original wife Klytaimnestra, for she is not worse, neither in figure and beauty, nor in intellect and the works of her hands.” There is more of a similar sort in Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon, e.g. Kassandra (cf. Od. 11.421–​3), let alone Agamemnon’s fraud concerning Iphigeneia. In the Homeric epics all this is skipped over (though much was contained in the cyclic epics); it would have weakened her role as an entirely negative counterpart for faithful Penelope.

Outweighing the “king”: Arete Leda’s daughters are connected to the Peloponnese, the center of pre-​archaic Greece, each to a Mykenaean palace: Helena to Lakedaimon/​Sparta and Klytaimnestra to Mykene. The two next appearing “queens” belong to the peripheral Ionian islands (Scheria to be imagined near Kerkyra/​Korfù and Ithaka) and to the period of the Great Colonization (from the later eighth to the mid-​sixth century BCE). Without illustrious pedigrees, they are still most influential, each in her way. Being the “queen” of fairy-​tale Scheria, Arete modestly keeps herself in the background and only incidentally expresses her views.40 But since her “kingly” husband Alkinoos always follows her proposals, it is her opinion that eventually prevails (Od. 6.310–​15, 7.73–​7). She cannot, however, herself take political decisions such as publicly granting hospitality to Odysseus or escorting him home. A most instructive example is her proposal that all the leading men of Scheria bring standardized hospitality gifts for Odysseus (Od. 11.335–​41). She proposes this during a private banquet in her own house for Scheria’s leading men, invited by Alkinoos: in such a context, the borders between the public and private spheres get blurred. Although supported by Echeneos, the party’s doyen, her proposal still needs formal confirmation by the “king” (Od. 11.344–​6): “My friends, certainly not contrary to our opinion is what the prudent (periphron: cf. Penelope) “queen” pleads, so follow her. | But Alkinoos must approve and realize it.”The “king” does not hesitate to follow her advice, without any damage to his authority (Od. 11.344–​53). The origin of her authority is not clear. Her deceased father, her husband’s brother (Od. 7.61–​72), may have possessed political privileges that she has inherited but as a woman cannot perform herself. Helena’s status at Sparta is comparable, since Menelaos owes his “kingly” position to her hand, but this does not give Helena any public significance. Ultimately, Arete’s unique standing suits the generally utopian scenery on Scheria and cannot be taken for a realistic model, let alone for an element of an allegedly consistent Homeric society which did not exist.

Managing crisis from the rear: Penelope Pēnelopē (epic Pēnelopeia), derives from pēnelops (a parti-​colored duck species, hence figuratively: “the fair one”),41 a derivation already often misunderstood in antiquity.42 The role she plays on the surface, spinning and weaving (Od. 1.356–​8), is conventional, practiced also by Helena and Andromache at Troy (Il. 6.323–​4; 6.490–​2), at Sparta by Helena (Od. 4.131–​6; 15.104–​8), and on Scheria by Arete (Od. 6.305–​6). Moreover, all these “queens” have to rear young children,43 oversee the female personnel in the house, and, at the side of their husbands, meet and feed guests.44 But thanks to the plot of the Odyssey, Penelope’s part is far more 275

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complex than that of any other “royal” woman in either epic, though she keeps herself in the background and only rarely discloses her thoughts, let alone her intentions. So, at first sight, she may appear a simple character, though authoritative and respected even by the most impertinent of her suitors. When her husband Odysseus leaves for the Trojan War, he entrusts to her their newborn son Telemachos, instructing her that “when you see him bearded, then get married to whom you choose, and leave the house” (Od. 18.269–​70, 19.530–​3). Odysseus is well aware that his mission is dangerous, so he ensures that, in case of his death, his private possessions will go to his son once he has come of age. Odysseus cannot count on his father Laertes who, for reasons not specified, has retired to a rural farmstead and declined to take over responsibility during his son’s absence. Penelope, then, was the only person Odysseus could count on, as women could generally act on behalf of their husbands and children, if not on their own behalf.45 However, after Odysseus’ absence continued without any word from or of him, her status gradually evolved to that of a widow. At first nothing changed concerning Penelope’s role in the oikos. She was only in her thirties when Telemachos approached adulthood, so she could still be given in marriage again by her father and, according to Odysseus’ instructions, leave her seemingly deceased husband’s oikos and move to the house of her new husband, taking along her dowry that Telemachos would have to refund (Od. 2.132–​3). Difficulties concerning Odysseus’ leading position (geras) did not arise on the material but rather on the political level. As the years went by, his position was increasingly regarded as vacant. His wife had so far held the purely honorary, but not formal status of a “kingly” woman, but this ended with her husband’s apparent death. Laertes, if he had ever been the leading man before his son Odysseus,46 was not ready to retake the position and Telemachos was too young and inexperienced. Such was the situation on Ithaka, around 16 years after Odysseus had departed and three years before he returned.The 108 leading men from Ithaka and some nearby islands then started to woo the seemingly widowed “queen” (the legal fiction of her status was evidently upheld), leaving it to her to decide for one of them.The plot seems to assume that her choice would be accepted by the family of her birth, though it had the legal right to make the decision for her. Though we learn about all this only later and offhandedly (Od. 15.520, 22.52), it is clear from the beginning that, by wooing Penelope, the suitors aimed at acquiring Odysseus’ leading position. With the consent of all suitors, her second husband would follow Odysseus into his bed and in his geras.We may deduce that no single one of the suitors controlled enough authority to be “king” and that Penelope as “queen” was assumed by all to provide her new husband with the necessary prestige.47 In other words, she decided who would be “king.” Penelope could do nothing directly for Telemachos in this respect, even though his paternal heritage was at stake. She could not secure Odysseus’ position for Telemachos since dynasty was at best one factor among others (Od. 1.386–​7).48 If she had accepted the role as an “electress” and left Odysseus’ house too soon, while Laertes remained in his rural exile, she would have betrayed the material interests of her son and counteracted Odysseus’ instructions. In this situation, she had to play for time, until Telemachos came of age. She gained a three-​year delay by her weaving and unweaving, until the suitors found out about her practice and took to blackmail: day by day, they assembled in Odysseus’ house, consuming his and his son’s livestock, while waiting for her decision. Her situation got even more uncomfortable when Telemachos realized that his paternal heritage had decreased because of the suitors’ consumption of his goods and blamed her, for a short while even joining in the suitors’ demand that she should leave the house and be remarried. He had only just then started to think and act as an adult and she was well aware of it. So the moment prescribed by Odysseus was at hand: Penelope could not wait any longer (Od. 19.157–​61). But she did. She had begun to trust a stranger who, entering her 276

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house in a beggar’s rags, sat among the suitors, and incurred their wrath by giving proofs of his intellectual, moral, and even physical superiority over them. This superiority cannot have escaped her. In repeated conversations, during which he had impressed Penelope by his sound judgment, the alleged beggar pretended that he had recently encountered Odysseus who would soon arrive. Penelope sensed that there was some mystery about him, but did not yet realize, with certainty, his identity. Odysseus, generally clever and cautious, was additionally alarmed by Agamemnon’s ill fate when he had finally returned home after 20 years. Thus Klytaimnestra’s crime had its effects on Penelope (Od. 11.444–​53, 24.192–​202), even though Penelope’s character is presented as the very opposite of the “queen” of Mykene. Since, however, Odysseus was not yet certain of his wife, he entered his house in disguise, in order to find out generally how things had developed during his long absence, whom he could trust, and how to punish those who had proved guilty. He had already privately revealed himself to his son Telemachos, so Penelope in the end was the only person of Odysseus’ family not let in on the secret, but she must have had some suspicion. Her standard epithet is periphron (“clever, intelligent;” cf. Arete). Moreover, as Odysseus’ wife, she must have seen that the peculiar stranger had a striking physical similarity to her husband, as even her old servant Eurykleia had realized (Od. 19.379–​81). Penelope had her own methods of finding out the truth. Recalling that old Eurykleia, who had lived in the house ever since she had been Odysseus’ nurse, knew about a large scar near Odysseus’ knee, Penelope ordered her, only her, to wash the stranger’s feet, though this service was in no way an appropriate one for an old, high-​ranking servant. Odysseus, well aware of Eurykleia’s knowledge, at first protested, but could not decline without confirming Penelope’s suspicion.When the old servant noticed the scar and recognized whom she had before her, Odysseus ordered her to keep silent, in a whisper, since Penelope was busy in the same hall. Though Athena prevented her from seeing or hearing what was going on (Od. 19.479–​80), Eurykleia’s emotion cannot have escaped Penelope’s notice, especially since she must have arranged the washing as a test. Though the outcome made the truth apparent to periphrōn Pēnelopeia, she kept on playing her role as did Odysseus his, and now—​not without Athena’s help—​she saw the solution to her problem. Immediately she announced to her suitors that she would make her decision in favor of one of them conditional upon a competition: the winner would have to draw one of Odysseus’ bows and shoot an arrow through the ears of 12 axes exactly arranged in line, as Odysseus had done many times before. She knew that no suitor would succeed. Odysseus, in his disguise, would attend the competition and even take part; she herself, with the assistance of Telemachos, arranged it. By winning the competition, Odysseus would reveal his identity and stand in that very moment in front of her suitors, a lethal weapon in hand: no bad plan, and it was hers (Od. 21.1–​4). It was, however, all she could contribute to the murder of her suitors. So she once more departed for her chamber and left the rest to Odysseus, Telemachos (who thus completes his passage to adulthood),49 two faithful herdsmen, and, most of all, Athena (Od. 22.297–​98). Unlike the goddess of war, Penelope, being a human woman, is excluded from the subsequent slaughter, one likely to be followed by the vengeance of the leading families of Odysseus’ realm, a consequence that Athena was working to prevent. Only after the killings of the suitors did Odysseus reveal his identity to Penelope. She had kept her distance, as she now explains, fearing, at all times, deception and lies (Od. 23.213–​17). Her pretended ignorance, however, cannot have been very convincing to a shrewd man like Odysseus. Therefore her final test concerning the nature of her marital bed (Od. 23.177–​204) may have been a device enabling her to give up her dissimulation in a manner convincing to him, by her pretended surprise. Actually, she must have known Odysseus’ identity since the washing scene. So periphrōn Pēnelopeia proved equal to polymētis Odysseus (“who knows many 277

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schemes”). Her ruse of undoing her weaving—​not her only one, as has been argued—​became her hallmark in the western tradition.50

Inside the seraglio: Trojan women In the epics, non-​Greek “royal” women from east of the Aegean are portrayed as entirely dependent on males. Although free to voice their opinion, it is, as a rule, rejected by their husbands. Their arguments are simple, based on sentiment rather than logic, as is that of Andromache in her conversation with Hektor at the Skaian Gate (Il. 6.392–​493), when she held their small boy Skamandrios/​Astyanax in her arms, in order to impress her views on him.51 His pursuit of honor in battle outweighed her appeals to be cautious and take care of herself and their little son. The story of her life, reduced as it is to the loss of her male relatives (Il. 6.413–​30), does not, however, move Hektor. So long as Achilleus along with his Myrmidonian laos (“contingent”) is on strike against the Greek commander-​in-​chief, he feels superior to the Greeks and behaves no less insensitively toward his own family than does Achilleus toward the Greeks.The old Trojan “queen” Hekabe fares no better when she tries to hold back her husband Priamos from entering the Greek camp and asking Achilleus to hand over the dead Hektor, as ransom (Il. 24.200–​16). This is no surprise, since her counsel is otherwise never heard.52 Hekabe’s successful efforts are on a different field:  she has born 19 children to Priamos (Il. 24.496), who has others by additional women: 62 children in all, 50 male and 12 female (Il. 6.243–​49, 24.495). His son and presumptive successor Hektor so far has only one child, as have many Greek “royal” families.53 Hektor’s son, however, is still a baby, so siblings might yet arrive. While the role of Trojan “royal” women is evident from such figures, in marriage relations they are absolutely dominated by males:  in their Eastern social context they are no match for Helena or Klytaimnestra, let alone for prudent Greek wives such as Arete and Penelope. Regarding Greek views on Eastern women, Panhellenic propagandists of the fourth century such as Gorgias or Isokrates would not have to start from zero. After the conquest of Troy, the Greek conquerors kill many Trojan women, deaths dealt with only in the cyclic epics and in some detail by Euripides.54 A few verses of the Odyssey, however, are devoted to Kassandra: violently torn off Athena’s Trojan cult statue and raped while still within the temple,55 she was allotted to Agamemnon and was going to be slaughtered with him by Klytaimnestra at Mykene (Od. 11.421–​3).56

Conclusion: no consistent sociology Homeric “royal” women follow the demands of literary plots in heroic poetry which are set in the context of more than one historical society. These highlights are something less than the elite female element in “the” Homeric society. Much more influential was going to be the fictional level, in terms of the individual thinking and conduct of some heroines. Their impact on Greek views on female roles has been enormous and helps us better understand some portrayals in subsequent historical societies.

Notes 1 The names of the poets were lost early. The Greeks attributed the two epics to one poet Homeros whose name is telling (“hostage” or “blind;” for the term’s special meanings in some Greek dialects see

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“Royal” women in the Homeric epics however LSJ, Ὅμηρος).The final versions go back to different poets, the Iliad preceding the Odyssey by few decades. 2 Before the texts were written down, probably only in the seventh century (for discussion see West 1995; Lucarini 2019:  389–​96), their transmission was oral and subject to permanent change. Only in Peisistratid Athens, during the second half of the sixth century BCE, manuscripts from the region of origin, the coast of Asia Minor and the offshore island of Chios, were collected and authoritative texts compiled, see van Thiel 1988; cf. Lucarini 2019: 380–​96. But even later there were still smaller modifications and insertions and their Ionic dialect was, in some places, adapted to the Attic of the late sixth century. This recension ([Platon], Hipparchos 228b 5–​10, see Schubert 2018: 86–​8 with some discussion on alternative Solonian or Peisistratean recensions, cf. Lucarini 2019: 393–​415) aimed at standard texts to be recited each fifth year during the Great Panathenaia (and other festivals: Platon, Ion 530a, see Heitsch 2017: 35–​6) by competitors who—​relieving each other—​had to perform fixed sections. 3 They have perished except for short fragments, collected and translated by West 2003; cf. Davies 2001. One of the thematic cycles was the Trojan War: the Kypria dealt with its cause, prehistory, and opening; the Aithiopis with Achilleus’ death and the quarrel about his arms; the Little Iliad with further episodes of the war, e.g. the construction of the Wooden Horse; the Iliupersis with the conquest of the city (West 2003: 142–​53), and the Nostoi with the return of Greek contingents, including “Orestes’ and Pylades’ avenging of Agamemnon’s murder by Aegisthus and Clytaemestra” (West 2003: 157). 4 Scodel 2005. 5 E.g. Thukydides 1.10–​11; cf. Raaflaub 2011b. 6 Snodgrass 1974; Atchity and Barber 1987; Ulf 1990; van Wees 2002; Osborne 2004; Raaflaub 2011a. 7 Ulf 2017: 141–​4. 8 Platon bans the epics from his ideal polis (Politeia 606e), see Murray 1997: 19–​24. In turn, the Sokrates of [Platon], Hipparchos 228b–​e recommends them as useful for educating the Athenians.They kept their influence until the fifth century CE, when Greek culture was superseded by Christianity. Illustrative is the empress Athenaïs/​Aelia Eudocia, an Athenian by origin, wife of the (eastern) Roman emperor Theodosius II (408–​550CE), cf. Holum 1982: 112–​46. 9 Chryseïs’ father Chryses is Apollon’s priest in Thebe (north of Adramytteion: Il. 1.11–​21, 366–​70); on Briseïs’ father we lack clear information from the Iliad (19.291–​6), see Dué 2011. According to the epic’s logic, both come from families of comparable rank. 10 Il. 24.710–​75: Andromache, Hekabe, Helena. 11 Od. 1.394–​6 (Ithaka); 8.41 (Scheria). Men of “kingly” status can collect from the groups they control within the demos (commoners) compensations for goods officially given, on Scheria (Od. 13.111–​15) and Kreta (Od. 19.196–​7), cf. Ithaka (Od. 23.356–​8). 12 Il. 12.310–​28, cf. 11.784. The “king” is strongest, most clever, and disposes of material resources and networks that materialize in prestigious guest presents, see van Wees 2011. 13 Women from elite families can, however, be priestesses, such as Theano, Athena’s priestess at Troy, daughter of the Thrakian ruler Kisses (Il. 6.297–​300, 11.223–​8). 14 Used otherwise only for Nausikaa (Od. 6.115) and Tyro (Od. 11.258); missing altogether in the Iliad. 15 Od. 6.115. Some female adjectives terminate in -​eia, whereas some male nouns in -​eus.The title basilissa (“queen”) is encountered only from the early Hellenistic era (Carney 1991; Müller 2009: 76–​81), not yet for Argead women, as sometimes pretended, nor by Xenophon (Oikonomikos 9.15), who uses the term in the traditional way. 16 Thalman 2011. 17 Od. 4.47–​50 (Sparta) and 8.433–​56 (Scheria). Also, Nausikaa delegates this task to her handmaids (Od. 6.210–​22). 18 Being in a servant’s role, Peisistratos is treated less attentively and receives no guest presents. 19 Roisman 2011b. 20 Explicitly stated for Eumaios (Od. 15.412–​14) and to be concluded for Eurykleia from her extended genealogy (Od. 1.429; 2.347; 20.148). Both bear aristocratic names: “he who strives in a good way” and “she whose glory is far-​reaching.” 21 20 oxen for Eurykleia as a little child (Od. 1.431) is excessive, for ideological reasons; a skilled adult woman from a commoner family is worth four oxen (Il. 23.704–​5). No price is mentioned for Eumaios (Od. 15.483). 22 Kypria:  Proklos’ argument (West 2003:  74–​ 5); Aiskhylos, Agamemnon 206–​ 46, 1522–​ 8; Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis has a plot that deviates from the cyclic tradition, see Aretz 1999.

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Johannes Heinrichs 23 In the Nausicaa-​chapter of Ulysses (Joyce 1926[1922]: 331–​65), her Dublin counterpart, young Gerty McDowall, tries to attract the interest of the Dublin Odysseus/​Ulysses Leopold Bloom when he takes a rest near the seashore.While sitting above him on the slope of Howth promontory that overlooks (cf. Od. 6.138 with LSJ, proecho, B) Dublin Bay, she exposes to his glances her freshly washed and ironed underwear. See Gifford and Seidman 1988: 611. 24 Another case might be Telemachos and Polykaste: [Hesiod] Catalogus/​Ehoiai fr. 221 MW (= fr. 168 Most, in Loeb)—​irrespective of alternative versions, see Heath 2011: 844. 25 E.g. Od. 4.5–​9 (Hermione), 19.400–​12 (Antikleia), Il. 6.394–​97 (Andromache). Penelope’s origin and original status (from a basileus family?) is not specified; her sister Iphtime follows her husband to (Thessalian?) Pherai (rather west Arkadian Aliphera, south of Heraia, see van Thiel 1988: 65, 245): Od. 4.797–​8 (cf. 3.488, 15.186). 26 Griffin 2011. 27 Od. 4.569. According to the Kypria (West 2003:  90–​91), her real mother was the goddess Nemesis (“Retribution”). With two immortal parents, Helena would however have been immortal herself. Thus, in the Homeric epics human Leda substitutes for divine Nemesis. 28 Cf. Euripides, Orestes 1639–​42. 29 Euripides’ version of her shrewed defence: Troades 895–​965. 30 Aiskhylos, Agamemnon 1464–​7. 31 Von Kamptz 1982: 371–​2. 32 Kypria: West 2003: 92–​3. References in Harder 1998. 33 At the moment of her marriage, her brothers, the Dioskouroi, were heirs apparent, but according to the Iliad they died after she had left for Troy (3.236–​41). 34 Kypria: Proklos’ argument (West 2003: 70–​73, §5); [Hesiod] Catalogus/​Ehoiai fr. 204 MW (= fr. 155 Most, in Loeb) 78–​84 [40–​46]. 35 Eder 2011, cf. Isokrates 10.63. 36 In Euripides (Orestes 1635–​7), Helena, being a daughter of Zeus, becomes an Olympian goddess. For more versions of her myth see Pausanias 3.19.9–​13(on Therapne). 37 Von Kamptz 1982: 29–​30, 104. 38 Lyons 2011b. 39 Backgrounds in the Nostoi (West 2003: 152–​3) and in Aiskhylosʼ Agamemnon—​some were most likely introduced only by the Athenian dramatist. 40 Felson 2011. 41 Von Kamptz 1982: 275–​6. Cf. Od. 18.212–​13—​the effect of her beauty on her suitors. 42 Early but incorrectly derived from pēnē: “woof, web,” and oloptō (from *eloptō): “to pluck out,” hence “the one who plucks out the woofs,” with regard to a shroud she weaves during the day and secretely undoes during the night to put off the moment when she must choose one of her suitors (Od. 2.94–​ 110), see von Kamptz 1982: 30, 70; Murnaghan 1986; Heitman 2005. 43 Menelaos had a legitimate son from a slave woman, born after Helena was beyond fertility:  Od. 4.11–​13. 44 Od. 4.121–​2, 136–​299 (Helena); 8.417–​56, 11.335–​53 (Arete); 18.206–​25 (Penelope). See Pedrick 1988. 45 Lacey 1966. 46 Though often mentioned, Laertes (West 1989) is never called basileus, only once geron (“member of a public council”: Od. 21.21), and once “commander of the Kephalenes (meaning the laos of the realm of Ithaka) in an expedition on the mainland” (Od. 24.377–​8). Either function hints at a “kingly” position without clearly indicating it. 47 Penelope is not restricted by dynastic arguments, as is Klytaimnestra. In turn, she cannot dispose of Ithaka’s leading position as her dowry, as argued, however, by Westbrook 2005: only the suitors’ consent gives her this competence. 48 Only after Telemachos has summoned a public assembly and undertaken voyages to Pylos and Lakedaimon/​Sparta does he win a personal standing that turns him into a competitor for his father’s “kingly” position—​and triggers the suitors’ plans to ambush and kill him, not without consequences for his mother’s mind. Her increasing concern for Telemachos will have prevailed over his prospects to follow his father as the leading man. Generally see Halverson 1986; Wöhrle 1999; Toher 2001; Heath 2011. 49 Wöhrle 1999; Toher 2001. 50 In the Penelope-​chapter of Ulysses (Joyce 1926[1922]:  694–​735), her Dublin counterpart Molly Bloom, while in her bed (recalling the Homeric heroine who so often weeps in her bedroom), lets

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“Royal” women in the Homeric epics her thoughts and memories float freely, recalling episodes from her life while she goes about her day in Dublin. One scene evokes Penelope’s encounter with Odysseus/​Ulysses on his return, when he was still a stranger to Ithaka, “[…] some dean or bishop was sitting beside me in the Jews’ Temple’s gardens when I was knitting that woolen thing a stranger to Dublin […]” (696; slightly altered orthography). See Gifford and Seidman 1988: 611. 51 Segal 1971; Shapiro 1995; Minchin 2011. 52 Roisman 2011a. 53 The palm goes to Nestor (Od. 3.32–​9, 450–​2), though the number of his children in the epics can be estimated at under ten. Next comes Agamemnon, with one son and three daughters (Il. 9.142–​45). 54 For Andromache see Little Iliad fr. 29.2, 30.1 and Sack of Ilion, Proklos’ argument 4 (in West 2003), moreover Euripides, Troades. 55 West 2003:  146–​ 7 (Proklos’ argument 3); for iconographical renderings of the scene cf. Zizza 2006: 205–​15. 56 Lyons 2011a; for us, Kassandra makes her great entry only in Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). Il. LSJ Od.

Iliad Liddell, H.G., Scott, R., and Jones, H.S. 1940. A Greek–​English Lexicon. Oxford. Odyssey

Bibliography Aretz, S. 1999. Die Opferung der Iphigeneia in Aulis. Stuttgart and Leipzig. Atchity, K. and Barber, E.J.W. 1987. “Greek Princes and Aegean Princesses: The Role of Women in the Homeric Poems.” In K. Atchity et al. (eds.), Critical Essays on Homer. Boston, 15–​36. Carney, E.D. 1991. “What’s in a Name? The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period.” In S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s’ History and Ancient History. Chapel Hill, 154–​72. Davies, M. 2001. The Greek Epic Cycle. Bristol. Dué, C. 2011. “Briseïs.” In Finkelberg 2011: I, 144–​5. Eder, B. 2011. “Sparta.” In Finkelberg 2011: III, 816–​17. Felson, N. 2011. “Arete.” In Finkelberg 2011: I, 83. Finkelberg, M. (ed.) 2011. The Homer Encyclopedia, 3 vols. Chichester. Gifford, D. and Seidman, R.J. 1988. Ulysses Annotated. Berkeley. Griffin, J. 2011. “Helen.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 335–​7. Halverson, J. 1986. “The Succession Issue in the Odyssey.” Greece & Rome 33: 119–​28. Harder, R. 1998.“Helene [1]‌.” In H. Cancik and H. Schneider (eds.), Der Neue Pauly Vol. 5. Leiden, 278–​80. Heath, J. 2011. “Telemachos.” In Finkelberg 2011: III, 842–​4. Heitman, R. 2005. Taking Her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer’s Odyssey. Ann Arbor. Heitsch, E. (ed.) 2017. Platon, Ion oder Über die Ilias. Göttingen. Holum, K.G. 1982. Theodosian Empresses. Berkeley. Joyce, J. 1926 [first published 1922]. Ulysses. Paris. Lacey, W.K. 1966. “Homeric Hedna and Penelope’s Kyrios.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 86: 55–​69. Lucarini, C.M. 2019. La genesi dei poemi omerici. Berlin and Boston. Lyons, D. 2011a. “Kassandra.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 433. Lyons, D. 2011b. “Klytaimnestra.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 443–​4. Minchin, E. 2011. “Andromache.” In Finkelberg 2011: I, 53–​4. Müller, S. 2009. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Berlin and New York. Murnaghan, S. 1986. “Penelope’s agnoia.” Helios 13: 103–​15. Murray, P. 1997. Plato on Poetry. Cambridge. Osborne, R. 2004.“Homer’s Society.” In R.L. Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer. Cambridge, 206–​19. Pedrick,V. 1988. “The Hospitality of Noble Women in the Odyssey.” Helios 15: 85–​101.

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Johannes Heinrichs Raaflaub, K. 1997. “Homeric Society.” In I. Morris and B. Powell (eds.), A New Companion to Homer. Leiden, 624–​48. Raaflaub, K. 2011a. “Historicity of Homer.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 359–​61. Raaflaub, K. 2011b. “Society, Homeric.” In Finkelberg 2011: III, 810–​13. Roisman, H.M. 2011a. “Hecuba.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 334–​5. Roisman, H.M. 2011b. “Nausicaa.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 558–​9. Schubert, C. (ed.) 2018. Platon, Hipparchos. Göttingen. Scodel, R. 2005. “Tragedy and Epic.” In S. Bushnell (ed.), A Companion to Tragedy. Malden, 181–​97. Segal, C. 1971. “Andromache’s anagnorisis: Formulaic Artistry in the Iliad 22.437–​476.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 75: 33–​57. Shapiro, H.A. 1995. “Coming of Age in Phaiakia: The Meeting of Odysseus and Nausikaa.” In B. Cohen (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey. Oxford and New York, 155–​64. Skutsch, O. 1987. “Helen, her Name and her Nature.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 107: 188–​93. Snodgrass, A.M. 1974. “An Historical Homeric Society?” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 94: 114–​25. Thalmann, W.G. 2011. “Household.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 373–​5. Toher, M. 2001. “Telemachus’ Rite of Passage.” La Parola del Passato 56: 149–​68. Ulf, C. 1990. Die homerische Gesellschaft. München. Ulf, C. 2017. “Führung  –​nicht:  Herrschaft. Widerstreitende Diskurse bei Homer und Hesiod und ihr historischer Kontext.” In S. Rebenich and J. Wienand (eds.), Monarchische Herrschaft im Altertum. Berlin and Boston, 141–​65. Van Thiel, H. 1988. Odysseen. Basel. Van Wees, H. 2002. “Homer and Early Greece.” In H.M. and J. Roisman (eds.), Essays on Homeric Epic [special issue]. Colby Quarterly 38: 94–​117. Van Wees, H. 2011. “Kingship.” In Finkelberg 2011: II, 436–​8. Von Kamptz, H. 1982. Homerische Personennamen. Göttingen. West, M.L. 1995. “The Date of the Iliad.” Museum Helveticum 52: 203–​19. West, M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments, 7th to 5th c.  BC. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA and London. West, S. 1989. “Laertes Revisited.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 35: 113–​43. Westbrook, R. 2005. “Penelope’s Dowry and Odysseus’ Kingship.” In D. Lyons and R. Westbrook (eds.), Women and Property in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Societies. Conference Proceedings, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. https://​chs.harvard.edu/​CHS/​article/​display/​1219 (accessed June 12, 2020). Wöhrle, G. 1999. Telemachs Reise. Göttingen. Zizza, C. 2006. Le iscrizioni nella Periegesi di Pausania. Pisa.

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24 ROYAL WOMEN IN GREEK TRAGEDY Hanna M. Roisman

Introduction Although the heroines of ancient Greek tragedy have their origins in myth, they share certain features with women in the male-​dominated Athenian society of the fifth century BCE, when the plays were written, produced, and acted by men, in front of predominantly male audiences. In this chapter I  will address some of the contexts in which these royal women operate.1 These heroines, and women in general, would have been perceived as inferior to men not only in physical strength and social status but also in character (e.g. “everywhere we women are in second place, always at a distance from men,” or “The man who will stop speaking ill of a woman will in fact be called a wretch and short of understanding,” (frgs. 319, 36 frg. 319, TrGF vol. 5.1 Kannicht). Although the tragic heroines are queens and princesses, they interact primarily with family members, male partners, and the slaves maintaining their households. Khrysothemis notes their physical weakness when she says to Elektra,“You were born a woman, not a man; physically, you’re not as strong as your enemies” (Soph. El. 997–​8).2 Nevertheless, the tragedians often presented powerful women, several of whom transgressed the gender rules that were paramount to Athenian society. The exceptionality of these women resides in part in the myths inherited by the tragedians, but they also used these unusual females for their own purposes.

Royal women in relation to the ruling authorities How do the royal or monarchial heroines engage with ruling authorities? Given the royal status of these women, the authorities would often be their close family members or husbands. However, women in ancient Greece, including those of monarchial status, had no political power. Despite this norm, tragedy often presents royal women in a different light. The prime example is Klytaimnestra, who is earlier described in the Odyssey as an obedient wife seduced by Agamemnon’s cousin, Aigisthos (3.253–​75). Aiskhylos’ Klytaimnestra is a much different woman who rules the polis with an iron fist, an indication that the playwright wanted to make some kind of statement about women in ruling positions. However, as with many of the heroines, there is a twist to their depiction, as we shall see.

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Monarchial heroines with executive power The only monarchial heroine who acts as a fully autonomous ruler is Klytaimnestra in Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon (458 BCE), the first play of the Oresteia. While Agamemnon has been away fighting at Troy for ten years, Klytaimnestra has taken his place in the administration of the polis. In Agamemnon she is well fitted to the task, thanks to her quick wits, admirable strategic planning, and notable rhetorical skills. In Greek tragedy the first reference to a character is usually revealing: it is evident that Aiskhylos means to present Klytaimnestra as an anomaly. In line 11, she is introduced by the Watchman as a person incorporating both male and female traits: she is “a woman with a hopeful heart which plans like a man” (gynaikos androboulon elpizon kear).3 She is a complex character who comprises the full spectrum of one of the fundamental polarities on which Greek tragedy is based: the male/​female divide. While being amply gifted with traits the Greeks associated with men—​eloquence, strategic intelligence and the cold determination to relentlessly pursue her goals—​she also has what are considered the feminine traits of deceitfulness and willingness to alter facts to suit her purposes. In addition, she possesses an uncanny insight into other people, i.e. “feminine intuition.” The two antitheses she encompasses, that between the genders (anēr/​gynē,) and that between “hope” (elpis), signifying the irrational, and “mind and counsel” (boulē), along with the reversal of their traditional assignations, feature as the main motifs in Agamemnon and the Oresteia as a whole. It quickly becomes obvious that the citizens of the polis are not happy with Klytaimnestra’s rule, but it is hard to assess whether this is because she is a woman or because she has flagrantly brought her lover, Aigisthos, into the palace, while her husband is away at war. The obstacles that her gender presented to Klytaimnestra in her rule during Agamemnon’s sojourn at Troy, are epitomized at the beginning of the play, when the Elders who make up the Chorus repeatedly criticize her for initiating citywide celebrations as soon as she has learned of the fall of Troy. They are not convinced that Troy has fallen and see Klytaimnestra’s decisiveness in setting all the city altars alight with celebratory sacrifices as an indication of feminine hastiness arising from a dream, a vision, and gossip. The Elders, in spite of their polite declaration of their allegiance to her, carefully observe that the throne can be filled only by a male (258–​60). Her rule, they imply, is only temporary.

Monarchial heroines overthrowing executive power Two royal heroines plan, carry out, or facilitate the murders of sitting monarchs. The first is Klytaimnestra and the second her daughter Elektra, princess of Argos. The prospect of their womenfolk rising up against them, rebelling, and overthrowing them, must have terrified the men of fifth-​century Athens. Yet it was just this spectacle that the tragedians chose to present. These monarchial women have an independence of thought that must have chilled the male spectators’ blood in their veins! Klytaimnestra’s “temporary” rule would naturally have come to an end upon the return of her husband, but Aiskhylos created a queen with no intention of relinquishing her power. Instead, she has carefully planned and executed the murder of her husband without any male, or female, assistants. By contrast, all presentations of Elektra (by Aiskhylos, Sophokles, and Euripides) show her waiting for Orestes’ return before helping her brother plan and commit matricide and regicide. Even after the murders there is no indication that Elektra ever sought power for herself. So, while Elektra exhibits some of her mother’s traits, Aiskhylos’ Klytaimnestra remains unique in her wish to rule the polis. Her strategic ability, singlemindedness, and rhetorical prowess allowed her to deceive and manipulate Agamemnon into walking into a death trap. Klytaimnestra initially claimed that her motive for murder was 284

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avenging the death of her daughter Iphigenia (Ag. 1417, 1432), but she clearly intended to continue ruling (Ag. 1672–​3). Since as a woman she could not ascend to the throne, she planned to eventually share the rule with Aigisthos. This plan, however, eventually fails: when we see her again in Libation Bearers, the second part of the trilogy, it is Aigisthos who calls the shots, while she attends to the household duties as an obedient wife (Cho. 716–​17, 734–​6, 844–​6). Klytaimnestra’s masterly performance, both before and after Agamemnon’s arrival, demonstrates how a powerful woman might effectively use her feminine artfulness to enhance “masculine” skills. When the Messenger announces the arrival of Agamemnon, Klytaimnestra describes herself as a loyal wife, watchdog of his household who knew no delight or scandalous report from another man any more than of tempering bronze (611–​12). Her self-​description to the Messenger as “loyal/​faithful wife” (gynē pistē, 606), is a rhetorical tour de force. She uses the military concepts of “fidelity” or “loyalty” familiar to Agamemnon from the last ten years spent with his army. The use of language from his comfort zone creates a false sense of security. The phrase itself is triply odd. Pistos (“loyal”) is a rare personal epithet found previously only in Homeros and limited to a military context, but Klytaimnestra transports it into a domestic environment, where being a “loyal wife” becomes the heart of her wifely identity. Secondly, it is used formulaically and only for Homeric heroes who have proven their loyalty in death.4 That Klytaimnestra is attuned to this original meaning of the epithet becomes clear in her reference later to the slaughtered Kassandra, whom she calls Agamemnon’s “loyal (pistē) bedfellow,” meaning that she was so loyal to her master that she died for him (1442).5 Is Klytaimnestra insinuating that she is ready to die for Agamemnon if necessary or that her life without him was a “living death”? Klytaimnestra is speaking Agamemnon’s language, lulling his senses before she strikes. Thirdly, her use of the epithet for herself is unique: there is no other extant case in epic or the tragedies where a person uses this epithet to describe him/​herself.This usage reveals her as both self-​masculinizing and brazen. There is also the possibility of a semantic ambiguity in the phrase as it appears in the text. When the two words (in accusative) gynaika pistēn are pronounced emphatically together, they can be heard and understood as gynaik’apistēn meaning the exact opposite: “unfaithful/​disloyal wife.”6 In terms of performance the text gives latitude to an actor to pronounce Klytaimnestra’s phrase as he pleases. To further ensure that Agamemnon completely drops his guard, Klytaimnestra prepares a truly royal welcome for him. The crimson tapestries spread for him to walk on as he enters the palace are so expensive that even he, a victorious king, is reluctant at first to trample on them. He soon succumbs to Klytaimnestra’s blandishments. This scene highlights Klytaimnestra’s shrewd calculation: she intends to ensure divine support for her plan by luring Agamemnon into committing an act of hybris which will awaken the gods’ jealousy (photnos). Although, as is usual in Greek tragedy, the audience do not see the murder, Agamemnon’s captive concubine, Kassandra, gives its graphic details in her prophecy (1107–​26). Kassandra ultimately walks into the palace, in full knowledge of what will happen next, praying that her enemies may pay a blood penalty for “the death of a slave, an easy victim” (1324–​6). Indeed, Klytaimnestra’s power soon wanes. After the murders, Aigisthos takes credit for overthrowing Agamemnon and intends immediately to take power over Argos. It seems that Klytaimnestra, although successful in duping her husband, has underestimated her lover’s ambitions. Of the three plays presenting Elektra at the time of the matricide, it is Sophokles’ Elektra that most prominently frames Elektra’s revenge as an ideological and political act, rather than only a personal one. Situating the action in Argos in front of the royal palace, the heart of political power and conflict, Sophokles must have wanted to keep audience’s attention on the scene of Klytaimnestra’s vengeance.

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Sophokles’ Elektra is determined to seek revenge for her murdered father partly for political reasons: to rid the city of the two usurpers, Klytaimnestra and Aigisthos. She is depicted as a courageous idealist and revolutionary, determined to see justice done for her murdered father and to bring down a corrupt and illegitimate regime. On the other, more personal level, she is a lonely and frustrated woman, living under the thumb of her father’s murderers and prevented by them from marrying (164–​5, 187–​8, 961–​6). Sophokles thus explores the complex relationship between political idealism and courage, and the cruel and sordid means by which ideals are inevitably acted on in the world of power and Realpolitik. In her initial encounter with the Chorus Elektra emphasizes the morality of her stand, but her encounters with her sister Khrysothemis focus on the moral and political question of how one should act in the face of superior political power. The timid and practical-​minded Khrysothemis counsels submission: they are only women, she says (997–​1002), but Elektra is ready not only to kill but also to suffer and die. Politically, Sophokles’ Elektra assumes the role of public speaker, a role formally restricted to men. Her repeated, detailed descriptions of her father’s murder and of the royal couple’s mistreatment of her are voiced in public, becoming more than expressions of personal grief and anger.They have served to keep Agamemnon’s memory alive in Argos, to protest the conduct of the ruling powers, and to reinforce public perception of the illegitimacy of their rule. However, Elektra differs from her mother in that she makes no practical plans for retribution until the arrival of her brother Orestes. Although she clearly wishes her mother dead, she does not envisage herself as having the power to execute an act of murder by herself without any help. Euripides’ Elektra seems to have a far more personal agenda. She is nominally married to the Farmer, yet still a virgin, and living in poverty in the countryside, away from the luxuries of life in the palace. Her complaints focus as much, if not more, on her own deprivations, far from her ancestral home, as on her father’s murder. She deceives her mother into coming to her assistance by claiming she has given birth, and then helps Orestes murder her. Very soon after this, both Elektra and Orestes express regret and misgivings after the matricide.

Monarchial heroines defying executive power Sophokles’ Elektra challenges the fifth-​century conventions whereby the indoors was generally considered the sphere of women, the outdoors the domain of men.7 Sophokles’ Antigone also defies the de facto ruling power of the polis, her uncle Kreon. Antigone is a Theban princess, daughter (and sister) of Oidipous by Iokaste. Her decision to bury her brother Polyneikes, who attacked the city of Thebes in an attempt to retrieve the rule from his brother Eteokles, is both personal and political, even though she is not fully aware of the latter. Antigone is an impulsive heroine who buries her brother against Kreon’s edict, out of instinctual feeling that this is what one should do for a brother, without first formulating the principles theoretically justifying her action. She is portrayed as a character of great natural integrity, yet stubborn and intransigent. In focusing on what she regards as the moral way to behave toward family and the gods, she not only ignores the opinions of others, but is also willing to endanger them by attempting to convince them to collaborate with her. Furthermore, when her sister Ismene does not cooperate with her, Antigone casts her off, prioritizing the needs of her dead brother over those of her living sister. However, none of her acts divulge any political awareness or ambition.8 Although Antigone does not see herself as opposing the state, but just her uncle, scholars have seen the play as questioning the relationship of an individual and the state, or as representation of the conflict between oikos and polis.9 Although Kreon’s constitutional status in the play is vague, it is clear that after the death of Eteokles and Polyneikes, Oidipous’ sons, he is the legitimate ruler 286

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of the city, and has the power to issue edicts (164–​74). Antigone’s disobedience against his edict is seen by him as a political offense against his newly donned power. For Kreon the city comes before family, and there is no greater evil than insubordination such as Antigone’s (671).

Royal heroines challenging and deceiving the ruling authorities With art mimicking life, tragic monarchial women are also depicted as victims of violence through wars or other forms of maltreatment. Despite their inferior status, they find ways to challenge the authorities responsible for their victimhood, often employing various forms of deception. The most notable example is seen in Euripides’ Medea. In trying to understand Euripides’ characterization of Medea, it is important to appreciate her background as presented in the play. Medea is a “barbarian,” and therefore forever a foreigner. Although she was a Princess of Kolchis, Medea is now an apolis, a woman with no city. At Kolchis she had helped Jason obtain the Golden Fleece and followed him first to Iolkos, where she tried to help him retrieve his rightful rule by tricking Pelias’ daughters into killing their father, the usurper of the throne. After fleeing Kolchis and then Iolkos, Jason quickly forgets everything Medea has done on his behalf, belittling her actions when challenged on his treatment of her (e.g. Med. 526–​34). Casting Medea aside, he decides to marry the daughter of Kreon, King of Korinthos, instead. Out of fear of Medea, who is known to be a witch, Kreon decrees that she is to be exiled immediately with her sons in order to ensure his daughter’s safety. Although her queenly demeanor is apparent when she meets Aegeus, King of Athens and converses with him on equal footing (Med. 663–​758), Medea has no status in Greece, and she is painfully aware of her condition. Her social and political “otherness” is a leitmotiv of Medea’s story, yet she has learned enough about Greek behavioral codes such as fidelity, gratitude, and the honoring of oaths to castigate Jason for breaking them. In spite of being a foreigner and a soon-​to-​be exile, Medea is not afraid of debating with Kreon. She resorts to pleading and depicting herself as helpless. However, immediately after Kreon grants her a temporary reprieve, Medea reveals to the Chorus that her pleas were a ruse to gain time to plan her revenge. She has deceived Kreon, and the Chorus might well have wondered to what extent she has deceived them, too. Medea rapidly prepares and sends a poisoned robe to Jason’s new bride, which clings to the princess’ skin and burns her to death.While there is nothing in the play that specifically indicates any intention to murder Kreon, he too meets his death when he tries to save his daughter. Medea is fearless in executing this attack on the ruler of the city. Her revenge on Jason, however, is only complete once she murders their own sons.

“Good wives” who make their stands against ruling authorities—​who are also their husbands: Deianeira, Kreusa, Phaidra, and Alkestis As wives, tragic monarchial women’s conduct is usually reactive.They do not become unfaithful or vengeful except when the husbands’ behavior prompts it. Some choose to stand by their husbands, despite what might be considered the outrageous behavior of these men. Deianeira, Alkestis, Phaedra and, to a lesser extent, Kreusa are generally depicted as traditional women who submit to the ruling authorities, who also usually happen to be their husbands. In cases where subversive reactions to a husband seem justified, the wife often incurs either pain or death. In Sophokles’ Women of Trachis, Deianeira, the daughter of the king of Kalydon, has traveled with Herakles to his kingdom of Trachis after their nuptials. However, Herakles is rarely present, instead traveling far and wide on his adventures. Sophokles depicts Deianeira as a good wife, a 287

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passive figure who tolerates her husband’s absence without complaint. She is characterized by her inactivity, for example when, still a young bride, she was frozen in terror while Herakles was fighting Akheloios, the river god, in order to win her. She has stood by Herakles throughout the years of his adventuring, despite being certain that he has had many extramarital liaisons while away from home (Soph. Trach. 459–​60). Furthermore, she adores and yearns for her undeserving husband. She sees him as the “noblest of all men” (Soph. Trach. 177). When Herakles finally does return from what he has declared will be the last of his ventures, he has with him the beautiful captive Iole, daughter of King Eurytos. Fearful that she is about to lose her intimacy with Herakles, she finally decides to use what she thinks is a love potion, but in reality a deadly poison. What she thought was a fairly minor deceptive seduction results in her husband’s torturous death; as a result she commits suicide. Kreusa is also depicted as a good wife to her husband Xuthus in Euripides’ Ion.The daughter of the legendary Athenian king Erechtheus secretly bore a child in her youth after being raped by Apollon, but exposed him at birth. She suffers from the guilt of this episode and from the shame of her childlessness in her marriage with Xuthus, a foreigner who won her as a war prize. When she and Xuthus come to Delphi for help with their childlessness, Kreusa encounters the young man, later named Ion, serving in Apollon’s temple, without realizing that he is the son she had lost. When Xuthus is misled into believing that Ion is his own son, and plans to install him on the throne of Athens, Kreusa feels doubly betrayed by Apollon. Not only will she apparently remain childless, but Xuthus will introduce an interloper into her family, who will inherit the throne of Erechtheus. Despite the affinity she had felt for Ion, Kreusa is persuaded by the Old Tutor that she must prevent this from happening. She rejects his suggestion to kill Xuthus because their marriage was not unhappy, and Xuthus exhibits tender care for her (Ion 657–​60). She does, however, agree to poison Ion with a drop of Gorgon’s blood she has always kept with her. She has deceived Xuthus throughout their marriage about her childless status, and now goes behind his back instead of confronting him about this new son. It would seem that the limits placed on women’s legitimate means of action force them into desperate measures. Even after the successful outcome of the story, she is forced by Athena to continue to lie to Xuthus about the paternity of Ion. Alkestis’ agreement to die for her husband Admetos is often taken as a mark of love, and portrayed as such in the play’s reception.10 However, a close look at the encounter between the spouses reveals that she might simply have had no choice. From what she tells Admetos, it is clear that her motive was not love or concern for him, but rather her reluctance to make her children fatherless (Eur. Alc. 288). It might well be that she feared for the lives of her two children: after all, Admetos did not hesitate to ask his parents to die in his place.11 They, however, refused their shameless son’s request (Eur. Alc. 467–​70). Alkestis, despite literally agreeing to die for her husband the king, names her conditions for doing so. She instructs Admetos: “Keep (the children) as lords in my house, and do not marry again” (304–​5). Alkestis may well have known that Admetos could not stand by any such pledge, but at least he would live with the guilt of knowing he had not kept his word if he does remarry. The end of this play proves that her assessment of Admetos’ inability to be without a wife has proven correct.

The supreme woman—​Helen’s femininity versus ruling authorities Like her twin half-​sister Klytaimnestra, Helen is incomparable in Greek tragedy.While Klytaimnestra was the daughter of Leda and the mortal Tyndareus, Helen is the semi-​divine daughter of Zeus, who seduced Leda when he took the form of a swan. With the fame of her unparalleled beauty going before her, Helen is a law unto herself. Extant tragedy does not deal specifically with Helen 288

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leaving her husband and going (willingly or not) with Paris to Troy. It does however dwell at great length on the aftermath of the Trojan War, the tragic consequence of Helen’s departure. In Euripides’ Elektra, Orestes, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Iphigenia at Aulis, Trojan Women, Hekabe, and Andromakhe, none of the female characters has a good word to say about Helen. Her betrayal of her husband has led to the ruin of their families. Helen, however, presents an entirely different story in Trojan Women. Priam and Hekabe were at fault for not heeding the warning and having Paris.The gods were at fault. Paris was duped into falling in love with her, as she was offered to him as a bribe by Aphrodite, who has also bewitched her. In Troy, she did nothing wrong, as she could not have been expected to escape and return to Menelaus; even after Paris’ death, she was powerless as the wife of Deiphobos. Nothing Helen says is taken seriously by anyone, but her complete subversion of male authority figures is obtained by her beauty. Even Helen’s close relations, her sister Klaitemnestra and niece Iphigenia, blame their suffering on Helen. Only Euripides’ Helen, based on an alternative version of the myth, presents Helen as a faithful and devoted wife to Menelaos. An eidōlon, or image of Helen, had gone to Troy with Paris, while the real Helen was whisked to Egypt and for 17 years stayed faithful to her husband. After the war, the shipwrecked Menelaos is washed ashore in Egypt and is confused to find his wife there, dry and well dressed, thinking she had been with him at the shipwreck and later hidden in a cave. In Euripides’ Orestes, Helen’s final appearance, Helen is still unrepentant, only feeling some remorse at her sister’s death, and seeking to send libations to Klytaimnestra’s tomb. Incredibly, she asks Elektra, who participated in her mother’s murder, to carry out this task. Elektra refuses and suggests that Helen’s daughter Hermione be sent instead. When Elektra and Orestes are condemned to death for matricide, and Menelaos will not intercede on their behalf, they decide to kill their aunt and hold their cousin Hermione hostage for ransom. Incredibly, even at this point, Helen is somehow spared: being rescued by Apollon, she takes her place in the heavens alongside her brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, according to her father Zeus’ will.

Monarchial women fulfilling women’s traditional roles The monarchial women presented in tragedy engage in a variety of functions and roles that were common to women generally: they are not only mothers and wives, but also engage in the traditional roles that the household requires of them. They weave and dye their clothes, they offer hospitality, and partake in religious responsibilities, including lamenting and tending to the dead. Iphigenia, living among the Taurians away from her family, sums up some of those roles when she bemoans her fate of being deprived of the accepted womanly duties: “without marriage, or children, or city, or friends, not raising hymns to Hera at Argos, nor embroidering with my shuttle, in the singing loom, the likeness of Athenian Pallas and the Titans” (Eu. IT 220–​4). This ordinary aspect of the lives of royal women must have brought the protagonists closer to the audience and created some common ground.

Motherhood There is no bond stronger than that of a mother and her child, as Klytaimnestra succinctly states, when told that Orestes has been killed in a chariot race: It’s a wondrous thing to give birth. For even when you’re treated badly, you can’t hate your own children. (Soph. El. 77–​78) 289

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Motherhood not only assures the continuation of the royal line but also bestows status on the woman by having her join the family of her husband, even after the husband’s death, as in the case of Tekmessa in Sophokles’ Aias.12 However, a woman’s potential for motherhood also poses a threat to illegitimate rulers. Thus, the two Elektras and Khrysothemis are deprived of a marriage or a proper marriage by Aigisthos out of fear of a possible male heir who could avenge the murder of Agamemnon and reclaim the rule over Argos (Soph. El. 164–​5, 187–​8, 961–​6; Eur. El. 19–​42). Barred from the fulfillment of her womanhood, Elektra is envious and almost pruriently censorious of her mother’s sexuality (271–​6, 585–​94), and libidinously invested in her deceased father and absent brother. Young maidens are shown to crave marriage and motherhood, as Antigone’s song expresses (Soph. Ant. 810–​11; cf. El. 164–​5, 187–​8, 961–​2). Hekabe in Euripides’ Trojan Women and Hekabe might be the example of the most tragic motherhood. After witnessing the death of her sons on the battlefield and burying her toddler grandson Astyanax, thrown from the ramparts of Troy, she suffers loss after loss. She tearfully parts from Polyxena, who is led away to be slaughtered on the tomb of Achilles. Hekabe also knows that her daughter Kassandra, cursed with the gift of prophecy that no one believes, will die violently as well. At this point the wish of a mother to save her daughter, and to avenge her children killed in the war are her main motivators.13 However, it is the loss of Polydoros—​ her youngest son whom she and Priam had sent to King Polymestor in Thrace to ensure the youngster’s survival and, by extension, a future for the Trojans if their city fell  —​that finally breaks the distraught mother, prompting her into planning a terrible revenge on her son’s murderer. Together with her, fellow enslaved Trojan women, having lost everything else, also lose their compassion as mothers: they not only blind Polymestor, but murder his two young sons. Motherhood is also seen as a motivating force for Kreusa and Medea, although in very different fashions. In Euripides’ Ion, Kreusa, the only survivor of the autochthonous lineage to the Athenian throne, although childless in her marriage with Xuthus, gave birth to a baby boy in her youth, after being raped by Apollon. Kreusa exposed the baby boy but left with him tokens of recognition that linked the child with the founding myth of Athens.14 In spite of her youth and impossible circumstances, Kreusa demonstrated concern for the future of her child and a mother’s love. Eventually, her reunion with her son is effected by these tokens of recognition. Crucially, it was Kreusa’s mothering instinct that ensured the continuation of the line of Erechtheus. Medea, on the other hand, is a very different mother. She kills her sons as part of the vengeance she is exacting from Jason for abandoning her for the princess of Korinthos. She claims that her sons by Jason will not be safe in Korinthos with her in exile, and “since they must [die], the one who gave them birth shall kill them” (Eur. Med. 1061–​2)—​so she rationalizes her dreadful decision. Her internal struggle before executing the boys’ murder is agonizing. She acknowledges the horrific pain she is about to undergo but cannot restrain her emotions: “my wrath overbears my calculation” (Eur. Med. 1079) she admits. Thus, while Kreusa is determined to discover the fate of her abandoned baby boy and also to preserve the purity of her lineage even at the risk of her own life, Medea annihilates her motherhood by killing her two sons in the process of avenging herself on Jason, assuring she leaves him no heirs.

Lamenting the dead The most politically powerful religious function in the hands of women was lamenting the dead. In the sixth century BCE Solon recognized the political power of such laments by imposing restrictions on the participation of women, e.g. only kinswomen over 60 could participate in 290

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the procession.15 Sophokles gives this powerful weapon to his Elektra, who, in lamenting her father’s death outside the palace doors, turns her personal grief to social and political ends (see above, pp. 285–6). Euripides’ Elektra also laments her fate, but unlike her Sophoklean counterpart her lament does not have the same public political resonance, since she lives in the countryside far away from the city (El. 54–​63, 112–​212). Antigone also pours out her grief and arouses a political response from the Chorus when she laments her own upcoming death and burial as a further sign of her singularity (Soph. Ant. 806–​62).

Relations with the gods The relationship between some of the Greek monarchial heroines and the gods seems to be more of a personal than a religious nature. Most notably, Helen and Medea have divine ancestry and allow themselves a certain leeway in their behavior. Helen in Trojan Women is unapologetic and shamelessly blames her elopement on the goddesses whom Paris judged, specifically Aphrodite (Tro. 924–​42), and although guilty, as a daughter of Zeus, she somehow always remains unscathed. Medea thinks that murdering her sons is justifiable, and is helped by her grandfather Helios, who sends her a chariot to escape Korinthos. Kreusa also had what may be called an intimate relationship with one of the gods, Apollon, who raped her in her youth. When later in life she comes to Delphi, Kreusa castigates Apollon, blaming him not only for raping her, but also for not caring about their child. While other heroines do not have such close relationships with the gods, they petition them, negotiate with them, or complain about their treatment by them, although often fruitlessly. Aiskhylos’ Klytaimnestra’s direct appeals to the gods are denied or rendered futile. She seeks a pact with the daimōn: she will give up her share of the royal wealth if only the daimōn will go elsewhere and persecute some other house (Ag. 1566–​76). After her death, the Furies, who should pursue Orestes for shedding the blood of his mother, fail to pursue him on their own. Klytaimnestra’s ghost has to urge them to pursue the matricide (Eum. 94–​116). Finally, Athena, having the final vote in the trial of Orestes before the Athenian Areopagos, does not refute Apollon’s contention that a woman is a mere vessel for the father’s seed, by which logic the father is the only parent with any rights to the child. Thus Klytaimnestra, the woman who rose to a position of unparalleled power, challenging her husband Agamemnon in every way possible—​his right to determine the fate of their children, his right to rule the polis, and ultimately his right to live—​is finally defeated by none other than Athena herself, who makes sure that after her death Klytaimnestra loses even the right to be considered a true parent at all. Iphigenia’s relationship with Artemis is complicated. According to the seer Kalchas, it was Artemis who had withheld the wind from the fleet’s sails at Aulis, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia would bring back the wind, allowing the army to sail to Troy (Eur. IA 90–​2; IT 15–​19). However, according to one version, Artemis interceded at the last moment, saving Iphigenia from being sacrificed (IA 1581–​83; IT 27–​9). Among the Taurians, Iphigenia is supposed to live this traumatic moment time after time as she prepares human victims for sacrifice at the goddesses’ temple. Despite her traumatic existence, Iphigenia retains the clarity of thought to observe that no divinity wants human sacrifice and that the fearful ordeal is dictated by humans: “Impossible that Zeus’ bride Leto could have given birth to such a foolish creature [Artemis]. […] I believe that people, here themselves murderous, ascribe their own fault to the goddess. None of the gods, I think, is wicked” (IT 385–​91). When Iphigenia is about to escape by ship from Thoas, whom she has deceived with a ruse at having to purify the statue of the goddess in the sea after it has been polluted by the strangers, Poseidon stirs up a storm and almost wrecks their ship 291

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on the rocks. Thoas intends to recapture the escapees, but Athena appears as dea ex machina and intercedes with Poseidon to allow them to sail away, with the instruction that Iphigenia will serve the goddess until the end of her days (IT 1462–​4). Thus, although saved from death by Artemis, Iphigenia never sees her home again.

Conclusion The three tragic playwrights, Aiskhylos, Sophokles, and Euripides, skillfully breathed life into an array of monarchial heroines, each with her own distinct personality, story, and motivations. These characters, replete with the full array of human emotions, still fascinate readers and audiences today.They have ambitions, they take revenge, they love their children and their families, and hate those who harm them. While reflecting to some extent the limitations placed on fifth-​century Athenian women, the royal heroines are often larger than life. Ultimately, they were brought into being as part of highly dramatic theatrical performances. They would have danced, sung, wailed, debated, and pleaded before an audience.Those who died would have lost their lives just out of sight, but their bodies might have been viewed on stage.We cannot be sure whether there were any women watching the first appearances of these heroines, but with the gift of hindsight we can say that they have reverberated through over 2000 years of history and still find their place in the hearts of audiences today.

Notes 1 Due to the limited space I will not discuss all the royal women appearing in extant tragedies, but I will consider most of them. 2 Translation of Sophokles’ Elektra is by Roisman 2008/​2017. Translations of Euripides’ plays are by or based on Kovacs 1999; 2001, of Aiskhylos on Sommerstein 2008, of Euripides’ fragments on Collard and Cropp 2008. 3 See Stanford 1937: 92: “a woman of irrational hopes combined with the deliberate and purposive resolution of a man.” 4 The epithet appears only six times in the Iliad, referring to four heroes: Patroklos (17.557, 18.235, 460), Stichios (15.331), Lykophron (15.437), and Podes (17.589). For discussion, see Roisman 1984: passim. 5 For discussion, see Roisman 1984: 105–​6. 6 Ferguson 1972:  83 mentions this possibility but without any further elaboration. For a full discussion and grammatical ramifications of the use of apistēn, which is a compound adjective in an unusual female form in Greek, and of other double entendres mentioned here, see Roisman 2018b. For a similar intentional or unintentional manipulation of sound-​play, see De Jong 2001: on Od. 18.306–​43, where she discusses erga gelasta “the laughable deeds” that can be understood also as erg’ agelasta “not laughable/​g rave deeds.” 7 For the various qualifications of this assumption, see Easterling 1987. 8 For discussion see Roisman 2018a. 9 This is how Hegel 1962: 62–​74 reads this play. For discussion of Hegel’s analysis, see Steiner 1984: 19–​42; Hester 1971; and briefly Griffith 1999: 49. 10 Roisman 2015. 11 Roisman 2000; Luschnig and Roisman 2003:182–​6; Roisman forthcoming. 12 For discussion see Roisman 2019. 13 Collard 1991: 23–​4. 14 The theme of Athenian autochthony runs throughout the play: 8–​13, 29, 57–​64, 74–​5, 80–​1; cf. 184, 260–​82, 568, 589–​92, 671–​2, 720–​4, 736, 810–​15, 840, 987–​1017, 1058–​60, 1069–​73, 1074–​90, 1106, 1220, 1297–​9, 1073–​88. The study of autochthony, particularly from a feminist perspective, received great impetus from the work of Loraux (1990) and Zeitlin (1989, reprinted in Zeitlin 1996). 15 Plut. Sol.21, Dem. 43.62. For discussion see Alexiou 1974: 14–​23; Holst-​Warhaft 1992: 99–​170.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. Collard, C. (trans.) 1991. Euripides: Hecuba, with Introduction,Translation, and Commentary. Warminster. Collard, C. and Cropp, M. (trans.) 2008. Fragments. Selection, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA. De Jong, I.F. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge. Easterling, P.E. 1987. “Women in Tragic Space.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 34: 15–​26. Ferguson, J. 1972 [reissued 2013]. A Companion to Greek Tragedy. Austin and London. Griffith. M. 1999. Sophocles: Antigone. Cambridge. Hester,V.J. 1971. “Sophocles the Unphilosophical: A Study in the Antigone.” Mnemosyne 24: 11–​59. Holst-​Warhaft, G. 1992. Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature. London and New York. Kovacs, D. 1995. Euripides: Children of Heracles, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba. Cambridge, MA. Kovacs, D. (trans.) 1999. Euripides: Trojan Women; Iphigenia among the Taurians; Ion. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA. Kovacs, D. (trans.) 2001. Euripides: Cyclops; Alcestis; Medea. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA. Loraux, N. 1990. “Kreousa the Autochthon. A Study of Euripides’ Ion.” In J.H. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton, 168–​206. Luschnig, C.A.E. and Roisman, H.M. 2003. Euripides’ Alcestis with Notes and Commentary. Paolucci, A. and Paolucci, H. 1962. Hegel on Tragedy. New York: Doubleday. Roisman, H.M. 1984. Loyalty in Early Greek Epic and Tragedy. Hain. Roisman, H.M. 2000. “Meter and Meaning.” New England Classical Journal 27: 182–​99. Roisman, H.M. (trans.) 2008/​2017. Sophocles: Electra. Translation with Notes, Introduction, Interpretative Essay and Afterlife. Newburyport, MA. Roisman, H.M. 2014. “Hecuba.” In H.M. Roisman (ed.), Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, vol. II. Malden, MA, 670. Roisman, H.M. 2015. “Alcestis.” In R. Lauriola and K.N. Demetriou (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Euripides. Leiden, 353–​80. Roisman, H.M. 2018a. “The Two Sisters.” In D. Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Antigone. London, 63–​77. Roisman, H.M. 2018b. “Loyal Clytemnestra:  γυναῖκα πιστήν (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 606)” Giornale Italiano di Filologia 70: 11–​18. Roisman, H.M. 2019. “Tecmessa.” In D. Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Ajax. London, 97–​115. Roisman, H.M. Forthcoming. Tragic Heroines of Ancient Greek Drama. London. Sommerstein, A.H. (trans.) 2008a. Aeschylus. Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA. Sommerstein, A.H. (trans.) 2008b. Aeschylus. Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound. Cambridge, MA. Stanford. W.B. 1937. “Γυναικὸς ἀνδρόβουλον ἐλπίζον κέαρ (Agamemnon line 11)” Classical Quarterly 31: 92–​3. Steiner, G. 1984. Antigones. Oxford. Zeitlin, F.I. 1989/​1996. “Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self in Euripides’ Ion.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 35: 144–​97; repr. in F.I. Zeitlin (ed.), Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago, 285–​338.

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Introduction Argead women—​the mothers, sisters, wives, or daughters of reigning Argeads and their male relatives—​became visible because of the clan nature of Argead monarchy.1 As Carney points out, all members of this clan “were seen as part of the basileia, including women who were Argead by blood or marriage.”2 As such, they all represented its dynastic image and contributed to it. It is misleading to think in terms of a dichotomy of “private” versus “public,” which cannot be applied to the Argead roles. Family life in the ruling house was essentially political: honoring ancestors stressed the history of Argead accomplishments; closeness between relatives symbolized their branch’s solid unity; marriages were a matter of politics, status, and alliances; procreation served to ensure succession and preserve Argead rule. Argead family business was no matter of personal feelings, emotional care, or attachment, but of preservation of influence, connections, and legitimizing staged scenes of dynastic conformity and power. Given all this, the life of female and male Argeads was inevitably in the public eye. Supposedly, the large veranda of the palace of Aigai—​the old Argead capital, later the symbolic center and dynastic necropolis—​was constructed as a place for the family to be seen on certain occasions.3 Birth, marriage, and death as dynastic markers were of political concern. Female Argeads will have taken part in weddings and burials, probably splendid and impressive festivals intended to show their wealth and influence to a large number of officials and allies.4 Philip II staged the wedding of his daughter Kleopatra in 336 as a major event in the crowded theater of Aigai, combined with ceremonies associated with his Persian war, musical contests, games, and lavish banquets (Diod. 16.91.4–​93.1). It was an advertisement of Argead power and participation in Greek culture, explicitly directed to Macedonian leading circles and Greek representatives. Burials were a platform for the successor to show himself as the heir conducting the funeral and sharing the customary rites.5

The sources Research on Argead women is hampered by the problem of the sources. Evidence is scarce, scattered, fragmentary, and focused on male Argeads. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence is generally poor for Argead Macedonia, let alone for royal women. Traces of portrait statues are 294

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first to be found in the second half of the fourth century BC: of the statues dedicated by Philip’s mother Eurydike to the goddess Eukleia (“Good Fame”) at Aigai, dated in the 350s, only two inscribed podia and a peplos figure (wearing a long female garment) survive.6 The statue’s identity (Eukleia, a priestess, or Eurydike) is debated. An inscription from near Palatitsia may point at a lost portrait statue of Eurydike.7 In 338, Philip II commissioned the first known Macedonian dynastic group made of gilded marble that showed himself, his father, mother, wife Olympias, and son Alexander (Paus. 5.17.4, 20.9–​10).8 This sculptural representation of the legitimacy and unity of his family core was put up in the Philippeion, a circular roofed building, dedicated to Zeus, in Olympia. Only the statue bases have survived. The scarce epigraphic material for royal women also dates to the second half of the fourth century BC. The earliest inscriptions are those of Eurydike mentioned above.9 Like the male Argeads, royal women were identified by their personal names and usually patronymics, for example: Εὐρυδίκα Σίρρα Εὐκλείαι (Eurydike, daughter of Sirras, to Eukleia: SEG 36.556). While the paternal name entered the official record and collective memory, this does not apply to that of the mother, as confirmed by lists of Argead rulers (Hdt. 8.139; Diod. Sic. 7 F 15–​17). As a result, the mothers of several Argead rulers, even influential ones, are unknown. Inscriptional political documents from Greek poleis such as treaties of alliance or peace involving Argeads do not mention any royal women, neither in association with the reigning Argead who represented the empire (IG I³ 89; Syll.³ 135), nor among the Argead signatories. Argead coins are another problem. In Hellenistic times, coins could be minted for a royal woman (in her name as indicated by the legend on the reverse), show her portrait, and on rare occasions be issued by a royal woman herself, such as Kleopatra Thea.10 However, there are no coins minted by or for an Argead woman, and no coin portraits of them.11 Due to the lack of Macedonian reports, Greek and Roman texts are our main literary sources. However, they view Macedonia and its monarchy from the outside and preserve the cultural perceptions and judgments of their respective intellectual and socio-​political backgrounds. This is an issue. Although the Argeads claimed a—​surely forged—​Greek (Heraklid) descent from Peloponnesian Argos (Hdt. 8.137.1, 139; Thuc. 2.99.3; 5.80.2; Diod. Sic. 7 F 15)  and their court society participated in Greek culture, in several respects, Macedonia, influenced by Thrace, Illyria, Epeiros, and probably the Achaimenid Empire, differed from Greece, also regarding the spheres of action of elite women.12 The contemporary speeches of the Attic orators attest to the degree of prominence of Alexander III’s mother Olympias and his sister Kleopatra among the Athenians (Lyk. Leokr. 26; Hyp. Eux. 19–​23). Similar to the references to Argead rulers, the orators only mention their personal names (even without any implied reference to Macedonia). Their names apparently connected them with their house.13 This implies that the audience was knowledgeable about their identity and public persona.The device “With or without his mother Olympias, there was only one Alexander”14 also works the other way around. Acknowledging the Argead women as representations of the clan, the orators also shed significant light on the gloomy mood in Athens under the detested Macedonian dominion: the women were seen as another manifestation of the evil Macedonian oppressors and corrupting forces.15 Distressed by the public appearance of royal women in the field of politics, Greek and Roman authors showed an attitude Carney fittingly characterizes as “a compound of ignorance and hostility” accompanied by feelings of alienation.16 As a result, they provide us with distorted moral views on Argead women as agents of their clan: interfering in an “unseemly” way into “manly” business, causing chaos and bloodshed. Infamously, Olympias is portrayed as a quarrelsome, jealous, scheming, and cruel battle-​ax who gave her stepson mind-​destroying 295

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drugs (Plut. Alex. 77.5) and instigated her husband’s assassination (Just. 9.7.1–​12). Creating the impression that loss of morals runs in the family, Plutarch is indignant that Olympias’ daughter Kleopatra allegedly betrayed her royal rank by using her freedom of action (apparently as a young widow) and lack of control by the head of the family (her undutiful brother Alexander who did not care for her remarriage) in order to have an affair with a handsome young man (Mor. 818b–​c). Trogus-​Justin summarizes the prejudices of Greek and Roman writers against women in politics by characterizing Olympias’ political style when fighting for her grandson’s rights in Macedonia as follows:17 she “committed a great slaughter among the leading circles throughout the country in a manner more like a woman than a royal” (14.6.1). Such stereotypical ancient depictions reveal a lot about the socio-​cultural background of the authors and next to nothing about the historical women and their contributions to the standing of their house. For example, while depicted as a kind of ancient prototype of a degenerate helicopter-​mother (Plut. Alex. 39.7), according to Macedonian standards, Olympias was a good mother: caring, energetic, and profoundly integrated into the networks of power.18

Missing titles, significant names There is no evidence for the use of a female title for the wives, mothers, and daughters of the Argead ruler. Ancient Macedonian equivalents to terms such as “dowager queen,” “queen mother,” “queen” or “princess” (as well as “(crown) prince”) did not exist. The word basilissa for a Macedonian royal woman is first attested in the times of the Successors for Demetrios Poliorketes’ wife Phila (Syll.3 333.8–​9, after 306).19 It was used for wives and occasionally daughters of a Macedonian ruler, signifying that they were members of the royal house without implying any specific powers or office.20 Argead rulers did not use the title basileus either. It would not have suited their traditional position as a primus inter pares (first among equals). Philip II paved the way for breaking away from this limitation—​without calling himself basileus. If Alexander III used the title at all—​it is debated whether it emerged posthumously—​he did so only in his last years.21 Accordingly, it is also unclear whether in this time or during the transitional years after his death, some royal women received a title. An Athenian inventory of dedications lists votives (a golden rhyton and jewelry) by Roxane, his Baktrian wife, to Athena Polias (Syll.³ 334). Perhaps it dates to the time after 323 when Olympias advocated the throne rights of her grandchild Alexander IV, Roxane’s son, in Europe. She may have tried to polish Roxane’s image.22 While the inscription calls her (dead?) husband basileus, Roxane is only labeled his wife (gyne). According to epistolary slanders, ascribed to Theopompos (Ath. 13.595d–​e = BNJ 115 F 254b), and a contemporary pun by the Greek comic poet Philemon (Ath. 13.595c), Alexander III’s treasurer Harpalos, infamous for his dolce vita, forced the local population of Babylon and Tarsos to call his courtesans basilissai. The credibility of this information is doubtful. Even if it contained some truth, it is not proof of an established practice at the Argead court. Carney suggests that in some individual cases, Argead women’s personal names that recognized their public identity had the impact of a “quasi-​title”: it marked their influential status as Argeads before actual titles were employed.23 Sometimes, Argeads used their daughters’ names to commemorate their political and military accomplishments.24 Alexandros I called his child Stratonike, “victory in military matters” (Thuc. 2.101.6), perhaps referring to a victory in Bisaltia or eastern Macedonia in the 370s/​60s.25 A daughter of Philip II was named Thessalonike, “victory over the Thessalians” (perhaps at the Krokos Field in 352); another, Europe, commemorating the establishment of the Macedonian hegemony in 338 (Ath. 13.557d). Alexander III’s sister Kleopatra honored her brother’s defeat of the Theban revolt in 335 (that had begun by 296

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attacking the Macedonian garrison on the Kadmeia) by calling her baby daughter Kadmeia (Plut. Pyrrh. 5.5). While throne names were not Argead practice, in the turbulence after Alexander III’s death, the prestige of his successor Arrhidaios was increased by the change of his name to Philip after his famous father (Curt. 10.7.7; Diod. Sic. 8.2.4; Arr. Succ. F 1.1). Similarly, Arrhidaios’ wife Adea was renamed Eurydike (Arr. Succ. F 1.23), a reference to Philip’s mother and the Argead past carrying dynastic prestige and apparently political promises.26 Another change of a female name mirrors the public status of royal women:  Philip II’s Epeirote wife Polyxena-​Myrtale was renamed Olympias after her marriage (Plut. Mor. 401a–​b), either to commemorate his victory in Olympia (Plut. Alex. 3.5) or in the Macedonian games at Dion, or to stress his piety to the Olympian Gods.27 Reportedly, Olympias also bore the name Stratonike, perhaps as an epithet when fighting for Alexander IV. Maybe it referred to her faction’s victory at Euia (317).28 In any case, it was a statement underlining the “trademark quality” of royal names.

Succession advocacy and polygamy Argead mothers played an important role as succession advocates, in particular since there was no fixed systematic succession process such as primogeniture in Macedonia.29 While most often, sons succeeded their fathers, succession was a matter of situational power constellations at the court and political circumstances in the empire, not of any fixed rules. It was in the interest of an Argead mother that her son made it to the throne and retained it: his career empowered her.30 As Carney states, polygamy “transformed mothers and sons into political units” and contributed particularly to the influence of royal women.31 If the son was still a minor and her position at the court firmly consolidated, she could act as a regent on his behalf, like Kleopatra, Alexander III’s sister. She seems to have taken the regency in Epeiros when her husband Alexandros I died in 331/​330, leaving an infant son, Neoptolemos (Just. 12.2.3–​4; Aischin. 3.242; Liv. 8.24.5–​13).32 While there is no explicit epigraphical evidence for her regency, perhaps, as her reception of the sacred envoys shows (SEG 23.189, l.12), she acted as regent. Matters of Argead succession were influenced by polygamy as a royal prerogative. Polygamy served to secure a sufficient number of throne candidates, and to establish or intensify political alliances with other influential families on a wide scale. It is uncertain which Argead ruler introduced this practice. Philip II is the first for whom it is explicitly attested (Ath. 13.557b–​e). But it was probably practiced before (Just. 9.8.3). If it was borrowed from Achaimenid practice, it was made compatible with Argead requirements: Persian royal polygamy linked the dynasty with its leading circles, Argead polygamy distinguished it from them.33 Since polygamy carried the risk of inner dynastic strife and discord in leading circles, it has been argued that the negative portrayals of some Argead mothers and sons were the by-​ product of “amphimetric strifes” (rivalries between mother–​son-​g roups), thus traces of smear campaigns.34 The malicious character assassins are identified with the victims’ own family members who tried to outmaneuver the rival contender by raising doubts about his legitimacy (“bastardizing”) and slandering his mother’s descent and conduct. However, as Carney states, the term “bastardizing” is too narrow to describe the phenomenon: more often, the status of the mother, not the son, is denigrated.35 In addition, such slanders against Argead mothers and sons might not be the result of rude family feuds, but the literary product of our Greek and Roman authors with their moral view from the outside.36 Argead polygamy was a major source of misunderstanding resulting in distorted depictions of marriage politics, the court, and wives. For Greeks and Romans, 297

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monogamy was the norm while polygamy was often “barbaric,” associated with eastern despots, extravagance, and decadence.37 Accordingly, the authors showed a lack of understanding of the status of Argead wives and offspring. Since in their eyes, there could only be one legal wife (γυνή) with legitimate (γνήσιος) children, not several of them, they erroneously depicted these “superfluous” wives as mere concubines (παλλακαί), mostly of lower rank, and their children as illegitimate (νόθος). Thus, one of Philip II’s seven wives, Philinna, a high-​ranking Thessalian, was called a dancing-​girl (saltatrix) and prostitute (scortum) (Just. 9.8.2; 13.2.11) of obscure birth (Plut. Alex. 77.5). Being a child of a polygamous father, even Alexander III was associated with reproaches of being “illegitimate” (in the sense of a “lesser” legitimacy)—​at least according to a sensationalist anecdote in our Greek and Roman sources (Plut. Alex. 9.4; Ath. 13.557d–​e; Just. 9.7.3–​5). However, all of the women the ruler had married were his acknowledged wives and all those of their children whom he had acknowledged were legitimate. It is also inappropriate to speak of a “chief wife” and “second wives.” This misconception seems to be inspired by Western imaginations of the “harem” as a counter-​image of sexual and social norms.38 Hence, since accusations of bastardy and low birth are standard elements of the Greek and Roman misrepresentation of the practice of polygamy, it seems unlikely that any knowledgeable Argead court member slandered his relatives in terms fitting a monogamous view. They surely thought in other categories. It has also been supposed that the polygamous Argeads failed to establish any consistent method of hierarchizing their sons and principles of legitimacy.39 However, this idea of fixation and quasi-​institutionalization does not apply to the Macedonian structures. Just like succession, legitimacy was not a fixed principle.The ruler’s sons’ political “market value” depended on situational, changeable power constellations.This flexible “market value,” symbolic weight or capital (immaterial elements of prestige constituting social status) consisted of the following factors: the basic requirement of being an Argead; the prestige, political importance, and genealogy of his paternal and maternal families; the degree of being marked out by the reigning ruler; his own military and political experience and skills; and in particular the dimension of support by the influential Macedonian factions. In a polygamous court, the candidate’s mother’s status as a distinguishing mark was of special importance. Since the outcome was determined by the constellation of power at the court, a new ruler might have owed his accession not least to the networks of his mother. Her—​flexible—​symbolic capital was constituted by the political influence and prestige of her natal family’s ancestry, the influence of her faction, her ability to give birth to a potential successor, and her personal ability to engage in networking.40 But nothing was fixed. All depended on the political situation. A marital bond could become unimportant for the ruler. For example, when Alexander III married the Baktrian Roxane in 328/​327 (Curt. 8.2.26–​9; Plut. Alex. 47.4), the bond served the immediate political need to gain Baktrian supporters to settle the Sogdian–​Baktrian revolt. The marriage’s importance was diminished by the end of the revolt and even more so when in 324, Alexander married two Achaimenid women with much higher prestige.

Historical developments Argead women’s areas of action expanded in accordance with their dynasty’s rise. Philip II’s reign was a watershed. His own structural and visual elevation of rank in relation to his leading circles increased the participation of royal women in the monarchical presentation. Even before that, their roles will have encompassed more than the “traditional” fields of marriage policy and 298

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reproduction: political, diplomatic, dedicatory, beneficial, and probably also cultic aspects. But the scarce evidence mentions early Argead women only as brides or mothers. The Greek Herodotos, known as the father of historiography (Cic. leg. 1.5), mentions the first attested Argead woman, Gygaia (5.21.2). In 513–​510, her father Amyntas I complied to the demand of Dareios I’s general Megabazos for a formal surrender (Hdt. 5.18.1–​2; Just. 7.3.1–​ 3).41 Gygaia married Megabazos’ son Boubares (Hdt. 5.21.2, 7.22.2, 8.36.1; Just. 7.3.9), perhaps an Achaimenid.42 The date is debated.43 Herodotos places the wedding in the aftermath of Amyntas’ surrender while stating that his son Alexandros I gave his sister to Boubares—​actually her father’s task if he had been alive. The identity of the giver of the bride hints at Alexandros’ early reign. Since he was much more influential than Amyntas—​who had been a peripheral, hardly important local dynast—​it would also explain why the high-​ranking Persian Boubares would want to marry into this family. In this context, in a likely fictional banquet story, Herodotos mentions that Argead women did not attend courtly symposia (Hdt. 5.18–​20; cf. Just. 7.3.3). This would be in accordance with the Greek view that symposia were no place for any respectable women. However, Carney assumes that they might have been occasionally present or banqueted separately.44 The next Argead woman also appears in the context of strategic marriage policy. In 429, Stratonike, the sister of Perdikkas II, was given to Seuthes, the nephew of the Odrysian ruler Sitalkes (Thuc. 2.101.5–​6). Allied with Athens, Sitalkes had invaded Perdikkas’ realm (Thuc. 2.95.1, 98.1, 100.1–​4; Diod. Sic. 12.50.3–​51.3). Perdikkas negotiated a peace that was sealed by the marital union. Usually, the Athenian Thucydides hardly pays any attention to women and rarely mentions female names.45 While Stratonike is an exception, he is not interested in her in her own right. Rather, naming her serves as a proof of authenticity and alleged inside knowledge regarding his claim that the marriage was another crookery of Perdikkas, Thucydides’ usual suspect, portrayed as a devious, nightmarish ally of Athens:46 allegedly, Perdikkas secretly and subversively bribed Seuthes—​another unreliable “barbarian”—​by offering Stratonike and a large dowry. Seuthes accepted and made his uncle retreat, who thereby let the Athenians down (2.100.5–​6). This passage is an instructive example of the layers of bias and partisanship that mostly color the information on the Argeads. Altogether, the few attested Argead women of the fifth and early fourth century BC appear exclusively as wives and mothers. They are hardly more than names to us—​if their names were recorded at all. Things change with Eurydike, the wife of Amyntas III (394/​393–​370/​369), “the first royal woman in Macedonia known to have taken an active role in public events.”47 Macurdy, the pioneer scholar regarding Argead women, sees her as an embodiment of the rise of “woman power” in Macedonia.48 Probably of prestigious Lynkestian and Illyrian origin (Plut. Mor. 14b; Suda s.v. Karanos κ 356 Adler; Strab. 7.7.8), Eurydike provided Amyntas III, who had been troubled by the Illyrians (and likely their Lynkestian ties), with the political connections he so badly needed (Diod.14.92.3). Probably, they married in the still tense situation in the late 390s.49 Eurydike increased her symbolic weight by giving birth to three sons and a daughter (Just. 7.4.5). Her political significance did not seem to have faded during Amyntas’ reign—​the Illyrian threat remained a factor, the Lynkestians unpredictable. Although Amyntas had another wife, Gygaia, perhaps from another Argead branch,50 and three sons with her (Just. 7.4.5), only Eurydike’s sons made it to the throne, succeeding each other: Alexander II, Perdikkas III, and Philip II. Her public presence was at its height under Philip II, when other Argead women also emerged with a public profile. In the span from his reign to Olympias’ death in 316, the whole range of royal women’s spaces of action besides succession advocacy, marriage politics, and reproduction became visible: dedications, benefactions, diplomacy, piety, politics, warlike appearances, cultural 299

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policy, and patronage. Exemplarily, regarding politics and diplomacy, Olympias demanded the surrender of the fugitive Harpalos from Athens in 324 (Diod. 17.108.7); Kleopatra represented Epeiros as thearodoch (official receiving sacred envoys) in 330 (SEG 23.189, l.12).51 As for acts of piety, Olympias dedicated a golden bowl to the goddess Hygieia in Athens (Hyp. Eux. 4.19). Concerning cultural policy and artistic patronage, Eurydike posed as a role-​model regarding education (Plut. Mor. 14b-​c); Kleopatra sponsored the tomb of a Greek flute-​player, probably her court musician (Paus. 1.44.6). Olympias and Kleopatra, the most prominent Argead women, were promoted by Alexander III in his reign. During his campaigns, they held position in Europe, working hand in hand with him.52 He enabled their benefactions for the sake of the house by sending parts of his booty to them (Plut. Alex. 16.8, 25.4, 39.7). After the establishment of Macedonian control over the Kyrenaika in 331/​330, he shipped Kyrenaian grain to them which they sold during a time of shortage in Greece (SEG 9.2; Lyk. Leokr. 26), likely cheaper than the expensive famine price. After the battle of Gaugamela (331), Olympias ordered a dedication of crowns to Delphic Apollon to be paid with 190 dareikoi, the Persian gold coins, obviously another part of Alexander’s booty (Syll.³ 252).

Argead women and war Warrior skills were central elements of Argead representation, certainly responding to the practical requirements of rule. War was so crucial that even some women participated in the demonstration of Argead warrior skills.53 Carney divides their warlike appearances into three categories: battlefield command, symbolic leadership, and administrative leadership.54 As for the first category, Kynnane, the daughter of Philip II and his Illyrian wife Audata, fought on his side during his Illyrian campaign in the 340s (Polyain. Strat. 8.60), perhaps commanding some Illyrian mercenaries.55 In 317, during the civil wars in Macedonia, Kynnane’s daughter Adea-​ Eurydike appeared as a commander in the battle of Euia (Diod. Sic. 19.11.2, 9; Ath. 13.560f). In the ongoing debate on the identity of the occupants of tomb II in Vergina-​Aigai, it has been supposed that Adea was the woman buried like a warrior in the antechamber with a set of gilded weapons.56 At Euia, the participation of Olympias, the figurehead of Adea’s opponents, was of an organizational nature (symbolic leadership). The fact that Adea’s Macedonian troops deserted to Olympias because of her (higher) axioma (prestige, rank, influence: Diod. Sic. 19.1.2) illustrates that they understood and accepted her military role. The military training attested for Audata, Kynnane, and Adea (Ath. 13.560f; Diod. Sic. 19.11.1–​3) may have been both a preparation for battlefield command and a public show demonstrating the house’s warrior skills, hence symbolic leadership. As for administrative leadership, in 368/​367, Philip II’s mother Eurydike reactivated philia networks by hiring the Athenian mercenary general Iphikrates. He expelled the pretender Pausanias who had invaded Macedonia and threatened the future of her minor sons (Aischin. 2.27–​9; Nep. 11.3.2). Unfortunately, we have no information on any income or property of Argead women. However, since there are Hellenistic examples of royal women with their own funds at their disposal, perhaps this also applied to the Argead women: Eurydike may have paid the mercenaries herself.57 A legend of proto-​historical Macedonia connects Macedonian women with war. While there is no explicit reference to female Argeads, given the dynasty’s warlike profile, the association is not unlikely. According to the Macedonian Polyainos (Strat. 4.1), the Argead ruler Argaios (sixth century BC) tricked the invading Illyrians into believing that his small force was a huge one: when the enemy advanced, he let Macedonian girls, devotees of Dionysos, 300

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appear who carried thyrsoi instead of spears and had their faces covered with wreaths. The Illyrian ruler mistook them for men and retreated. A grateful Argaios built a temple to Dionysos Pseudanor (“sham man”) and called the priestesses Mimallones (“imitators of men;” cf. Kallim. F 503 Pfeiffer). The tale is thought to reflect a transition rite for Macedonian adolescent girls that included cultic female travesty. Furthermore, Angiò sees a metaphorical hint at the political and military aspects of the roles of Argead women whom Macedonian recipients likely associated with the Mimallones.58 It is tempting to connect this with the suggestion that Olympias, associated with Dionysiac rites and the term Mimallones (Plut. Alex. 2.5–​6; Ath. 13.560f), was a priestess of Dionysos.59

Argead widows The fate of an Argead widow depended on her individual situation.60 Often, she was in danger: in order to cut the ties to the predecessor and to prevent potential rivals from allying themselves with her, the new persons in charge killed her. Exemplarily, in 323, Perdikkas, Roxane’s new patron, had Alexander’s two Achaimenid wives Stateira and Parysatis (probably)—​to whose incomparably higher dynastic prestige Roxane could not measure up—​killed (Plut. Alex. 77.4). He wanted to use Roxane’s unborn child as a political tool and dead widows could make no rival claim to being pregnant with Alexander’s baby. The question of remarriage of an Argead widow depended on her age and her individual situation. It has been suggested that there existed a pattern of Argead “levirate” or “stepmother” marriages: successors married their predecessors’ widows, often their own stepmothers, as tokens of legitimacy.61 However, as Carney points out, the respective dynamics are much more variable and the marriage to royal widows did not legitimate a ruler in any absolute sense.62 Additionally, such a pattern of “stepmother marriages” is based on scholarly reconstruction of gaps of knowledge. The burden of proof regarding the three debated cases rests with problematic sources. As for Perdikkas II and Phila, no marriage is attested at all, only lovesickness (Hipp. Sec. Sor. 5; cf. Luk. Hist. conscr. 35). Regarding Archelaos, the assumption depends on the homonymy of his wife Kleopatra and his father’s betrothed (Pl. Grg. 471a–​d; Diod. 14.37.6). In the case of Ptolemy of Aloros—​likely no ruler but Perdikkas III’s guardian—​and Eurydike (probably merely his mother-​in-​law), the marriage is debated since only a scholiast mentions it.63 The Christian author Tertullian (Apol. 9.16–​17; Ad nat. 1.16) claims that the Macedonians (= rulers?) were suspected of habitually sleeping with their mothers:  when Oidipous was performed first in Macedonia, they ridiculed Oidipous’ grief and shouted rowdily:  “ἥλαυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα (drive into the mother)!” The source of inspiration for this indecent tale will not have been any practice of Argead (step)mother-​marriages. Tertullian draws a comparison to the Persians, likewise suspected of such evil habits, and refers to Ktesias with his stereotypical depictions of Eastern courtly decadence (BNJ 688 F 44a–​b).64 Hence, it looks like another by-​ product of pejorative Greek and Roman fantasies about polygamous courts.

Conclusions The scope of the activity and visibility of Argead women depended on the political situation of their house in general and increased with its rise. It varied with the women’s individual circumstances and their skills in establishing and using personal networks and handling political situations. When they emerged in the public eye, even if they appeared in their own right, it was always in connection with their dynasty. The link was so inextricable that the Attic orators thought it sufficient to mention only Argead women’s personal names without any hint at 301

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their descent.This inextricability also enabled their warlike appearances: Macedonian recipients apparently understood that they contributed to presenting their house as a solid, warlike unity.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Elizabeth D. Carney for all of her support and helpful suggestions. All dates, if not indicated otherwise, are BCE. Carney 2019: 8; 2016: 7–​8, 11; 2003: 251; 1995. 2 Carney 2016: 7. 3 Carney 2010b: 50. On the court as a political arena: Strootman 2014: 35–​40. 4 Carney 2017: 147–​8; 2015b: 149; 2010a: 416–​17; 2010b: 47; Hammond 1992: 31. On the theatre as the setting of Kleopatra’s marriage: Palagia 2017: 157. 5 Carney 2017: 148; Alonso Troncoso 2009: 278, 280, 282, 285. 6 Carney 2019a: 82–​92; Palagia 2010: 39–​40; Saatsoglou-​Paliadeli 2000; Mortensen 1992: 163–​5. 7 Carney 2019a: 92–​5. 8 On the Philippeion see Carney 2019a: 108–​12; Palagia 2017: 151–​3; Carney 2010a: 417; 2009: 195; Worthington 2008: 164–​6; Carney 2007. According to archaeological results, there was no change in the original statue program and, contrary to Pausanias’ claim, the statues were not made of ivory and gold (like cult statues): Schultz 2007: 205–​21. Palagia takes the statue of Eurydike for Philip’s last wife Kleopatra, maybe renamed Eurydike (2017: 153; 2010: 38–​9), cf. Arr. Anab. 3.6.3. See Heckel 2006: 89–​90. 9 Carney 2019a: 76–​92; Mortensen 1992: 163–​5. 10 See chapters 15 and 17. 11 The same is true for the male Argeads. The heads on the obverse of Argead coins show Herakles and Zeus. The beardless youth wearing a taenia may be the Argead founder figure. As an exception, on the earliest series, the Macedonian rider may portray Alexandros I, and the bearded type on Philip II’s tetradrachms Philip: Heinrichs 2017: 80–​5. 12 Carney 1993b: 318–​20; O’Neil 1999. 13 Carney 2010b: 45. 14 Whitehead 2000: 217. 15 Wirth 1999: 304–​6. 16 Carney 2016: 12. 17 On her role in the transitional years see Chapter 27. 18 Carney 2009: 189. 19 Carney 1991: 161; Chapter 26 in this volume. 20 Carney 2019a: 112–​15; Carney 1991. 21 Troxell 1997: 92–​3. 22 Carney 2019: 139, n. 6; Bringmann and von Steuben 1995: 19–​20, no. 3 [E]‌. Uncertain: Kosmetatou 2004: 75–​80. On this stage in Olympias’ career see Carney 2006: 60–​87. Alexander had also dedicated to Athena Polias: Bringmann and von Steuben 1995: 313–​14, no. 268 [E]. On Roxane see Heckel 2006: 241–​2. 23 Carney 2010b: 44; 1991. 24 Psoma 2015: 16, 22; Carney 2010b: 44–​5. 25 Müller 2017a: 95–​8. 26 Psoma 2015: 16; Carney 2010b: 44; Macurdy 1932: 25. 27 Carney 2006: 15–​16; Heckel 2006: 181; Carney 2000: 62–​3; Funke 2000: 97, 164; Macurdy 1932: 24. 28 Carney 2006: 16. 29 Carney 2019: 9–​11; 2018; Mitchell 2012: 4; Hammond 1992: 31. On Argead succession cf. Müller 2017b: 193–​5; Psoma 2012; Anson 2009; Greenwalt 1989; Hatzopoulos 1986; Carney 1983. 30 Carney 2019a: 10 states that a mother had to prioritize her son over her husband; Carney 2018: 29; 2000: 23–​7; 1992; 1987: 37–​8. 31 Carney 2003: 251; 2019a: 10. 32 Meyer 2013: 121–​2; Heckel 2006: 90–​1; Carney 2000: 89; Funke 2000: 188. 33 Carney 2017: 139. On Persian royal marriages see Brosius 1996: 35–​92. 34 Ogden 1999: ix–​x, xiv–​xv. 35 Carney 2019a: 11–​13. 36 Müller 2015: 472–​3.

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Argead women 37 Madreiter 2012: 144–​5, 161; Brosius 1996: 3–​4; Greenwalt 1989: 22. 38 Lewis 2004: 13, 96, 98–​9, 182, 185–​7. On the rejection of the term “chief wives” see Mitchell 2012: 4; Carney 2009: 190. 39 Ogden 1999: ix. 40 Müller 2017b: 194–​5; Carney 2006: 22–​4. 41 Olbrycht 2010: 343; Heinrichs and Müller 2008: 289–​90. 42 Badian 1994: 110–​12, 116. 43 Zahrnt 1992: 245–​6, n. 19. After Amyntas’ submission: Olbrycht 2010: 343; Badian 1994: 109, 112; Hammond 1992:  31; Borza 1990:  103, n.  15. Alexandros I  fixed it:  Carney 2017:  142; Macurdy 1932: 14. A son of the couple was named Amyntas and entrusted with the government of Alabanda/​ Alabastra by Xerxes (Hdt. 8.136.1). 44 Carney 2016: 264; 2015a; 2019b: 48. On the story’s fictitious character: Müller 2016: 115. 45 Vanotti 2010: 450. 46 Müller 2017a:  33–​8, 151–​5. On Stratonike’s marriage:  Carney 2017:  140; Müller 2017a:  158–​9; Carney 2000: 20; Archibald 1998: 119–​21; Hammond and Walbank 1979: 129; Macurdy 1932: 14. 47 Carney 2019a: 53. 48 Macurdy 1927. 49 Eurydike’s descent: Carney 2019a: 23–​31; Müller 2016: 213; Macurdy 1932: 17–​22. On the date of the marriage: Carney 2019a: 27–​8; Müller 2016: 213; Greenwalt 1989: 25. 50 Roisman 2010: 161. 51 Meyer 2013: 122; Funke 2000: 179–​80, 188–​90. 52 Carney 2006: 50–​1, 96. 53 Carney 2004: 188; Carney 1993b: 318–​20. 54 Carney 2004: 184. 55 Carney 2004: 185; Heckel 1983–​4; Macurdy 1932: 49. Perhaps her Illyrian descent played an additional role: Macurdy 1927: 210. 56 Palagia 2017: 158–​60; Carney 2004: 187; Landucci Gattinoni 2003: 44–​56; Carney 1991: 22–​3. Her former patron Kassandros provided the burial (Diod. Sic. 19.52.5; Ath. 4.155a). See Chapter 27 in this volume. On Adea: Heckel 2006: 4–​5; Landucci Gattinoni 2003: 40–​3; Carney 2000: 132–​37; Heckel 1983–​4. On the date of Olympias’ death: Anson 2006. 57 Carney 2019a: 76; 2010a: 416; Müller 2007. On Persian royal women’s funds: Brosius 1996: 123–​82. On Eurydike and Iphikrates: Carney 2019a: 38–​40, 64–​7; Müller 2016: 226–​7; Mortensen 1992: 157–​9. 58 Angiò 2018. On the rite de passage: Hatzopoulos 1994: 73–​85. 59 Carney 2010b: 46; 2006: 96–​101. However, Asirvatham 2001: 95–​6 argues that Plutarch uses an image of Olympias’ “depraved religion” to delineate the Hellenic from Alexander. 60 Carney 2019b. Pace O’Neil 1999: 2. 61 Ogden 1999: xix–​xxi, 8–​9; Ogden 2011: 102–​4. 62 Carney 2019b: 391–​5. 63 On Perdikkas II see Ogden 2017: 157–​86. He thinks that Phila is the real name of Simiche, Archelaos’ mother (Pl. Grg. 471a–​c;Ail. VH 12.43). See however Müller 2017: 246–​60. On Archelaos: Whitehorne 1994: 21–​3, 27–​8. Cf. Carney 2019: 375–​6; Psoma 2012: 76; Ogden 2011: 94; Carney 2000: 21–​2; Ogden 1999: 8–​10, 23–​4; Macurdy 1932: 15–​16. It is debated whether Kleopatra was an uncommon name. See Carney 2000:  22. Ptolemy and Eurydike are discussed in Carney 2019a:  35–​44; Müller 2016: 224–​6. 64 Madreiter 2012:  55–​6, 92–​3 doubts the historicity of Persian royal incestuous marriages. Even the single case of a consanguinous Argead marriage—​between Archelaos’ daughter and her half-​brother (Arist. Pol. 1311b)—​is debated. According to an emendation of the passage in question, it was no sibling marriage: Roisman 2010: 158; Hammond and Griffith 1979: 169; Macurdy 1932: 14.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). BNJ Worthington, I. (ed.) Brill’s New Jacoby [online] https://​referenceworks.brillonline.com/​browse/​ brill-​s-​new-​jacoby (accessed June 30, 2020).

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Argead women Hammond, N.G.L. and Griffith, G.T. 1979. A History of Macedonia, vol. II. Oxford. Hatzopoulos, M.B. 1986. “Succession and Regency in Classical Macedonia.” Archaia Makedonia 4: 272–​92. Hatzopoulos, M.B. 1994. Cultes et rites de passage en Macédoine. Athens. Heinrichs, J. 2017. “Coins and Constructions.” In S. Müller et. al. (eds.), The History of the Argeads: New Perspectives. Wiesbaden,  79–​98. Heinrichs, J. and Müller, S. 2008.“Ein persisches Statussymbol auf Münzen Alexanders I. von Makedonien.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 167: 283–​309. Heckel, W. 1981. “Polyxena, the Mother of Alexander the Great.” Chiron 11, 79–​86. Heckel, W. 1983. “Adea-​Eurydike.” Glotta 61: 40–​2. Heckel, W. 1983–​4. “Kynnane the Illyrian.” Rivista storica dell’Antichità 13/​14: 193–​200. Heckel, W. 2006. Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great. Oxford. Kosmetatou, E. 2004. “Rhoxane’s Dedications to Athena Polias.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 146: 75–​80. Landucci Gattinoni, F. 2003. L’arte del potere. Stuttgart. Lewis, R. 2004. Rethinking Orientalism. London and New York. Macurdy, G.H. 1927.“Queen Eurydice and the Evidence for Woman-​Power in Early Macedonia.” American Journal of Philology 48, 201–​14. Macurdy, G.H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore and London. Madreiter, I. 2012. Stereotypisierung –​ Idealisierung –​ Indifferenz. Wiesbaden. Meyer, E.A. 2013. The Inscriptions of Dodona and a New History of Molossia. Stuttgart. Mitchell, L.G. 2012. “The Women of Ruling Families in Archaic and Classical Greece.” Classical Quarterly 62: 1–​21. Mortensen, K. 1992. “Eurydice: Demonic or Devoted Mother?” Ancient History Bulletin 6, 156–​71. Müller, S. 2007. “Im Interesse des oikos:  Handlungsräume der antiken makedonischen Königinnen” Feministische Studien 2: 258–​70. Müller, S. 2015. “A History of Misunderstandings? Macedonian Politics and Persian Prototypes in Greek Polis-​Centered Perspective.” In R. Rollinger and E. van Dongen (eds.), Mesopotamia in the Ancient World. Wiesbaden, 459–​80. Müller, S. 2016. Die Argeaden. Geschichte Makedoniens bis zum Zeitalter Alexanders des Großen. Paderborn. Müller, S. 2017a. Perdikkas II. –​Retter Makedoniens. Berlin. Müller, S. 2017b. “The Symbolic Capital of the Argeads.” In S. Müller et  al. (eds.), The History of the Argeads: New Perspectives. Wiesbaden, 183–​98. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Ogden, D. 2011. “The Royal Families of Argead Macedon and the Hellenistic World.” In B. Rawson (ed.), A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman World. Oxford, 92–​107. Ogden, D. 2017. The Legend of Seleucus: Kingship, Narrative and Mythmaking in the Ancient World. Oxford. Olbrycht, M.J. 2010. “Macedonia and Persia.” In J. Roisman and I. Worthington (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Oxford, 342–​69. O’Neil, J.L. 1999. “Olympias: ‘The Macedonians Will Never Let Themselves Be Ruled by a Woman.’” Prudentia 31: 1–​14. Palagia, O. 2010. “Philip’s Eurydice in the Philippeum at Olympia.” In E.D. Carney and D. Ogden (eds.), Philip II and Alexander the Great. Oxford, 33–​42. Palagia, O. 2017. “Archaeological Evidence.” In S. Müller et  al. (eds.), The History of the Argeads:  New Perspectives. Wiesbaden, 151–​161. Psoma, S.E. 2012. “Innovation or Tradition? Succession to the Kingship in Temenid Macedonia.” Τεκμήρια 11: 73–​87. Psoma, S.E. 2015. “Naming the Argeads.” Ktèma 40: 15–​26. Roisman, J. 2010. “Classical Macedonia to Perdiccas III.” In J. Roisman and I. Worthington (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Oxford, 145–​65. Saatsoglou-​ Paliadeli, C. 2000. “Queenly Appearances at Vergina-​ Aegae.” Archäologischer Anzeiger 3: 387–​403. Schultz, P. 2007. “Leochares’ Argead Portraits in the Philippeion.” In R. von den Hoff and P. Schultz (eds.), Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, Style, Context. Cambridge, 205–​33. Strootman, R. 2014. Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires. Edinburgh. Troxell, H.A. 1997. Studies in the Macedonian Coinage of Alexander the Great. New York. Vanotti, G. 2010. “Tucidide e le donne: Un rapporto complesso.” In: V. Fromentin et al. (eds.), Ombres de Thucydide. Paris, 441–​62.

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26 WOMEN IN ANTIGONID MONARCHY Elizabeth D. Carney

Introduction This chapter tries to understand why the prominent role of women in Antigonid monarchy, initially a model for competing dynasties, narrowed after the death of Demetrios Poliorketes, reversing the general trend in other dynasties, despite the persistence of a number of similarities between the role of third-​and second-​century BCE Antigonid women and that of women in other Hellenistic royal houses.1 The chapter also considers how some inscriptional evidence complicates this perception of a relatively limited role for royal women in Antigonid Macedonian monarchy.

The Antigonids before Demetrios Poliorketes’ loss of Macedonia in 288 Antigonos Monophthalmos (I) and his son Demetrios Poliorketes (I) were the first of Alexander’s Successors to receive cult (c. 311/​310)2 and also the first, in 306, to have their friends (philoi) acclaim each of them with a royal title (basileus), one justified by their military success (Diod. 20.53.2–​4; Plut. Demetr. 18.1–​2; App. Syr. 54).3 Thus, father and son became kings at the same time and a number of Alexander’s other former generals soon followed, typically doing so after a victory. For years father and son served as models, inventors really, of many aspects of Hellenistic monarchy. Demetrios, in particular, developed the stagecraft of Hellenistic monarchy by splendid display, by his many wives and women, and by his military boldness, ever ricocheting between victory, defeat, and recovery. However, after the massive Antigonid defeat at Ipsos in 301 left Antigonos dead on the battlefield and Demetrios on the run (Diod. 21.1.4b; Plut. Demetr 29.1–​30.1), despite Demetrios’ rapid if comparatively brief return to prominence and apparent stability during his rule over Macedonia (294–​88 BCE; Plut. Demetr. 37.1–​2, 39.1–​44.7), the Antigonids no longer served as models for the other monarchies. When Demetrios’ son, Antigonos (II) Gonatas, finally established himself as king of Macedonia c.  277 (Just. 25.1.1–​2.7; Diog. Laert. 17.141), after years of struggle and uncertainty (some of which persisted even later),4 he created a monarchy in which women played a narrower role in the public presentation of monarchy and in the public politics of the dynasty than they had in Argead times, earlier in Antigonid rule, and in virtually all the other Hellenistic dynasties.5 307

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Initially, as with male Antigonids, at least until Demetrios Poliorketes’ loss of Macedon, the public role and activities of Antigonid women also established precedents and models for other Hellenistic royal women. Phila I, the first married of Demetrios’ wives,6 along with some of Demetrios’ mistresses (Ath. 253a–​b), received the first cult attested for a royal woman (Ath. 254a, 255c).7 Phila is also the first woman attested with the title basilissa, c. 305: this happens in a Samian decree (Syll3 333.6–​7) honoring a certain Demarchos, who is referred to as a guard in basilissa Phila’s entourage.8 Though Demetrios had children by other women, Phila was the mother of Demetrios’ heir Antigonos Gonatas and of Stratonike II, future wife of Seleukos I and Antiochos I (Plut. Demetr. 53.4). No inscription currently securely attests that Stratonike I, the wife of Antigonos I,9 was called basilissa, but granted that her daughter-​in-​law Phila was referred to by this title by c. 305, it seems possible that Stratonike was as well, given that her husband and son took the title basileus at the same time. A Delian inscription from c. 300 refers to an agalma (“image,” probably a sacred image) of Stratonike on Delos; this was more likely an indication of a cult for Stratonike’s granddaughter, but it could possibly have been one dedicated to Stratonike I (OGI XI.4.415).10 This paralleling, a kind of twinning, of the public presentation of royal males by that of royal females was quickly imitated by the other Successors. Neither Phila nor Stratonike appeared in front of armies, led them, or went into battle (as some late Argead women did),11 though their husbands were perpetually at war. Both women did play a role behind the scenes in the military activities of their respective husbands. Phila and her mother-​in-​law, Stratonike I, were accompanied by a force of bodyguards (Syll3 333.6ff; Diod. 19.16.1–​5), as were kings.12 Granted the extensive lands and cities in Asia, the islands, and the Greek mainland that their husbands controlled or hoped to, both women stayed near their husbands’ troops, supervising and safeguarding supplies and/​or wealth. When Antigonos I fell in battle at Ipsos in Phrygia in 301, Stratonike I was in Kilikia, protecting their valuables (wealth), but was rescued by her son (Diod. 21.1.4b). Phila sent royal robes and goods to her husband during the siege of Rhodes (Diod. 20.93.4; Plut. Demetr. 22.1) and served as a patron of Demetrios’ troops and their families (Diod. 19.59.4). Like later Argead women, both women took part in politics and political schemes. Their marriages played a part in alliances and political maneuvers. Stratonike I followed her husband, who had become satrap of Phrygia, to Asia Minor, living near Kelaenae in Phrygia. In 319, Stratonike involved herself in an intrigue with a certain Dokimos (a captured former supporter of her husband’s enemy Perdikkas). Apparently, she plotted with Dokimos to enable his escape, thus temporarily guaranteeing his loyalty to the Antigonids, to whom he then betrayed his former allies, though Stratonike did turn Dokimos over to guards, probably her own guards (Diod. 19.16.1–​5). We know nothing certain about Stratonike’s family.13 Antipatros, the father of Phila I, was the most prominent of the generals of Alexander until his death in 319 and had ruled Macedonia during Alexander’s long absence. Antipatros arranged three marriages for Phila, each serving his political ends. She supposedly advised her father, even as a young girl (Diod. 19.59.5). Phila also engaged in diplomacy between her husband and her brother Kassandros, men who were often at odds (Plut. Demetr. 37.3). Demetrios was later accepted as king in Macedonia in good part because she was Antipatros’ daughter and her son was Antipatros’ grandson (Plut. Demetr. 37.3). Both Stratonike I and Phila I shared in the disasters of their male kin, as had Adea Eurydike and Olympias. After the Ipsos defeat and her husband’s death, Stratonike and Demetrios sailed to Salamis, on Kypros, still an Antigonid possession (Diod. 21.1.4b). Later, in 297, Ptolemy besieged and took Salamis, and Stratonike and some of Demetrios’ children were captured, but Ptolemy subsequently freed them and sent them back to with gifts and honors, probably 308

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in connection to the marriage of Demetrios’ daughter Stratonike II to Seleukos (Plut. Demetr. 35.5, 38.1). Presumably Stratonike I died not long thereafter. Phila, after her husband was forced to give up rule of Macedonia and flee, killed herself rather than submit to further humiliation (Plut. Demetr. 45.1). Since the days of Philip II, royal marriages, those of royal daughters as well as those of the kings themselves, played an important part in creating the dynastic image (see p. 313). Indeed, Demetrios was able to regain a considerable part of his power and status because Seleukos asked for Demetrios and Phila’s daughter, Stratonike II, in marriage. Demetrios and Phila I took part in a ceremony in several stages, accompanied by his fleet, across several regions, one that brought together the former enemies (Plut. Demetr. 31.3–​32.2).The bride, having first married Seleukos I, later married Seleukos’ son Antiochos I. She continued, however, to maintain an Antigonid identity, as several inscriptions at Delos attest, an identity that stressed the royal status of both her father and mother.14 The later Argeads, at the very least, had been polygamous, Philip II notoriously, arguably extravagantly so. Antigonos I and Demetrios I, though father and son, presented very different public images in respect to marriage. Stratonike I is the only known wife of Antigonos; he was apparently monogamous, as the last Argead kings had not been.15 Demetrios, however, was polygamous on a grand scale, perhaps in imitation of Philip II, though certainly in order to achieve various political aims. He married the Athenian Eurydike (307),16 Deidameia the daughter of Aiakides the king of Molossia, the sister of Pyrrhos,17 Lanassa the daughter of Agathokles and former wife of Pyrrhos (303),18 and, after the death of Phila (287), Ptolemais a daughter of Ptolemy,19 and he possibly also wed an Illyrian woman.20 Demetrios may additionally have contemplated marriage to Kratesipolis, widow of Alexander, son of Polyperchon (Plut. Demetr. 9.3).21 According to Plutarchos, Lanassa said that she had heard that Demetrios, of all the kings, was most inclined to marry wives (Plut. Demetr. 10.5). In addition, Demetrios spent much time, publicly, with several well-​known courtesans, some of whom received cult, much as Phila did. He had children by a number of these women, in addition to his son and daughter by Phila. As Plutarchos says (Demetr. 14.2), Phila may have been the most prestigious of his wives (and the only one known as basilissa), but several of his other wives and even courtesans, most famously Lamia,22 participated in public ceremonies and events. Lanassa, for instance, may have played Demeter to Demetrios’ Dionysos in a ceremony in Athens (Douris BNJ 76 F 13). Plutarchos is perhaps correct in saying that he gave neither Phila nor any of the other women much timé (“honor” or “respect;” Plut. Demetr. 14.2–​3).The multitude of Demetrios’ wives and courtesans, much like his golden and purple cloak (Plut. Demetr. 41.4), embodied the splendor of his rule.

Reconstituted Antigonid rule, based in Macedonia After the collapse of Demetrios’ fortunes, many aspects of the dynastic image he and his father had generated did not endure, though some did persist despite Demetrios’ humiliating final years. Though Demetrios had further brief success after his departure from Macedonia, he ended his days as prisoner of his son-​in-​law Antiochos (Plut. Demetr. 50.5–​52.4). There were no more purple and gold cloaks for him, though his son Antigonos Gonatas, in keeping with the now established tradition of family loyalty, particularly between father and son, arranged as grand a funeral as possible in the circumstances (Plut. Demetr. 53.1–​3). Plutarchos highlights the closeness of the Antigonids, noting that (with one exception) they did not kill each other (unlike the other dynasties) and that Antigonos and his son were very close. Demetrios I, for instance, he says, agreed to marry Phila only because it was his father’s wish (Plut. Demetr. 3.1–​4, 309

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14.2–​3). Whether or not any Antigonids after Demetrios I and Antigonos I were literally co-​ kings,23 they did display remarkable cohesion. The identity of the successor seems always to have been clear, apart from the dispute involving the two sons of Philip V, caused or at least exacerbated by Roman interference.24 Antigonid monarchy differed considerably from Argead monarchy. It continued, however, to be heavily dependent on the Macedonian elite (court and local); it is no accident that the Romans, at the time of conquest, attempted to destroy that group (Liv. 45.18, 29, 30.3–​8.32; Diod. 31.8.1–​9; Just. 33.2.7).25 Antigonos Gonatas, though a loyal son, seemed consciously to reject aspects of his father’s flamboyant and expansive kingship, notably the prominence of royal women.26 Later sources (accepted by some modern scholars) have doubtless exaggerated to make Gonatas the perfect, moderate philosopher king and his father the opposite,27 but it seems clear that the supposed “glorious servitude” ascribed to Gonatas (Ael. V.H. 2.20) did not include much political activity by his wife. This proved to be a precedent. Many of the changes in Macedonian monarchy that happened after 277 tended to define and institutionalize the role of royal women yet, effectively, to limit it, whether unintentionally or (more likely) intentionally. Whereas the Philippeion, the monument Philip II had erected at Olympia after his great victory at Chaironeia, contained images of the women as well as the men of the dynasty (and, so likely, did another monument once visible near Vergina/​Aigai),28 and other Hellenistic dynasties were represented by mixed-​gender family groups and married royal pairs, the progonoi (ancestors) monument erected at Delos, probably by Antigonos Gonatas, apparently housed only images of a god and a number of men, but no women.29 Images of Antigonid women existed in various places, including Delos, but they are omitted from the public face of the collective dynasty portrayed on Delos.

The growth of royal monogamy and the narrow presentation of Antigonid monarchy Antigonos I’s apparent and public monogamy rather than his son’s attention-​g rabbing polygamy became the dominant Antigonid model, one probably rejected by Demetrios II, though he was more discretely polygamous than his grandfather Poliorketes. With few cases of multiple wives and fewer yet of multiple sons contesting for the throne, royal mothers had little need to function as succession advocates. Consequently they did not acquire the power and importance related to such advocacy. Royal monogamy limited the size of the royal family; the Antigonids remained a comparatively small group, very different from what for so long seemed the sprawling and seemingly vast Argead royal house, with its unending array of claimants to the throne. Loyalty was easier to come by when there were fewer candidates for the throne to compete for it. Moreover, whereas Eurydike, widow of Amyntas III, and Olympias, widow of Philip II, acquired power and developed public personae because they served as advocates for child kings, only one Antigonid, Philip V, became king as a child (he was 9 years old when Demetrios II died in 229). His mother Chryseis (see below, p. 311) developed little in the way of a public persona because Antigonus Doson (an Antigonid cousin of Philip V) married her and served as her son’s guardian and as king until Doson died when Philip V was barely adult; Doson had promised not to raise any sons he might have by Chryseis, thus preventing a succession crisis (Just. 28.3.9–​16, 4.16; Paus. 7.7.4–​5; Plut. Aem. 8.1–​4; Euseb. Chron. 1.237–​8; Etym. Mag. s.v. “Doson”). One might expect that the one fairly clear case of post-​Demetrios Poliorketes polygamy, that of Demetrios II, would have caused troubles with the succession, but it did not. Though some have considered Demetrios II a serial monogamist, the evidence strongly indicates that he was 310

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married to more than one woman at the same time.30 Demetrios II first married Stratonike III, the daughter of Antiochos I and Stratonike II, daughter of Demetrios I, while his father Antigonos Gonatas was still alive, in the mid-​250s. Stratonike III had no sons by Demetrios, though she may have had a daughter, Apama, who later married Prusias II of Bithynia.31 In 245 or 244, Antigonos Gonatas instructed his son to marry Nikaia, the widow of their treacherous kinsman Alexander, who had inherited control of the great citadel of Korinthos. Antigonos used this trick marriage to gain control of Korinthos.32 Though the marriage was a sham, it does seem to have happened (Polyaen. 4.6.1; Plut. Arat. 17.2–​4). Possibly Demetrios divorced Nikaia, who was probably past childbearing years anyway, but in any case, Demetrios still had no son and possibly no daughter either. Shortly after the death of Antigonos Gonatas in spring 239, Demetrius married Phthia, the daughter of Alexander II of Epirus and his sister-​wife Olympias II. Olympias II had offered her daughter to Demetrios after her husband’s death; she had two young sons and the Aitolians threatened invasion. Justin (28.1.1–​4) specifically asserts that, at the time of his marriage to Phthia, Demetrios already had a wife (i.e. Stratonike) and that Stratonike left Macedonia for the court of her brother, as though she had been divorced. Athenian inscriptions dated to 236/​235 and 235/​234 refer to a basilissa of basileus Demetrios; though the basilissa’s name is damaged, of the names of any known wives of Demetrios II, only Phthia’s fits the space in these inscriptions. Thus, they appear to confirm that Phthia had married Demetrios by 236/​235 and, since these inscriptions also refer to her children, they also imply that she had married him at least a year before. Philip V, the son of Demetrios II, was born c. 238/​237 (Polyb. 4.5.3, 24.1), yet several sources name the mother of Philip V as Chryseis, a Thessalian war captive (Euseb. Chron. 1/​237–​8; Etym. Mag. s.v. “Doson;” Synkellos 535.19). Chryseis was certainly not a king’s daughter, probably not a courtesan, though possibly a concubine before she was a wife.33 After Demetrios’ death in 229, when Antigonos Doson became Philip V’s guardian and also king, he married Chryseis. Chryseis’ status is confirmed by Polybios’ account of her generous contribution to the Rhodians after the terrible earthquake of 222 (Polyb. 5.89.7). Polybios lists the donations of other Hellenistic kings, but the only royal pair, though giving separately, are Antigonos Doson and Chryseis. Though many scholars have argued that Phthia and Chryseis were the same person, no ancient source connects these two names and all these arguments appear to have developed because of a refusal to recognize that Demetrios may have been married to three or four women at the same time, primarily because he was desperate for a male heir.34 Whereas Philip II, Alexander, and Demetrios Poliorketes practiced polygamy successfully for political reasons and a kind of royal display, Demetrios II’s polygamy seems to have caused some political problems and happened for quite different reasons. This appears to be the only fairly clear case of Antigonid polygamy after Poliorketes, though there may have been more. Philip V’s rival sons had different mothers, but this does not necessarily mean that he was polygamous, though neither does it prevent it.35

Basilissa and the ranking of royal wives Even if there is only one relatively certain example of Antigonid royal polygamy from this period, one immediately wonders if these wives were ranked in some formal way and, if so, whether the application of the title basilissa related to some sort of ranking. Ranking of royal wives in the Argead era had been situational, particularly since there was, at that time, no female royal title. Granted the tiny number of inscriptions referring to Antigonid wives, the fact that 311

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only in a few cases do we have reason to suspect polygamy, and that we cannot be certain it was a title exclusive to one woman within Antigonid realms (for instance, elsewhere king’s daughters as well as kings’ wives were termed basilissa; in the case of polygamy, do we know for certain that, in all dynasties, at all periods, only one wife could be basilissa?), currently the title of basilissa is too rare an occurrence in extant evidence to offer help in terms of the ranking of royal wives. As we have observed, Phila I, wife of Demetrios Poliorketes, is the only of his wives for whom there is inscriptional evidence confirming that she was basilissa. Phila II, wife of Antigonos Gonatas, appears as basilissa in a Kassandreian inscription,36 but she was his only known wife. As we have noted, Phthia is almost certainly the basilissa of Demetrios II referred to in Athenian inscriptions, but we cannot be certain whether Stratonike III ever had the title, or Chryseis (while she was Demetrios’ wife, if she was), for that matter. Delian inventories call Phthia basilissa, but mention her father, not her husband, and so could date to a time before her marriage or after she was widowed (ID 407.20, 443B.137, 444B, 461B.46). Laodike, wife of Perseus, does appear as basilissa (IG X 4, 1074), but she was Perseus’ only wife and was a king’s daughter.37 Thus, based on current evidence and the knowledge that basilissa was not necessarily the title of every king’s wife, at most, one might consider evidence for its usage in Antigonid Macedonia suggestive in terms of ranking, but only that.

Antigonid marriage alliances Granted that royal polygamy had declined but did not exactly disappear in Hellenistic Macedonia, one might wonder whether the choice of Antigonid wives indicates a policy or persistent pattern, as certainly happened, at least at times, in other dynasties.38 There is indeed one persistent pattern: intermarriage with the Seleukid dynasty. Antigonos Gonatas, Demetrios II, and Perseus all married Seleukids. Demetrios Poliorketes’ daughter Stratonike II first married Seleukos himself and later his son Antiochos. It is not an accident that we hear of grand wedding festivals/​processions in connection to several of these marriages (see p. 313); they were prestigious international arrangements, typically with significant political aspects. Antigonids did also marry into other ruling dynasties. Demetrios Poliorketes’ varied marriages include two royal marriages (to a daughter of Ptolemy and the sister of Pyrrhos) and perhaps another, if one considers Agathokles of Syracuse royal, since Demetrios married his daughter Lanassa. Demetrios II married the daughter of an Epeirote king and at least one and possibly two Antigonid daughters married kings of Bithynia.39 But a surprising number of Antigonids made non-​royal marriages to Greek women, some from elite families, some not, and it is not clear whether we should count relationships with courtesans and/​or concubines as marriages. We know of no marriages to Macedonians. As we have seen, Poliorketes himself married Eurydike of Athens and he may have tried to marry Kratesipolis, widow of Alexander son of Polyperchon (Plut. Demetr. 9.3–​4); she likely came from a northern Greek elite family.40 Demetrios II nominally married Nikaia; she also probably came from an elite Greek family.41 Chryseis was said to be a captive Thessalian, of unknown parentage. Perhaps most surprising of all is the marriage of Philip V. The mother of his son Perseus was Polykratia of Argos. She had been married to Aratos the Younger of Sikyon, but hostile tradition says she began an affair with Philip V and ultimately, probably after the death of her husband, in hope of a royal marriage (that probably did happen) she went to Macedonia with Philip V and likely became the mother of Perseus. Polykratia was probably from an elite house, once in service to the Ptolemies.42 We do not know the identity of Philip’s son Demetrios’ mother, though she too was probably Greek.

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A number of women our sources consider courtesans were associated with some of the Antigonids. Poliorketes, for instance, was famously infatuated with Lamia, and had a child by her (Ath. 13.577c). Antigonos Gonatas had a son, Halkyoneus, probably by a concubine named Demo; it is telling that he apparently did not even bother to marry or have a son by a more elite woman, until he had gained control of Macedonia.43 Granted the tendency of ancient sources to attack a male by imputing the status and sexual purity of his mother, and yet the undoubted existence of royal courtesans who may be concubines, by whom kings fathered children, sorting fact from political innuendo is often impossible.44 Whatever the status of Antigonid brides, the Antigonids consistently married outside of Macedonia, excepting Phila I.

Wedding festivals Philip II had turned the wedding of his daughter Kleopatra into a grand international affair and festival, one that became a model for Hellenistic kings (Diod. 16. 91.4–​93.2): these festivals often commemorated political alliances, confirmed or created the public personae of the men involved, flaunted and yet shared the wealth of the kings, served a variety of religious purposes, staged dynastic rule, and involved the general (already present and invited) public in the drama of dynasty. After the conquests of Alexander and the establishment of the Hellenistic dynasties, brides and their families often traveled great distances; this necessity transformed the marriage into a royal progress over large areas of the Mediterranean world, an embodiment of a marriage alliance.45 These weddings functioned as a kind of index of Antigonid monarchy, their rise and fall and rise again indicating Antigonid ambitions and their success or failure. Demetrios I was, unsurprisingly, inclined to wedding display. Antigonid fortunes revived when Seleukos asked to marry Stratonike II, daughter of Demetrios and Phila I: Demetrios sailed to Syria with his daughter and his fleet, stopping to conquer lands and plunder along the coast. Phila joined him at some point. He met Seleukos; they traded banquets and spent much time together in public and private (Plut. Demetr.31.3–​32.3). Demetrios’ wedding to Lanassa included a celebration in Athens that not only honored him as a god accessible to the Athenians, but may also have involved an understanding of Lanassa as an embodiment of Demeter (Ath. 6.253c–​ f).46 Though Phila II must have traveled to Macedonia for her marriage to Antigonos Gonatas, their wedding, as far as we know, though hymned by Aratos of Soli (Suda s.v. “Aratos”), may have been consciously localized, tied to Gonatas’ initial celebration of the traditional basileia festival, thus connected to his portrayal of himself a restorer of tradition.47 An even more localized purpose was served by the “trick” wedding of Nikaia: the Panhellenic festival, lyre playing and singing, royal guard, and luxurious litter of Nikaia enabled her supposed father-​ in-​law to distract her and seize her citadel (Polyaen. 4.6.1; Plut. Arat. 17.2–​5). Obscurity then descends on Antigonid weddings until the two that were arranged by the last Macedonian king, Perseus. Perseus, invited by Seleukos to marry his daughter Laodike but treaty-​bound himself not to travel to Syria, instead had the Rhodian navy, outfitted at his expense, make the trip to bring his bride, attended by dignitaries, to Macedonia; each sailor received a golden crown and timber for ships (Polyb. 25.3.8–​9; App. Mac. 11.2; Livy 42.12.4). In addition, Perseus gave his sister to Prusias II of Bithynia, at the request of Prusias (Livy 42.12.1–​ 3; App. Mith. 12.1.2). According to these sources, Perseus’ enemy Eumenes of Pergamon portrayed these marriages as, in effect, signs of an anti-​Roman coalition. These last marriages did Perseus no lasting good, but underline how politically significant international wedding festivals had become.

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Cults and royal women Though the Antigonids had effectively founded Hellenistic ruler cult, once established in the rule of Macedonia, they neither had nor developed state cults, unlike other Hellenistic dynasties.48 Antigonos Gonatas supposedly did not encourage his own worship, but inscriptions demonstrate that there were in fact cults to him in Athenian territory and perhaps elsewhere. Some Antigonids may have received lifetime cult in a few Macedonian cities.49 Compared to the other dynasties, the Antigonids founded few cities, and so opportunities for eponymous foundations were limited, whereas the other dynasts named or renamed many cities after themselves or family members, including the women of their family. City founders received cult and so possibly, did, the eponyms. In Thessaly, Demetrios I founded Demetrias and received cult there (Strab. 9.5.15. 436C; IG IX.2,1099b and 1129). Demetrios II did, however, found a city and name it “Phila” after his mother Phila II (Steph. Byz. s.v. “Phila”).50 Some Antigonid women received cult outside Macedonia. Aside from the cults to Phila I attested for Athens, there was a civic cult to a Phila at Samos, more likely to Phila II the wife of Antigonos Gonatas, but possibly to Phila I.51 A Delian inscription refers to a cult of Stratonike, likely the daughter of Demetrios Poliorketes, but possibly his mother (OGI XI 4.415 = IG 11.4.415).52 We know of no cult of Antigonid women in Macedonia itself.

Euergetism and piety Little evidence survives about Antigonid women’s euergetism, but enough to suggest that it existed. Phila II made donations at Delos along with her mother Stratonike.53 Perhaps the most spectacular evidence relates to Chryseis, wife of Demetrios II and of Antigonus Doson. After the terrible earthquake at Rhodes, many Hellenistic dynasts made charitable contributions to the Rhodians, but only in the case of Doson and Chryseis did both husband and wife give aid: Chryseis gave large quantities of grain and lead (Polyb. 5.89.7).The Delians praised Laodike, wife of Perseus, for her piety (presumably manifested by offerings) and erected a statue of her in thanksgiving (Syll3 639).This same Laodike may have made a dedication to Zeus at the Eukleia sanctuary at Aigai.54

The sources and their significance Narrative sources for Macedonia in the Antigonid period are poor—​sometimes non-​existent—​ and, as a result, we are unusually dependent on the relevant lives of Plutarchos and on Justin. When Roman involvement in Greek and Macedonian affairs begins to grow, Polybios and others pay attention, but they do so primarily from a Roman point of view, often with great hostility.Though inscriptions have provided information about Antigonid royal women, most of these inscriptions, as we have seen, are not Macedonian in origin, but rather Athenian, Delian, or Samian. Despite the poor quality and scarcity of relevant sources, one must conclude that Antigonid women played no direct role in Macedonian power politics; that kind of participation seems limited to the kings themselves, their sons, and royal philoi. Two inscriptions from Macedonia itself, however, nuance this conclusion. One interpretation of an enfranchisement document from Veroia has Phila II listed jointly with her husband Antigonos Gonatas as a guarantor of slaves’ freedom.55 A Kassandreian inscription, honoring a certain Dorotheos, reveals that Phila II had men in her entourage who helped to integrate her into the functioning of the kingdom. The courtier Dorotheos seems to have served as Phila’s liaison to Kassandreians petitioning her, 314

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on private or public business.56 Royal women, because of their access to kings, had long had an ability to intercede for those who appealed to them, just as Phila I and Stratonike I had done. These inscriptions suggest a kind of discrete, but institutionalized power for Phila and, quite possibly, other Antigonid women. Nothing after the death of Phila I indicates that Antigonid women played a public role, in power politics, but their ability to influence and grant access, to link cities to the court, may have been the norm, not an exception.57

Conclusion The role of women in Argead monarchy initially reflected the expansive nature of the dynasty and its ambitions. Similarly, the formalized and delimited position of royal women in restored (i.e. after 277 BCE) and narrowed Antigonid monarchy speaks to a more defined understanding of monarchic rule in Hellenistic Macedonia both for women and even for men.

Notes 1 All dates are BCE unless stated otherwise. 2 A city cult for Antigonos and Demetrios is attested at Skepsis (OGI 6). Father and/​or son received a variety of cults at Athens between 307/​306 and 290. See discussion and references in Landucci 2016. 3 See Paschidis 2013:  129–​32 for a discussion of the assumption of a royal title. See also Billows 1990: 155–​60. 4 See Lane Fox 2011: 495–​519 for a survey of these events. 5 Macurdy 1932:  69 first noted the limited role of Antigonid women, beginning with the reign of Antigonos Gonatas. On Antigonid women see Macurdy 1932: 58–​80; Ogden 1999: 171–​98; Carney 2000: 179–​202; Harders 2013; Gabelko and Kuzmin 2020. 6 On the career of Phila, see Wehrli 1964; Le Bohec 1993; Carney 2000:  165–​9; Carney 2020; and Chapters 16 and 27 in this volume. 7 See Chapter 27; Carney 2000: 218–​19. Based on the Athenaios passages, the cults to the courtesans were apparently civic cults of the Athenians and Thebans; a philos of the Antigonids set up a private cult to Phila, but the context of the passage implies the existence of a civic cult as well. Ogden 2009: 357 unconvincingly argued that Lamia’s daughter Phila is the one referred to in the passage. 8 Robert 1946: 17, n. 1. An Ephesian decree (Ephesus II, 3) which honors a Melesippos, said to be part of what appears to be basilissa Phila’s court or entourage, was originally dated to c. 300/​299, but Robert 1946: 17, ns. 1–​2, argued for a date close to that of the Samian decree; Wehrli 1964: 142 accepted this view. Paschidis 2008: 387–​9 dates the Samian decree to c. 299, though he also seems to agree that it is the earliest evidence for the female title. His dating is not convincing. See further Chapters 16 and 27 in this volume and Carney forthcoming. 9 On Stratonike I, see Macurdy 1932: 62, 64–​6; Billows 1990: 9, 17, 29, 40, 235, 263; Heckel 2006: 258. 10 Billows 1990: 235 n. 118 prefers to attribute it to the widow of Antigonos I. 11 Ath. 560 f.; Diod. 19.11.23; Polyaen. 8.60; Arr. FGrH 156 F 9.22). See further Chapter 25 in this volume. 12 Billows 1990: 263, n. 42, assumes that the man referred to in this passage was one of Stratonike’s own bodyguards. So also Paschidis 2008: 268, n. 2. 13 See Billows 1990: 17, n. 5 for discussion of the (unproven) possibility that they were connected to the Argeads. A daughter of Alexander I had the same name (Thuc. 2.101.6), but this is hardly strong support.“Stratonike” was also supposedly one of the names or epithets of Olympias (Plut. Mor. 401a–​b). 14 See Carney 2000: 172, 227; Chapter 16 in this volume. 15 Stratonike likely married Antigonos soon after 340, granted that her elder son Demetrios was born about 336. Her younger son, Philip, died early (Plut. Demetr. 2.1–​3). In this same passage, Plutarchos reveals that some authors assert that Demetrios was actually the son of Antigonos’ brother and that, after the brother’s death, he married the widow and so people called Demetrios his son rather than his nephew.

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Elizabeth D. Carney 16 She came from a famous Athenian family and was the widow of Ophellas of Kyrene. She had a son, Korrhagos, by Demetrios. Plutarchos says that the Athenians were happy about the marriage (Plut. Demetr. 14.1–​2). Ogden 1999: 175. 17 She was, therefore, the great niece of Olympias, Alexander’s mother, and had once been engaged to Alexander IV (Plut. Demetr. 25, 32, 53, Pyrrh. 4). Her marriage relates to Demetrios’ alliance with Pyrrhos, in opposition to Kassandros. Deidameia died soon after, in 299/​298. On Deidameia, see Wehrli 1964: 142–​4; Ogden 1999: 175. 18 Whereas her father had arranged her first marriage, Lanassa herself ended it and, wanting another royal marriage, chose Demetrios (Plut. Pyrrh. 9.1, 10.5). See Ogden 1999: 175–​6; Carney 2000: 169–​71. 19 Plut. Demetr. 32.3, 46.3; Macurdy 1932; Ogden 1999: 176. 20 Ogden 1999:  176. Ptolemais had a son by Demetrios, Demetrios “the Fair” (Plut. Demetr. 53.4). Plutarchos, in this same passage, says that Demetrios also had a son, another Demetrios, by an unnamed Illyrian woman. Ogden considers her a wife. Significantly, Plutarchos, in listing all of Demetrios’ children, mentions this son, but not Lamia’s daughter by Demetrios (Ath. 13.557c), but Ogden 1999: 176 argues that Plutarchos simply omitted her name rather than that he chose not to name her because he considered her illegitimate. 21 Wheatley 2004 considers down-​dating the supposed episode but accepts it as historical, though his own discussion seems to bring its historicity into question. 22 Plut. Demetr. 24.1. See Ogden 1999: 263–​4 for further references. Wheatley 2003 is useful in contextualizing Plutarchos’ reference to her. 23 See discussion in Landucci 2016. 24 For discussion and references, see King 2018: 256. 25 See Ma 2011. On courts generally, see Chapter 28 in this volume. 26 Demetrios created a public image of himself and his rule, not always a successful one, but certainly one misunderstood or twisted by later writers who objected to Macedonian monarchy and employed sources originally generated by Demetrios’ enemies, which were then further manipulated by Plutarchos and others to their own ends (e.g. Plutarchos’ need to have Demetrios’ career parallel Mark Antony’s). See Tatum 1996; Thronemann 2005; Müller 2010. Plutarchos’ Life of Demetrios is inevitably an important source for Antigonid rule and makes compelling reading, but it is highly unreliable. 27 See Müller 2010; Landucci 2016: 45–​8. 28 Paus. 5.17.4, 20.9–​10. For the monument at Aigai, see Saatsoglou-​Paliadeli 2000: 397–​400. 29 See Carney 2007:  78–​81, especially ns. 93–​7, for this Antigonid monument and for those of other dynasties, differently configured. Whereas some dynasties constructed monuments which commemorate both men and women (e.g. the Mausoleum), others, like this Antigonid stoa, seem only to have commemorated males and the divine founder.The statues the monument once displayed are long gone, but cuttings (not all are present) indicate only male images were present. It is not certain that Antigonos Gonatas created the monument, but likely. See also Landucci 2016: 50–​1. 30 See Gabelko and Kuzmin 2020 for a very different reading of Demetrios II and the context and chronology of his marriages. See also Chapters 15 and 16 in this volume. 31 Carney 2000: 184–​7. 32 Carney 2000: 188–​9. 33 Ogden 1999: 179–​81 believes that she was a courtesan; even if we assume, as he does, that she was given her name only after she became a captive, in apparent imitation of the Iliad, and even if we agree that it was a name common among courtesans, the Homeric story itself—​Chryseis is the war prize of a “king,” her father offers rich compensation for her (see Chapter 23 in this volume on her father’s status), and her father is a priest—​could mean simply that she was a concubine, a war prize of Demetrios, and some sources say that he married her, as Antigonos Doson certainly did. 34 See discussion and references in Ogden 1999: 179; Carney 2000: 184–​93; Lane Fox 2011: 518. 35 Livy 39.53 indicates that Perseus and Demetrios, the two sons of Philip V, did not have the same mother, and implies that Perseus’ mother was a courtesan or prostitute and not Philip’s legal wife (mater familias), as was the mother of Demetrios. Livy’s treatment of Perseus is overtly hostile; Perseus’ mother was probably the Argive Polykratia, the former wife of Aratos, and of high birth. See Ogden 1999: 184–​5; Carney 2000: 193–​4. 36 SEG 39.595. See p. 309. 37 On Laodike, see Ogden 1999: 187–​9; Carney 2000: 195–​7. 38 See Chapter 17.

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Women in Antigonid monarchy 39 It uncertain whether Apama, daughter of Philip V, married a Prusias of Bithynia or whether Demetrios II had a daughter by Stratonike and that she married an earlier Prusias of Bithynia. See discussion in Ogden 1999: 64, 187; Carney 2000: 187, 197. 40 Ogden 1999: 246, though he considers her likely a courtesan, also deduces that she was “nobly born” since she had married Polyperchon’s son. 41 Carney 2000: 188. 42 See Ogden 1999: 183–​4; Carney 2000: 193–​4. Roman propaganda has so contaminated our sources that it is difficult to know how to assess evidence about her and her status. 43 On Halkyoneus and Demo, see Ogden 1999: 178–​9; Carney 2000: 181–​2. 44 Ogden 1999: 215–​21 discusses these issues, though in terms of analysis of individual women he is more inclined than I am to conclude that they were courtesans. See also Ogden 2009. 45 See Carney 2000: 203–​7; Ager 2017. 46 See Landucci 2016: 42–​3, especially n. 17. 47 See Carney 2000: 182–​3, ns. 13–​14. 48 See Mari 2008 and Landucci 2016 for recent overviews. 49 So Mari 2008: 251–​66. 50 On the possible connection between eponymous foundations and cult, see Carney 2000: 207–​9. 51 See Mari 2008: 253, n. 72; Lane Fox 2011: 513. 52 See Carney 2000: 305, n. 71. Billows 1990: 235, n. 118 prefers to identify the cult as that of Antigonos I’s wife. 53 Bruneau 1970: 546–​50 gives citations. 54 Saatsaglou-​Paliadeli 2000: 389–​92, based on reconstruction of a fragmentary inscription. 55 Hatzopoulos 1990: 144, n. 37; Le Bohec 1993: 245. 56 SEG 39.595. Hatzopoulos 1990: 133–​4; 1996: 2 no. 46; Le Bohec 1993: 244–​5. 57 See Paschidis 2006 on the link between court and civic elites.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, inscriptions, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ager, S.L. 2017. “Symbol and Ceremony:  Royal Weddings in the Hellenistic Age.” In A. Erskine, L. Llewellyn-​Jones, and S. Wallace (eds.), The Hellenistic Court. Swansea, 165–​88. Billows, R.A. 1990. Antigonos the One-​Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State. Berkeley. Bruneau, P. 1970. Recherches sur les cultes de Délos à l’époque hellénistique et à l’ époque impériale. Paris. Carney, E.D. 2000. Women and Monarchy. Norman, OK. Carney, E.D. 2007. “The Philippeum, Women, and the Formation of Dynastic Image.” In W. Heckel, L. Tritle, and P. Wheatley (eds.), Alexander’s Empire: Formulation to Decay. Claremont, CA, 27–​70. Carney, E.D. forthcoming. “The First Basilissa: Phila, Daughter of Antipater and Wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes.” In G. Tsouvala and R. Ancona (eds.), New Directions in the Study of Women in Antiquity. Oxford and New York. Gabbert, J.J. 1997. Antigonus II Gonatas: A Political Biography. London and New York. Gabelko, O. and Kuzmin, Y. 2020. “A Case of Stratonices: Two Royal Women between Three Hellenistic Monarchies.” In R. Oetjen (ed.), New Perspectives in Seleucid History, Archaeology and Numismatics. Berlin and Boston, 202–​24. Harders, A.-​C. 2013. “Ein König und viele Königinnen? Demetrios Poliorketes und seine Ehefrauen.” In C. Kunst (ed.), Matronage: Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke von Herrscherfrauen im Altertum in diachroner Perspektive. Rahden, 43–​50. Hatzopoulos, M.B. 1990. “Un nouveau document du régne d’Antigone Gonatas.” In M.B. Sakellariou (ed.), Poikilia. Mélétèmata 10. Athens, 133–​47. Hatzopoulos, M.B. 1996. Macedonia Institutions under the Kings, vols. I and II. Meletemata 22. Athens. Heckel, W. 2006. Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great. Oxford and Malden, MA. King, C.J. 2018. Ancient Macedonia. Abingdon and New York. Landucci, F. 2016. “The Antigonids and Ruler Cult: Global and Local Perspectives?” Erga Logoi 4: 39–​60.

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Elizabeth D. Carney Lane Fox, R.J. 2011. “‘Glorious Servitude…’: The Reigns of Antigonos Gonatas and Demetrios II.” In R.J. Lane Fox (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon. Leiden and Boston, 495–​520. Le Bohec(-​Bouhet), S. 1981. “Phthia, mère de Philippe V: Examen critique des sources.” Revue des Études Grecques 94: 34–​46. Le Bohec(-​Bouhet), S. 1987. “L’Entourage royal à la cour des Antigonides.” In E. Lévy (ed.), Le système palatial en Orient, en Grèce et à Rome. Strasbourg, 316–​26. Le Bohec(-​Bouhet), S. 1993. “Les reines de Macédoine de la mort d’Alexandre à celle de Persée.” Cahiers du Centre Glotz 4: 229–​45. Ma. J. 2011. “Court, King, and Power in Antigonid Macedonia.” In R.J. Lane Fox (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon. Leiden and Boston, 521–​44. Macurdy, G.H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore. Mari, M. 2008. “The Ruler Cult in Macedonia.” Studi Ellenistici 11: 219–​68. Müller, S. 2010. “Demetrios Poliorketes, Aphrodite und Athen.” Gymnasium 117: 559–​73. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Ogden, D. 2009. “Courtesans and the Sacred in the Early Hellenistic Courts.” In T. Scheer and M.A. Lindner (eds.), Tempelprostituten im Altertum—​Fakten und Fiktionen. Berlin, 344–​76. Paschidis, P. 2006. “The interpenetration of civic elites and court elite in Macedonia.” In A.-​M. Guimier-​ Sorbets, M.B. Hatzopoulos, and Y. Morizot (eds.), Rois, Cites, Necropoles: Institutions, Rites et Monuments en Macedoine. Meletemata 45. Athens and Paris, 251–​67. Paschidis, P. 2008. Between City and King: Prosopographical Studies on the Intermediaries between the Cities of the Greek Mainland and the Aegean and the Royal Courts of the Hellenistic Period (322–​190 B. C.). Athens and Paris. Paschidis, P. 2013. “Agora XVI 107 and the Royal Title of Demetrius Poliorcetes.” In V. Alonso-​Troncoso and E. Anson (eds.), After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi (323–​281 BC). Oxford, 121–​41. Robert, L. 1946.“Adeimantos et la Ligue de Corinthe. Sure une inscription de Delphes.” Hellenica 2: 15–​33. Saatsoglou-​Paliadeli, C. 2000. “Queenly Appearances at Vergina-​Aegae:  Old and New Epigraphic and Literary Evidence.” Archäologischer Anzeiger 3: 387–​403. Tatum, W. J. 1996. “The Regal Image in Plutarchos’s Lives.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 116: 135–​51. Thronemann, P. 2005. “The Tragic King: Demetrios Poliorketes and the City of Athens.” In O. Hekster and R. Fowler (eds.), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome. Stuttgart,  63–​86. Wehrli, C. 1964. “Phila fille d’Antipater et épouse de Démétrius, roi des Macédoniens.” Historia, 13: 140–​6. Wheatley, P. 2003. “Lamia and the Besieger: An Athenian Hetaera and a Macedonian King.” In O. Palagia and S.V. Tracey (eds.), The Macedonians in Athens 322–​229 B.C. Oxford, 29–​36. Wheatley, P. 2004. “Poliorcetes and Cratesipolis: A Note on Plutarchos, Demetr. 9.5–​7.” Antichthon 38: 1–​9.

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Commonalities

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27 TRANSITIONAL ROYAL WOMEN Kleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, Adea Eurydike, and Phila Elizabeth D. Carney

In the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian (Achaimenid) Empire and of his unexpected early death in 323 BCE,1 his former generals (the Successors) warred against each other over the empire again and again and began to assume royal titles in 306. By the 280s, they and their descendants had created three major Hellenistic kingdoms. When Alexander died, the only surviving male Argeads (the dynasty that had ruled Macedonia since the seventh century BCE) were Alexander’s mentally disabled half-​brother (Philip Arrhidaios III), his posthumously-​ born son (Alexander IV), and an illegitimate young son (Herakles). Though the Macedonians soon made Alexander IV and Philip Arrhidaios co-​kings, the lack of an immediately viable Argead male heir enabled the wars of the Successors but, at the same time, gave greater prominence to Alexander’s female kin.These women had the potential to serve as vehicles of continuity in the course of transition from the old monarchy to the new ones, from the old dynasty to the developing ones. In the end, however, all the male Argeads and all but one of the female Argeads had been murdered by 308, and female members of the Successors’ families (rather than female Argeads) participated in the articulation of Hellenistic monarchy and dynastic identity.

Introduction This chapter will examine three women whose careers played critical roles in this transition; they exemplify the roles of women in monarchy at the end of the Argead monarchy and the beginning of the Hellenistic period (323–​287). Even before the death of Alexander, the absences, temporary or permanent, of himself and his father Philip II had already increased the public role of royal women (the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of kings) as succession advocates or spokespersons or representatives for their male kin, and already made these women seem more royal, more monarchic.2 After Alexander’s death, royal women came to play a far more prominent and more institutionalized role in monarchy, though exactly how prominent and in what ways varied by dynasty and ruler. Each of these kingdoms (and the later developing smaller ones as well) combined Macedonian monarchic tradition with the monarchic traditions of the regions now encompassed in the new realms. Hellenistic monarchy was not, however, merely a consequence of the simple combination of two or more cultures; each dynasty and 321

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ruler invented and reimagined traditions; Hellenistic monarchy and the situation of women in each dynasty constantly evolved.

Kleopatra Kleopatra (c. 354–​c. 308), the daughter of Olympias of Molossia and Philip II, was Alexander’s only full sister.3 During her brother’s reign she played an unprecedented part in public life and, after his death, she had the potential, via marriage to one of the Successors, to combine, biologically and politically, the Argead dynasty with one of the newly developing ones. However, for reasons we shall consider, this eventuality never came to pass. In 336, when she was probably in her late teens, Philip arranged Kleopatra’s marriage to her maternal uncle, Alexandros, king of Molossia. Philip staged this wedding as an international event, highlighting his wealth, power and influence on the eve of his planned invasion of the Persian Empire (Diod. 16.91.4–​6; Just. 9.6.1–​2); it was the prototype for Hellenistic royal wedding festivals, like them, turning the private public, an example of Philip’s royal stagecraft.4 Philip also likely intended that this particular wedding would mend fences with his son Alexander, Olympias, and with Olympias’ brother, and would project this re-​established family unity to the rest of the Greek world, whom he had invited. A  rift had previously developed because Alexander’s legitimacy had been questioned during the celebration of Philip’s seventh marriage (Philip practiced polygyny), precipitating the departure of Olympias and her son and Olympias’ return to her brother and her native kingdom (Plut. Alex. 9.4–​7; Just. 9.7. 2–​7; Satyr. ap. Ath. 13.557d–​e). Philip needed to demonstrate that the rift was over; in the public festivities, he probably paraded between his son and his brother-​in-​law, now son-​in-​law (Just. 9.6.3), but as Philip was about to enter the theater for a performance, he was assassinated (Diod. 16.92.1–​94.4). Thus, Kleopatra’s adult life began not simply with her marriage but with her father’s murder and the consequent struggle for the Macedonian throne, one her brother won. The policies of her husband and her brother increased Kleopatra’s prominence in both Molossia and Macedonia. She and Alexandros had two children together (Plut. Pyrrh. 5.5). About the same time as Alexander the Great invaded Asia in 334, Alexandros of Molossia invaded Italy, but was killed while campaigning there c.  331 (Liv. 8.  24.5–​13). Even though young widows of childbearing age usually remarried quickly, Kleopatra did not remarry after her husband’s death and showed no interest in doing so until after her brother’s death in 323. Her failure to remarry—​whether her decision or her brother’s or that of both—​is intriguing. An anecdote in Plutarchos (Mor. 818b–​c) even imagines her brother approving an extramarital sexual relationship for her, remarking that she should have some enjoyment or benefit out of her basileia (kingdom or dominion). Kleopatra remained in Molossia for about seven years after the demise of her husband. The Athenians sent her an embassy conveying condolences (Aeschin. 3.242). She received religious ambassadors (SEG XXIII 198). Kleopatra sold grain to Korinth (Lycurg. Leocr. 26)  and was given (or bought) grain from Kyrene in a time of shortage, probably for Molossia (SEG IX 2). Her grain activities, like those of her mother (who also received grain from Kyrene), probably had a political context and may have happened in concert with Alexander’s policies, though the dates involved remain uncertain.5 She maintained some sort of court and was at least a minor patron of the arts (Paus. 1.44.6), if not, as far as we know, on the scale of later Hellenistic royal women. Dionysius, tyrant of Herakleia (a city on the Black Sea), having irritated Alexander, assumed, apparently rightly, that Kleopatra could intercede successfully with Alexander on his behalf (Memnon FGrH 434, F 4.37), confirming that she was able to play the role of intercessor 322

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with the king, as later royal women would. Alexander sent her, as well as his mother, booty from his campaigns (Plut. Alex. 25.4). At some point during Alexander the Great’s reign, Kleopatra’s mother Olympias returned to her native Molossia, having unsuccessfully (at least in the short term) quarreled with Antipatros, the man Alexander had left in administrative and military control of Macedonia and Greece (Diod. 18.49.4; Paus. 1.11.3). For a time both women resided in Molossia and then, late in Alexander’s reign, Kleopatra left Molossia for Macedonia. Plutarchos (Alex. 68.3) asserts that in the last year or two of Alexander’s reign, upset and desire for change was everywhere present and that Olympias and Kleopatra even formed a faction against Antipatros, and Olympias took (control/​rule of) Molossia whereas Kleopatra took Macedonia (in this passage, Alexander congratulates his mother on her choice, saying that the Macedonians would never be ruled by a woman). Another Plutarchos passage (Eum. 3.5) seems to confirm Kleopatra’s change of location, since it has her in Pella soon after Alexander’s death. Thus apparently Kleopatra and her mother engaged in a political struggle with Antipatros, one that would outlast Alexander’s reign. Our sources are so vague that it is difficult to determine the specifics of the original quarrel. Still, it appears that Olympias and Kleopatra believed that Antipatros took too much on himself, that he was acting too like a king and he, in turn, felt that both were over-​stepping their roles, whether because they were women or simply because they opposed his actions. Since, in the last year or so of his reign, Alexander dismissed Antipatros from his post and ordered him to Babylon (Diod. 17.118.1; Arr. 7.12.5–​7)—​though Antipatros in fact did not obey this command—​Kleopatra and her mother were gradually winning Alexander over to their point of view. Though no documentary source refers to Kleopatra as either guardian for her son or regent (or to her possibly sharing that role with her mother), the evidence just described suggests that she functioned in something like these capacities from the time of her husband’s departure for Italy until she returned to Macedonia c. 324.6 Kleopatra and Olympias appear on the Cyrene grain inscription only with personal names, no patronymics, whereas all other names on the list are those of states; on the basis of parallel male usage, this may mean that they were functioning as heads of state (which is not specified).7 Moreover, though we certainly cannot say that Kleopatra co-​ruled with her brother, many of her known actions imply a sharing of power, influence, and decisions with her brother, a role that subsequent Hellenistic royal women would also play and, in some dynasties, expand, but a role that was unprecedented at the time. Alexander’s unexpected death transformed Kleopatra’s life: she and her mother now lacked physical protection, protection a new husband in command of troops might provide. Potential grooms seemed to abound. Diodoros, probably repeating the views of the contemporary historian Hieronymos of Kardia, asserted that Kassandros, Lysimachos, Antigonos, and Ptolemy, but really all the Successors, wanted to marry Kleopatra because of the distinction of her family. He added that each, in the hope that the Macedonians would follow the lead of this marriage, was reaching out to the royal house in order to encompass rule over the whole realm for himself (20.37.4–​6).8 None of them did manage to marry Kleopatra and, not entirely coincidentally, none of them proved able to control all of Alexander’s empire.9 Soon after Alexander’s death, Kleopatra began to act proactively to pursue her interests, primarily through marriage negotiations, doing so more than once in opposition to prospective brides from the family of Antipatros. Her marriage politics involved risk and ultimately cost her life. Diodoros’ diction in the passage just mentioned implies that the generals initiated marriage talks, but other authors and Diodoros himself (elsewhere) indicate that Kleopatra or her mother sometimes initiated marriage negotiations themselves. Plutarchos (Eum. 3.5) says 323

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that, soon after Alexander’s death, Kleopatra had sent letters to Leonnatos summoning him to Pella in order to marry her; Plutarchos associates Leonnatos’ marriage plans with his desire to rule Macedonia. Significantly, Antipatros had already offered him a daughter in marriage (Diod. 18.12.1).10 Leonnatos’ death in battle in 322 prevented his marriage to Kleopatra. Kleopatra then left Macedonia for Asia Minor in order to marry the first regent, Perdikkas, even though he had already contracted to marry Nikaea, a daughter of Antipatros (and perhaps had already married her). Arrian (FGrH 156 F 9.21), discussing the effort to arrange a marriage between Kleopatra and Perdikkas, has Olympias dispatching Kleopatra to Perdikkas, whereas Justin (13.6.4) says simply that Olympias approved, perhaps implying that Perdikkas initiated talks. Just possibly Perdikkas offered Kleopatra some sort of administrative appointment as an incentive.11 Perdikkas’ plan to reject Nikaea, even though he had initially sought her out, in favor of Kleopatra, alienated Antipatros and others and started a war that ultimately led to Perdikkas’ defeat and murder in 321 or 320 (Diod. 18.23.1–​3, 25.3; Arr. FGrH 156, F 9.21; Just. 13.6.4–​8). Whereas Leonnatos’ death on the battlefield was simply a consequence of the fortunes of war, Perdikkas died as a result not only of poor military and political decisions, but also and arguably primarily because he had changed his mind and wanted to marry Kleopatra, thereby insulting Antipatros and threatening his rivals by this distinctive marriage, as well as offering them an excuse for attack (Diod. 18.23.1–​4, 25.3–​6). In the light of this dynamic, it is not surprising that we hear of no more specifics about marriage negotiations with Kleopatra until 308. They may have happened, but the parties involved must have been much more discreet if they did. After the death of Perdikkas, Kleopatra did not return to Macedonia, but stayed in Asia Minor. Antipatros, who had crossed to Asia, took over as regent for the two kings. Before he returned with them to Macedonia, he had a confrontation with Kleopatra c. 320, during which he reproached her for friendship/​alliance with Perdikkas and Eumenes. Indeed, some sort of clash between Antipatros and Eumenes had threatened just before, but Kleopatra sent Eumenes away (possibly he was another would-​be groom as well as ally). In any case, Kleopatra was not frightened off by Antipatros’ wrath and disapproval; she argued back, apparently in public, perhaps with Macedonian armies as witness (Plut. Eum. 8.4; Arran FGrH 156, F 11.40). Intriguingly, Antipatros did not compel Kleopatra to return with him and the two kings to Macedonia, though he does seem to have left her in what eventually became a kind of house-​ arrest at Sardis under the control of Antigonos. Years passed, during which almost all the rest of her family was killed off. Antipatros died, but his son Kassandros took over control of Macedonia, killed Olympias, imprisoned and ultimately murdered Alexander IV and his mother Roxane, then arranged the murder of Alexander’s other son, Herakles (and his mother). By about 308, the only Argeads left were Kleopatra herself and her half-​sister, Thessalonike, whom Kassandros had seized and married after the death of Olympias. At this point, Kleopatra contacted Ptolemy and attempted to escape Sardis to reach him, presumably to marry him. Antigonos’ officer discovered her plan and Antigonos had her killed, though publicly blaming her female attendants for the murder he had ordered (Diod. 20.37.3–​6). That Kleopatra and Olympias sometimes took the initiative in marriage talks indicates their importance and prestige, not the lack of it.12 Kleopatra’s post-​Alexander career raises some puzzling and yet significant issues. Naturally, one wants to know why, if they all wanted to, none of the Successors married her. Two of the projected marriages failed to happen, as we have seen, because the grooms died before they could marry, and another because Kleopatra herself was murdered. But this does not explain why Antigonos did not marry her or have his son do so or why he had his son marry Antipatros’ daughter Phila instead (see p. 237). By this point, about 320, when Kleopatra was 324

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sequestered at Sardis, it apparently became more critical for most of the Successors to prevent her from marrying a rival than it was to marry her themselves. The rivalry between Antipatros (and his family) and Olympias and Kleopatra is striking; it would be a mistake to put it down to Antipatros’ supposed misogyny.13 As we’ll see, he had no problem with his own daughter’s relatively public role. One wishes that we could know more about the confrontation between Antipatros and Kleopatra, but she obviously took an aggressive position, understanding that she somehow had a right to oppose the regent. Kleopatra prefigured the role of female close kin in Hellenistic dynasties: she waged war by marriage alliance. It was a war she lost, but might have won.

Adea Eurydike Adea Eurydike (c. 337–​316 BCE), also a member of the Argead dynasty (Kleopatra was her aunt), was a kind of James Dean-​like character who did indeed live fast and die young, possibly leaving behind a good-​looking corpse.14 Her short, if dashing, career may have served as a model for a number of aspects of the subsequent role of women in Hellenistic dynasties. If anything, the brevity and drama of her short life made the things she did more striking to her contemporaries, though those same qualities may explain comparatively scant scholarly attention. She was doubly royal, since both her mother and her father were Argeads. Her mother was Philip II’s daughter Kynnane (whose mother Audata was an Illyrian) and her father was Amyntas, Philip’s nephew (the son of his brother Perdikkas III, the ruler who preceded Philip), whom Alexander killed at the start of his reign, allegedly because of Amyntas’ ambitions for the throne (Polyaen. 8.60; Just. 12.6.14; Arrian FGrH 156 F 9.22; Plut. Mor. 327c; Curt. 6.9.17, 10.24). Once widowed, Kynnane did not remarry and apparently spent the years of Alexander’s reign training her daughter in military skills (Ath. 13.560f; see below, p. 326). After Alexander’s death, Kynnane sprang into action: despite Antipatros’ attempts to prevent her, she and her daughter escaped Macedonia for Asia, with some sort of military force. She planned to marry her daughter to one of the new co-​kings, Philip Arrhidaios, Kynnane’s own half-​brother. When Kynnane reached Asia, Perdikkas and/​or his brother killed her in order to prevent the realization of her plans for her daughter, but the Macedonian army, outraged by the killing of Philip’s daughter, forced the elite to allow the marriage she had planned (Arr. FGrH 156 F 9.22–​23; Polyaen. 8.60).15 Granted that Philip Arrhidaios was understood as somehow mentally disabled and so always had a regent, Adea Eurydike was able to take a more prominent position, functionally, than he, though nominally a king. Soon after her marriage, Adea Eurydike, though still a teenager, began to give speeches to the troops, attempting to woo control of them away from whatever general was currently regent. She came quite close to succeeding and nearly brought down Antipatros himself, but in the end a coalition of the Successors defeated her attempt and she and her husband returned to the Greek mainland, in the control of Antipatros, who was now regent (Diod. 18.39.1–​4; Arr. FGrH 156, F. 9.30–​3; c.f. Polyaen. 4.6.4). After Antipatros died in 319, however, Adea Eurydike and her husband somehow escaped the control of the new regent Polyperchon, and, once back in Macedonia, Adea Eurydike allied herself with Antipatros’ son, Kassandros, seeming herself to act as regent for her husband (Just. 14.5.1–​4; Diod. 19.11.1). Kassandros, however, was not in Macedonia when an army headed (if not exactly led) by Olympias and by Polyperchon, with Alexander IV and his mother Roxane, approached the borders of Macedonia with an army. Adea Eurydike and Philip Arrhidaios, rather than waiting for Kassandros, called out the local Macedonian army, with some difficulty, and went out to meet the opposing forces. This was a fairly traditional Macedonian event: one member of the ruling dynasty opposed another and 325

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someone ended up dead. What was unusual was that both sides were led by women. Duris (ap. Ath. 13.557f) said that Olympias dressed as a Bacchant and Adea Eurydike as a Macedonian soldier; whatever one makes of the literal truth of this statement, it does describe the public persona and leadership role of each woman. In any case, the home army went over to Olympias and she had Philip Arrhidaios executed and forced Adea Eurydike to kill herself (Diod. 19.11.1–​8; Just. 14.8–​10). Despite the brevity and lack of success of Adea Eurydike’s career, it proved significant for the future. One of the things that would mark Hellenistic monarchy was the tendency to display monarchic power in terms of gendered pairs. This tendency was most developed in Ptolemaic monarchy, but it appears in virtually all the dynasties of the period, though sometimes the pair was constituted not by a husband and wife, but by some other close-​kin combination.16 Adea Eurydike and her husband seem to be the prototype for this pattern: Philip Arrhidaios’ perceived mental limitations, the scarcity of living Argeads, the fact that Adea Eurydike was doubly Argead by birth, that she was very closely related to him (he was her half-​uncle and her cousin), and that she acted so aggressively contributed to this situation. There is a marked parallelism in the careers of this royal pair: both changed their names when they came to “power” (Arr. FGrH 156, F 9.23; Curt. 10.7.7; Diod. 18.2.4; Just. 13.3.2), evoking distinguished ancestors, and in both cases, the army forced the elite to give them their roles. Once married, they seem never to have been apart. As we have noted, in the last phase of their careers, Adea Eurydike acted like a regent for her husband. They died, if not exactly together, nearly so.17 Adea Eurydike served as a model in two other ways; the first is certain, the second merely speculation. Though both Olympias and her daughter Kleopatra appeared in a military context, Adea Eurydike made her military identity central. She generated a military persona, by her dress and by her actions (Duris ap. Ath. 13.560f). The origins of her behavior certainly lay with her mother (and probably grandmother) since she was trained in military affairs and her mother Kynnane, at least, appears to have gone into battle (Polyaen. 8.60).18 It is less clear that Adea Eurydike actually fought in battle. But she was comfortable around the army, which had, as I have noted, made her a king’s wife and she used that ease in a military setting in a very political way, through harangues to the troops, though her approach seemed to work better with the armies in Asia than the one in Macedonia itself (Diod 19.11.2–​7). She, more than Olympias and Kleopatra, is the prototype for the appearance of Hellenistic royal women in front of armies, particularly for their giving speeches in front of armies.19 A more speculative possibility is that Adea Eurydike could have been the first royal Macedonian woman to employ the female royal title basilissa. The first actual evidence for the word’s use as a title comes only with Phila around 306, roughly a decade after the death of Adea Eurydike (see p. 327). Adea Eurydike’s name appears in no extant inscription, so we do not know if she used a title or not. Phila’s use of it, as we shall see, clearly relates to the initiation of the male title basileus in 306 by her father-​in-​law and husband (a practice soon followed by the rest of the Successors). In the Hellenistic era, basilissa was employed as a title of royal wives, daughters, mothers, and, sometimes, regnant or co-​regnant women. But who decided to create a female title and why? Was it the court of Antigonos and Demetrios or did their courts simply appropriate an earlier development? Could Adea Eurydike have invented a female title to indicate her unique status, the wife of a king viewed as not able to rule, a member of the ruling family on both sides, and a person who took public action, even military action? I have already noted how much she and her husband functioned and were understood as a pair; the (largely false) parallelism of creating a female title to match the male one makes sense in terms of her distinctive situation.20

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Phila My third choice is Phila (c. 350–​288 BCE), daughter of Antipatros and wife—​ultimately—​of Demetrios Poliorketes.21 Unlike my other two exemplars, she was not, in fact, an Argead and could not, in a literal way, be categorized as royal until 306, when her husband Demetrios began to employ a royal title. We first hear of Phila in the context of her father Antipatros’ alliances with members of the elite via marriage to his daughters. Phila’s first marriage was to a Macedonian named Balakros. Though he was a royal bodyguard and became satrap of Kilikia, the fact that their only named son was named after Antipatros (not after his paternal grandfather, as was common practice) suggests that this was not as important an alliance as Phila’s two subsequent marriages. Balakros was killed in 324 while attempting to put down a rebellion (Diod. 18.22.1). After Alexander’s death in 323, many of the generals seemed eager to ally themselves with Antipatros by marriage. Krateros, considered to be the best of Alexander’s generals and the most traditionally Macedonian, married the widowed Phila in 322/​321; she had a son by him, a second Krateros, but her second husband soon fell in battle and Phila once more became a widow (Diod. 18.18.7; Plut. Demetr 14.2). Yet again, as part of an alliance, Antipatros arranged a marriage, this time to Demetrios Poliorketes, the son of Antigonos; the marriage happened around 320, in the context of the series of arrangements made after the death of Perdikkas. Demetrios supposedly did not want to marry Phila because she was older than he, but in the end agreed because his father wanted the marriage alliance (Plut. Demetr. 14.2–​4, 27.8). Phila remained married to Demetrios for the rest of her life. Demetrios’ career was one of dramatic ups and downs. Phila had both a son (Antigonos Gonatas) and a daughter (Stratonike) with Demetrios (Plut. Demetr. 31.5, 37.4, 53.8). She served as support staff during campaigns, organizing equipment and personnel (Diod. 20.93.4; Plut. Demetr. 22.1). Demetrios was famously polygamous (see Chapter 26) but apparently fonder of various courtesans than any of his wives. As he and his father moved toward taking a royal title, they received civic cult, first at Skepsis in 311 (OGI 6), then in Athens as the savior gods in 307.22 About the same time, both a private cult (begun by one of the most important of Antigonid philoi, Adeimantos of Lampsakos) and a civic cult were initiated for Phila as Phila Aphrodite (Ath. 254a, 255c), but similar cults also began for several of Demetrios’ mistresses (Ath. 253a–​b).23 By the early third century, cults of living and dead royal women had developed in several dynasties and the Ptolemies also developed state cults.24 Important philoi like Adeimantos played a vital role connecting the kings and dynasties to Greek cities, often acting as civic benefactors; the connection between philoi and the developing cults of royal women and their relationships with royal women themselves also served to entrench and legitimize kings and dynasties.25 In terms of cult, little else differentiated Phila from some of her husband’s mistresses, but the title basilissa did. Our earliest evidence for the use of this title is an inscription recorded within about a year of the time when Demetrios and his father began to be addressed as kings; this inscription also demonstrates that she had a court of her own, since this critical inscription is an honorary decree for one of her philoi, Demarchos, who is referred to as a guard in basilissa Phila’s entourage (Syll3 333.6–​7). The inscription is usually dated c. 305.26 Use of the female title spread rapidly to the other Hellenistic dynasties and was commonplace by about 300.27 Our sources describe the critical role of royal philoi in the initiation of the male royal title for the Successors (Plut. Demetr. 17.2–​ 18.4; Diod. 20.53.1–​4; App. Syr. 54); no extant source details the circumstance that led to the initiation of basilissa as a title for Phila and others, but one suspects that royal philoi were again involved, though whether the impulse originated in the courts of Antigonos and Demetrios or among Phila’s own philoi we cannot say.28

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Despite the glamorous victories of Antigonos and Demetrios, their success appeared to vanish when Antigonos fell at Ipsos in 301 (Plut. Demetr. 17.2–​6, 29.7–​8; Diod. 20.53.2) and for a time Demetrios seemed little more than an Asian warlord. But he had new successes, married his daughter by Phila to Seleukos (Plut. Demetr. 31.5), reacquired clout in Athens, and in 294 became king of Macedonia. Kassandos, Phila’s brother, had ruled Macedonia from 316 until his death, but his surviving sons proved far less able than he, and Demetrios was able to murder one and gain recognition as king (Plut. Demetr. 36.1–​37.2). Apart from the murder, Demetrios was recognized as ruler of Macedonia because of Phila, because she was the daughter of Antipatros (Plut. Demetr.37.3). Demetrios, not terribly focused on Macedonia, gradually lost popularity there and in 288 he was forced to flee the country. He lived for another five years, unsuccessfully besieging Athens, having mixed success in Asia, only to die in 283, having spent his last years as a prisoner of his son-​in-​law Seleukos. Phila, however, poisoned herself when Demetrios was forced to give up Macedonia. Plutarchos (Demetr. 45.1) attributes her suicide to grief at seeing her husband a private fugitive and refugee and says she gave up all hope, hating his luck (Plut. Demetr. 45.1). Perhaps, despite his interminably unpredictable career and many wives and mistresses, Phila actually cared about Demetrios, but in tragedy noble women kill themselves when there is no honorable choice left.29 Her suicide is particularly interesting because of an encomium about Phila preserved in Diodoros (19.59.3–​5; Diodoros says he will say more about her, but there is a lacuna in the text so we have only this passage). Hieronymos of Kardia who, despite his earlier opposition to them, was a member of the courts of three generations of Antigonids, is Diodoros’ likely source. Diodoros describes Phila positively, but not particularly as a warm or especially loving person, rather as one who is thoughtful, wise, and fair (she settles disputes in camp) and helpful (she arranges marriages for poor girls and frees those unjustly charged). Her character seems to resemble that of her famous father and Diodoros actually says that Antipatros, himself famous for his sagacity, consulted his daughter on great affairs even while she was still a girl. Phila is a transitional figure for reasons probably already evident, and perhaps for some less so. In the era of the Successors, she was the first woman to become royal because her husband did; a number of other women soon followed her example. She was a model of what was to come for other reasons too: she played a role in international diplomacy (negotiating between her brothers and husband; Plut. Demetr. 32.3), served as a patron of the soldiers and their families, had the first cult for a royal woman as well as the first title, and generally acted as support for her husband’s operations. Analysis of her has suffered from what could be termed the “good girl” problem. She is often compared to Octavia, Octavian’s sister and wife of Mark Antony, who tried to mediate between them, put up (for some time) with his very public on–​off relationship with Kleopatra VII, and brought up his children by other women after his death. The comparison is a fair one, but fails to recognize that each of these women had a public persona, one that was not entirely generated by male kin.30 In Phila’s case, Demetrios’ endless affairs and marriages may have seemed more or less to be expected, much in the mode of Philip II, but there is some reason to think that Demetrios chose to humiliate Phila publicly;31 his loss of Macedonia, in any event, was a step too far for her.

Conclusion Some conclusions about the role of women in the transition from Argead monarchy to the varied dynasties of the Hellenistic period are obvious, some less so. Female members of the Argead dynasty attempted to perpetuate the old monarchy or help to create a new hybrid: both 328

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sorts of attempts failed. Chance, especially early in the period, played a role in this failure, but the Successors, especially the Antigonids, did not continue to prioritize the survival of the Argead line. Antipatros is usually depicted as a loyal and traditional Macedonian, but he and his descendants often acted in opposition to the female Argeads and the surviving males. The rival marriage alliances make this clear. Antipatros himself did not murder any Argeads, but his son Kassandros certainly did. While Antipatros and Kassandros seemed comfortable with Phila’s prominence if not that of Kleopatra, Olympias, or Adea Eurydike, the Antigonids, descendants of Antipatros through Phila, did not create a monarchic tradition in which women played a prominent role, in contrast to the other major dynasties.32 Though the gendered pairing of monarchic power that first appeared in this period was initially the consequence of the scarcity of males and the need for the new dynasties to legitimize themselves, displaying and understanding monarchic power in terms of both men and women outlasted the transitional period, probably because it made a larger dynastic footprint possible, helped royal dynasties to cope with the greater distances involved in Hellenistic kingdoms, generated a gendered and more accessible way to understand dynastic rule, and was supported and publicized by royal philoi, some connected primarily to a royal woman, some to a royal male, and some to both. These larger and more international courts enabled female patronage to be international. Royal women, by their patronage and that of their philoi, and through their developing cults, made their dynasties accessible and understandable. Many of these women acted as intercessors—​Phila is an obvious example—​and this intercession became an important aspect of Hellenistic monarchy. One of the hallmarks of the period, something that would become more customary as the Hellenistic period went forward, was the way in which royal women took on a military role. Because this role was fairly narrowly defined—​they appeared with armies, addressed them, controlled citadels—​it is easy to underestimate its importance in terms of generating and articulating dynastic loyalty. Again, this first happened by chance, particularly because of the absence of males and the importance of the army in Asia, but it became institutionalized. Finally, this is a period in which the agency of royal women was critical, even though their active roles often led to their deaths. Many of these women were murdered because of their agency. Royal males tried to limit the agency of royal women while taking advantage of it, but in many cases the long-​term consequence was the empowerment of the women of the developing dynasties.

Notes 1 All dates in this chapter are BCE unless otherwise indicated. 2 I employ the term “royal woman” because no female title existed before the late fourth century when some but not all wives, daughters of kings, and sisters of kings began to be appear in inscriptions with the word basilissa next to their names. Usage of this title varied over time and by dynasty, so neither “queen” nor “princess” seems an appropriate way to translate basilissa. 3 On Kleopatra, see Carney 1988: 394–​404; 2000: 75–​6, 89–​90, 123–​8; Meeus 2009. 4 Carney 2000: 203–​7; Spawforth 2007: 91; Ager 2017. 5 See Rhodes and Osborne 2003: 487–​93 for discussion and references and for the conclusion that the motivation was at least partially political, contra Marasco 1992: 77–​99. See also Pazdera 2006: 142–​59. 6 Meyer 2013: 122 considers her the guardian of her son. 7 Charneux 1966: 178. 8 Seibert 1967: 19–​24 speculates about the possible specific circumstances in which Kassandros, Lysimachos, and Antigonos tried to marry Kleopatra. Carney 1988: 402, n. 47 suggests that the Diodoros passage need not refer to a formal offer of marriage but rather to discussion of it. 9 Like Meeus 2009: 64, n. 4, I consider all the Successors interested in the rule of the whole empire.

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Elizabeth D. Carney 10 Meeus 2009: 71–​2 argues that Antipatros’ offer post-​rather than predated Kleopatra’s. I do not agree, but either order of events shows them in competition. 11 Meeus 2009: 78–​7 argues, based on a variant reading of one of the fragments of Arrian, that Perdikkas appointed Kleopatra “civil governor of Lydia” and that the former satrap Menander, after this, in effect, functioned as her underling. 12 Contra Meeus 2009. 13 Diodoros (19.11.9) recounts the supposed deathbed warning of Antipatros never to let a woman rule the kingdom. Apart from the dubiousness of deathbed statements (contra O’Neil 1999), it seems clear that Olympias, Kleopatra and Antipatros engaged in (and apparently initiated) what proved to be an enduring clan rivalry between the Antipatrids and the Aeakids of Molossia. See further Carney 2006: 85–​7,  104–​7. 14 Carney 1987; 1994; 2000: 132–​7. See also Macurdy 1932: 48–​52. If she is the woman buried in the antechamber of Tomb II at Vergina—​a much disputed possibility—​than she certainly had a beautiful burial. See discussion and references in Carney 2016. 15 Heckel 1983–​4; Carney 2000: 69–​70, 129–​31. 16 Roy 1998 makes this important point. See discussion of some examples of the phenomenon in Widmer 2019 and D’Agostini 2019. 17 See also Carney 2019: 22–​5. 18 Pomeroy 1984: 6 rightly observes that careers of these women constitute evidence for the preservation of a military tradition (presumably Illyrian) in this female line of descent. 19 Pillonel 2008. 20 Carney 2019: 24 and forthcoming. 21 Wehrli 1964; Heckel 1989; Carney 2000:  165–​ 9; Heckel 2006:  207–​ 8; Harders 2013; Carney forthcoming. 22 See discussion and references in Müller 2010. 23 Ogden 2009:  357 argued unconvincingly that Lamia’s daughter Phila is the one referred to by Athenaios. See Wallace 2013:  144–​6 for a discussion of Adeimantos, the cult, and the date of the inscription. 24 Carney 2000: 209–​24. See also Chapter 9 in this volume. 25 See Carney 2013:  166, n.  137 and Wallace 2013:  145 on parallels between the relationship of Adeimantos to Phila’s cult and that of Kallikrates to Arsinoë II’s cult; and see Le Bohec 1993: 237, n. 64 and Savalli-​Lestrade 1994: 431 on royal women and philoi generally. 26 Carney forthcoming. Paschidis (2008) 387–​9 attempted to re-​date the Samian decree to c. 299, arguing that it was part of an Antigonid attempt to regain ground lost after Ipsus, though he also seems to agree that the Samian decree is the earliest evidence for the female title. It is, however, highly unlikely that the practice of referring to Phila as basilissa began after the Antigonid defeat at Ipsos in 301. 27 See Carney 1991; 2000: 225–​8; 2011: 202–​4. 28 Harders 2013: 30 suggests that members of Phila’s court initiated the practice. See Chapter 16 in this volume. 29 See also Savalli-​Lestrade 2015: 190. 30 See, for instance, Macurdy 1932: 59–​61. 31 Heckel 2006: 208, noting that Demetrios’ daughter by his mistress Lamia was named “Phila” (Ath. 13.577c), takes it as sign of Demetrios’ “abuse” of Phila. 32 See Chapter 26.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ager, S.L. 2017. “Symbol and Ceremony:  Royal Weddings in the Hellenistic Age.” In A. Erskine, L. Llewellyn-​Jones, and S. Wallace (eds.), The Hellenistic Court. Swansea, 165–​88. Carney, E.D. 1987. “The Career of Adea-​Eurydike.” Historia 36, 4: 496–​502. Carney, E.D. 1988. “The Sisters of Alexander the Great: Royal Relicts.” Historia 37: 385–​404.

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Transitional royal women Carney, E.D. 1991. “ ‘What’s In a Name?’ The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period.” In S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History. Chapel Hill, 154–​72. Carney, E.D. 1994. “Olympias, Adea Eurydice, and the End of the Argead Dynasty.” In I.Worthington (ed.), Ventures into Greek History. Oxford, 357–​80. Carney, E.D. 2000. Women and Monarchy in Macedonia. Norman, OK. Carney, E.D. 2006. Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great. Oxford and New York. Carney, E.D. 2007. “The Philippeum, Women, and the Formation of Dynastic Image.” In W. Heckel, L. Tritle, and P. Wheatley (eds.), Alexander’s Empire: Formulation to Decay. Claremont, CA, 27–​70. Carney, E.D. 2011. “Being Royal and Female in the Early Hellenistic Period.” In A. Erskine and L. Llewellyn-​Jones (eds.), Creating the Hellenistic World. Swansea, 195–​220. Carney, E.D. 2013. Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon. Carney, E.D. 2016. “Commemoration of a Royal Woman as a Warrior: The Burial in the Antechamber of Tomb II at Vergina.” Syllecta Classica 27: 109–​49. Carney, E.D. 2019. “An Exceptional Argead Couple: Philip II and Olympias.” In A. Bielman Sánchez (ed.), Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives. London and New York, 16–​31. Carney, E.D. forthcoming. “The First Basilissa: Phila, Daughter of Antipater and Wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes.” In G. Tsouvala and R. Ancona (eds.), New Directions in the Study of Women in Antiquity. Oxford and New York. Charneux, P. 1966. “List Argienne de Thearodoques.” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 90: 156–​239. D’Agostini, M. 2019. “A Change of Husband:  Cleopatra Thea, Stability and Dynamism of Hellenistic Royal Couples (15–​129 BCE).” In A.Bielman Sánchez (ed.), Power Couples in Antiquity:  Transversal Perspectives. London and New York, 42–​68. Harders, A.-​C. 2013. “Ein König und viele Königinnen? Demetrios Poliorketes und seine Ehefrauen.” In C. Kunst (ed.), Matronage: Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke von Herrscherfrauen im Altertum in diachroner Perspektive. Rahden, 43–​50. Heckel, W. 1983–​4. “Kynnane the Illyrian.” Rivista storica dell’antichita 13–​14: 193–​200. Heckel, W. 1989. “The Granddaughters of Iolaus.” Classicum 15: 32–​9. Heckel, W. 2006. Who’s Who in the Age of Alexander the Great. Malden, MA. Le Bouhec (-Bouhet), S. 1993. “Les reines de Macédoine de la mort d’Alexandre à celle de Persée.” Cahiers du Centre Glotz 4: 229–​45. Macurdy, G. H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore. Marasco, G. 1992. Economia e storia. Viterbo. Meeus, A. 2009. “Kleopatra and the Diadochoi.” In P. van Nuffelen (ed.), Faces of Hellenism: Studies in the History of the Eastern Mediterranean (4th Century B.C.–​5th Century A.D.). Studia Hellenistica 48. Leuven, Paris, and Walpole MA, 63–​92. Meyer, E.A. 2013. The Inscriptions of Dodona and New History of Molossia. Stuttgart. Müller, S. 2010. “Demetrios Poliorketes, Athen und Aphrodite.” Gymnasium 117: 559–​73. Ogden, D. 2009. “Courtesans and the Sacred in the Early Hellenistic Courts.” In T. Scheer and M.A. Lindner (eds.), Tempelprostituten im Altertum—​Fakten und Fiktionen. Berlin, 344–​76. O’Neil, J. 1999. “Olympias: ‘The Macedonians will never let themselves be ruled by a woman.’” Prudentia 31: 1–​14. Paschidis, P. 2008. Between City and King: Prosopographical Studies on the Intermediaries between the Cities of the Greek Mainland and the Aegean and the Royal Courts of the Hellenistic Period (322–​190 B. C.). Athens and Paris. Pazdera, M. 2006. Getreide für Griechenland: Untersuchungen zu den Ursachen der Versorgungskrisen im Zeitalter Alexanders des Grossen und der Diadochen. Münster. Pillonel, C. 2008. “Les reines hellénistiques sur les champs de bataille.” In F. Bertholet, A. Bielman Sánchez, and R. Frei-​Stolba (eds.), Egypte  –​Grèce  –​Rome:  les différents visages des femmes antiques:  travaux et colloques du séminaire d’épigraphie grecque et latine de l’IASA 2002–​2006. Bern, 117–​45. Pomeroy, S.B. 1984. Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra. New York. Rhodes, P.J. and Osborne, R. (eds.) 2003. Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–​323 BC. Oxford. Roy, J. 1998. “The Masculinity of the Hellenistic King.” In L. Foxhall and J. Salmon (eds.), When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity. London and New York, 111–​35. Savalli-​Lestrade, I. 1994. “Il ruolo pubblico delle regine ellenistiche.” In S. Alessandri (ed.), Historie. Studie offerti dagli allievi a Giuseppe Nenci in occasione del suo settantestimo compleanno. Galatina, 415–​32. Savalli-​Lestrade, I. 2015. “Les adieux à la βασίλίσσα, Mise en scène en intrigue de la mort des femmes royales dans le monde hellénistique.” Chiron 45: 187–​219.

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Elizabeth D. Carney Seibert, J. 1967. Historische Beiträge zu den dynastischen Verbindungen in hellenistischer Zeit. Historia Einzelschriften 10. Wiesbaden. Spawforth, A.J.S. 2007. “The Court of Alexander the Great.” In A.J.S. Spawforth (ed.), The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies. Cambridge, 82–​120. Wallace, S. 2013. “Adeimantus of Lampsacus and the Development of the Early Hellenistic ‘Philos.’” In V.  Alonso-​Troncoso and E. Anson (eds.), After Alexander:  The Time of the Diadochi (323–​281 BC). Oxford, 142–​57. Wehrli, C. 1964. “Phila fille d’Antipater et épouse de Démétrius, roi des Macédoniens.” Historia 13: 140–​6. Widmer, M. 2019.“Looking for the Seleucid Couple.” In A. Bielman Sánchez (ed.), Power Couples in Antiquity: Transversal Perspectives. London and New York, 32–​41.

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28 WOMEN AND DYNASTY AT THE HELLENISTIC IMPERIAL COURTS Rolf Strootman

Introduction A peculiarity of the Hellenistic empires is the powerful position royal women held at court, and their central place in dynastic representation.1 Hellenistic kingship was a family affair, and royal women played key roles—​through their public images as much as their political activities—​ in the creation and legitimization of the Hellenistic empires.2 This goes back to the Argead Empire after the death of Alexander, when a lack of able male successors enabled several talented women of the dynasty to rise to power.3 They paved the way for later generations, as powerful women recurred in the Seleukid and Ptolemaic dynasties with a frequency that is unique in ancient history. This chapter discusses the place and agency of women at the imperial courts of the Hellenistic world. The focus will be on the four major Macedonian dynasties:  the Argeads, Ptolemies, Seleukids, and Antigonids. Despite differences, and developments through time, several characteristics were shared by these dynasties, who after all had a common background in the Aegean and were in constant interaction with each other. Themes to be discussed are royal women’s roles in dynastic succession, dynastic marital strategies, and the socio-​political agency of court women (royal wives, sisters, daughters, and concubines). Court studies go back to Norbert Elias and have profoundly influenced the study of the emerging states of Early Modern Europe;4 of importance too is the more recent work on court culture and imperialism by Jeroen Duindam and others.5 A court studies perspective has offered new understandings and interpretations of ancient monarchies as well, especially the Hellenistic empires and in their wake the Achaimenid Empire.6 The Hellenistic courts were basically the private households of the dynasties.7 They were also meeting points where political and economic networks converged and where power was created, negotiated, and distributed.8 This actor-​based perspective offers an alternative to the conventional focus on institutions and “political philosophy,” and the new interest in networks and exchange offers an alternative to the modernist conceptualization of the Hellenistic empires as states. Circumventing the traditional search for formal state institutions also means that the agency of women at court can be understood as a cardinal aspect of the exercise of power rather than as merely ancillary and incidental. Being essentially a household, the court was not an entirely male-​dominated domain to begin with, but one in which women were literally at home. Though there were to some 333

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extent typically male and female spheres within the household—​e.g. in their religious tasks, men tended to deal more with male and women more with female deities—​powerful women should not be seen as intruders in politics because no distinction existed between the court as private household and the court as political institution.9 In Greek inscriptions and historical narratives, royal houses are sometimes called oikos or (basilikē) oikia,10 “the composite household of persons and property that was the focus of family identity and interest.”11 The size of these households would frequently expand from a core group of people when visitors would assemble for specific festive occasions. In the Argead, Antigonid, and Seleukid empires this involved considerable movement of the court, often following a religious calendar. The ability of the Hellenistic courts to both attract and seek out local elites was a powerful instrument of imperialism.12 Because many of these “great events” were organized around rites de passage of the royal family—​births, marriages, burials, inaugurations—​royal women played key roles in them.13 The various imperial households of the Hellenistic period were mobile. Royal courts were typically able to move, and they often did. Notably Argead, Seleukid and Antigonid kings were regularly on campaign, accompanied by their courts.14 The idea that the residual sovereign authority of the dynasty was located in a specific place even if the monarch himself was absent, such as existed in early modern Western Europe,15 never fully developed in the Macedonian empires (though some concept of a “royal city” existed in the Seleukid Empire, Seleukeia-​on-​the-​Tigris and Seleukeia-​in-​Pieria being the main examples).16 To be sure, Macedonian kings often left their families behind while on campaign. “Capital” for the Hellenistic empires is an anachronistic concept because it presupposes that a process of “going out of court” was in progress or completed, that is, the formal disconnection of dynastic household and state apparatus that was the foundation of the modern nation state. If a concept of royal sovereignty in the sense of Kantorowicz’s “king’s two bodies” existed in the Hellenistic world,17 this sovereignty could also be located in royal women. In the older literature on Hellenistic kingship it is commonly stated that in the Hellenistic empires the king “was the state,” or words to the same effect. But the actual situation probably was plainer:  there was no state. It is true that Argead and Antigonid kings were kings “of the Macedonians” (Makedones), i.e. the Macedonian ethnos as a political body.18 But this was only a constituent part of their overall basileia, the pretensions of which were more far-​reaching. The Ptolemies were pharaohs of the “Two Lands” as part of their overall, universalistic pretensions; the Seleukids were also kings of Babylon, etcetera. The Seleukid court was very itinerant.Where Seleukid royal women and their courts resided when not accompanying the king on campaign is unknown; they may have stayed in a specific locality such as Seleukeia-​on-​the-​Tigris or Sardis with the intention to create an additional dynastic center, where petitioners and negotiators could go when the king was progressing; or they may have traveled themselves, changing residence just as the male monarch did. Archaeology has yielded very little evidence that Hellenistic palaces in fact served residential purposes. Hellenistic palatial architecture seems to have been ceremonial and representational above all.19 This is a trait that Hellenistic palaces share with Achaimenid palaces such as Persepolis or Susa. The best-​known examples are the Antigonid palace at Vergina (Aigai) and the acropolis of Pergamon. The palace at Aigai consisted of an inner courtyard surrounded by banqueting rooms for ritualized feasting.20 The exception were the Ptolemies. Although they did shift the location of their court seasonally to Memphis, and in the second and first centuries BCE21 ritually progressed up and the down the Nile on a floating palace, Alexandria was a relatively stable seat of power and an imperial microcosm, where monuments, fauna, flora, and knowledge symbolizing the imagined extent of Ptolemaic imperial hegemony were accumulated. 334

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The Ptolemaic palace district mimicked that of Hekatomnid Halikarnassos, but on a grander scale, and, with its threefold setup of a huge outer palace consisting of semi-​public royal/​religious monuments (the so-​called Basileia district), palace gardens, and the private “Inner Palaces,” prefigures later Mediterranean palaces such as Topkapı Sarayı in Ottoman Constantinople.

Royal women and dynastic succession Already before the Hellenistic period, Macedonian elite women played a crucial role in the transmission of the dynastic inheritance, of which royalty (basileia) was the principal element.22 Basileia was not a public office but a hereditary privilege, a family possession. The Macedonian dynasties were based on dual descent; they accepted the transmission of inheritance through both the male and female line.23 In this dynastic setup, women had better opportunities to become key political actors than in dynasties organized along the male bloodline. A complicating factor was the practice of polygyny, common among the Argeads and adopted also by Alexander’s successors. In his 1999 book Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death, Daniel Ogden put forward the influential thesis that the Hellenistic dynasties lacked a consistent method of hierarchizing royal wives and organizing the succession, which led to a fierce competition between the wives to ensure the succession of their sons; this destructive rivalry, that broke up the royal courts and made succession conflicts endemic, according to Ogden was the main cause of the Hellenistic dynasties’ demise.24 Ogden’s thesis is no longer widely accepted. It is clear that Hellenistic royal women could be hierarchized and that Hellenistic kings had various strategies at their disposal to regulate the succession.25 In the Seleukid Empire, conflicts over the succession between brothers or half-​brothers were actually rare; Nicholas Wright has pointed out that even in the later period of dynastic warfare, primogeniture was generally respected by each of the two rival branches of the Seleukid house.26 The Ptolemaic, and infrequent Seleukid, practice of brother–​sister marriage—​borrowed from the fourth-​century Hekatomnids, though it may have been practiced sporadically by the pre-​Hellenistic Argeads27—​made it as clear as a bell who was the female head of the household, and only her children would in principle be eligible for the throne (though conflicts over the succession between these children could still occur).28 Moreover, dynastic polygyny was not a feature peculiar to the Hellenistic dynasties. As Duindam has shown, with the exception of medieval and early modern Europe, polygyny was the rule in dynastic reproduction in world history and primogeniture was far from universal.29 Conflicts between women close to the king were natural in courts where polygynous reproduction was practiced.30 Duindam further noted that dynastic women “rarely acted only as passive vehicles of reproduction or as disinterested outsiders in succession conflicts. Even in dynasties based entirely on the notion of a male bloodline, women played marked roles.”31 The Hellenistic dynasties were certainly based on succession through the matriline as well, amplifying women’s agency in the succession. An early example is that of Kleopatra, the sister of Alexander whom various Diadochs (Leonnatos, Perdikkas, Kassandros, Lysimachos, Antigonos, Ptolemy) desired to marry in order to “legitimate” their rule—​or so her role in Alexander’s “funeral games” is usually explained.32 In fact, it was not Kleopatra’s relationship with Alexander that made her a key player on the political scene between 323 and her death in 308: more important was the circumstance that after Alexander’s death she had become the main claimant to the heritage of her father, Philip II. Her popularity among a multitude of power-​hungry suitors cannot be explained with the vague term “legitimacy,” but rather by the very tangible fact that if she bore a son, this son would inherit the Argead family’s basileia. By producing offspring with Kleopatra, a 335

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man like Perdikkas could translate the Argead basileia to his own family, while for 16 years or so he could act as regent for his minor son. But this arrangement would also have given Kleopatra substantial power. A comparable scenario unfolded at the very end of Hellenistic history, when Kleopatra VII, who was the inheritor of both the Ptolemaic and Seleukid basileia, concluded a marriage alliance with Caesar. For Kleopatra this was a way to find a strong ally who could help her secure her rule and make her empire great again; for her Roman companion it was a means to bring Hellenistic kingship into his familia and, more importantly, to control the Near Eastern vassal kings as regent for his minor son, Ptolemy XV (Caesarion). After Caesar’s death, Antony continued this policy when in 34 BCE he proclaimed Kleopatra “Queen of Kings” and Caesarion “King of Kings,” and gave local kingdoms to his own children with Kleopatra.33 A wife could be elevated to the status of first queen by granting her the title of basilissa and the right to wear a diadem. King’s wives were not routinely called basilissa. The title bestowed special status and authority on a consort, and elevated her above possible other spouses.34 Demetrios Poliorketes had several wives and many concubines but only one, Phila, bore the title of basilissa.35 Thus, a basilissa was originally mutatis mutandis a first queen, or queen mother, and this in turn was a means to hierarchize royal women and pre-​arrange the succession; it also enhanced the loyalty of the designated first queen and made the members of her paternal family stakeholders in the imperial project. Support from the court, the army, and powerful local elites could be generated by making the basilissa a central figure in dynastic representation.36 The title of basilissa was later also granted to princesses; this presumably can be associated with concerns about the succession as well.37 The wish to secure the succession and dynastic continuity was likely a significant motivation for the brother–​sister marriages of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which in turn increased the formal equality of king and queen in this dynasty. The prominent position of the queen at the Ptolemaic court is reflected in court poetry; queens both acted as patrons of poets and feature in poetic texts, for instance in Kallimachos’ Victory of Berenike, an epinician ode celebrating the victory of the queen’s horses in the Olympic Games.38 A second mechanism to ensure a harmonious transition of power was the elevation of one son above his (half-​)brothers by giving him far-​reaching responsibilities, honors, and authority. This partly explains the well-​known Hellenistic practice of joint kingship, in which the successor received the title of basileus during his father’s lifetime.39 The son who acted as co-​ruler was thereby not only signaled as successor, but also given the opportunity to gain support of the army and local elites, so that it would be difficult to remove him from power after his accession as sole king. Dual kingship was practiced occasionally and with varying degrees of success.40 Dual kingship considerably increased the status and power of the successor’s mother.41 In the early Seleukid Empire, not only the father–​son dyad but also the public unity of mother and son was emphasized in dynastic representation. In 300/​299 and 299/​298, the Milesian dēmos in rapid succession voted a decree in honor of Antiochos, Seleukos I’s heir, and the setting up of a statue of Antiochos’ mother, Apama; in both cases the initiative came from the powerful Seleukid philos Demodamas of Miletos, and thus ultimately from the Seleukid court.42 The promotion of Apama at this specific time can be related to Seleukos’ marriage to Stratonike, the daughter of Demetrios Poliorketes, which made it necessary to secure Apama’s status as first queen and her son Antiochos’ primacy in the succession.43 Thus an image was created of the harmonious unity of the Seleukid king, queen, and male successor. In the Antiochos Cylinder from Borsippa (268), Antiochos I, Stratonike, and their son, Seleukos, repeatedly appear together as a mirror image of the divine Babylonian triad of Marduk (father), Erûa (the mother “who creates offspring”), and

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Nabû (“first son”).44 This simplified nuclear family of king/​husband, queen/​wife, and heir/​son, which was also presented in other media, has been called the Seleukid reigning triad.45 Family ties were constantly stressed by the Macedonian dynasties, for instance by the use of dynastic epithets (Eupator, Philopator, Philadelphos, Philometor), by sharing divine honors, by a preference for family groups in portrait sculpture,46 by naming cities after kings, queens and their children, and through the pronunciation of family traits on coin portraits, such as the Ptolemaic “strong chin” or the bull’s neck of the early Seleukids.47 An interesting aspect of family resemblance in coin portraiture is the process of “assimilation,” by which a queen’s face would be subtly altered to resemble the features of her husband.48 After his victory in the Battle of Chaironeia (338), Philip II commissioned the building of the Philippeion in Olympia, which housed statues of himself, his parents, his queen Olympias, and his heir Alexander.49 To the sphere of family politics also belongs the use of dynastic names. Seleukid princesses were most often called Laodike or Antiochis, while the name Stratonike (after the Antigonid wife of Seleukos I  and Antiochos I) also recurred.50 In the Ptolemaic kingdom the use of dynastic names was radical. Since Ptolemy Soter by coincidence had been succeeded by another “Ptolemaios,” all Ptolemaic kings bore this throne name, while after c. 200 BCE all queens were named Kleopatra, creating an image of a superbly stable and eternally ongoing monarchy.51 Other recurring female dynastic names among the Ptolemies were Berenike, Arsinoë, and Ptolemais.

Dynastic marriage The Seleukids intermarried more with royalty than did the Ptolemies, who in most generations avoided marriage with external dynasties. For their daughters, the Seleukid house mostly arranged hypogamous marriages, where the woman is married to a man of lower status, thereby affirming the superiority of the Seleukid imperial house over the vassal dynasty. Eumenes II of Pergamon rejected a marriage with a daughter of Antiochos III because this would give her father too much authority over Eumenes’ house.52 David Engels, Richard Wenghofer, and this author have shown how Seleukid kings (above all Antiochos III) consolidated alliances and brought local dynasts into the extended Seleukid family through dynastic marriages; they thereby exchanged in the periphery of the empire failing attempts at direct rule for rule by proxy.53 As we have seen, the royal household was the meeting point where the networks converged that held the Hellenistic empires together, and where exchanges and negotiations between stakeholders in the imperial project took place. Princesses were key actors in the establishment of imperial cohesion, creating lasting connections between secondary houses and the imperial dynasties. Queens could act as diplomats through their paternal families’ local networks. For instance Apama—​Seleukos Nikator’s Iranian bride and mother of his successor and co-​ruler, Antiochos I—​played an important role in the establishment of Seleukid hegemony in her native Central Asia, while also representing the dynasty in the West.54 Alex McAuley has shown how the Seleukids interacted with regional rulers in Anatolia by arranging diplomatic marriages of these rulers to Seleukid princesses, enabling Seleukid interference in the households of their clients; the principal agents of these interventions were the Seleukid princesses themselves, who remained in contact with their paternal house.55 Hellenistic dynastic marriages were celebrated with much pageantry and must have been arranged well in advance to allow visitors to arrive. Unfortunately, the details of such ceremonies have not been preserved.56 Princesses typically were not accompanied by their fathers, but by court dignitaries, and they presumably had with them a personal entourage of servants, ladies 337

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in waiting, and guards. Around 178, Laodike, daughter of Seleukos IV, traveled to Macedonia to marry king Perseus accompanied by a huge bridal escort on board a flotilla of Rhodian warships; the marriage was connected to Perseus’ inauguration as king some time earlier.57 Shortly after the accession of Antiochos III, his young bride Laodike was escorted to Seleukeia-​ on-​the-​Euphrates (Zeugma), a border town, where Antiochos awaited her “with all due pomp and splendor” and where the wedding ceremony took place “with royal magnificence;” the couple then proceeded to Antioch-​on-​the-​Orontes, where Laodike in a second ceremony was proclaimed basilissa.58 Queens introduced their own following into their husbands’ households, a phenomenon that is known as the “doubling” of the court. Though there is no archaeological evidence that Hellenistic palaces were divided into male and female spaces, there is some scattered evidence that Hellenistic queens indeed had their own courts. Berenike Syra, one of the wives of Antiochos II (aka Phernophoros, “Dowry-​Bringer”), had a personal bodyguard of Galatian warriors given to her by her father, Ptolemy II.59 For the later Seleukid household, a chamberlain and chief physician of the queen have been attested.60 There is some evidence that, at the Ptolemaic court of the late third century, queens were attended by female pages, who may have been the daughters of important philoi.61 Though we know that queens upon marriage brought with them substantial dowries, it is difficult to say if they themselves had command of these possessions.62 The practice of returning a princess a generation later, who would then bring back a dowry to her mother’s paternal house, seems to indicate that the dowry in principle would become the inheritance of the queen’s children, and thus be lost to her paternal family if no such strategies were employed to prevent it. The fact that Seleukid and Ptolemaic queens acted as benefactors of cities and as patrons of the arts shows that they, in one way or another, had substantial financial resources at their disposal.63

Royal women as power brokers From the original brother–​sister reign of Arsinoë II and Ptolemy II—​who shared the cult title Philadelphos (“brother/​sister-​lover”)—​Ptolemaic queens wielded considerable power, culminating in the sole reigns of Berenike IV and Kleopatra VII in the mid-​first century BCE.64 But also in the Argead and Seleukid dynasties, royal women regularly had a degree of formal authority not seen in the Achaimenid or Roman empires. Because male rulers were often away on campaign, they delegated power to their mothers or wives. Alexander left his mother Olympias practically in charge of the Argead household in Macedon, where she seems to have served as counterweight against the male regent, Antipatros.65 Olympias was able to consolidate her position of primacy and accumulate enough support to remain powerful after her son’s death.66 Another interesting example is Laodike, wife of Antiochos III. While Antiochos was on campaign, Laodike represented him as monarch, maintaining diplomatic contacts with the poleis of Asia Minor and having authority over the royal treasury. This is clear from a famous letter to Iasos from c. 195, in which Laodike states that she is acting “in accordance with the wishes of my brother,”67 an expression of fictive kinship stressing the closeness of husband and wife. Antiochos himself likewise emphasized that Laodike was his other self by calling her “our sister and queen” in his correspondence.68 There are more examples of Seleukid queens acting in their own name as benefactors of civic communities.69 Women’s authority increased when queen mothers ruled temporarily as regents to bridge a gap between two male rulers. Olympias, whose example most of all created acceptance for later queens to rule, was regent for Alexander’s son, Alexander IV.Women ruling as regent thereafter reappear with some frequency, 338

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the best example being the powerful Seleukid queen of Ptolemaic descent, Kleopatra Thea, in the later second century BCE.70 Royal women could exercise considerable influence by acting as mediators, or brokers, between the king and others at court. We are told that Pyrrhos the Molossian, who as a young man stayed as a hostage at the court of Ptolemy Soter, “cultivated Berenike in particular, seeing that she was the most influential and the most virtuous and intelligent of the wives of Ptolemy.”71 The resultant (anti-​Antigonid) alliance between Pyrrhos and Ptolemy I was sealed by a marriage involving not a daughter of Ptolemy, but a daughter of Berenike from an earlier marriage, Antigone. It is perhaps noteworthy that Antigone derived status from her mother’s rank as queen rather than through her father, Philippos son of Amyntas, an infantry officer in the army of Alexander and “a Macedonian of no note and of lowly origin.”72 Diodoros recounts how in 316 Dokimos, a partisan of Eumenes, was captured by Antigonos Monophthalmos but made a dramatic escape by negotiating with Antigonos’ wife Stratonike; he later rose to high office in Antigonos’ army.73 Josephus tells a tale about a woman whose husband, a court dignitary named Arion, had been thrown in jail:  “Arion’s wife informed Kleopatra of this, [and] Kleopatra informed the king of it,” after which Arion was released.74 Though the historicity of especially the last tale is dubious—​ Josephus’ narrative clearly belongs to the genre of court stories, and the identity of queen “Kleopatra” is extremely hard to establish—​it may be noted that in such stories queens consistently act as intermediaries between the king and others. More detail is given in another, and again rather novelistic, passage from Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. Josephus writes how in the later third century Joseph, a member of the priestly Tobiad family of Jerusalem, traveled to the Ptolemaic court to obtain the right to collect taxes in Judea: “[He] privately sent many presents to the king, and to [queen] Kleopatra, and to their philoi, and to all that were powerful at court, and thereby purchased their goodwill to himself.” Finally, a meeting with the king was arranged by the queen; while Ptolemy was traveling from Memphis to Alexandria, Joseph waited beside the road at a place agreed upon in advance, was invited into the royal carriage, and was granted restricted time to address the king: “With his amusing and clever conversation he made a good impression on the king, who began to like him, and he was invited for dinner at the palace, as a guest at the royal table.”75 In terms of court studies, the queen in these examples is not merely acting as an intermediary, but at the same time as a filter through which matters had to pass on the way to the king. The point is, that for ideological reasons kings were obliged to be open and accessible; but for reasons of status and honor they could not openly refuse requests or ignore advice. Accessibility therefore could be a risk for the king, but advantageous for powerful individuals whose status gave them admission to him.76 Court dignitaries like the chiliarch at Alexander’s court or so-​ called favorites therefore often were given the task of regulating access and creating a protective screen between the king and those seeking to exploit him.To the category of favorites—​relative outsiders to court society who are elevated to a position of primacy by the favor of the king—​ also belong a group of court women not discussed thus far: royal concubines.77 In the literary sources we often find the topos of the royal concubine as a vulgar, unscrupulous, power-​hungry seductress who makes the king her sex slave. Polybios writes about the Ptolemies: “But what are Mnesis and Potheine but flute-​players, and was Myrtion not one of those vulgar professional mime actors? And was Ptolemy Philopator not the slave of the courtesan Agathokleia, who brought the kingdom to the brink of collapse?”78 The negative image of royal concubines in the Greek narrative sources has carried through to modern scholarship, where they are often depicted as courtesans. But when Polybios writes that Ptolemy II set up public statues of his concubine, Kleino, he unintentionally reveals the 339

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high status these women actually had.79 It indicates that being a royal concubine was also a formal public role—​an aulic office, reminiscent of the official Maîtresse en Titre at the court of Louis XIV.80 One of the most notorious concubines in Hellenistic history, Agathokleia, was in fact the sister of Agathokles, Ptolemy Philopator’s minister-​favorite. In other words, she was a woman of noble birth, connected through kinship with one the most powerful men in the empire. A king’s relationship with a concubine could thus be a semi-​marital link with a member of his own court. Another reason for maintaining relationships with concubines may have been to produce extra offspring: either loyal “bastard” sons to whom responsibilities could delegated, or girls to be given in marriage to seal alliances inside or outside the court. Because concubines were in a position to communicate with the king in private, without other people being present, they too could regulate access to the king by acting as brokers, as well as perhaps acting as mediators between a powerful family of philoi and the king, as in the example of Agathokles and Agathokleia. But these women likely were also themselves able to exert influence on the king, for “whoever had the king’s ear shared to some extent in his power.”81

Conclusion Despite significant differences between the dynasties, Hellenistic queenship was a pan-​ Mediterranean and inter-​ imperial institution—​ and perhaps a category of its own. Royal women were central figures in the dynastic households, and as mothers, heirs, and regents played key roles in the maintenance of dynastic continuity. They sometimes had responsibilities that many cultures consider typically male, such as acting as benefactors of cities or having leading roles in warfare (e.g. Olympias, Arsinoë III, Kleopatra Thea, and Kleopatra VII). They acted as power brokers at court, as public representatives of dynasties, and maintained contact with their paternal families.

Notes 1 The classic study of Hellenistic royal women is Macurdy 1932; for the Argeads also Carney 2000. Whitehorne 1994 offers short biographies of the many Argead, Seleukid, and Ptolemaic royal women who were named Kleopatra. For Seleukid royal women see Coşkun and McAuley 2016. I was unable to consult Hämmerling 2019. 2 Nourse 2002. 3 Carney 1991; cf. Macurdy 1927. 4 Elias 1969. 5 See i.a. Duindam 1995; 2003; 2016. 6 Spawforth 2007; Strootman 2007; 2014; Jacobs and Rollinger 2010; Llewellyn-​Jones 2013; Carney 2015; Erskine, Llewellyn-​Jones, and Wallace 2017. A two-​volume book on the Roman imperial court, edited by Ben Kelly et al., is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. 7 Strootman 2013a. 8 On this function of the court see Duindam 2018. 9 Carney 1994, for the Argead court; cf. Müller 2007; Strootman 2014: 93–​110. 10 Strootman 2014: 38; Seleukid evidence is discussed by Coloru 2012: 85–​6. 11 Patterson 1998: 3. 12 Strootman 2013b; 2018. 13 On Hellenistic inauguration ritual, see Strootman 2014: 210–​32. 14 For women at Alexander’s itinerant court, see Carney 2003. 15 Rodríquez-​Salgado 1991: 207. 16 Von Reden and Strootman in press. 17 Kantorowicz 1957.

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Women at the Hellenistic courts 18 On the ethnos of the Makedones, see Hatzopoulos 2015. 19 Strootman 2014: 54–​90; on Hellenistic palace architecture, see Nielsen 1994; Brands and Hoepfner 1996; Kutbay 1998. 20 Hatzopoulos 2001. 21 All dates in this chapter are BCE unless otherwise indicated. 22 Mirόn Pérez 2000. 23 See Carney 1994 for the Argeads, and Strootman 2010 and 2016 for the Ptolemies and Seleukids. A consequence of this custom, is that when the Seleukid dynasty became extinct in the patriline, the Seleukid heritage was claimed by various matrilineal descendants, including Mithradates VI of Pontos (a grandson of Antiochos IV Epiphanes), Antiochos I of Kommagene (grandson of Antiochos VIII), and Kleopatra VII (heir to the Seleukid throne by multiple links). 24 Ogden 1999: ix–​xi. 25 Strootman 2007: 111–​17; Müller 2009: 18–​84. 26 Wright 2011. 27 Ogden 1999: 125. 28 On Ptolemaic sibling marriage, see Ager 2005; Buraselis 2008 and Chapter 29 in this volume. 29 Duindam 2016: 109–​27, 153. 30 Duindam 2016: 125. 31 Duindam 2016: 89. 32 On Kleopatra’s role in the Argead succession, see Meeus 2009. See also Chapter 27 in this volume. 33 Strootman 2010. 34 Strootman 2014: 107, 198–​9; Widmer 2019. 35 Carney 1991: 161; on Demetrios’ wives, see Harders 2013. 36 Müller 2013. 37 Ritter 1965: 116. 38 On the public image of Ptolemaic queens, see Wikander 1996; Hazzard 2000. 39 On joint kingship, see Holton 2018. 40 Billows 1995. 41 McAuley 2017b. 42 I.Didyma 479 and 480; cf. Engels and Erickson 2016. 43 Widmer 2015. 44 See Strootman 2013b; Holton 2018: 118–​23. For the titulature of Stratonike, see Widmer 2019. 45 McAuley 2017a: 190. 46 Hintzen-​Bohlen 1990; Müller 2009: 156–​386. 47 Fleischer 1990. 48 Wood 1999: 59. 49 See Carney 2007. 50 McAuley 2018. 51 Strootman 2014: 100. 52 Polyb. 21.20; App., Syr. 5; cf. Ager 2017: 176. 53 Engels 2011; Strootman 2011; 2016;Wenghofer and Houle 2015;Wenghofer 2018. See also Chapter 17 in this volume. 54 On Apama’s role in creating the Seleukid Empire, see Harders 2016; Ramsey 2016; Plischke 2016. 55 McAuley 2017a. 56 Sources for Hellenistic dynastic weddings are discussed by Ager 2017: 166–​71. 57 Polyb. 25.4.8; Liv. 42.12.3; App., Mac. 11.2. 58 Polyb. 5.43.3–​4. 59 Just. 27.1.4–​7; App., Syr. 65;Val. Max. 9.10 ext. 1; Polyaen. 8.50. 60 RIG 1158 (c. 100 BCE). 61 Polyb. 15.33.11. 62 Strootman 2014: 102–​3. 63 Bringmann 1997: 172. 64 Van Minnen 2010; cf. Müller 2009: 85–​155. See Chapters 7 and 11. 65 On Alexander’s suspicion of Antipatros and his house, see Müller 2003: 44–​6. 66 On the career of Olympias, see Carney 2006. 67 Austin 1981: no. 156; SEG 26, 1226. 68 Austin 1981: nos. 191 and 200; cf. Coloru 2012: 89.

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Rolf Strootman 69 Bringmann 1997; Ramsey 2011. 70 D’Agostini 2019. 71 Plut., Pyrrh. 4. 72 Paus. 1.7.1, who may be exaggerating. 73 Diod. 19.16. 74 Jos., AJ 12.4.8 (204). 75 Jos., AJ 12.4.5 (185). 76 On these mechanisms, see Strootman 2017b. 77 Literature on Hellenistic concubines is limited; it includes Ogden 1999: 215–​72, and Buraselis 2017. 78 Polyb. 14.11.2–​5. 79 Polyb. 14.11.2–5. 80 Horowski 2004: 98–​107. 81 Knecht 1982: 89.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). RIG  Michel, R. (ed.) 1900. Recueil d’Inscriptions Greques. Brussels.

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Rolf Strootman Müller, S. 2009. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II.  und Arsinoe II. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 263. Berlin. Müller, S. 2013. “Das symbolische Kapital von Argeadinnen und Frauen der Diadochen.” In Kunst 2013,  31–​42. Nielsen, I. 1994. Hellenistic Palaces: Tradition and Renewal. Aarhus. Nourse, K.L. 2002. Women and the Early Development of Royal Power in the Hellenistic East. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. Swansea. Patterson, C.B. 1998. The Family in Greek History. Cambridge, MA. Plischke, S. 2016. “Apame und Stratonike –​Die seleukidische Königin als Bindeglied zwischen West und Ost.” In C. Binder, H. Börm, and A. Luther (eds.), Diwan. Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Kultur des Nahen Ostens und des östlichen Mittelmeerraumes im Altertum. Duisburg, 325–​46. Ramsey, G. 2011. “The Queen and the City:  Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities.” Gender & History 23, 3: 510–​27. Ramsey, G. 2016. “The Diplomacy of Seleukid Women: Apama and Stratonike.” In Coškun and McAuley 2016, 87–​104. Ritter, H.W. 1965. Diadem und Königsherrschaft. München and Berlin. Rodríquez-​Salgado, M.J. 1991. “The court of Philip II of Spain.” in R.G. Asch and A.M. Birke (eds.), Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–​1650. London, 206–​44. Savalli-​Lestrade, I. 2003. “La place des reines à la cour et dans le royaume à l’époque hellénistique.” In R. Frei-​Stolba, A. Bielman Sánchez, and O. Bianchi (eds.), Les femmes antiques entre sphère privée et sphère publique. Bern, 59–​76. Spawforth, A.J.S. (ed.) 2007. The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies. Cambridge. Strootman, R. 2007. The Hellenistic Royal Court. PhD Dissertation, Utrecht University. Strootman, R. 2010. “Queen of Kings: Cleopatra VII and the Donations of Alexandria.” In M. Facella and T. Kaizer (eds.), Kingdoms and Principalities in the Roman Near East, Stuttgart, 139–​58. Strootman, R. 2011. “Hellenistic Court Society: The Seleukid Imperial Court under Antiochos the Great, 223–​187 BCE.” In J. Duindam, M. Kunt, and T. Artan (eds.), Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires. Leiden,  63–​89. Strootman, R. 2013a. “Dynastic Courts of the Hellenistic Empires.” In H. Beck (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Greek Government. Malden, 38–​53. Strootman, R. 2013b. “Babylonian, Macedonian, King of the World:  The Antiochos Cylinder from Borsippa and Seleukid Imperial Integration.” In E. Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Shifting Social Imaginaries in the Hellenistic Period. Leiden, 67–​97. Strootman, R. 2014. Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires. Edinburgh. Strootman, R. 2016. “The Heroic Company of my Forebears: The Ancestor Galleries of Antiochos I of Kommagene and the Role of Royal Women in the Transmission of Hellenistic Kingship.” In Coşkun and McAuley 2016: 209–​30. Strootman, R. 2017. “Eunuchs, Renegades and Concubines: The ‘Paradox of Power’ and the Promotion of Favorites in the Hellenistic Empires.” In Erskine, Llewellyn-​Jones, and Wallace 2017, 121–​42. Strootman, R. 2018. “The Return of the King: Civic Feasting and the Entanglement of City and Empire in Hellenistic Greece.” In F. van den Eijnde, J.H. Blok, and R. Strootman (eds.), Feasting and Polis Institutions. Leiden, 273–​96. Van Minnen, P. 2010. “Die Königinnen der Ptolemäerdynastie in papyrologischer und epigraphischer Evidenz.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewußte Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof. Berlin, 39–​54. Von Reden, S., and Strootman, R. In press. “Imperial Metropoleis and Foundation Myths.” In C. Fischer-​ Bovet and S. von Reden (eds.), Comparing the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. Cambridge. Wenghofer, R. 2018. “New Interpretations of the Evidence for the Diodotid Revolt and the Secession of Bactria from the Seleucid Empire.” In Erickson 2018, 151–​72. Wenghofer, R., and Houle, D.J. 2015. “Marriage Diplomacy and the Political Role of Royal Women in the Seleukid Far East.” In Coşkun and McAuley 2016, 191–​208. Whitehorne, J. 1994. Cleopatras. London and New York. Widmer, M. 2015. “Apamè. Une reine au cœur de la construction d’un royaume.” In A. Bielman Sánchez, I. Cogitore, and A. Kolb (eds.), Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome. Grenoble,  17–​34.

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Women at the Hellenistic courts Widmer, M. 2019. “Translating the Seleucid βασιλισσα:  Notes on the Titulature of Stratonice in the Borsippa Cylinder.” Greece & Rome 66, 2: 264–​79. Wikander, C. 1996. “Religion, Political Power, and Gender.” In P. Hellström and B. Alroth (eds.), Religion and Power in the Ancient World. Uppsala, 183–​8. Wood, S.E. 1999. Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.-​A.D. 68. Leiden. Wright, N.L. 2011. “The Iconography of Succession under the Late Seleukids.” In N.L.Wright (ed.), Coins From Asia Minor and the East. Sydney, 41–​6.

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29 ROYAL BROTHER–​SISTER MARRIAGE, PTOLEMAIC AND OTHERWISE Sheila L. Ager

Sometime between 280 and 275 BCE1, Ptolemy II of Egypt, son of Ptolemy I and his queen Berenike I, married his older sister, Arsinoë II. Arsinoë was also the child of Ptolemy I  and Berenike, and was thus her husband’s full sister. She had been previously and disastrously married to a half-​brother on her father’s side—​a union considered legal and acceptable in ancient Athens at least—​but a marriage between children of the same father and mother was unprecedented in both Greek and Macedonian custom.2 The marriage of Arsinoë and Ptolemy evidently caused at least some degree of shock: the Alexandrian poet Sotades was allegedly executed for mocking the “unholy” nature of the union, while his contemporary Theokritos more strategically likened it to the marriage of Zeus and Hera.3 It is possible that the shock value was calculated; it is certainly the case that Ptolemy and Arsinoë placed deliberate emphasis on the incestuous marriage through their mutual adoption of the epithet Philadelphos (“Sibling-​Lover”) and their ultimate deification as the Theoi Adelphoi (“the Sibling Gods”).4 The marriage was shocking (though the level of shock seems to have been higher among Victorian-​era scholars than it actually was in antiquity) because, it is generally said, it breached the incest taboo. Such a statement is not entirely accurate, and prior to delving into the significance and purpose of the royal marital patterns of the Hellenistic age, it is important to provide a more nuanced definition of “incest” and to review the meaning of “taboo.” While the terms incest and consanguinity are often used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing. Consanguinity is a biological factor: the degree of consanguinity in a relationship is a straightforward measure of how much genetic material is shared between the partners. Incest, on the other hand, is a culturally specific social construct, and while it is true enough that incest has been frowned upon in virtually every human society, past and present, beliefs about what in fact constitutes “incest” vary widely from culture to culture and over time.5 First-​cousin marriage, for example, while certainly consanguineous, is legal throughout much of the world today, and is not considered incestuous by those societies that allow it. On the other hand, Canada bans marriage between adoptive siblings and the UK bans marriage with a wide variety of in-​ laws. In neither case are such marriages consanguineous; they are, however, clearly considered to be incestuous. For the purposes of this chapter, incest will be understood in its most basic sense of nuclear-​family and lineal ascendant/​descendant blood-​relationship unions: father–​daughter, mother–​son, sister–​brother, grandfather–​granddaughter, and grandmother–​g randson. These are unions that are in general eschewed in almost every human society. 346

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The marriage between Arsinoë II and Ptolemy II was unquestionably consanguineous—​full siblings share the maximum amount of genetic material possible—​though such a designation is generally most significant in the context of (inbred) offspring. Since the Philadelphoi had no children together, it is the social construct of incest that has the most meaning here, and this brings us to the question of the incest taboo. The Oxford English Dictionary defines taboo as follows, in line with its original use in South Pacific cultures: set apart for or consecrated to a special use or purpose; restricted to the use of a god, a king, priests, or chiefs, while forbidden to general use; prohibited to a particular class (esp. to women), or to a particular person or persons; inviolable, sacred; forbidden, unlawful. (OED, taboo, noun)6 The prohibition against incestuous behavior is thus not truly universal, in spite of general claims to the contrary; in certain belief systems, incest is merely the prerogative of specific classes of beings. Many world mythologies, including the Greek, Persian, and Egyptian, envisioned the creation of the world as the outcome of sexual acts between closely-​related dyads (father–​daughter, mother–​son, sister–​brother). Likewise, many cultures throughout history have elevated their royalty to semi-​or fully-​divine status, and accorded them the prerogative to commit incest. It is important to recognize that members of a royal house are not granted an “exception” to the taboo, nor do they “break” the taboo; they simply play their own role within the framework of taboo, allowed to engage in behaviors, because of their elevated status, that are barred to others. So it is not the case that brother–​sister marriage among royalty is not incest simply because the taboo allows it; rather, it is incest, and it is important and significant that it be recognized as such. All incestuous marriages are endogamous, but not all endogamy is incest. Endogamous marriage—​marriage within an in-​group, however that group is defined—​was common in antiquity, and remains common in many contemporary societies. Religion, class, culture, ethnicity, status, and family and property considerations can all promote endogamy.7 Royalty by its very nature constitutes an in-​group, and the tendency of royals to marry other royals creates complex relationships:  Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, is both her second cousin and her third cousin once removed. The wars of Alexander’s Successors and the establishment of the Hellenistic kingdoms featured a flurry of exogamous political intermarriage that within the span of a generation resulted in a situation similar to nineteenth and twentieth-​century Europe, where the ruling families were all multiply related to each other, and endogamy, in the sense of consanguinity, became a common pattern. Thus, Antigonos II of Macedon married his niece, the Seleukid princess Phila, daughter of Seleukos I and Antigonos’ sister Stratonike, who had married Seleukos as part of a political pact between the latter and her father Demetrios Poliorketes. In political terms, the marriage of Antigonos and Phila was exogamous, but their close blood relationship made the marriage at the same time endogamous. Later Antigonid rulers, such as Demetrios II and Perseus, also took brides from the Seleukid house. But the other two leading dynasties—​the Ptolemies in Egypt and subsequently the Seleukids in Asia—​adopted a pattern of brother–​sister marriage that was endogamous in all senses of the word. The Ptolemies were leaders on this front, beginning with the marriage of the Philadelphoi. While Ptolemy III married a cousin from Cyrene, Berenike II, their children Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë II became the first full-​sibling couple in the dynasty to produce a child, Ptolemy V, and for the next century and a half, the Ptolemies engaged in full-​sibling marriage wherever possible.8 It may have been observation of their neighboring Ptolemaic rivals that led 347

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the Seleukids to their own experiments with brother–​sister marriage, though they would probably also have been aware of the incestuous marriages among the previous Achaimenid rulers and perhaps also the Hekatomnids of Karia.9 Our first certain evidence for the adoption of the sister–​brother ideology among the Seleukids comes in the reign of Antiochos III, who, like Ptolemy III, addressed his queen Laodike III as “sister,” in spite of the fact that she was his first cousin.10 The evocation of the sibling-​marriage was no doubt linked to the self-​presentation of Antiochos III and Laodike III as the first Seleukid “power couple,” as Marie Widmer calls them.11 The daughter of Antiochos III and Laodike III, Laodike IV, was married to her full brother Antiochos, no doubt at the behest of the king (and perhaps the queen). Laodike IV outlived her first brother-​husband, who died before his father did, sometime in 193. Subsequently she may have married another full brother, Seleukos IV, again probably by the will of their father. After Seleukos was murdered, Laodike may have married her third brother, Antiochos IV, who had been detained as a hostage in Rome, but who returned to Syria upon the death of his brother Seleukos and asserted his rights to the throne. After Antiochos’ death in 164, Seleukos IV’s son Demetrios returned from his own Roman exile and took the throne as Demetrios I. According to Livy (Per. 50), Demetrios I  subsequently married a Laodike, and it is generally accepted, though not a certainty, that this Laodike was Demetrios’ full sister, the widow of Perseus of Macedon. The marriage of Demetrios I and Laodike V, if indeed they were brother and sister, was the last sibling marriage we know of in this dynasty. By the mid-​second century, a countervailing marital tradition had arisen in the Seleukid kingdom.The practice of one queen marrying more than one brother (initially Laodike IV, and later Kleopatra Thea) resulted in diverging lines of half-​siblings and their children staking multiple claims to the throne.The ensuing dynastic chaos was exploited by the Ptolemies, whether in a bid to lay claim to Seleukid territory, or to neutralize potential Seleukid ambitions within the Ptolemaic kingdom. This exploitation took the form of political-​military alliances with various Seleukid claimants and pretenders, sealed with a marriage to a Ptolemaic princess.12 The first Ptolemaic bride to enter the Seleukid house in a century was Kleopatra Thea, married by her father Ptolemy VI first to the pretender Alexander Balas (150), and subsequently to Demetrios II (146). When Demetrios was captured by the Parthians, Thea offered herself in marriage to Demetrios’ half-​brother and rival ruler Antiochos VII. The children Thea had by her different husbands, particularly her sons Antiochos VIII and Antiochos IX, continued the trend of half-​sibling rivalry that was slowly tearing the Seleukid kingdom apart. A clear-​cut pattern of brother–​sister marriage was thus a relatively short-​lived phenomenon among the Seleukids, at least as far as our sources can tell us. Moreover, the numismatic and epigraphic record suggests that after Kleopatra Thea, Seleukid emphasis on the figure of the queen, the basilissa, and/​or the royal couple as a ruling unit was much attenuated. Antiochos III had stressed the importance of Laodike III to his reign, addressing her as his sister, granting her regency powers while he was campaigning in the East, and establishing a state cult in her honor.13 Their daughter Laodike IV had a pivotal role in establishing royal legitimacy, acting as queen to three of her brothers in succession; she was also the first Seleukid woman to be portrayed on the coinage of the realm.14 Demetrios I and Laodike V appear to have emphasized their sibling duality through the use of jugate portraiture on their coinage.15 With the death of Kleopatra Thea around 121, however, queens largely disappear from the material record. Among the three great dynasties of the Hellenistic world, then, the Ptolemies adopted early on a custom of incestuous (chiefly sibling) marriage, which they clung to for well over 200 years; the Seleukids experimented with it, particularly under Antiochos III and his children 348

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and grandchildren, but the increasing complications of the dynasty and the interference of Ptolemaic Egypt seem to have prevented them from engaging in it consistently; and the Antigonids of Macedon seem never to have contemplated going down that road, the uncle–​ niece marriage of Antigonos II and the nephew–​aunt marriage of his son Demetrios II being as close as they came. In the case of the Antigonids, who not only did not develop a custom of sibling-​marriage, but also mostly eschewed intermarriage with other royalty, it seems likely that their relationship with the old homeland of Macedon and with the Greek leagues and poleis would have made it unwise to adopt the kind of elevating—​and potentially alienating—​practice of kings assimilating themselves to the divine through a union that was taboo.16 We do, however, find evidence of sibling-​marriage in some of the lesser kingdoms of the Hellenistic period, though none of them appears to have pursued it with quite the passion and persistence of the Ptolemies. The Pontic and Kommagenian dynasties, which had often intermarried with the Seleukids, featured full brother–​sister marriage in some generations. Mithridates IV of Pontos was married to his sister Laodike, though they do not appear to have had children; the pair adopted the dual epithet “Philadelphoi,” which they advertised on their coinage, where, like Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II, they were portrayed in jugate fashion, with images of Hera and Zeus on the reverse.17 Mithridates VI Eupator likewise married a sister named Laodike. In Kommagene, the later pro-​Roman ruler Antiochos III Philokaisar married his sister Iotape; the pair reproduced themselves exactly, producing the son who would become Antiochos IV Epiphanes and the daughter Iotape who would marry him and take on the epithet Philadelphos. As Elizabeth D. Carney points out, “sibling marriage enabled the current pair to appear to reincarnate earlier pairs.”18 In the absence of secure evidence for the Seleukid ruler Antiochos I having married a half-​ sister, we must conclude that Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II, with whom we started this chapter, were the initiators of sibling marriage among Hellenistic royals. This does not mean that they invented the custom ex nihilo, or that all subsequent incestuous royal marriages were necessarily undertaken in imitation of the Ptolemies. Much scholarly effort has gone into the search for the motivations of the Philadelphoi, and numerous conjectures have been made: possible reasons range from political pragmatism to subconscious symbolism. Carney’s recent monograph on Arsinoë II provides a convenient summary of the many suggestions, not all of which are mutually exclusive.19 One possibility is that Ptolemy and Arsinoë were reacting against the polygamous model that had dominated the previous generation. The multiple political marriages of the Successors of Alexander resulted in dynastic situations that were ripe for conflict: specifically, what Daniel Ogden calls amphimetric strife, rivalry between half-​siblings born of different mothers.20 By three of his wives, Ptolemy I Soter had as many as a dozen sons and daughters, and the children of his two Macedonian wives, Eurydike and Berenike, certainly fit Ogden’s paradigm.21 Ptolemy held off designating his heir until perhaps the mid-​280s, and his two sons, each named Ptolemy, both appear to have believed they were eligible. When Ptolemy finally settled on Berenike’s child (the future Ptolemy II), Eurydike’s son (nicknamed Keraunos, “the Lightning-​Bolt”) left Egypt, “in fear,” says Appian (Syr. 62).That fear may well have been justified, given that Ptolemy II is said to have secured his hold on the throne by getting rid of his other half-​brothers (Paus. 1.7.1). As for his sister Arsinoë, she too had experienced the dangers of amphimetric strife, dangers that she, like her brother, may have had a hand in instigating. Her first marriage, to the Diadoch Lysimachos, produced three sons. Lysimachos, however, already had a son and heir-​presumptive, Agathokles. It may have been Arsinoë’s ambition on behalf of her children—​or concerns over their security—​that led to the rivalry that tore apart the house of Lysimachos and ultimately 349

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put an end to his kingdom. Arsinoë herself escaped, along with her sons, but her subsequent decision to marry her half-​brother Keraunos resulted in further disaster when he had her two youngest sons murdered. Arsinoë fled to Samothrake, and thence to Egypt. Both Ptolemy and Arsinoë, therefore, were survivors of polygamy and its dangerous side-​effects.22 From this point on, no Ptolemaic king practiced polygamy, with the unusual exception of Ptolemy VIII and his marriage to mother and daughter, Kleopatra II and Kleopatra III; the royal line was now restricted to the offspring of monogamous unions. But avoidance of polygamy need not necessitate marriage within the nuclear family. If incestuous marriage is nothing more than an avoidance technique, there ought to be something more to avoid than the dangers of polygamy. Political isolationism and restriction of privilege within the immediate family may have been a factor, whether such insularity is construed as the evasion of international entanglements or the shunning of ties with any other than the royal family in the domestic sphere. The dangers of the former may be illustrated by the drama at the Seleukid court in the mid-​third century. Antiochos II, already the father of at least two sons by his wife Laodike I, married Ptolemy II’s daughter Berenike “Syra” in 252, as part of the settlement at the end of the Second Syrian War; Berenike subsequently bore him a son. When Antiochos died unexpectedly in 246, rival claims to the throne were put forward by both royal women on behalf of their sons. Berenike’s brother, Ptolemy III of Egypt, took advantage of the situation to invade the Seleukid realm, ostensibly for the sake of his sister and her child, though both of them may have been dead before he reached Antioch. The ensuing Third Syrian War (and the Fratricidal War that grew out of it) took a significant toll on the Seleukid kingdom. If taking a foreign royal bride was hazardous, what about marrying into other high-​ranking families? This too could prove risky, as is shown by the case of Achaios the Younger. Achaios’ genealogy is disputed, but his family line may have intersected with the Seleukid dynasty on more than one occasion; Achaios himself was certainly both cousin and brother-​in-​law to Antiochos III. Achaios had served as one of Seleukos III’s generals, and avenged Seleukos’ death when the latter was murdered on campaign in Asia Minor only three years after taking the throne; although urged to take on the diadem himself, Achaios famously averred his loyalty to the Seleukid house and continued the campaign in the name of Seleukos’ younger brother, Antiochos III. Ultimately, however, he succumbed to temptation, and named himself king (Polyb. 4.48.11–​12).This seems to have taken place around the fall of 220, and for the next seven years, Antiochos III was not in a position to reassert his authority in Asia Minor. Although we are told that Achaios’ armies were unwilling to march against Antiochos himself, it is clear that they supported Achaios’ Anatolian ambitions, and in all likelihood it was his connections to the royal house, along with his military successes, that gave him the stature to declare himself as a rival monarch.23 Avoidance of the hazards of political entanglement and restriction of privilege and power to the immediate family, then, may have been pertinent pragmatic factors in encouraging the extreme endogamy of the Ptolemies, and of the Seleukids at certain points in their history, but there are other motivations to consider as well. Emulation of earlier models—​seeking acceptance in the newly conquered lands by imitating the customs of their predecessors—​has also been identified as a motivation.24 I believe there is something to be said for this argument, though not perhaps in the ways that it has been formulated to date. It cannot be mere chance that the custom of sibling-​marriage in the Hellenistic period flourished in precisely those regions where Greek inhabitants were a minority among large indigenous populations with a tradition of greatly elevated kingship. Where previous arguments along these lines have tended to founder is in the discovery that royal sibling-​marriage was not a consistent or even a dominant pre-Hellenistic custom in either 350

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Asia or Egypt. Ancient Greek writers, such as Diodoros and Pausanias, were convinced that sister–​brother marriage was common in Egypt.25 Some decades ago, however, Jaroslav Černý and Russell Middleton published studies that examined the Egyptian evidence thoroughly and demonstrated that incestuous marriage, whether among royalty or commoners, was considerably less frequent than popular belief (ancient or modern) has held.26 Nevertheless, we do know that some pharaohs at least married their sisters or half-​sisters. As for Achaimenid Persia, Maria Brosius argues that “the notion that Achaimenid kings entered incestuous alliances must be dismissed.”27 Brosius’ arguments, however, seem to me to fall into the category of scholarly attempts to explain incest by explaining it away. In other words, numerous scholars who have examined the tradition of consanguineous royal marriage have tended to start from the a priori assumption that (a) incest is bad; (b) allegations of incestuous behavior are therefore accusations of bad behavior; and (c) such accusations must therefore be subjected to scholarly analysis with a view to (potentially) rescuing their subjects from such false allegations. Such assumptions are particularly the case with the Asians and the Egyptians: Herodotos, one of the first Orientalists, cites Kambyses’ love for his sisters as evidence of his madness and criminal behavior.28 Brosius therefore dismisses the story of Kambyses’ marriages to his sisters (at least one of them full) as Egyptian propaganda.29 But there is no particular reason to reject Herodotos’ testimony on this point, and certainly no reason to believe that the Egyptians—​themselves familiar with the concept of royal incest—​would employ this tactic to tarnish Kambyses’ reputation (although it is possible that they did highlight the story of his murder of his sister-​wife).30 Half-​sibling Achaimenid unions, of which the best-​known is probably that between Darius II and his half-​sister Parysatis, are deemed non-​incestuous by Brosius on the grounds of the oft-​cited Athenian law mentioned above (p.  346). But this law—​which is only attested for Athens, not for other Greek cities—​cannot be applied broadly to other societies as a measure of what was or was not considered incest in those societies (I come back to the inconsistency of first cousin-​marriage in the modern world). Interestingly, Brosius accepts Plutarchos’ report that Artaxerxes II, son of Darius II and Parysatis, married two of his daughters, as does Lloyd Llewellyn-​Jones, who also is suspicious of Herodotos’ narrative about Kambyses.31 Not wishing to fall into the trap of explaining incest away myself, I remain agnostic on the question of Artaxerxes’ marriage to his daughters.32 It is certainly true, however, that direct lineal incest is much less common among royal dynasties, and usually inspires greater revulsion than sibling incest among onlookers. In their general study of incest, Jonathan Turner and Alexandra Maryanski argue that there is a hierarchy of prohibitions against the various forms of heterosexual nuclear-​family incest that is established by social norms and linked to psychological impact.33 Other normative systems—​such as patriarchy or expectations of parental nurturance—​may either support the incest prohibition or mitigate its strength. Turner and Maryanski conclude that in general we may expect a moderate to strong prohibition against brother–​sister incest; a strong prohibition against father–​daughter incest; and a very strong prohibition against mother–​son incest. The psychological impact seems to vary proportionately with the prohibition: sisters tend to suffer fewer psychopathologies than daughters, and sons suffer most of all. The fact that, aside from the primordial pairing of Earth and Heaven, Gaia and Ouranos, Greek myth features only one Oedipus suggests the Greeks did indeed think of mother–​son as the most appalling type.34 We have no known examples of lineal incest in the Hellenistic period, in spite of occasional speculation to the contrary. As we have seen, though, both father–​daughter and mother–​son incest appear in ancient myth systems, and we do have Pharaonic evidence for father–​daughter marriages. The evidence for Akhenaten’s marriages to his daughters is disputed, but the record states that both Amenhotep III and Ramesses II married one or more daughters.35 351

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If we return to the starting point of this particular argument, we may conclude that prior to the Hellenistic period both the Achaimenid line and the Pharaonic dynasties did in fact furnish numerous examples of endogamous marriage that at times featured nuclear-​family incest, particularly brother–​sister unions, whether full or half. We may also conclude that in neither case was incestuous marriage the norm, though regular intermarriage with a select elite of noble or priestly families may have meant that a great number of royal marriages were consanguineous without necessarily being incestuous. Thus sibling-​marriage was a possibility, but it was not a rule. If either the Ptolemies or the Seleukids thought to model themselves on their predecessors in order to gratify local populations, there was no need to adopt incest as a consistent pattern, but the fact that the examples were there before them may have given the Ptolemies in particular some inspiration. In my view, however, to conclude that Hellenistic rulers chose sibling-​marriage as a way of assimilating themselves to previous ruling dynasties, is to skip a step in this process. I would argue that the real factor was not a regional tradition of incestuous marriage per se, but rather a tradition of supremely exalted monarchy. The Egyptian pharaoh and the Persian great king were godlike and unapproachable beings, set off from the normal run of humankind, and their engagement in incestuous marriage was simply one of many manifestations of their stature. When Alexander adopted even a modicum of Achaimenid style, it provoked anger and resistance in many of his men, who saw him as seeking to alienate himself from his Macedonian roots and making himself too “grand.” It seems that the Hellenistic rulers of Macedon absorbed this lesson: as we have already seen, the Antigonids were careful not to give the same kind of offense, whether by incestuous marriage or by other markers of lofty kingship. Cultural imitation, then, while it may have played a role in suggesting models to some Hellenistic rulers in Asia and Egypt, does not provide a full rationale for the practice of royal sibling incest; its appearance in some Asian and Pacific cultures, as well as in Africa and South America, is enough to rule out cultural diffusion as a primary cause.36 I have pointed out that the taboo restricts incest to a particular class of beings, and the practice of incest may maintain and strengthen the integrity of that class. Exalted monarchs may choose to keep their special blood “pure” by refusing to mingle it with that of lesser beings. Indeed, Brent Shaw has argued that not only did the Ptolemaic dynasty set itself apart in this manner by the second generation, the non-​royal Greek and Macedonian settlers also assimilated themselves to their rulers by viewing themselves as part of the ruling class and turning inward to brother–​sister marriage rather than mingling their blood with that of Egyptians.37 The argument may be good as far as it goes, but surely if the necessity to keep the strain pure is the root of royal incest, the Achaimenid king and the Egyptian pharaoh would have been far more assiduous in their adherence to incestuous marriage. Many pharaohs were the sons of women of non-​royal blood, a circumstance that by definition also means they were the offspring of non-​incestuous unions.38 The notion of royalty as a special class of beings naturally segues into the divine assimilation argument: to engage in taboo behaviors is to declare that one is at least semi-​divine, since the gods are allowed to have incestuous relations. The adoption of divine behaviors need not be tied to any particular deity, but as it happens the Ptolemies had ready-​made models on both the Greek and the Egyptian side. The sibling-​spouses Zeus and Hera were an obvious choice, and were deliberately evoked in Theokritos’ encomium on Ptolemy II (Idyll 17); the Ptolemaic courtier and admiral Kallikrates erected statues of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II at Olympia, facing the temples of Hera and Zeus.39 An even better model was provided by the Egyptian triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, already inextricably tied to the Pharaonic throne.40 The mutual love of Isis and Osiris was celebrated: according to Plutarchos, they made love even while still in the womb (Mor. 356a). Moreover, the murder and dismemberment of Osiris by Set, Isis’ mourning, 352

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her collection of his scattered limbs, her partial revivification of his dead body, and her conception of Horus from it, all resonate with the brutality and the sexuality of early cosmogonic myths which emphasize both the chaos and the creative power of incest. I remain convinced that it is the symbolic value of incest that is at the core of dynastic decisions to pursue it, whether consistently, as did the Ptolemies, or intermittently, as did some of the other Hellenistic dynasties.41 Incest is a marker of the special status of those who rule: a behavior so shocking can only be engaged in by those who are powerful enough to endure it. Not only does incestuous marriage signal their power to the rest of the world, it also bestows power upon them, the power of creation. Incestuous relationships in mythology, whether engaged in by gods or humans, are inevitably fruitful.This is particularly the case in cosmogonic myths, where the world moves from a state of primordial chaos to something more ordered, where humankind can survive. It is not surprising that such myths feature incestuous relations of all kinds, given that incest itself represents disorder and chaos; it is the paradoxical role of incestuous sexual relations to start bringing order to that chaos, in part by the creation of beings who can have non-​incestuous relations. Such creativity and fruitfulness also find expression in customs of royal beneficence, and are made visual in the Ptolemaic badge, the cornucopia. Again, I think it is no coincidence that we find the custom of sibling-​marriages taking hold in the Egyptian and the Asian realms, where the kings traditionally played a role in defeating chaos and bringing about cosmic order.42 But the symbolic value of incest is inherent in each iteration, and the question of earlier models is in some senses almost irrelevant. The Ptolemies were not simply engaging in a hollow and meaningless imitation of earlier cultural practice—​they were themselves powerful cosmic beings, with no need to defer to the antecedence of the pharaohs. In the context of a volume on women and monarchy in antiquity, the underlying rationale for sibling-​marriage may be less significant than the apparent impact of this practice. Shrouding incest in a blanket of shame—​as some earlier scholars supposed was the case—​undoes all its symbolic power. We would expect, then, to see royal incestuous marriage publicly celebrated, and so we do. The poetry of Theokritos and Kallimachos, the adoption of epithets such as Philadelphos, the persistent practice in both Ptolemaic and Seleukid documents of addressing the king’s wife as “sister” (whether she was or not), the celebration of sister-​wives in coinage and in cult: all of these add up to a remarkable emphasis on the figure of the queen. Ptolemaic women in particular were portrayed as avatars of love and beauty, and were frequently associated with or assimilated to Aphrodite, as were the Seleukid queens Stratonike and Laodike III. Scholars frequently hasten to add that this association was with Aphrodite in her role as patron of marital love, rather than Aphrodite the goddess of sexual desire and gratification. I am not sure that we need to make this distinction, any more than we need to assume that Ptolemaic or Seleukid kings and queens tried to play down their incestuous relationships. On the contrary, I believe they celebrated the sexuality of the female partner in particular, which in turn drew attention to the incest. It may have been primarily the queen who was celebrated for her beauty and sexuality—​not unlike the modern phenomenon of “trophy wives” of powerful men—​but Sabine Müller’s 2009 study has demonstrated the ways in which sibling-​marriages also entailed an ideology that focused on the ruling pair as a natural couple. This phenomenon is embodied in the official Ptolemaic cult that venerated the duality of each generation of deified rulers: the Theoi Soteres (“Savior Gods”), the Theoi Adelphoi (“Sibling Gods”), the Theoi Euergetai (“Beneficent Gods”), and so on. Ptolemy II, who initiated the custom of sibling-​marriage and who placed enormous emphasis on his sister-​wife Arsinoë in literature, art and cult, also chose to advertise that she was his natural political partner as well. In the famous Chremonides Decree, Ptolemy states that in 353

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supporting Athens against Antigonid Macedon, he is following the policy of his ancestors and “of his sister.” In the Egyptian monument known as the Pithom Stele, Ptolemy again references the wise counsel of Arsinoë: “The king discussed with his sister, the wife and sister of the king, to protect Kemet (Egypt) against enemies.”43 Older scholarship had a tendency to see Arsinoë II—​Ptolemy’s elder by perhaps as much as eight years—​as a domineering woman who forced her way into her weak-​minded brother’s counsels and his bed. This image of Arsinoë (and of Ptolemy) is long gone, and I believe it is even possible to go to the other extreme, and argue that her role and her influence were only what her brother-​husband allowed them to be. But as time went on, Ptolemaic sister-​queens certainly did gain a stature—​and a real power—​that put them on a par with the Ptolemaic kings. Kleopatra II and Kleopatra III in the second century, and Kleopatra VII in the first, are particularly imposing examples of ancient female monarchy. The practice of sibling-​marriage ensured that these women were from birth marked out for a special rank and role. Unlike royal brides who married into the ruling house of another kingdom, such as the unfortunate Berenike Syra, sister-​brides shared everything with their brother-​husbands as they grew up: family, status, upbringing, relationships, and so on.44 Not only would this situation ease the transition into the role of wife of the ruler, it would also give the queen equal importance to the king as a repository of royal power: sister-​queens such as Kleopatra II and Laodike IV played a pivotal role in their brothers’ accession to the throne. And although it is dangerous to make assertions about the psychological makeup of historical individuals, it is tempting to speculate that the assertiveness of many Ptolemaic queens is to be connected to the healthy egos they may have developed in a context where they were seen as significant—​perhaps even the equals of their brothers—​from the moment they were born.

Royal brother–​sister marriage: appendix Royal Hellenistic marriages closer than first cousin The Argeads • • •

Ptolemy of Aloros and Eurynoë, daughter of Amyntas III (?) (half-​siblings?) Alexander I of Epiros and Kleopatra, daughter of Philip II and Olympias (uncle–​niece) Philip III Arrhidaios and Adea-​Eurydike (uncle–​niece)

The Ptolemies • • • • • • • • • • •

Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II (full siblings) Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III (full siblings) Ptolemy VI and Kleopatra II (full siblings) Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra II (full siblings) Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra III (uncle–​niece) Ptolemy IX and Kleopatra IV (full siblings) Ptolemy IX and Kleopatra Selene (full siblings) Ptolemy X and Kleopatra Berenike III (uncle–​niece) Ptolemy XII and Kleopatra V Tryphaina (full or half-​siblings) Ptolemy XIII and Kleopatra VII (full siblings; almost certainly unconsummated) Ptolemy XIV and Kleopatra VII (full siblings; almost certainly unconsummated)

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The Seleukids • • • • • •

Antiochos I and Nysa (?) (half-​siblings?; Ogden 1999: 124–​5) Antiochos II and Laodike I (half-​siblings?; Ogden 1999: 124) Laodike IV and Antiochos the Son (full siblings) Laodike IV and Seleukos IV (full siblings) Laodike IV and Antiochos IV (full siblings) Demetrios I and Laodike V (full siblings)

The Antigonids • •

Antigonos II and Phila II (uncle–​niece) Demetrios II and Stratonike (nephew–​aunt)

Epiros • • •

Arybbas and Troas, daughter of Neoptolemos I (uncle–​niece) Alexander I of Epiros and Kleopatra, daughter of Philip II and Olympias (uncle–​niece) Olympias, daughter of Pyrrhos I and Antigone, and Alexander II, son of Pyrrhos I and Lanassa (half-​siblings)

Pontos • •

Mithridates IV and Laodike (full siblings) Mithridates VI and Laodike (full siblings)

Kommagene • • •

Mithridates II and Antiochis (?) (full siblings) Antiochos III and Iotape (full siblings) Antiochos IV and Iotape (full siblings)

Notes 1 All dates in this chapter are BCE. 2 On the evidence for half-​sibling marriage in Athens, see Harrison 1968: 22–​3. 3 Plut. Mor. 11a; Athenaios 621a; Theokritos Idyll 17.131–​4. 4 Ager 2005; Müller 2009: 134–​53, 262–​6; Carney 2013: 79–​80; Muccioli 2013: 203–​8. 5 The only known examples of nuclear-​family consanguineous marriages among non-​royalty are in Egypt during the Roman period (and probably the Hellenistic period as well) and Zoroastrian Persia. 6 For discussions of the incest taboo, see Arens 1986; Turner and Maryanski 2005. 7 See Müller 2013. 8 Ptolemy III still evoked the ideology of sibling-​marriage by referring to his cousin-​wife as his “sister;” see van Oppen 2015: 35–​8. 9 For a summary of Seleukid sibling-​marriages, see Ogden 1999: 124–​8, 134–​7, 140–​3, 146–​7; on the Hekatomnids, see Carney 2005 and Chapter 14 in this volume. 10 Ma 2000: nos. 2, 17, 18, 26, 37. 11 Widmer 2019: 34; see also Widmer 2008; Chapter 17 in this volume. 12 See Ehling 2008: 154–​64, 213–​14, 219–​21, 226–​8; Chrubasik 2016: 129–​35, 142–​4, 166–​76. 13 See Widmer 2008; 2019.

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Sheila L. Ager 14 Houghton, Lorber, and Hoover 2008: nos. 1318, 1332, 1368; 1371, 1407, 1421, 1422, 1441, 1477; Ager and Hardiman 2016. 15 Houghton, Lorber, and Hoover 2008: no. 1691. See Chapter 30 in this volume. 16 One exception is the marriage of Perseus to Laodike, daughter of Seleukos IV, a marriage attended by so much pomp and public ceremony that it drew the (unwelcome) attention of the Romans (Plb. 25.4; Livy 42.12). See Chapter 26. 17 De Callataÿ 2009: 77–​8, figs. 39–​41. Muccioli argues in favor of the possibility that “Philadelphos” in Mithridates’ case refers to his relationship with his brother Pharnakes I (2013: 212–​13), but the presentation of the brother–​sister pair is a clear evocation of Ptolemaic precedents. For the jugate coinage of the Philadelphoi, see Lorber 2018: nos. 307–​19, 707–​8. See Chapter 30 in this volume. 18 Carney 2013: 77. 19 Carney 2013:  70–​82. See also (int. al.) Carney 1987; Ager 2005; Buraselis 2008; Rowlandson and Takahashi 2009. 20 Ogden 1999: ix–​xxxiv. 21 Ogden 1999: 59–​62,  70–​3. 22 See Müller 2009: 18–​84; Krevans 2012; Carney 2013: 40–​64, 76–​7. 23 D’Agostini 2018. 24 Macurdy 1932: 118; Ogden 1999: 77–​8; Buraselis 2008. 25 Diod. 1.27.1; Paus. 1.7.1.The late date of these writers suggests that their views may have been clouded by both Ptolemaic practice and by the custom of sister-​brother marriage among non-​royals attested in Roman Egypt (it seems highly likely, although the evidence is scarce, that non-​royal sibling marriage had already begun in Hellenistic Egypt; see Modrzejewski 2005: 351–​2). 26 Černý 1954; Middleton 1962. See also Robins 1993: 26–​7. 27 Brosius 1996: 81; cf. also Bigwood 2009. 28 To be fair, Herodotos cites the murder of one of his sister-​wives as an example of Kambyses’ kaka (bad actions), not the marriage itself. Cf. Sancisi-​Weerdenburg 1983 on the Orientalist approach of the west in its concept of Persian royal women. 29 Brosius 1996: 81. 30 Ogden 1999: 126. 31 Plut. Artax. 23, 27; Brosius 1996: 30, 69; Llewellyn-​Jones 2013: 116. 32 The question of incestuous marriage among the Achaimenids inevitably brings Zoroastrianism and the practice of xwēdōdah (achieving virtue through brother–​sister, father–​daughter, and son–​mother incest) into the discussion. Although the Achaimenid rulers worshiped Ahura Mazda, it is far from certain that all Zoroastrian beliefs and practices were present at this early stage of Persian history; all our sources on xwēdōdah are quite late.The Sasanian rulers do seem to have consciously practiced incestuous marriage. See Frandsen 2009: 60–​103 for an extensive discussion of the sources. 33 Turner and Maryanski 2005: 65–​81. This particular portion of their study is not culturally specific. 34 See Rudhardt 1982: 749–​51. 35 Robins 1993: 29; Dodson and Hilton 2004: 35, 146–​8, 169. 36 See Arens 1986: 8–​9. 37 Shaw 1992; cf. Modrzejewski 2005. 38 Robins 1993: 27–​9; Dodson and Hilton 2004: 17. 39 IOlympia 306, 307; see Carney 2013: 79, 97. 40 Buraselis 2008; Krevans 2012. 41 Ager 2005: 20–​8; 2006: 174–​9; see also Rudhardt 1982; Arens 1986. 42 Koenen 1993; Frandsen 2009: 89. 43 IG II2 687 l.  17; CM 22183 (translation at www.attalus.org/​docs/​other/​inscr_​258.html (accessed July 31, 2019)). Antiochos III also emphasized his political partnership with Laodike III (see Ma 2000: no. 17). 44 This is not to suggest that all Ptolemaic couples shared identical interests and friends; Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III in particular seem to have lived separate lives.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

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Bibliography Ager, S.L. 2005.“Familiarity Breeds: Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 125: 1–​34. Ager, S.L. 2006.“The Power of Excess: Royal Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty.” Anthropologica 48: 165–​86. Ager, S. L., and C. Hardiman. 2016. “Female Seleukid Portraits: Where Are They?” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation, and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 143–​72. Arens, W. 1986. The Original Sin: Incest and its Meaning. Oxford. Bigwood, J. 2009. “‘Incestuous’ Marriage in Achaemenid Iran: Myths and Realities.” Klio 91: 311–​41. Brosius, M. 1996. Women in Ancient Persia (559–​331 BC). Oxford. Buraselis, K. 2008. “The Problem of the Ptolemaic Sibling Marriage: A Case of Dynastic Acculturation?” In P. McKechnie and P. Guillaume (eds.), Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World. Leiden, 291–​302. Carney, E.D. 1987. “The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt.” Parola del passato 42: 420–​39. Carney, E.D. 2005. “Women and Dunasteia in Caria.” American Journal of Philology 126: 65–​91. Carney, E.D. 2013. Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life. Oxford. Černý, J. 1954. “Consanguineous Marriage in Pharaonic Egypt.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 40: 23–​9. Chrubasik, B. 2016. Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men Who Would Be King. Oxford. D’Agostini, M. 2018. “Asia Minor and the Many Shades of a Civil War:  Observations on Achaios the Younger and his Claim to the Kingdom of Anatolia.” In K. Erickson (ed.), War within the Family: A Reassessment of the First Half-​Century of Seleucid Rule. Swansea: 59–​81. De Callataÿ, F. 2009. “The First Royal Coinages of Pontos, from Mithridates III to Mithridates V.” In J. Munk Høtje (ed.), Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom. Aarhus,  63–​94. Dodson, A., and D. Hilton. 2004. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. London. Ehling, K. 2008. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der späten Seleukiden (164–​63 v. Chr.). Stuttgart. Frandsen, P.J. 2009. Incestuous and Close-​Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia:  An Examination of the Evidence. Copenhagen. Houghton, A., Lorber, C., and Hoover, O. 2008. Seleucid Coins: A Comprehensive Catalogue, Part II : Seleucus IV through Antiochus XIII. New York. Koenen, L. 1993. “The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure.” In A. Bulloch et  al. (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-​Definition in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley, 25–​115. Krevans, N. 2012. “Virgins and Brides in the Land of Brotherly Love.” In C. Cusset, N. Le Meur-​Weissman, and F. Levin (eds.), Mythe et pouvoir à l’époque hellénistique. Leuven, 303–​18. Llewellyn-​Jones, L. 2013. King and Court in Ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE. Edinburgh. Lorber, C. 2018. Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part I: Ptolemy I through Ptolemy IV. New York. Ma, J. 2000. Antiochos III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor. Oxford. Macurdy, G.H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens. Baltimore and London. Middleton, R. 1962.“Brother–​Sister and Father-​Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt.” American Sociological Review 27: 603–​11. Modrzejewski, J.M. 2005. “Greek Law in the Hellenistic Period: Family and Marriage.” In M. Gagarin and D. Cohen (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law. Cambridge, 343–​54. Muccioli, F. 2013. Gli epiteti ufficiali dei re ellenistici. Stuttgart. Müller, S. 2009. Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoe II. Berlin and New York. Müller, S. 2013. “Endogamy.” In R.S. Bagnall et  al. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. https://​ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/​doi/​10.1002/​9781444338386.wbeah22094 (accessed July 14, 2019). Ogden, D. 1999. Polygamy, Prostitutes, and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties. London. Oppen de Ruiter, B.F., Van 2015. Berenice II Euergetis: Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship. New York. Robins, G. 1993. Women in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge, MA. Rowlandson, J., and Takahashi, R. 2009. “Brother–​Sister Marriage and Inheritance Strategies in Greco-​ Roman Egypt.” Journal of Roman Studies 99: 104–​39. Rudhardt, J. 1982. “De l’inceste dans la mythologie grecque.” Revue française psychanalyse 46: 731–​63. Sancisi-​Weerdenburg, H. 1983. “Exit Atossa: Images of Women in Greek Historiography on Persia.” In A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity. London, 20–​33. Shaw, B.D. 1992. “Explaining Incest:  Brother–​ Sister Marriage in Graeco-​ Roman Egypt.” Man 27: 267–​99. Turner, J.H., and Maryanski, A. 2005. Incest: Origins of the Taboo. Boulder, CO, and London.

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30 JUGATE IMAGES IN PTOLEMAIC AND JULIO-​ CLAUDIAN MONARCHY Dimitris Plantzos

Introduction The artifacts discussed in this chapter—​mostly coins, seals, and engraved gemstones—​carry a distinctive type of imagery, in most cases associating a male ruler with his female consort. Devised as a symbol of political strength and permanence, the conjoined depiction of the two members of a ruling couple was widely used in the Greco-​Roman world, as well as its periphery, and produced some considerable spin-​offs (with a pair of siblings, for example, or a divine instead of a royal pair).The examples to be discussed in this chapter cover this entire span, from Ptolemaic Egypt (where the scheme was first designed) and the Hellenistic East at large to Rome in the time of the late republic and the Julio-​Claudians.

Sibling gods and mother-​loving kings Ptolemaic ideals of kingship were fashioned partly on the Pharaonic tradition and partly on the Greco-​Persian model established by Alexander.1 This meant that a Ptolemaic king served both as a Hellenistic basileus and as local pharaoh; as such, he embodied the state as a charismatic ruler approved of and protected by the gods, while at the same time, as pharaoh, he was seen as the earthly manifestation of Horus, invincible and ever victorious. In both traditions, sovereignty drew its legitimacy from dynastic continuity, and the royal couple soon came to symbolize this. Ptolemy Philadelphos was the first to add the living royal couple to the cult of Alexander (possibly in 272/​1 BCE), first as the “temple-​sharing gods” (Theoi Synnaoi) and then as the “sibling gods” (Theoi Adelphoi);2 these were Ptolemy II and his sibling-​wife Arsinoë, joined in a hieros gamos (“holy marriage”) according to a precedent set by Zeus and Hera (or Dione; see p. 363), as well as many a pharaonic couple.3 The third Ptolemaic couple were later incorporated into the dynastic cult as the “benefactor gods” (Theoi Euergetai), but it was only Ptolemy IV who, retrospectively, added his great-​g randparents, the “savior gods” (Theoi Soteres), a divine epithet established already under Philadelphos, to the cultic sequence. The result was a collective, and dynamic, dynastic cult celebrating the legitimacy and the continuity of the state in the face of its ruling couples. This was a Ptolemaic invention, later to be exported to the Seleukids and other Hellenistic kingdoms, such as Kommagene.

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Figure 30.1  Gold octodrachm issued by King Ptolemy II Philadelphos /​Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt (obverse); Jugate busts of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II; c. 261/​260–​240 BCE Source: Athens, National Numismatic Museum; inv. no. 455 (Demetriou Collection)

Doing politics through coinage was another habit the Ptolemies inherited from Alexander (and the Argeads before him);4 heavily politicized coin imageries, in particular, became a trademark Macedonian practice that they developed to perfection. The jugate-​busts scheme itself, that is the representation of a royal or divine couple in close up, seated side-​by-​side and usually facing right, seems to have been invented to be employed as a propaganda device on Ptolemaic coinage.5 It may have been derived from earlier Greek/​Macedonian art, mostly reliefs, where two individuals were shown to sit, stand, or advance side by side;6 pharaonic imageries, on the other hand, tomb-​paintings and temple reliefs more likely, may also have provided the inspiration for this new pictorial type.7 Ptolemaic coins often show fuller busts of deities and rulers (that is, a complete depiction of the head, in profile, the neck, and the upper part of the shoulders in three-​quarter view, customarily draped), whereas Macedonian, Seleukid, and other Hellenistic coinages tend to favor simpler depictions of heads, down to a decorative, undulating cut-​line at the lower neck. The first official, and securely dated, image of a Ptolemaic couple in jugate depiction comes from a monumental series of gold octodrachms and tetradrachms (approximately 27.8 and 14 grams respectively) introduced by Philadelphos in the 260s BCE as a means of glorifying the newly established dynasty (see Figures 30.1 and 30.2). The obverse shows the Adelphoi facing right, with a shield symbol behind them (a symbol of military worthiness as well as civic safe keeping); on the reverse, Ptolemy I and Berenike are shown, also in jugate depiction. Both wear diadems, and their shoulders are draped. Ptolemy Soter is shown older (though not as old as he was when he died), with clenched lips, pointy nose, deep-​set eyes and rather unruly hair. Philadelphos looks younger, and better groomed. He is sporting a sideburn, and the characteristic big, well-​rounded eye that will soon become a Ptolemaic trademark. His shoulder is draped with a chlamys-​like garment, possibly the porphyra, the purple-​dyed cloak worn by royalty in Hellenistic art, though mostly on coins and gems.8 The two royal consorts are shown partially covered by their kings. They look significantly alike, as does Arsinoë to her brother, Philadelphos. Both women wear the “melon coiffure,” 360

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Figure 30.2  Gold octodrachm issued by King Ptolemy II Philadelphos /​Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt (reverse); Jugate busts of Ptolemy I and Berenike I; c. 261/​260–​240 BCE Source: Athens, National Numismatic Museum; inv. no. 455 (Demetriou Collection)

a heavy, intricately massive hairstyle typical of royal women in the early Hellenistic period (though not exclusive to them).They both wear diadems and their shoulders are loosely draped. Their noses are pointy, their lips tight, their chins look rounded and their jowls are heavy. They are depicted as ideal supplements to their royal husbands—​regal and, in effect, divine.9 The Arsinoë of the Theon Adelphon series—​and, by extension, the portrait of her mother—​ is comparable to the female coin-​portrait types created by the Ptolemies for their consorts. Arsinoë herself was given a long-​lived series of silver decadrachms, gold octodrachms and (later) silver tetradrachms soon after her death in c. 270 BCE that continued well into the second century BCE.10 She is shown on the obverse on her own, wearing the diadem underneath a stephane (thin, pointy crown), and partly covered by the apoptygma (overfold) of her peplos by means of a “veil.” A ram’s horn decorates her ear (a reference to a Pharaonic counterpart?) and the tip of a scepter is usually discernible rising from her side and above her head. The reverse bears the symbol of the dikeras, a double cornucopia apparently designed for her.11 This is certainly the image of a deified royal woman, a beneficent basilissa thanked for the prosperity and well-​being of her people. Although on her posthumous coinage Arsinoë is only identified with her royal epithet (Philadelphos), Berenike II, royal consort of Ptolemy III, is called a basilissa (“royal woman”) on hers, where she is shown quite similar to her predecessor, though with a single cornucopia and without any direct references to deification (such as Arsinoë’s horn).12 These regal images are also present on seals, gems, and signet rings of the period, although with these, for the lack of inscriptions or any other historical context, we are generally at difficulty to identify them with any certainty (some of those women might not be royal at all).13 The message of the Theon Adelphon series is clear to anyone handling or—​better still—​ possessing the coins: dynastic continuity is secured through familial ties going back to the Age of Alexander, and dynastic stability guarantees the prosperity symbolized by the coin at hand. The words THEON ADELPHON (“of the sibling gods”), the cult name of Ptolemy II and his sibling-​wife Arsinoë, were first placed together on the obverse of the coin, later to be divided between the two sides,THEON now seemingly referring to the Soteres, though not necessarily implying their deification.14 Though the coins were struck well below the weight implied by 361

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their denominations (a full octodrachm ought to weigh almost 28.5 grams),15 the names they were commonly identified with suggested their political as well as fiscal importance: the gold octodrachm was called a mnaeon, a name that suggested it was worth a full mna or 100 silver drachms. Accordingly, the tetradrachm was called a pentekontadrachmon, that is, a piece of 50 (silver) drachms. Besides confirming that silver remained the basis for monetary exchange across the Hellenistic world, the two names also help translate their obvious worth into their irresistible street value: combined with their physical attraction, their intrinsic value reflects onto the personages of the four royal persons depicted, confirming their own worth as rulers and their potency as divinities. The impact of the jugate scheme must have been considerable. A mysterious plaster cast, allegedly from the Fayum in Egypt, seems to confirm this, albeit in a circumspect way.16 The piece is made of stucco, and it is of irregular shape with its maximum diameter measuring just under 15 cm. It shows two jugate busts, a draped man and a veiled woman, in relief. Unlike their counterparts from coinage, these turn left. The diadem the man wears suggests the two personages are royal, and their physiognomies, as well as the piece’s alleged findspot indicates they may be members of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Indeed, following the precedent of the dynastic octodrachms and tetradrachms discussed above (p.  360), they seem more likely to be either Ptolemy I and Berenike or Ptolemy II and Arsinoë. Contrary to the coins, however, the images on the cast appear heavily idealized. The noses of the two portraits have been tampered with (already in antiquity?), with that of the man leaving a visible “ghost” on the cheek of his companion. The man’s strong cheek and pumped-​up forehead, as well as his once pointy nose, suggest he is Ptolemy Soter rather than his son Philadelphos, which would make the piece a depiction of the Theoi Soteres. The piece is apparently not a show piece in itself, but a cast made to be used in the making of another, presumably metal, artifact. But a cast of what? A general consensus among earlier scholars seems to be that the cast was taken from a piece of metalwork or a mold for the replication of some sort of metal decoration portraying the royal couple; in this case it would serve as the mold for the making further molds. Some have hypothesized on the cast being a copy of a “grand cameo” of the early Ptolemaic period, though this does not seem to be verified by either archaeological evidence or technical probability.17 At any rate, the Alexandria cast provides us with a glimpse into what an idealized depiction of the savior gods might look like in early Ptolemaic art besides coinage. The depiction need not be earlier than the dynastic coin-​series; as a matter of fact, its idealization and possible reworking in antiquity seem to confirm that the portraits were posthumous and quite possibly were switched from the Soteres to (perhaps) the Philadelphoi at some point after the piece’s construction (this would mean that after having served as a joint depiction of the Soteres the image was cast anew and modified to portray the Philadelphoi). In any case, the piece provides a good depiction of a “state couple” of the early Ptolemaic period: the two busts, suitably idealized, attired and coiffed, suggest their royal as well as divine nature as confirmation of their regal power and ability to rule, safeguarding their realm and their royal subjects. A series of silver tetradrachms from the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (222–​205 BCE) indicates a new twist in the jugate scheme’s career: the coins represent the archetypical divine couple, Sarapis and Isis, in the way the Soteres and the Philadelphoi had been depicted in the previous decades.18 The two divinities are shown in bust, draped, facing right; their facial characteristics (despite Sarapis’ beard) and expressions recall those of the kings shown on the dynastic octodrachms and tetradrachms. Sarapis is wearing a minuscule atef crown (once mistaken for a “lotus bud” by early students of Greek numismatics) and Isis wears the horns-​and-​ disk crown she shared with Hathor in pharaonic iconography. The reverse shows a Ptolemaic 362

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eagle facing left, though turning his head backward, toward a dikeras hovering over his back.The entire scheme seems to suggest Ptolemaic leadership in the form of a royal couple mirroring a divine one (whereas in fact it is the gods who adopt here the imagery of the kings).19 This does not mean that Ptolemaic kings were ever assimilated to Sarapis (Ptolemy Epiphanes may have been an exception, and this posthumously). The women of the Ptolemaic royal family, however, were gradually assimilated to Isis—​both as a royal consort and a queen mother—​which was crucial for dynastic continuity and stability. Inevitably, though perhaps also non-​intentionally, the facial features of Isis on these depictions seem to evoke those of the ruling queen (or a dead queen mother), an intriguing suggestion to which we will turn below (see p. 364). Signet rings were quick to adopt the Sarapis/​Isis jugate scheme, as we can tell from a seal-​ impression found affixed on a papyrus from Elephantine (Papyrus XXIII) dating from 223/​ 2 BCE.20 A much later papyrus, from 138 CE, states that a witness to a transaction seals the document with a glymma (seal-​impression) “of Isis and Sarapis.”21 A massive gold ring, now in London, is a good example of the type.22 A number of engraved gems, roughly dated to the later third, second, and first centuries BCE, as well as many later ones, also carry the scheme.23 At a later point, the jugate-​busts depiction was adopted by other divinities as well.24 A variant of the scheme, two frontal busts shown side by side, may be found on a gold medallion now in New York.25 The two busts recreate the divine personages as shown on Philopator’s coins (though here with Isis on Sarapis’ right rather than the other way round); the piece is difficult to date, though it must be later than the coins, possibly second or first century BCE. The Sarapis-​ and-​Isis jugate busts were exported to the numismatic imagery of at least one other Hellenistic territory, Epirus in northwestern Greece: during the third and second centuries BCE, the jugate busts of Zeus Dodoneus alongside his (local) consort Dione are featured on the obverse of the silver staters issued by the Epeirote League, an obvious inspiration derived from Philopator’s coins.26 Returning to depictions of royals, the jugate-​ busts scheme was soon exported from Alexandria to other Hellenistic kingdoms. Kleopatra Thea, first, herself a Ptolemaic princess (she was the daughter of Ptolemy VI Philometor), adopted the scheme when she became a royal consort and eventually a basilissa in Seleukid Syria.27 Kleopatra became the wife of three successive Seleukid kings from 150 to 125 BCE (Alexandros Balas, Demetrios II Nikator, and Antiochos VII Sidetes), and died at the hands of her son and co-​regent Antiochos VIII Grypos, who, fearing for his own life, murdered her in 121 BCE. Kleopatra’s coins, where she is accompanied by a cornucopia as were her Ptolemaic counterparts, name her a basilissa and a thea eueteria (“a goddess of fertility”). She is shown next to her first husband, Balas, and actually occupying the foreground of the representation, her bust overshadowing his.28 Twenty-​five years later, on an issue of 125–​121 BCE, Kleopatra, who was by then sharing the throne with her son by Demetrios Nikator, Antiochos Grypos, has him appear next to her on their dynastic coinage.29 She is once again shown as the senior partner in their union, a practice later to be adopted by her namesake Kleopatra VII of the Ptolemies in relation to her own co-​regents, first her brothers and finally her son. At about the same time when Kleopatra was leaving her fatherland to marry Alexandros Balas, the jugate-​busts scheme was being adopted by king Mithradates IV of Pontos for an exceptional silver issue, where he is shown next to his consort (and possibly also his sister) Laodike.30 The busts, conventionally showing the king in the foreground, are both draped and diademed, turning left in the Ptolemaic fashion. Brutal realism (Mithradates’ head in particular emphasizes his coarse features and facial hair) was a Pontic trait (initiated by this king’s predecessors, his father Mithradates III and brother Pharnakes I), here combined with a stately image, laden with political symbolisms. Impossibly, as was also the case with the coins struck 363

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for Kleopatra Thea, the imagery suggests dynastic peace and stability even if those rulers’ actual careers demonstrated anything but. Farther afield, Eukratides I, who ruled the kingdom of Baktria between c. 171–​155 BCE, chose a jugate depiction of his parents, Heliokles and Laodike, as a royal couple for the obverse of an exceptional silver tetradrachm he issued.31 As the ruling king, Eukratides is shown diademed on the reverse, self-​identified as a basileus and as “great” (megas). Intriguingly, only Laodike is shown diademed next to her bareheaded husband. It seems that, in this coin too, the jugate-​ busts scheme retains its state symbolism: the couple apparently constituted Eukratides’ claim to the throne (possibly because Laodike was a Seleukid princess or the widow of a previous king) and their presence on their son’s coinage most likely carries a clear political symbolism. Later on, the scheme would also be adopted on the coinage of the Greek kingdoms of India, namely by Strato (c. 130–​75 BCE) shown next to his mother Agathokleia (who ruled as regent while he was still a minor),32 and by Hermaeus (c. 75–​55 BCE) shown next to his consort, Kalliope.33 Back in Alexandria, the jugate-​busts type had last appeared in a revival of the Theon Adelphon octodrachms in gold, by Ptolemy V in the very beginning of the second century BCE.34 The type then disappears from Ptolemaic coinage, only to re-​emerge in Egyptian seals from the later second and earlier first century BCE. Official seals and signet rings generally do not survive; we do however possess some crucial, and massive, finds of clay seal-​impressions from the Hellenistic and early Roman worlds.35 The so-​called Edfu Hoard of clay seal-​impressions preserves several interesting Ptolemaic portrait types, including some jugate-​bust depictions (even some triple-​ jugate busts).36 Identification is hindered by the lack of inscriptions, the relatively bad state of preservation of most surviving sealings, and the fact that images of the late Ptolemies, as well as those of their consorts, are not otherwise known from coinage or sculpture. As the preponderance of recognizable male and female portraits from the Hoard, however, seems to point to the period from Philometor to Kleopatra VII, the Hoard is usually dated to the timeframe between the 180s and the 30s BCE, with some earlier and perhaps later inclusions. An interesting practice emerging from the study of the Hoard is the tendency to portray the consort of the king (ruling, recently deceased, or ruling on her own) in the guise of Isis, and the extent to which these depictions suggest actual deification.37 The jugate-​busts scheme is also used to portray Sarapis and Isis, in the example set by the use of the type in Philometor’s coins, as discussed above (p. 362).38 In an additional number of sealings, however, we find joint depictions of Ptolemaic couples (where the man is either beardless or only slightly bearded, therefore he cannot be Sarapis; see Figures 30.3 and 30.4).39 These show the ruling couple in all its dynastic glory: the busts are always draped, and some female ones appear to be veiled; pharaonic insignia are carried by men and women alike (atef crowns for the kings, horns-​and-​disk crowns for their consorts, alluding to Isis and, secondarily, Hathor); the men, in particular, also wear Ptolemaic dynastic headdresses, such as elephant scalps (alluding to Dionysos and Alexander himself), falcon headdresses (alluding to Horus), or the occasional aegis (a shawl-​like mantle lined with snake-​heads, typical of Zeus; cf. Figure 30.4). As the rings that created those impressions were worn by state officials—​Alexandria bureaucrats, most likely, in correspondence with the indigenous priesthood ruling Edfu at the time—​the depictions offer, quite expectedly, duly authorized, explicitly designed state imageries communicating the regime’s political ideology and underlining its stability. Although we are in no position to identify those men and women with any degree of certainty,40 we can be positive that we are looking, collectively, at images of Kleopatras I, II, and III next to their male consorts (Ptolemies V,VII,VIII, IX, and X); some others, on the other hand, and most notably Kleopatra VII, are more readily recognizable, either on their own,41 or next to their co-​rulers. Although the later second and earlier first centuries BCE were times of relentless dynastic strife and 364

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Figure 30.3  Clay seal-​impression from Edfu; Ptolemaic couple, late second /​early first century BCE Source: Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum inv. no. 906.12.193. Photograph by Royal Ontario Museum

Figure 30.4  Clay seal-​impression from Edfu; Ptolemaic couple, late second /​early first century BCE Source: Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum inv. no. 906.12.196. Photography by Royal Ontario Museum

catastrophic civil war for Egypt, the stately depictions appearing on the signet rings enlist the image of the ruling, and also divine, couple in order to promote an official image of stability and power. An exceptional representation of this category, though not one coming from Edfu, shows a deified female bust in Isis/​Hathor costume and carrying an Ammon horn superimposed over the bust of a boy-​king wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.42 The woman has invariably been called “Kleopatra I” on the basis of her resemblance to Kleopatra’s very rare coin portraits, to which some further sealings have been compared. The accumulation of divine attributes is striking, especially for a royal person who does not seem to have been deified during 365

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her lifetime. It might be possible to accept the image as a joint depiction of Ptolemy Philometor (“the mother-​loving king”) alongside his mother, who also acted as his regent (which would mean she is depicted after her death in 176 BCE), though this might be unprovable.

From Mark Antony to the Julio-​Claudians In a world where kingship lay at the epicenter of politics, the jugate-​busts scheme was easy to establish. Even when Hellenistic kingdoms succumbed, one after the other, to Rome—​a polity gradually evolving into an empire governed by a family closely resembling a Hellenistic dynasty—​the motif ’s potent symbolism was unmistakable. Roman diplomats and generals were in close contact with the Hellenistic East from the early second century BCE on; their dealings with Egypt, in particular, uneasy and distrustful as they were, created nonetheless waves of “Egyptomania” back in Rome now and then, scandalizing the conservative though inspiring others. A number of artifacts adopting the jugate-​busts scheme in the Julio-​Claudian period confirm this observation. Predominant among them are the so-​called Cameo Gonzaga now in St Petersburg and the Cameo of the Ptolemies in Vienna.43 Also known as “grand cameos” based on their exceptional size (15.7 cm and 11.5 cm high, respectively), the two pieces have long excited the imagination of scholars, collectors, and art enthusiasts at large. Regrettably, they both lack a reasonably secure archaeological and historical context, and we seem to know more about their post-​antique afterlife than the actual conditions of their making and use.44 Scholarly tradition persistently associates the two grand cameos with the early Ptolemies, variously recognizing in them portraits of Ptolemy Philadelphos and Arsinoë or, posthumously, Alexander and Olympias (and the plaster cast discussed on p. 362 has often been associated with them). And this has been so, even if there is no reliable evidence to suggest that cameo-​cutting was practiced prior to the mid-​second century BCE.45 Even stylistically, the two cameos seem to belong to the early first century CE rather than the early Hellenistic period. Their iconography seems obscure to us, however: their heavily idealized features seem imaginary rather than portrait-​like, so it might be more reasonable to argue that whoever these personages are, they are not meant to be living at the time the two cameos were created (in which case the identification of the Cameo Gonzaga in St Petersburg with a posthumous portrait of Alexander next to a much more idealized female bust might not be altogether impossible). A third “grand” cameo, today in Berlin, also carries a similar depiction of a royal or imperial couple.46 The man on this one has been recognized as Caligula next to a female member of the Julio-​Claudian family; some scholars have also dated the other two cameos to around Caligula’s time. Even though, in our present state of knowledge, we are unable to date the three cameos securely and identify those portrayed in them with any degree of plausibility, we must conclude that they are early imperial rather than early (or even late) Hellenistic. Although deriving from Hellenistic prototypes (and the flashy originals from which the Edfu sealings came may have provided a strong model), the three cameos cannot be placed in the Hellenistic East, where royal portraits were much more individualized. The three cameos might well represent Julio-​ Claudians, or even Alexander himself next to a heavily idealized Olympias, a representation not unknown in Augustan art, including gem-​cutting.47 The jugate-​busts scheme was also introduced to late republican and early imperial coinage. Mark Antony’s cistophori depicting his portrait alongside the bust of his wife Octavia are demonstrably influenced by similar depictions on Ptolemaic coins and seals.48 Octavia is shown here not as a basilissa, of course, but as a semi-​regal consort, whose presence in the life of Antony and depiction on his coinage carries a deep political significance (given her familial relationship to 366

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Octavian). This is made even more explicit with the so-​called “fleet bronzes,” struck across the eastern Mediterranean, some of which feature the jugate heads of Antony and Octavian facing Octavia’s bust.49 The jugate heads of the two politicians here suggest alliance and Octavia’s bust facing them, in recognition as it were, seems to be standing as a symbol of the familial ties between the two men, as guarantor, once again, of stability, peace, and prosperity. This practice was continued under the Julio-​Claudians. Female members of the imperial family are often featured on their coinage, sometimes in jugate depictions with their husbands—​ a practice also noticeable on the engraved gems of the period.50 An interesting feature of these coins is that, as a rule, male heads appear truncated (following a Hellenistic tradition most notable with the Seleukids of Syria) whereas females are represented as draped busts (as with the Ptolemies).51 The iconographical disparity is striking, and may be attributable to the combination of two different, though equally strong, visual traditions. A good example is the cistophori issued by Claudius, where he is shown next to Agrippina the Younger (facing left).52 The two heads are impressively cut, with deep characterization of their likeness and physiognomy. Agrippina was also featured on the coinage of her son, Nero, during the first years of his reign, when she was still able to exert considerable political influence over him.53 Later on, after Agrippina’s death, Nero included Poppaea Sabina in his coinage following the example of Mark Antony; in one of his provincial issues, from Ephesos, the pair are shown in the jugate-​busts scheme, Nero as a truncated head and Poppaea as a draped bust.54 A cornelian intaglio from a private collection in England portrays a Roman emperor, most likely Nero, next to the conjoined bust of a woman (Figure 30.5).55 Following the precedent set by Roman republican and imperial coinage, the gem shows the man’s truncated head, with the cut immediately beneath the neck-​line already practiced by the Antigonids, the Seleukids, and other Hellenistic monarchs, whereas the woman is portrayed in full bust, veiled. Nero is crowned with a laurel wreath, while his companion seems to be wearing a stephane. The Ptolemaic overtones in composition and style are unmistakable, even

Figure 30.5  Cornelian intaglio. Imperial couple (Nero and Poppaea?); c. 62–​65 CE Source: Private collection. Photography by Bob Wilkins

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though the man is obviously characterized as a Roman ruler. If he is truly meant to be Nero, then he looks too old to have been paired with Agrippina, and his wife Poppaea Sabina presents herself as a plausible alterative. The Ephesos coin mentioned above (p. 367) may have provided the model for this gem, which might well have been cut in the Hellenistic East. An iconographical debt—​though one of significant political symbolism—​seems thus to have been repaid.

Conclusions The jugate-​busts scheme was devised in the Ptolemaic court under Philadelphos, in the early third century BCE. The representation of the conjoined busts of the ruling royal couple, as well as their predecessors, was meant to emphasize dynastic unity, stability, and prosperity. The scheme is most noticeable on coins and seals, though its diffusion in antiquity must have been wider, including sculpture and toreutics. In it, royal women appear as guarantors of peace in the realm and the well-​being of their subjects through their double role as consorts of the ruling king and, more often than not, mothers of the next one. When they are ruling on their own, they often choose to be portrayed next to their siblings or sons, thus reversing the emphasis on familial ties. Adopted by the Romans, both of republican and imperial times, the scheme carries most of its original political symbolisms even though historical circumstances have changed. Busts of Roman women appear once again conjoined to those of their husbands or sons on coins or gems as an indicator of social order and political strength. It is these political connotations that made the jugate-​busts scheme a strong political symbol and guaranteed its survival during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. And even after the Ptolemies, the Seleukids, or the Julio-​Claudians had long ceased to exist, the type was revived, once again on coins and medals, by royals across Europe or even political figures in America (suffice to mention, here, as an example, the Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar struck by the USA Mint in 1923, bearing jugate depictions of former US Presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, which however failed to impress critics, if we are to judge by Cornelius Vermeule’s dismissive view that the piece was “an aesthetic monstrosity,” “a bad pun in art”).56 In most other cases, however, a politically charged pairing, usually a royal marriage, remained the point of the depiction, as is evident, for example, in the coins and medals issued during the joint reign of William of Orange and Mary II of England, Scotland, and Ireland between 1689 and 1694.57 Struck in gold, silver, or bronze, the monumental issues emphasize the couple’s union, as if to drive the point of their “Glorious Revolution” closer to home. At a time when reigning over England was at least as precarious as ruling over Ptolemaic Egypt or Seleukid Syria, Queen Mary (who was, in fact, senior to her husband in the line of succession) revives an old iconographic precedent, laden with political meaning and ideological authority, as a means of establishing her rule in the face of war abroad and rebellion at home, not to mention threats from her own family. At once intimate and authoritative, the jugate depiction of the royal couple seemed to carry the same political substance in the London of the 1680s as in the Ptolemaic Alexandria of the third century BCE.

Notes 1 See Koenen 1983; 1993; also Hölbl 2001: 90–​123, and Pfeiffer 2016 for an overview. 2 Hölbl 2001: 95, 171, 285–​8; cf. IJsewijn 1961: 119–​21; Pestman 1967: 134–​57. See also Green 1990: 145, 180, 190; and Chapter 9 in this volume. 3 Cf. Frandsen 2009. See Chapter 29 in this volume.

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Jugate images 4 See Heinrichs 2017. 5 See, chiefly, Kyrieleis 1975: 6; Troxell 1983; Mørkholm 1991: 101–​11; Plantzos 1999: 42–​54; Carney 2013: 78–​80. For a recent overview of Ptolemaic portraiture and its significance, see Queyrel 2019. 6 Some of the figures on the Parthenon frieze, for example, like the advancing peplophoroi, seem to be setting a telling precedent (see e.g. Boardman 1985: fig. 96.15), or many of the figures on burial reliefs (as on the gravestone of Lykeas and Chairedemos from Salamis; Boardman 1985: fig. 152). 7 See, among many examples, the seated couples in the banquet scene depicted in the wall-​painting from the Tomb of Nebamun in Egypt (Thebes); Parkinson 2008: 56. 8 Smith 1988: 34. 9 On the intricacies of deification of Ptolemaic royal women, see Carney 2000:  33–​40, with earlier bibliography. 10 See Troxell 1983; Mørkholm 1991: 103; Carney 2013: 78–​80. A recent re-​examination of the series revives an old, and rather farfetched theory, according to which Arsinoë’s portrait on the second-​ century issues of the type is modelled on the actual likeness of the actual basilissa at the time, taking this to suggest an “assimilation,” successively, of Kleopatras I, II, and III to her, something not corroborated by any existing evidence, historical or other (Lorber 2018). 11 Kyrieleis 1975:  78–​94; Brunelle 1976:  10–​29; Plantzos 1991–​92; for images, see, e.g. Mørkholm 1991: nos 294–​5; Stanwick 2002: no. 215. 12 Images: Mørkholm 1991: no. 307; Stanwick 2002: no. 217. 13 Plantzos 1999: 47–​52. 14 E.g. Mørkholm 1991: nos 297–​8. 15 Ibid.: 104; see also von Reden 2007: 50–​6. 16 Alexandria, Greco-​Roman Museum inv. no. 24345. See Kyrieleis 1975: 6–​7; Plantzos 1996: 122–​3 (with earlier bibliography); La gloire d’Alexandrie 1998: 79 no. 37 [Queyrel]. 17 See Plantzos 1996. 18 Mørkholm 1991: 109; pl. 317. 19 See Plantzos 1999: 82–​3. 20 Plantzos 1999: 27, 25 fig. 1.32. Alternatively, the seal may be showing a royal couple, as the old drawing of it I was able to consult seems quite unclear on the male bust’s features. 21 Plantzos 1999: 82 n. 125. 22 London, British Museum inv. no. GR 1865.7–​12.55. Boardman 1970: 362, pl. 1011; Plantzos 1999: 82–​ 3; Walker and Higgs 2001: no. 35; Plantzos 2011: 402, 409 fig. 4. 23 Plantzos 1999: nos 367–​74. 24 E.g. Plantzos 1999: 83 no. 375. 25 La gloire d’Alexandrie 1998: 244 no. 181 [Ballet]. 26 Mørkholm 1991: 152, pl. 522. 27 Davis and Kraay 1973: 215–​19 figs. 108–​15. Other female members of the Seleukid dynasty using the scheme were Laodike IV next to her son Antiochos (see Ager and Hardiman 2016: 145 fig. 1) and Kleopatra Selene, also next to her son Antiochos XIII (see Ager and Hardiman 2016: 170). For an overview, see Meyer 1992/​93. 28 Green 1993: 442–​7 fig. 143; see also Meyer 1992/​93: 114–​25, and Ager and Hardiman 2016: 169–​71 for a recent discussion. 29 Davis and Kraay 1973: figs. 110–​11; 115; Mørkholm 1991: 177, pl. 635. 30 Davis and Kraay 1973: figs. 204, 206; Mørkholm 1991: 175, pl. 624. 31 Davis and Kraay 1973: 238–​9, figs. 146–​7, 149. 32 Davis and Kraay 1973: 247–​8, figs. 168–​9, 172. 33 Davis and Kraay 1973: 249, figs. 176–​7, 179. 34 Mørkholm 1991: 110, pl. 327. 35 See Plantzos 1999: 22–​32 for a survey; also Boussac and Invernizzi 1996 for individual studies. 36 See Lorber and van Oppen de Ruiter 2017 for a recent account; see also Plantzos 1996a; 1999: 27–​8; and 2011 for study and interpretation. The sealings were affixed onto papyri presumably sent from Alexandria to Edfu or signed and sealed locally; the documents were destroyed by fire at some point in antiquity, and the “baked” sealings were thus preserved in order to be found in the early 1900s, by looters, who sold them to western collectors. 37 See Plantzos 1996a; 2011; contra Lorber and van Oppen de Ruiter 2017 and van Oppen de Ruiter and Lorber 2017, who seem to be placing too much emphasis on what they understand as “stylistic criteria” and not enough on historical evidence or probability.

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Dimitris Plantzos 38 See, e.g. Plantzos 2011: figs. 2b and 2c. 39 See, e.g. Plantzos 2011: figs. 2d, 2e, 2f, 8, 9; 1996a: pls. 48.5–​6, 49.8, 49.10–​11, 50.16, 52.21–​2. 40 On the problems of identification and chronology, see Plantzos 1999: 27–​8; 1996a. 41 E.g. Plantzos 1996a: pls. 53.28–​9; Walker and Higgs 2001: no. 176. 42 See Plantzos 1996a: 309, pl. 48.5. 43 See chiefly Plantzos 1996b: 123–​7 with extensive discussion and bibliography. 44 Cf. Brown 1997. 45 See Plantzos 1996b: 127–​30. 46 Platz-​Horster 1997; also cf. Plantzos 1996b: 127–​8. 47 Kyrieleis 1971: 178. 48 Burnett et al. 1992: no. 2202; see also Woytek 2014: 55–​6, fig. 27. 49 E.g. Burnett et al. 1992: no. 1463. 50 See Zwierlein-​Diehl 2007: no. 613 (Augustus and Livia?); no. 624 (Tiberius and Livia?), and so on. 51 See the discussion in Woytek 2014. 52 Burnett et al. 1992: no. 2224; see also Woytek 2014: 56, fig. 29. 53 Sutherland 1984: Nero 6–​7. 54 Burnett et al. 1992: no. 2230. 55 See Plantzos 1993. 56 Vermeule 1971: 165. 57 See Pincus 2011; for an example of William and Mary’s jugate coinage, see British Museum 2019.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ager, S. and Hardiman, C. 2016. “Female Seleukid Portraits:  Where Are They?” In A. Coşkun and A. McAuley (eds.), Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire. Stuttgart, 143–​72. Boardman, J. 1970. Greek Gems and Finger Rings. London. Boardman, J. 1985. Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period. London. Boussac, M.-​F. and Invernizzi, A. 1996. Archives et sceaux du monde Hellénistique. Torino, Villa Gualino 13–​16 Gennaio 1993. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Supplément 29. Athens. British Museum. 2019. Collection Online. https://​bit.ly/​2lzfjo0 (accessed September 3, 2019). Brown, C.M. 1997. “Isabella d’Este Gonzaga’s Augustus and Livia Cameo and the ‘Alexander and Olympias’ Gems in Vienna and Saint Petersburg.” In M.C. Brown (ed.), Engraved Gems:  Survivals and Revivals. Hanover and London, 85–​101. Brunelle, E. 1976. Die Bildnisse der Ptolemaërinnen. Frankfurt. Burnett, A.M., Amandry, A., and Ripolès, P.P. 1992. Roman Provincial Coinage. I: From the Death of Caesar to the Death of Vitellius (44 BC–​AD 69). London and Paris. Carney, E.D. 2000. “The Initiation of Cult for Royal Macedonian Women.” Classical Philology 95, 1: 21–​43. Carney, E.D. 2013. Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life. Oxford. Davis, N. and Kraay, C.M. 1973. The Hellenistic Kingdoms: Portrait Coins and History. London. Frandsen, P.J. 2009. An Incestuous and Close-​Kin Marriage in Ancient Egypt and Persia. Chicago. Green, P. 1993. Alexander to Actium: The Hellenistic Age. London. Heinrichs, J. 2017. “Coins and Constructions:  The Origins of Argead Coinage under Alexander I.” In S. Müller et al. (eds.), The History of the Argeads: New Perspectives. Wiesbaden,  79–​98. Hölbl, G. 2001. A History of the Ptolemaic Empire. London and New York. IJsewijn, J. 1961. De sacerdotibus sacerdotiisque Alexandri Magni et Lagidarum eponymis. Brussels. Koenen, L.L. 1983. “Die Adaptation ägyptischer Königsideologie am Ptolemäerhof.” In E. Van’t Dack (ed.), Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 24–​26 May 1982. Leuven, 143–​90. Koenen, L. 1993. “The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure.” In A. Bulloch et  al. (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-​definition in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley, 25–​38.

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Jugate images Kyrieleis, H. 1971. “Der Kameo Gonzaga.” Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseum in Bonn 171: 162–​93. Kyrieleis, H. 1975. Bildnisse der Ptolemäer. Berlin. La gloire d’Alexandrie. 1998. Exhibition Catalog. Paris. Lorber, C.C. 2018. “Cryptic Portraits of Ptolemaic Queens on Gold Coins of the Second Century B.C.” Numismatica e Antichita Classiche (Quaderni Ticinese) 47: 125–​48. Lorber, C.C. and van Oppen de Ruiter, B.F. 2017.“Clay Seal Impressions from Ptolemaic Edfu.” Numismatica e Antichita Classiche (Quaderni Ticinese) 46: 73–​95. Meyer, M. 1992–​3. “Mutter, Ehefrau und Herrscherin:  Darstellungen der Königin auf Seleukidischen Münzen.” Hephaistos 11/​12: 107–​32. Mørkholm, O. 1991. Early Hellenistic Coinage: From the Accession of Alexander to the Peace of Apamea (336–​ 188 BC). Cambridge. Parkinson, R. 2008. The Painted Tomb-​Chapel of Nebamun. London. Pestman, P.W. 1967. Chronologie égyptienne d’après les textes démotiques (332 av. J.-​C.–​453 ap. J.-​C. Leiden. Pfeiffer, S. 2016. “The Ptolemies: Hellenistic Kingship in Egypt.” Oxford Handbooks Online. https://​bit.ly/​ 2kpPqXo (accessed September 3, 2019). Pincus, S. 2011. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. New Haven. Plantzos, D. 1991–​2. “Ektheosis Arsinoes: On the Cult of Arsinoe Philadelphos.” Archaiognosia 7, 119–​34. Plantzos, D. 1993. “Nero and Poppaea on a Cornelian Ringstone.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 12: 355–​60. Plantzos, D. 1996a. “Female Portrait Types from the Edfu Hoard of Clay Seal Impressions.” In Boussac and Invernizzi 1996, 307–​13. Plantzos, D. 1996b.“Hellenistic Cameos: Problems of Classification and Chronology.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 41: 115–​31. Plantzos, D. 1999. Hellenistic Engraved Gems. Oxford. Plantzos, D. 2011.“The Iconography of Assimilation: Isis and Royal Imagery on Ptolemaic Seal Impressions.” In P. Iossif, A.S. Chankowski, and C.C. Lorber (eds.), More than Men, Less than Gods: Studies of Royal Cult and Imperial Worship. Leuven, 389–​415. Platz-​Horster, G. 1997. “Der Capita-​Jugata-​Kameo in Berlin.” In M. Broustet and M.Vollenweider (eds.), La glyptique de mondes classiques. Paris, 55–​70. Queyrel, F. 2019. “The Portraits of the Ptolemies.” In O. Palagia (ed.), Handbook of Greek Sculpture. Berlin and Boston, 194–​224. von Reden, S. 2007. Money in Ptolemaic Egypt: From the Macedonian Conquest to the End of the Third Century BC. Cambridge and New York. Smith, R.R.R. 1988. Hellenistic Royal Portraits. Oxford. Stanwick, P.E. 2002. Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs. Austin. Sutherland, C.H.V. 1984. The Roman Imperial Coinage. I: From 31 BC to AD 69. Revised edition. London. Troxell, H.A. 1983. “Arsinoe's Non Era.” Museum Notes (American Numismatic Society) 28: 35–​70. Van Oppen de Ruiter, B.F. and Lorber, C.C. 2017. “Royal or Divine? Female Heads in the Edfu Hoard.” Chronique d’Égypte 92: 349–​94. Vermeule, C. 1971. Numismatic Art in America. Cambridge, MA. Walker, S. and Higgs, P. (eds.) 2001. Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. London. Woytek, B. 2014. “Heads and Busts on Roman Coins: Some Remarks on the Morphology of Numismatic Portraiture.” Revue numismatique 171: 45–​71. Zwierlein-​Diehl, E. 2007. Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben. Berlin and New York.

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PART VI

Rome Late republic through empire

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31 OCTAVIA MINOR AND PATRONAGE Katrina Moore

Introduction Octavia Minor, or Octavia the Younger, the elder sister and only full sibling of the man who would become the first emperor of Rome, Octavian Augustus (hereafter Octavian), remains one of the understudied women of the late republican period.1 In some part this is due to her portrayal as a “good” exemplum in the written sources. Whereas modern historians have a drive to rescue “bad girls” from the darkness of their undeserved reputations and the androcentric ancient sources, “good girls” are often considered a bit of a bore. Octavia was never accused of adultery, or of poisoning her husbands, rivals, or enemies. If we take the classical written sources at their word, then Octavia’s “goodness” was the quality that most exemplified her life, and the worst slander against her came from Seneca who accused her of grieving too deeply at the death of her only son, Marcellus (Sen. Ad Marc. 2.1–​5). Yet this cloak of “goodness” obscures the fact that Octavia played a large, if unofficial, role in the politics of the late republican period; to borrow a phrase from Roller, Octavia played a “public but not civic”2 role throughout the 30s BCE and into the early 20s.3 It is also relevant to understand that Octavia, and her “goodness,” were on the winning side of the Roman civil war. Although her reputation in the ancient written sources likely received embellishment due to her close familial proximity to Octavian, the victor in the struggle for sole power of the Roman world, it is crucial not to erase Octavia’s agency from the historical record. Octavia assisted her brother and played the role of “good” Roman matron, but this should not be understood as blind obedience. Roman women could exercise their agency in a variety of ways, and it appears Octavia exercised her agency to support her brother, which in turn allowed her unprecedented access to the public sphere. Octavia’s acceptable foray into the “public but not civic” life of Rome created a model that all wives of Roman emperors would aspire to emulate, and Octavia’s patronage helped set the stage for her brother Octavian’s dynastic intentions. Octavia’s proximity to powerful men in Rome allowed her the privilege to showcase her understanding of traditional Roman values and project them, and herself, on and into media and places where female virtues and women themselves had never been. For example, in the early 30s she became the first mortal, living Roman woman to have her image appear on Roman coinage.4 In 35 she received an

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extraordinary grant allowing statues in her likeness to appear in public. And in the 20s, she constructed a portico on the traditionally male area of the Campus Martius. Octavia’s contact with the Eastern provinces under Rome’s control heavily influenced this novel and successful use of imagery and patronage. Marcus Antonius (hereafter Antony) was given the responsibility of governing the East following the Battle of Philippi in 42, and in 40 he would become Octavia’s second husband. During their eight years of marriage, Octavia came into close contact with the Hellenistic areas under Roman control. She would even spend time living in Greece with Antony. Historically, Rome had a complicated relationship with Hellenistic culture. Though Greek art, philosophy, and literature were admired by the Romans, they also held a distinct prejudice against what they described as Eastern decadence and the effeminate effect it could have on practical and traditional Roman morals.5 Salient to the current discussion, Hellenistic culture promoted direct familial succession. For example, the Seleukid and Ptolemaic dynasties required female participation in public and political life. Maintenance of a healthy dynasty required female counterparts to the male power to produce heirs, provide stability, and help mediate goodwill.6 Octavia’s contact with the culture of the Eastern provinces, in combination with her awareness of traditional Roman virtues and values, enabled her to help promote her imagery and patronage in the “public but not civic” life of Rome, without offending Roman sensibilities, which had, until then, excluded women’s imagery in public and women’s contributions to the physical space of Rome. Upon examination, it is clear that Octavia played a role in the transitional period that ended the Roman republic and led to the Roman empire, and that she bridged and connected the Roman world to the Hellenistic. Octavia borrowed the ideology of acceptable female power in public from Hellenistic culture and combined it with Roman ideals of motherhood and devotion to family, traditionally private virtues. Octavia’s success as a patroness opened the public and physical space of Rome to contributions by women, especially those of the imperial court.7

Biographical sketch Understanding how Octavia came to appreciate traditional Roman virtues, how she was introduced to the “public not civic” role Roman women inhabited, and how she became acquainted with the Hellenistic areas under Roman control necessitates a biographical sketch.8 Octavia was born around 66 and came of age while the “First Triumvirate” of Gaius Julius Caesar (hereafter Julius Caesar), Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (hereafter Pompey), and Marcus Licinius Crassus was the dominant power in Rome.9 Her first marriage was to Gaius Marcellus, consul in 50. Gaius Marcellus was, by the time of their marriage in the late 50s, a political enemy of Octavia’s great-​uncle Julius Caesar and an ally of Pompey (App. B. Civ. 2.26–​30; Plut. Pomp. 58–​9). During the years of her great-​uncle’s rise to power in the early 40s, Octavia navigated a fine line between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her family. Later, Gaius Marcellus would take a more moderate stance in relation to Julius Caesar;10 Syme wryly remarks, “the consul who had placed a sword in the hand of Pompeius [Pompey], mindful at last of his marriage-​connection with [Julius] Caesar, abated his ardor.”11 It is hard to believe that Octavia, the “marriage-​connection,” had nothing to do with this reconciliation. Her husband and her family were now united in purpose and Octavia nurtured the relationship between her husband and brother.12 By the late 40s, she had all three of her children with Gaius Marcellus: their son Marcellus and their two daughters, Marcella Major and Minor.13

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During this time Octavia would be witness to a number of female exempla, “good” and “bad” alike. A “good” Roman woman performed her traditional role of mother and wife without infringing on male areas of power, such as politics, but a “bad” Roman woman scorned her traditional roles and attempted to use her influence outside the bounds of acceptable female behavior. For instance, the actions of the “bad” Fulvia, both her acceptable and her scandalous behavior, would provide a useful example for Octavia.14 Fulvia was married (sequentially) to allies of Octavia’s great-​uncle, allowing Octavia to observe Fulvia’s testing of the boundaries of female power because of their close social and physical proximity. Fulvia was not the only “good”/​“bad” woman from whom Octavia could have learned:  there was the mistress of her great-​uncle Julius Caesar, Servilla;15 the wife of her first husband’s close friend Cicero, Terentia;16 her own mother Atia; Aurelia the mother of Julius Caesar;17 and even elite women like “Turia”18 provided examples of how women could use their “public but not civic” power. Octavia would have encountered these women at social gatherings or during casual interactions in the streets of Rome. Each of these women was, in her own way, testing the limits of proper and acceptable female behavior and Octavia was in a position to observe and learn from their agency and ability to navigate the traditional norms, from Servilla’s ability to lead her family, to Terentia’s skillful management of her household while her husband was in exile, and her own mother Atia’s social acumen. In 40, Octavia was married to Antony, following a meeting at Brundisium between the bickering rivals for power, Antony and Octavian. Like Antony’s spouse Fulvia, Octavia’s husband Gaius Marcellus had conveniently died, and her brother Octavian used her remarriage to seal the newfound agreement for renewed cooperation between him and Antony (App. B. Civ. 5.55, 59, 62; Cass. Dio 48.28.3). Octavia and Antony were married in Rome (App. B. Civ. 5.66; Cass. Dio 48.31.3; Plut. Ant. 31.3;Vell. Pat. 2.78.1). This marriage symbolized peace to the Romans. Bloody civil war had been raging for many years prior; this marriage between the two rival families for power meant that Rome could breathe a sigh of relief that constitutional, republican government would return and restore the Roman world to normality. The hope for lasting peace was so prevalent that even poets wrote about the fruits of reconciliation. For example, Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue, written for Pollio, one of the negotiators at Brundisium (App. B. Civ 5.64; Plut. Ant. 30.4;Vell. Pat. 2.76.3), celebrated a hoped-​for boy child from the marriage of Antony and Octavia, a boy who would usher in a new age of peace, but that child was a girl, Antonia Major.19 Despite the hopes of Vergil and Romans generally, no child would likely have been able to mend the differences between Antony and Octavian. Through this marriage to Antony, Octavian assigned Octavia an important diplomatic role. It was her responsibility to help bridge the gap between her brother and husband, like the famous Sabine women of Rome’s myth-​history who negotiated between their families and husbands.20 The role of diplomatic negotiator was not novel to Octavia.While the Sabine women provided the traditional exemplum for Octavia, she also would have observed women such as Julius Caesar’s daughter, Julia, inhabiting this role. In the early 50s, to help ease the political discord between Julius Caesar and his rival Pompey, Julius Caesar gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Pompey (App. B. Civ. 2.14; Cass. Dio 38.9.1; Plut. Caes. 14.4–​5, Pomp. 47.6; Suet. Iul. 21).Years later, following her death, Romans worried that without her influence to mediate between her husband and her father, the two men would fall to fighting (App. B. Civ. 2.19; Cass. Dio 39.64.1; Plut. Caes. 23.4, Pomp. 53.5–​6; Livy Per. 106; Suet. Iul. 26). Julius Caesar even attempted to marry Octavia to Pompey, following Julia’s death, to recreate a connection between the two men, but Pompey chose not to marry Octavia (Suet. Iul. 27.1). Thus, in her lifetime, Octavia was a close

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observer to the expectation that a married woman would act as a diplomat between the family of her birth and that of her husband. In addition to this responsibility, Octavia was now the wife of the man who was in charge of the Eastern provinces (App. B.Civ. 5.65; Cass. Dio 48.28.3–​29; Plut. Ant. 30.4). When her husband was out of Rome, which was to be often considering his command outside of the city, Octavia would be the point of contact for any of his clientela or emissaries from the East, a responsibility which exposed her to Hellenistic culture.21 She would have further association with the East when she and Antony spent time in Greece, living in Athens during 39–​38. Here the couple seemed contented and relaxed, with Antony putting aside his insignia of command and walking around the city like an average citizen (Plut. Ant. 33.3–​4). He even attended lectures and took meals in the Greek fashion. Antony seemed much infatuated with Octavia, attending festivals with her. She seemed to have a positive effect on Antony, as he tended to his own business as well as pleasure: he met with embassies which he had previously postponed and completed the preparations for his upcoming campaign (App. B. Civ. 5.76). Though their blended family happily spent two years in Athens,22 tensions again began to rise between Octavia’s brother and husband. In 37, Octavia and Antony sailed for Italy, though at request of the now pregnant Octavia,23 she departed before her husband and met with her brother at Tarentum to persuade him to negotiate with Antony. She presented her husband’s grievances and heard those of her brother. She explained her husband’s position and convinced Octavian to speak with Antony. She did not hesitate to remind Octavian of her position as the most miserable woman, trapped between being the wife of one imperator and the sister of another (App. B. Civ. 5.93–​4; Cass. Dio 48.54.3; Plut. Ant. 35.1–​4). Again, the written sources should be carefully handled here; their ability to know her exact words is doubtful, but the sentiments her words express are accurate.24 The men came to an agreement for continued cooperation. At Tarentum, Octavia’s agency and her negotiation skills are noted by each of the ancient sources that chronicle this encounter. Octavia was able to arrange for an extra exchange of troops, in addition to the forces the two men pledged to provide one another (App. B. Civ. 5.95, 48.54.2 and 6; Plut. Ant. 35.4). Her years of experience on the “small stage” negotiating the relationship between her first husband Gaius Marcellus and her great-​uncle Julius Caesar aptly prepared her for the “big stage” negotiations between her second husband Antony and her brother Octavian. Octavia’s success was not reliant on her “goodness,” but rather on her experience and acumen. Following the Treaty at Tarentum, Octavia returned to Rome with all their children and Antony went to the East to begin his Parthian campaign (App. B. Civ. 5.95; Cass. Dio 48.54.5; Plut. Ant. 35.5).25 Neither Antony nor Octavia could have known this would be the last time they would see each other. The relationship between Antony and Octavian continued to deteriorate despite Octavia’s efforts, as the bellicose nature of their relationship was continually assailed by their pursuit of sole control of Rome.26 Though divided by distance and increasingly by politics (and maybe Kleopatra), Octavia did not leave Antony’s home in Rome until 32 when he officially divorced her (Cass. Dio 50.3.2; Livy Per. 132). She took all her children by Marcellus and Antony with her, as well as one of his sons by Fulvia, Iullus. His other son by Fulvia, Antyllus, remained with his father (Plut. Ant. 57.2–​3). Once married to Antony, Octavia became acquainted with the Eastern provinces. Antony’s alliance (and dalliance) with Kleopatra placed Octavia indirectly in contact with a Hellenistic queen.27 From across the Mediterranean, Octavia observed how the Egyptian queen used her motherhood to promote her dynasty. For example, Kleopatra chose to be represented with the iconography of Isis and included Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, on the Temple of Hathor at Dendera;28 she minted coins showing her and the infant Caesarion.29 Kleopatra’s 378

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promotion of her children informed the Egyptian people of her fecundity and therefore the success of her dynasty.30 Naturally, Kleopatra’s and Antony’s deaths in 31, following the Battle of Actium, ended these dynastic intentions as Egypt became a province of Octavian’s Rome. Octavia would go on to care for her own children by Gaius Marcellus and Antony, as well as Iullus, and Antony’s children with Kleopatra, the twins Alexander Helios and Kleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy Philadelphos (Plut. Ant. 87).31

Patronage This biographical sketch illuminates the development of Octavia’s iconography and patronage. Only a few written traces of her patronage remain, but extant material culture preserves aspects of Octavia’s iconography and patronage. After her marriage to Antony, coins were minted with her likeness, the first such coins in Roman history to feature a mortal, living woman. In 35, Octavia and Octavian’s wife Livia were given the novel grant of sacrosanctitas which allowed them to have public statues in their image. In the mid-​20s, Octavia constructed a portico which celebrated her role as mother, including a library dedicated to her son. Through these different forms, Octavia’s “public but not civic” role was promoted. Octavia’s “good” reputation protected her from censure, as our ancient sources find no fault in Octavia’s actions, though she repeatedly broke new ground in terms of women’s participation in public iconography and the public space of Rome.

Books The most traditional products of Octavia’s patronage are those books which were dedicated to her. Athenodoros, the Stoic philosopher and once teacher of Octavian, addressed a lost book to her (Plut. Publ. 17.5). The architect Vitruvius wrote that it was Octavia who recommended him to Octavian’s service (Vitr. De arch. 1. praef 2–​3). One can only speculate how much more prolific a patroness of writers Octavia might seem to be had more than a fraction of Rome’s written works survived to modern times. It is important to remember that Octavia was married at an early age and from that time on, she would have been running her own household. She became the wife of a consul when she was only 16. Through the political and social life of both her husbands, Octavia would have participated in the patron–​client system of the Roman aristocracy.32 It is not surprising that she had her own clients who wished to gain her favor as a patron, and it is equally unsurprising that she chose to bestow her patronage on clients, like the writers mentioned. Artisans of all types would find a worthy patroness in the grandniece of Julius Caesar, wife of a consul. After her marriage to Antony, it is likely partisans continued to seek out her patronage, as she was the wife of the man in control of the Eastern provinces and the sister of the man in control of the West.

Coins Coins minted in the Eastern provinces were the first material culture to bear Octavia’s image. These coins originated from the mints of Greek cities over which Antony had authority following their marriage in 40.33 Wood notes that, “A public celebration of the ruler and his wife as a royal couple, and the dynastic intentions that such a presentation implied, were far more acceptable here [in the East] than in Italy.”34 The coins mostly fall into two categories of series. The first series was minted to celebrate Antony’s accord with Octavian at Brundisium in 40,35 with additional similar series produced in the years following.36 These series either bear 379

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a portrait of Antony on the obverse and a portrait of Octavia on the reverse, or Antony and Octavia in jugate portraits on the obverse. The most salient to our discussion of Hellenistic cultural appropriation are the series of cistophoroi: they bear the couple’s portraits along with the cista mystica (cult objects associated with Dionysus).37 Antony was associated with and even honored as Dionysos in Athens, alongside Octavia as Athena (Plut. Ant. 57.1).38 Octavia’s representation as his female counterpart marks her as important and associated with divinity.39 A second series of coins was minted to publicize Antony’s accord with Octavian at Tarentum in 37. In these coin series, Octavia’s portrait is on the obverse of each, either jugate with Antony,40 facing Antony,41 or most interestingly, facing jugate portraits of Antony and Octavian.42 This last version demonstrates how important Octavia was to the relationship between her husband and her brother. The agency of Octavia in playing the role of mediator is clearly shown by her portrait’s placement on the coin: alone, facing the two men. Octavia’s role at Tarentum cannot be described as political, but her actions certainly set in motion political events. We cannot say that Octavia played a direct role in Roman politics, as Octavian and Antony did, but she certainly helped create the environment in which their political machinations took place. Her image on the coins of her husband displayed her prominent “public but not civic” role. All of these coins circulated in the Eastern provinces, which Antony controlled. The inclusion of Octavia’s portrait meant that the people of these provinces were aware of her likeness and associated her with the Roman power structure; the Hellenistic monarchical iconography helped enforce Antony’s control of the area and Octavia’s role as his female counterpart. It is difficult to ascertain how involved Octavia was in the production of these coins. The coins would have been minted by partisans of Antony’s looking to gain or repay favor and thus their production would have been known to her. But was Octavia consulted about the specific look of her portrait, or the arrangement of the figures on the coins? It is impossible to know.Yet, the agency Octavia exhibited throughout the negotiations at Tarentum suggest that she was far from a passive observer, generally.43 The circulation of her likeness as the female counterpart of Antony benefited her, even if she was not involved in the process of minting the coins.

Portraits In 35, Octavia and Livia were given the extraordinary grant of sacrosanctitas. Along with freeing the women of the need for a tutor to administer their affairs, and the right of protection for their persons on the same level as tribunes, sacrosanctitas granted the two women the right to public statues (Cass. Dio 49.38.1). Until this time, mortal, living women had no public statues made in their likeness in Rome; only legendary myth-​historical women such as Cloelia and goddesses were immortalized by statues, with one notable exception, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.44 Though this grant was given to both women, far fewer of Octavia’s portraits have survived and no identifying inscriptions remain.45 This should not be understood as an indication of Octavia’s importance in her lifetime, but rather as a sign of Livia’s subsequent dominance.46 Livia lived far more years than her sister-​in-​law and achieved a high level of public exposure, as her husband was the sole ruler of Rome and her son Tiberius succeeded him. The wealth of Livia’s preserved portraits should not imply that Octavia was less important during her own lifetime. Octavia would have been well known from the early 40s until her death in 11, commemorated by a public funeral and the first public “lying in state” of a female Roman (Cass. Dio 54.35.4–​5). The senate even voted posthumous honors for Octavia (Suet. Aug. 61.2). Livia lived until 29 CE, long enough to see her son gain sole power in Rome, unlike Octavia. Livia’s importance need not diminish Octavia’s; it is vital to assess the women without the bias of our vantage point in modernity.47 380

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There are three portrait busts which have been plausibly identified as Octavia: the Velletri bust, Smyrna bust, and Getty bust.48 With the sides of her hair pulled into a low bun near the nape of her neck and the middle front styled into a modest pompadour, known as the nodus hairstyle, her serene facial expression, and family resemblance to her brother Octavian, Octavia was included in statuary groups which honored the imperial family.49 She appears on the Ara Pacis Augustae, likely alongside her daughters Marcella Major, and Marcella Minor, and Octavian’s daughter Julia.50 There are also a handful of precious cameo portraits which are plausibly identified as Octavia.51 The variety of media and locations of these portraits, statue groups, and cameos suggest widespread recognition of Octavia. This comes as no surprise considering her visibility in events and the dissemination of her image in the Eastern Roman territories through Antony’s coinage. Most, if not all, of these portraits in their various media would have been commissioned not by Octavia herself, but for someone looking to gain favor with her.52 Of course, the argument could be made that a partisan looking to please Antony or Octavian through Octavia could have commissioned the portraits. As with her coins, these two possibilities need not be mutually exclusive since Octavia’s aims overlapped with those of her husband and brother. Even if one removes all agency from Octavia, the creation of the portrait busts would benefit her. Her likeness in public granted Octavia a level of recognition and respect; the only other images of women displayed in public were goddesses and exceptional women: Octavia was in elite company. The continued use of her imagery following her death points to the lingering power of her iconography; Octavia was still held in high enough regard for clients and partisans to capitalize on her portrait.

Portico Unlike with the coins and portraits, the agency of Octavia is clear and evident in her patronage of the Porticus Octaviae, or the Portico of Octavia. The Portico of Octavia was a renovation of the Portico of Metellus, located on the Campus Martius where it was a feature along the triumphal procession route through the city. Metellus originally erected his portico in 146, following a successful and victorious Macedonian campaign (Vell. Pat. 1.11.3).53 The Roman porticus was a unique architectural form: four connected porticos enclosed an area which could be customized to fit the needs of the patron, and which often contained a temple. The porticus gained popularity in the second century as a new way to deposit and display booty captured during successful military campaigns.54 There has previously been much debate on who exactly was the patron of the Portico of Octavia. Frustratingly, there is a similarly named Porticus Octavia, which can also be translated as the “Portico of Octavia.” (Hereafter the Latin Porticus Octavia will continue to be used to distinguish between the two different porticoes and attempt to avoid confusion with the Porticus Octaviae, Octavia’s portico.) This naming similarity in combination with a brief mention by the biographer Suetonius led scholars to believe that Octavian erected Octavia’s portico and merely named it after her (Suet. Aug. 29.4). But, Octavian himself records in his Res Gestae that he restored the Porticus Octavia in 33 (RG 4.19).The Porticus Octavia was originally built in 168 by a Gnaius Octavius. Festus (188L) provides the crucial supporting information that there were two porticos with the name Octavia.Thus, we can be more than reasonably assured that Octavia built her own portico to replace Metellus’ and Octavian restored the portico built by Gn. Octavius.55 Because of this, I believe that Octavia, not Octavian, was the patron of the Portico of Octavia. The Campus Martius was already an area of focus for Octavian’s early building program prior to Octavia’s contribution. In 33, even before he had sole control of Rome, Octavian 381

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restored the Porticus Octavia. He began construction of his mausoleum at this time and resumed construction on a theater begun by Julius Caesar. This theater, which would soon be next to the Portico of Octavia, would eventually be dedicated as the Theater of Marcellus to honor his nephew, Octavia’s son, following his death. But Octavian was not the only man contributing to this building program; Agrippa, aedile in 33, began construction on the Saepta Julia and his Pantheon, while Sosianus restored the Temple of Apollo Medicus which stood next to the Portico of Octavia. Octavia was the only female patron who built in the traditionally masculine area of the Campus Martius.56 By choosing this area to build her portico, Octavia was embedding her structure among other buildings built by those who were connected to and supported her brother Octavian and her portico’s close proximity to buildings of Octavian himself emphasized her connection to their gens, or ancestral family. Octavia began her renovation in the mid-​20s by razing and rebuilding the Portico of Metellus. 57 The two temples inside the original portico, to Juno Regina and Jupiter Stator, were refurbished (Plin. NH 36.42) and even Ovid could not fail to admire the beautiful marblework put in place by Octavia’s patronage (Ov. Ars am. 1.69–​70). In addition, Octavia added a library that was later dedicated to her son Marcellus (Cass. Dio 49.43.8; Plut. Marc. 30.6; Suet. Gram 21), a curia (Plin. NH 36.28),58 and a schola (Plin. NH 35.114, 36.22). The library included both a Greek and Latin section (Festus 188) and was large enough for a librarian, G. Melissus, to be assigned to keep the scrolls in order (Suet. Gram. 21). Though Octavia died in 11, the library continued to be used for at least another generation, as there are four employees of the library buried in the household tomb of Marcella Minor.59 This small detail helps to support the conclusion that Octavia was indeed the patroness of the portico; the burial of the library employees in a household tomb attests to her and her family’s personal interest in the portico.60 The dedication of this library to Marcellus following his death “gave public face to a profoundly intimate loss”61 and disproves Seneca’s claim that Octavia shut herself away following her son’s death (Sen. Ad Marc. 2.5.) Many works of art were housed in the various buildings of Octavia’s portico.62 Some of the artwork remained as a holdover from the Portico of Metellus.63 When she began her renovations and added new buildings, one imagines that Octavia removed, rearranged, or added new art to the buildings of the portico. Her choice to prominently display a statue of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, was an astute decision. The statue of Cornelia was not originally intended to portray the mother of the Gracchi. The statue later identified as Cornelia was probably originally a goddess, brought over by Metellus following his conquest in Greece.64 Although it has been argued that it was Octavian who repurposed the statue to help normalize his grant, I would posit that it was more likely Octavia who realized the importance of a precedent due to her understanding of both Roman tradition and Hellenistic culture. In Greece, Octavia would have become familiar with honorific statues of elite women, and she was well acquainted with how Roman propriety could easily be offended by non-​traditional “public but not civic” actions by women.65 The famous Cornelia shared many similarities with Octavia: they were both famous mothers, known for their fecundity, and they were both participants in the “public not civic” life of Rome.66 Cornelia, like Octavia, was a mortal woman; having a historical precedent for the unprecedented grant of statues given to Octavia in 35 would help ease the minds of the Roman public. The statue of Cornelia, along with featured statues of Venus,67 the mythological mother of the Julii line, and her son Cupid,68 were a public statement about Octavia’s motherhood. But further, these choices were the seeds of a dynasty, planted in a public space. Before his death, Octavia’s son Marcellus was widely seen as the heir apparent to Octavian. In 25, Marcellus was married to Octavian’s only child, Julia (Cass. Dio 53.27.5; Suet. Aug. 63). In 24 he was 382

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elected aedile and given the permission to stand for consul ten years early (Cass. Dio 53.28.3). Marcellus’ early death in 23 would end Octavia’s direct dynastic possibilities. The marriages of her daughters, however, would indirectly continue her dynasty: the emperors Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were Octavia’s descendants. Octavia’s portico would be seen by elite and non-​elite alike,69 and her choice of art conveyed a strong dynastic theme of motherhood which could be read by any who entered the public building. Octavia created a space for the Roman public to enjoy an extensive curated art collection which subtly signaled her virtue and her brother’s dynasty.

Conclusion The Hellenistic Eastern regions under Roman rule had a long history of public female patronage. For example, the Seleukid basilissa Laodike III, who lived in the late third century, acted as patroness of multiple cities and was reciprocally honored by them, as attested in surviving inscriptions. As basilissa, she was the consort to King Antiochos III.70 In the uncertainty of the Hellenistic period, Laodike’s patronage marked her as playing an important role in providing stability by reinforcing her role as a mother and thus, in perpetuating a dynasty.71 After Octavia became Antony’s wife, she would have come into contact with this representational ideology during her extended exposure to the Eastern provinces over which Antony governed. The use of Octavia’s imagery on Eastern coins cast her in a role similar to Laodike, as the female counterpart to the ruling power. In her portico, Octavia was able to use her patronage to highlight her motherhood and her role in continuing her brother’s line through his nephew, her son, and the peace which came with a stable dynasty. As Ramsey succinctly writes of Laodike: patronage and women’s public roles correlated in such a way to empower both parties, for her as contributor to Seleukid dynastic strength, for them as guarantors of civic stability and longevity. Kinship and familial ideology underpinned civic identity and power, and women manifested this in their public lives. (Ramsey 2013: 524) Using her experience of Roman virtues and Hellenistic culture, Octavia was able to present herself as a virtuous Roman matron while innovating in terms of dynastic intentions, public display, and patronage. In doing so, Octavia created a socially acceptable opening for women to contribute to the physical space of Rome. Her astute ingenuity created a template for Livia and all the imperial women who would follow her.

Notes 1 Though he was given the name Augustus in 27, this paper will refer to Octavia’s brother as Octavian throughout. 2 Roller 2018: 220. 3 All dates are BCE unless otherwise noted. 4 It is possible a series of coins minted in Lugdunum with the goddess Victory were based on Fulvia’s image.Yet, even if this is true, Fulvia is still depicted in the guise of a goddess, whereas Octavia is pictured as herself, a mortal woman. See further Wood 2000: 41–​3. 5 Gruen 1984: 250–​72. 6 Ramsey 2013: 510–​12, 516–​18. 7 As Bauman 1992:  98 notes, “She [Octavia] was a not unworthy successor to Fulvia as a forerunner of (and later as a participant in) the new style of feminine politics that would later emerge in the Principate.”

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Katrina Moore 8 Moore 2017 examines Octavia’s life in greater detail. 9 See Moore 2017: 8–​11 for Octavia’s unrecorded birth year. 10 Cicero calls Gaius Marcellus “timid” (Cic. Att. 207/​10.15). 11 Syme 1939: 62. 12 Cic. Att. 390/​15.12 notes Octavian’s attachment to Gaius Marcellus. 13 Marcus Claudius Marcellus: PIR II (2), 213–​15, no. 925. Claudia Marcella Major: PIR II (2): 264–​5, no. 1102. Claudia Marcella Minor: PIR II (2): 265–​6, no. 1103. 14 On Fulvia, see Babcock 1965; Welch 1995; Brennan 2012; Moore 2017: 43–​85. 15 Cic. Att. 389.1–​3/​15.11 records a family meeting, led by Servilla, which Cicero attended. 16 See Treggiari  2007. 17 Tac. Dial. 28 lists both Atia and Aurelia as model mothers. 18 See Osgood 2014. 19 See Osgood 2006: 193–​201 who terms (193, n. 127) the bibliography on the fourth Eclogue “immense.” This interpretation of the messianic child as the hoped-​for offspring of Antony and Octavia is now probably the most common view (Courtney 2010: 33). 20 Cic. Rep. 2.7; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.30–​47; Livy 1.9–​13; Ov. Fast. 3.67–​258 and Ars. Am. 1.101–​134; Varro Ling. 6.20, are all ancient sources contemporary to Octavia which discussed the Sabine women, while Plut. Rom. 14–​20 came about a century after her. 21 This was not an unusual arrangement for Roman matrons. See Treggiari 2007: 54–​70 on Terentia’s similar situation. Octavia had similar responsibilities when her first husband Gaius Marcellus was frequently out of the city. 22 Their daughter Antonia Major was with them, but they also probably had Octavia’s children by Gaius Marcellus and Antony’s children by Fulvia, Antyllus and Iullus. Plut. Ant 35.5 says that Antyllus and Iullus were sent back with Octavia to Rome, implying they were with her in Athens. 23 The couple had Julia Antonia Major with them (PIR I  (2):  171–​2, no.  884)  while they lived in Athens. Octavia appears to have been pregnant with Julia Antonia Minor (PIR I (2): 172–​3, no. 885) at Tarentum. 24 Bauman 1992: 91–​2; Green 1990: 673; Osgood 2006: 242–​3. 25 Cassius Dio (48.54.5) implies that Antony’s concern for his pregnant wife was merely a pretense to return to Kleopatra. Antony had not seen the Egyptian queen since 41 and had not been in any rush to see her, having since spent apparently contented years with Octavia. Cassius Dio simply foreshadows Kleopatra’s later involvement in Antony’s story. Since Octavia was pregnant with Antonia Minor, it was reasonable for her not to accompany her husband, especially on his imminent campaign. 26 Octavia attempted to bring supplies from Rome and meet with Antony in 35, but when she reached Greece, he ordered her to turn back, though he accepted the supplies she provided (Cass. Dio 49.33.4; Plut. Ant. 53.1–​2). 27 Moore 2017:  120–​8 postulates that Kleopatra and Octavia could have met in person during the queen’s visit to Rome in 46, rejecting the androcentric portrayal of the two women’s relationship in the ancient sources. 28 Jones 2012: 166–​8. 29 Jones 2012: 169–​70. 30 Jones 2012 convincingly argues that Octavian suppresses mention of Kleopatra’s motherhood, casting her as the dominant, and a masculine (rather than feminine), influence on Antony. Motherhood was a valued role in Rome; to vilify Kleopatra to Romans, Octavian needed to disassociate her from her role as mother. 31 Antyllus was killed in Egypt following the death of his father (Plut. Ant. 81.1). 32 See Deniaux 2006 for an overview of the patron–​client system during the Roman Republic. See Kunst 2010 and 2013 for an examination of the relationship between matronage/​patronage. 33 These coins do not bear Octavia’s name. Her identity can be inferred from her appearance and by the titles given to Antony on each coin. See Wood 2000: 41–​51. 34 Wood 2012: 41. 35 An aureus minted 38/​37 with Octavia on the reverse: RRC I: 531 no. 527; RRC II: pl. 63; Sydenham CRR, 193 no. 1196. See Wood 2000: 45 n. 66. 36 A series of aurei minted in 36/​35 with Octavia on the reverse: RRC I: 534 no. 533, 3a and 3b; RRC II: pl. 63; Sydenham CRR: 193 nos. 1200–​1. See Wood 2000: 45 n. 66. 37 Cistophoroi minted in 35 with Octavia’s bust on the reverse above the cista mystica flanked by snakes:  Sydenham CRR:  193 no.  1197. See Wood 2000:  44 n.  64. Cistophoroi minted in 35 with

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Octavia Minor and patronage Octavia and Antony in jugate on obverse and Dionysian imagery on reverse: Sydenham CRR: 193 no. 1198. See Wood 2000: 44, n. 65. 38 Raubitschek 1946. 39 These coins include no cult objects associated with Athena, the goddess as whom Octavia was honored in Athens (Plut. Ant. 57.1). Regardless, these coins call to mind a connection between Octavia and divinity as well as Octavia and the customs of the eastern provinces. 40 Asses with Antony and Octavia in jugate on the obverse: Sydenham CRR: 198 nos. 1258 and 1264, 199 no. 1268. See Wood 2000: 44 n. 65. 41 Sesterii with Antony and Octavia facing each other on the obverse: Sydenham CRR: 197 no. 1255, 198 nos. 1261 and 1265. Dupondii with Antony and Octavia facing each other on the obverse: Sydenham CRR: 197 nos. 1257, 198 nos. 1263 and 1267. See Wood 2000: 49 n. 77. 42 Tresses with Antony and Octavian in jugate facing Octavia: Sydenham CRR: 197 no. 1256, 198 nos. 1262 and 1266. See Wood 2000: 44 n. 65. 43 Kleiner 1996: 36 suggests that Octavia could have encouraged Antony to put her portrait on his coins. It does appear that Octavia had an influence on Antony’s behavior both in Athens and at Tarentum, so her involvement is certainly plausible. 44 Hemelrijk 2005: 310–​11. 45 It is notoriously difficult to differentiate decisively between portraits of Octavia, Livia, and Julia without accompanying inscriptions:  they shared hairstyles, facial features, and often all three bore a striking resemblance to Octavian’s portraits. 46 Flory 1993:  293–​4 convincingly argues that the grant of sacrosanctitas in 35 was focused more on Octavia than Livia. 47 Bartman 1999: 214 suggests that “Octavia’s numismatic history has also generated a false impression of her importance as a subject in Roman portraiture.” This statement is reductive. Wood 2000: 27–​8 writes that the lack of surviving portraits of Octavia suggests that “such portraits were never plentiful.” I hesitate to correlate this to Octavia’s importance. 48 The Velletri bust: Museo Nazionale Romano delle Terme, inv. 121221. See Kleiner 1992: 39, fig. 17; Winkes 1995, 68–​9, fig. 15, and 210 no. 226; Wood 2000: 52–​4. The Smyrna bust: Athens, National Archaeological Museum no.  547. Winkes 1995:  68, 208–​9 no.  221; Wood 2000:  52–​3. The Getty bust: The J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. No. 72.AA.106. See Erhart 1980. 49 Rose 1997: 120–​1, pls. 125 and 126 discusses Octavia in a group of Julio-​Claudian portraits dedicated by an association of doctors in Velia; Rose 1997: 128–​9, pl. 166 discusses a portrait of Octavia with Livia outside two temples at Glanum. 50 Though none of the figures are identified with inscriptions, scholars have long postulated their identities. Rose 1997: 102–​3, pl. 108.5. 51 Sardonyx cameo portrait: Cameo with portrait of Octavia, Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale. See Babelon 1951; Kleiner 1992: 78. Winkes 1995: 144, no. 69 identifies this cameo as Livia, contra Babelon and Kleiner. Cameo portraits of glass paste, sardonyx, and yellow chalcedony: Winkes 1995: 67–​71, 209 no. 222, 210 nos. 224 and 225. 52 Rose 1997: 3–​10. 53 Boyd 1953: 152; Richardson 1976: 60. 54 Macaulay-​Lewis 2009: 3. 55 See Boyd 1953; Richardson 1976; Woodhull 2003: 23–​5. 56 Woodhull 2003: 20. 57 Richardson 1976: 61–​2; Woodhull 2003: 18–​19. 58 The curia was used at least once as a meeting place for the senate in 7 (Cass. Dio 55.8.1). 59 CIL 6: 4431–​3, 4435, 4461; Boyd 1953: 157; Richardson 1976: 62; Woodhull 2003: 21–​2. 60 Boyd 1953: 157. 61 Woodhull 2003: 30. Also, 28–​32 on libraries as a fitting memorial for the dead. 62 Temples:  Plin. NH 36.42. Temple of Juno Regina:  Plin. NH 36.24, 35. Temple of Jupiter Stator:  Plin. NH 36.35. Curia: Plin. NH 36.28. Schola: Plin. NH 35.113, 114, 36.22, 29. Various Other Unspecified Locations: Plin. NH 35.139, 36.15. 63 Roller 2018:  218–​19. Octavia’s portico may have contained the 25 equestrian statues made in the likenesses of Alexander’s friends by the artist Lysippus. Pliny notes that Metellus brought these statues back from Macedonia but fails to clarify if they remained in the portico after Octavia rebuilt it (Plin. NH 34.64). Velleius wrote that the statues faced the temples in Octavia’s portico (Vell. Pat. 1.xi.3). Roller 2018: 199 reminds us, “In exceptional cases, female figures might attain exemplary status by

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Katrina Moore performing an action in a ‘manly’ sphere, or in a manner that could be described in masculine value terms.” Octavia’s mediations at Tarentum were firmly in the “manly” sphere, especially the commitment of extra troops (App. B. Civ. 5.95; Plut. Ant. 35.4).Thus, these equestrian statues would perhaps remind the viewer of her contribution at Tarentum. See Calcani 1989 for more on these bronze equestrian statues. 64 Roller 2018: 214–​18. Contra Moore, Roller believes the Portico of Octavia was built by Octavian. 65 Hemelrijk 2005 argues that Octavian repurposed the statue to help normalize his grant and gives these two reasons to explain why Octavian would re-​fashion the statue, but they are even more fitted to Octavia’s knowledge base. 66 Roller 2018:  197–​232 discusses Cornelia as an exemplary model, with special emphasis on her connection to Octavia. 67 Venuses: Plin. NH 36.15, 35. 68 Cupids: Plin. NH 36.22, 28. 69 Macauley-​Lewis 2009: 10. 70 Ramsey 2013 discusses Laodike and her patronage. See also Chapter 17 for more on Laodike III. 71 Ramsey 2013: 524.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Babcock, C.L. 1965. “The Early Career of Fulvia.” American Journal of Philology 86, 1: 1–​32. Babelon, J. 1951. “Le camée d’Octavie.” Monuments et mémoires publiés par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-​ Lettres 45: 77–​87. Bartman, E. 1999. Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome. Cambridge. Bauman, R. 1992. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome. London and New York. Boyd, M.J. 1953. “The Porticoes of Metellus and Octavia and Their Two Temples: A Re-​examination of the Texts.” Papers of the British School at Rome 21: 152–​9. Brennan, T.C. 2012. “Perceptions of Women’s Power in the Late Republic:  Terentia, Fulvia, and the Generation of 63 BCE.” In S.L. James and S. Dillon (eds.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Chichester, West Sussex, 354–​66. Calcani, G. 1989. Cavalieri di bronzo. La torma di Alessandro opera di Lisippo. Rome. Courtney, E. 2010. “A Basic Approach to the Fourth Eclogue.” Vergilius 56: 27–​38. Deniaux, E. 2006. “Patronage.” Translated by R. Morstein-​Marx and R. Martz, in N. Rosenstein and R. Morstein-​Marx (eds.), A Companion to the Roman Republic. Massachusetts and Oxford, 401–​20. Erhart, K.P. 1980. “A New Portrait Type of Octavia Minor (?).” The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 8: 117–​28. Flory, M.B. 1993. “Livia and the History of Public Honorific Statues for Women in Rome.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 123: 287–​308. Green, P. 1990. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Gruen, E.S. 1984. The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Hemelrijk, E.A. 2005. “Octavian and the Introduction of Public Statues for Women in Rome.” Athenaeum 93, 1: 309–​17. Jones, P. 2012. “Mater Patriae: Cleopatra and Roman Ideas of Motherhood.” In L. Hackworth Peterson and P. Salzman-​Mitchell (eds.), Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome. Austin, 165–​84. Kleiner, D.E.E. 1992. Roman Sculpture. New Haven and London. Kleiner, D.E.E. 1996. “Imperial Women as Patrons of the Arts in the Early Empire.” In D.E.E. Kleiner. and S.B. Matheson (eds.), I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome. Austin,  28–​41. Kunst, C. 2010. “Patronage/​Matronage der Augustae.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Machtbewußte Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof? Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis II. Berlin, 145–​61. Kunst, C. 2013. “Matronage von Herrscherfrauen:  Eine Einführung.” In C. Kunst (ed.), Matronage. Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke von Herrscherfrauen. Osnabrücker Forschungen zu Altertum und Antike-​Rezeption 19. Rahden, 7–​18.

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Octavia Minor and patronage Macaulay-​Lewis, E. 2009. “Political Museums: Porticos, Gardens and the Public Display of Art in Ancient Rome.” In S. Bracken, A.M. Gáldy, and A. Turpin (eds.) Collecting and Dynastic Ambition. Newcastle upon Tyne. Moore, K. 2017. Octavia Minor and the Transition from Republic to Empire. MA Thesis, Clemson University. Osgood, J. 2006. Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire. Cambridge. Osgood, J. 2014. Turia: A Roman Woman’s Civil War. Oxford, New York. Ramsey, G. 2013. “The Queen and the City:  Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities.” In L. Foxhall and G. Neher (eds.) Gender and the City before Modernity. Chichester, West Sussex. 20–​37. Raubitschek, A.E. 1946. “Octavia’s Deification at Athens.” TAPhA 77: 146–​50. Richardson Jr., L. 1976. “The Evolution of the Porticus Octaviae.” American Journal of Archaeology 80, 1: 57–​64. Roller, M. 2018. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge. Rose, C.B. 1997. Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-​Claudian Period. Cambridge. Syme, R. 1939. The Roman Revolution. Oxford. Treggiari, S. 2007. Terentia,Tullia, and Publilia: The Women of Cicero’s Family. London and New York. Welch, K. 1995. “Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 47 B.C.” Greece and Rome 42, 2: 182–​201. Winkes, R. 1995. Livia, Octavia, Iulia: Porträts und Darstellungen. Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Belgium. Wood, S.E. 2000. Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.–​A.D. 68. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne. Woodhull, M. 2003. “Engendering Space: Octavia’s Portico in Rome.” Aurora 4: 13–​33.

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32 LIVIA AND THE PRINCIPATE OF AUGUSTUS AND TIBERIUS Christiane Kunst

When Livia died in 29 CE the senate decreed extraordinary honors to be conferred on the dead Augusta (a title given her and some subsequent imperial women, indicating power and authority),1 resembling those of Augustus in 14 CE: consecration, a year’s mourning for her on the part of the Roman women, and an arch in her honor. Most likely the senate also voted for iustitium (abandoning the conduct of the public business for a defined period), as had been the case for the deaths of Augustus, his adoptive sons (Caius and Lucius), and Tiberius’ Caesares (Germanicus and Drusus Minor).2 From the senate’s perspective, Livia was a political figure.The emperor himself curtailed a number of these honors decreed to her memory. He particularly refused to have his mother deified, insisting on her alleged personal wishes.3 The explanatory statement clearly shows that Livia’s deification was widely expected, if not hard to refuse. For Tiberius, however, avoidance in this case was a question of his view on the principate’s ultimate design. From his accession to power onwards he had been little sympathetic to his mother’s interference and a female interpretation of imperial rule. His behavior on her death made this perfectly clear again. By refusing to be present at her public funeral Tiberius avoided acknowledgment of her past role. However, a decade later, in 42 CE, her grandson Claudius had Livia deified within 12 months of his accession to the purple.To him, leaning on her was essential for his claim of legitimate rule, from a dynastic and a political point of view. For Claudius, Livia’s deification was a statement of reassertion of the Augustan politics in which she had been prominent in representing the leading family and of the new moral behavior which was particularly encapsulated in female behavior. Between 8 and 17 CE, when Ovid hoped for Livia’s help to be called back from exile, he stated in his poems: “the earth holds nothing more glorious, save Caesar, from the sun’s rising to its setting.”4 To him she is femina princeps (woman, but princeps) and takes a leading position toward women and men.5 An anonymous poet echoes (between 33–​38 CE):6 “Can we follow better patterns of virtues than in you when you do the work of a Roman (female) princeps?”7 No other sources than these two poets apply the term “princeps” to Livia.Though composed in a panegyrical tone, the attribution sounds problematic as Augustus himself uses “me principe”8 to refer to his rule over Rome. A  decree about the imperial cult from Gytheion in Achaia, dated to 15 CE, repeatedly refers to Livia and Tiberius as hegemones (used for principes in Greek 388

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texts).9 Calling Livia princeps puts her next to Augustus and implies the auctoritas/​axioma (“prestige/​dignity”) that he claimed lay at the root of his overwhelming position (Res Gestae 34). Auctoritas, however, being connected to dignitas (honor and reputation) was no male prerogative. Hellenistic and other queens had axioma as well.10 A Roman mother assumed auctoritas materna toward her sons, which obliged them to pay attention to her wishes beyond mere domestic affairs.11 The historian Tacitus calls the general acceptance of Tiberius’ taking Livia’s advice auctoritas parentis.12 In Roman society, influence and informal power to a large extent rested on individual capacity to share in patronage, in providing others with favors and benefits of any kind (beneficia).13 To make an impact as patron substantial resources were needed, as well as opportunities to generate prestige (dignitas) for oneself and others.14 Dignitas, for instance, derived from holding formal positions of power or being close to people doing so. Dignitas was also gained from a number of personal qualities and from success, which in turn summed up on an individual’s auctoritas. Augustus’ auctoritas rested on the accomplishments (rerum gestarum) he laid out in his life’s record, preserved in an inscription (Monumentum Ancyranum) from the Roma and Augustus Temple at Ancyra in Galatia.15 One quarter of the text deals with the impensae (his personal expenditure on the plebs Romana and the military). Next to this he lists immaterial benefits (merita) he bestowed on the senate and people of Rome: freedom, peace, security, etc. Another important feature of the text was the list of honors to Augustus and his sons passed by the senate as gifts in return. Augustus staged himself not only as princeps but also as guardian of the state and its welfare.16 The symbol of this particular role was a golden shield by which the senate honored Augustus for the arrangements in January 27 BCE, after he had “transferred the republic from my [his] own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people.”17 Coins issued to popularize the golden shield show that the princeps protected state and people through the virtues inscribed on the shield: virtus, clementia, iustitia and pietas.18 Virtues were also attributed to Livia. Both the author of the consolatio Liviae and Ovid underline her virtuous behavior in connection with her role as (Romana) princeps. Livia’s pudicitia (“chastity”) even surpassed the exemplary pudicitia of the golden past.19 The Augustan historian Livy equated female pudicitia with male virtus as a qualification to protect the city.20 In the reign of Tiberius, three golden, shining bronze coins (Dupondii) were distributed, most likely during the first half of 23 CE, showing on their obverses feminine personifications of pietas (veiled), iustitia (with stephane) and an individualized portrait of Livia, salus Augusta (RIC²47). The question whether pietas and iustitia represent goddesses or Livilla and Antonia (Livia’s granddaughter and her mother) or even Livia herself is controversial.21 Nonetheless these coin types were identified with Livia in provincial coinage.22 More important for our concerns is that Livia is not associated with a single virtue, but rather represented as bearer of public welfare, thus uniting a collection of virtues.23 Representing Livia on the Salus-​Augusta-​coin was an extraordinary honor and in line with her exceptional role in the first decade of her son’s principate up to 26 CE, when Tiberius withdrew to Capri. During the reign of Augustus, Livia was presented as part of imperial rule on various levels. Though no coin was issued with her individual portrait, one particular coin type was frequently minted from the time of Augustus well into the time of Tiberius and showed a female figure (sometimes veiled) seated on a throne holding a scepter and laurel branch. At least in the provinces, this coin was interpreted as representing Livia.24 The official frame for Livia’s integration into public representation was given by honors bestowed on her by the Roman senate.25 Her appearance in public was legitimized first by her role as mother, second by her engagement in Roman cult, and third by her role as benefactress. 389

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Livia’s honors were thus increasingly tied to accomplishments. This becomes even more apparent when we compare the almost identical honors of 35 and 9 BCE. In 35 BCE Octavian/​ Augustus, still triumvir, had transferred the privilege of sacrosanctity given by the senate for his victory over Sextus Pompeius to him, his wife (Livia), and sister (Octavia), the wife of his colleague Marcus Antonius. None of the women had made any identifiable contribution to the success at Naulochos. At the same time both women were given the right to public statues and were freed from tutela (male guardianship), which allowed them to manage their own economic affairs.26 Twenty years later, in 9 BCE, Livia was given the same honors again. This time, however, the honors were tied to Livia’s merit as mother. Officially she was given the right to public statues and the ius trium liberorum, which entailed freedom from guardianship,27 to ease her sorrow after the loss of her commendable son Drusus.28 Ius trium liberorum was a reward for free-​born women for having given birth to three children and was designed as an incentive by Augustus’ marriage laws of 18 BCE. Livia had not only fulfilled the obligation by giving birth, she had given the republic two outstanding sons. Opportunities to appear in public were provided by religious ceremonies: in 24 BCE Livia, together with her sister-​in-​law, performed particular rituals on the occasion of Augustus’ return from Spain.29 She took part in the secular games of 17 BCE. Most likely she presided over the 110 matrons involved in the ceremonies.30 Religious gatherings of Roman matrons happened on a regular basis and must have laid out the framework for the conventus matronarum, where, under Livia’s (growing) leadership, female interaction and networking took place.31 Livia’s support of female deities is well established, as demonstrated by the restoration of the temples of Fortuna Muliebris (“Womanly Fortune”) or Bona Dea (“Good Goddess”).32 The commitment to Bona Dea tied Livia firmly to the Vestal Virgins, traditionally responsible for Rome’s well-​being and security, and turned her into their benefactress and leader.33 At the festival of Bona Dea one of the obligations of the Vestal Virgins was to transfer the cult-​image of the goddess Vesta from her temple to the house of the consul, where the priestesses together with the consul's wife offered sacrifice to the goddess.34 Ovid describes the festival of Bona Dea in his calendar (fasti) for the first of May and turns to its history. In the past, the temple was dedicated by the vestal Licinia, known for her notable chastity. When he comes to Livia’s restoration, he gives as her reason, “so she could imitate her husband and follow his lead in everything.”35 Livia’s marital pudicitia is elevated by Ovid above the old beneficial pudicitia of the Vestal Virgin and assumes the same nature of protecting the community.36 In addition to religious events, Livia participated in public events as part of the family. First, her role in Augustus’ adoption of his two grandsons in 17 BCE has to be mentioned, when the traditional formula was turned upside down and Livia became mother of the two boys.37 Secondly, she appeared in public as mother of her successful sons Tiberius and Drusus, giving lavish gladiatorial and theatrical shows.38 Tesserae (tokens in lead, bronze, or bone) with her portrait document Livia’s benefaction.39 Her sons’ celebrations as victorious commanders provided particular opportunities for her public appearances.40 In January 9 BCE, Tiberius had been awarded an ovatio (minor triumph) for his Pannonian victory and had given a public feast for the people. At the same time Livia, together with her daughter-​in-​law, feasted the women.41 The same festivities, planned for Drusus later in the year, had to be cancelled because of his death in Germany.42 Only a fortnight after Tiberius’ ovatio, the Ara Pacis, the impressive altar to the Augustan peace, decorated with panels showing the imperial family and public office holders, was dedicated on Livia’s birthday (January 30).43 Tiberius’ victory and Livia’s birthday thus merge with the Augustan promise of peace.The calendar of Cumae in Campania lists an annual thanksgiving on the day “for the reign of Caesar Augustus the guardian of the Roman people.”44 That Livia played a part in the whole program can be deduced 390

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from her leading position on the relief panel as first of the family behind Augustus and the already deceased Agrippa. For January 30 and the dedication of the Ara Pacis Ovid enters in his calendar, “And ask the gods who favor pious prayer /​That the house that brings peace, may so endure forever” (Fast. 1. 721–​2). The domus Augusta (Augustan House) was a political unit. Two years later, in January, 7 BCE, the celebrations of 9 BCE were more or less repeated. This time it was Tiberius who celebrated a formal triumph over the Germanic tribes. Again two feasts were organized, one for the senators on the capitol and another for their wives by Livia (Cass. Dio 55. 8. 2).45 The people were not left empty-​handed, because together with her son Livia dedicated the Porticus Liviae,46 a portico surrounding a lavish garden decorated with works of art, a pleasant gift to the urban population.47 The contemporary author Strabo (5.3) testified to the high significance of the portico for the new Augustan Rome; he describes the building as embedded in the imperial, gendered patronage of the new city and also connected to the political topography of capitolium and forum. The way Livia negotiated her position can be tracked by looking at the years between 6 CE and 2 CE, when Tiberius, who had been sharing tribunician power with Augustus, withdrew to Rhodes. At first intended as an attempt to put pressure on Augustus, the retirement soon turned into exile. Livia, meanwhile, worked to restore her son to Rome, using her female network and reinterpreting the highly cherished concordia.48 On the occasion of his triumph in 7 BCE, Tiberius had voted to restore the temple of Concordia on the Forum Romanum, “in order that he might inscribe upon it his own name and that of [his dead brother] Drusus.”49 When the temple was finally dedicated by him in 10 CE, it was to Concordia Augusta,50 embracing not only the restored concord of Tiberius and Augustus, but also the marriage of Livia and Augustus, which became a model for the whole imperial period.51 During the absence of Tiberius, Livia aligned herself with his promise and herself dedicated an Ara Concordiae in her porticus Liviae, inaugurated on June 11.52 The date is notable as the Matralia was an important festival for the Roman matrons; it enabled them to embody family solidarity. The Ara Concordiae of Livia became a symbol of marital harmony53 and was a political tool, together with the religious gathering of noble Romans, as a way to keep Tiberius’ case in the public eye. Livia’s accessibility to women as well as her public representation as an ideal wife and mother helped to create a female aspect to the principate.When the colony of Narbo dedicated an altar to Augustus in 11 CE, the citizens’ expectations were voiced in this way: “May it be good, well-​ omened and fortunate to Imperator Caesar Augustus […] to his wife, offspring and family; to the senate and people of Rome and to the colonists and resident aliens of the colony of Iulia Paterna Narbo Martius […]”54 Seen from Gallia Narbonensis the imperator was at the head, followed by his wife, children, and family, all of whom ranked before the senate and people of Rome. Three years later the princeps confirmed the Narbonian perspective of an imperial couple, bequeathing his name Augustus, which the senate had bestowed on him in 27 BCE as a gift for returning power,55 to Livia and his adoptive son Tiberius. From then onwards, Livia became Iulia Augusta.56 The senate reacted promptly and offered the title mater patriae (mother of the country) to Livia,57 parallel to the pater patriae once given Augustus and now to be assumed by Tiberius. The title encapsulated the official recognition that Livia had stood next to Augustus and was meant to keep her position next to Tiberius, who should also be addressed as “son of Iulia.” The new princeps forestalled the decrees, but he could not change social reality. Most honors were granted to Livia during his principate, beginning after Augustus’ death.58 The latter had not only bequeathed his name to his wife but also one third of his immense wealth, making her an even richer woman. More important, Livia became priestess of the deified Augustus (sacerdos 391

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divi Augusti) which opened up to her a formal position, made visible by the lictor accorded to her.59 She was prepared to use this new position to acquire an even more public role.60 For example, on a dedication of a statue for Augustus in 22 CE, her name was put before that of Tiberius.61 Perhaps it was on this occasion that she planned to give a banquet to the senate and the knights together with their wives; Tiberius insisted the senate had first to allow it and then that he and his mother had to entertain the women and men separately.62 When Livia fell ill later in the same year the senate decreed vota (“prayers”) for her health (Tac. Ann. 3.64). She had been included in vota publica at Rome by, at the latest, 21 CE.63 The Roman knights promised a gift for her recovery to Fortuna Equestris, later to be dedicated at Antium (Tac. Ann. 3.71). Now Livia was given the privilege of using a carriage (the two-​ wheeled carpentum) in town, just like the Vestal Virgins.64 From 24 CE on, she took her seat among the Vestals in the theater, supposedly to increase their prestige (Tac. Ann. 4.16). Livia’s precedence over the Vestal Virgins actually shows that their role preserving the state had been transferred to the Augusta. Livia was not put on an equal footing with the Vestal Virgins, but was valued as first woman of the principate. To sum up: Livia’s role as a model and cornerstone of the dynasty and as a universal benefactress justified her incorporation into public representation. This again affirmed her being the first woman of the domus Augusta as well as of the empire.65 The Ara Pacis, decreed in 13 BCE and dedicated in 9 BCE, had made visible the entanglement of the public sphere with the Augustan house. In the reign of Tiberius, Livia’s morning receptions (salutationes) were announced in the acta publica, the official news (Cass. Dio 57.12), underlining her role as a leading patroness.66 An anonymous poet wrote, “You direct eyes and ears toward you, your deeds we notice,/​and the voice sent from the mouth of the princeps cannot be covered up.”67 Moreover, the poet attests Livia has the power also to harm, but does not wield it in a negative way. On the contrary, she does not interfere with elections or in court, but exerts influence only in the (Augustan) house and there within reason (cons. Liviae 47–​50). A  similar position is taken by the historian Velleius Paterculus, a loyal supporter of Tiberius. Writing shortly after Livia’s death, he describes her as, “a woman pre-​eminent among women, and who in all things resembled the gods more than mankind, whose power no one felt except for the alleviation of trouble or the promotion of rank.”68 Along the same lines, the senate justified the arch decreed on Livia’s death by pointing out that the Augusta had saved senators and looked after the education and welfare of their children, by contributing to the dowries of their daughters (Cass. Dio 58.2.3). At the beginning of the third century CE, Cassius Dio wrote, “she occupied a very exalted station, far above all women of former days.”69 Indeed, there are quite a few testimonies that Livia was able to influence things on behalf of herself or her friends and favorites:  saving senators from the emperor’s wrath, protecting her female friends from prosecution, providing men with offices and priesthoods, or helping individuals and communities to tax privileges, etc. That Augustus was well aware of this fact and indeed favored Livia as patron, presumably because he trusted her, is clearly illustrated by a decree issued to Samos in which he makes public her suit on their behalf.70 The case of Tiberius’ praetorian prefect Seianus (Sejanus) proves that particular opportunities to influence could create a quasi-​monarchic position. Initially, Seianus relied on the loyalty of the guards but then he “had gained the favor of the senators, partly by the benefits he conferred, partly by the hopes he inspired, and partly by intimidation.”71 The exchange of favors for loyalty is generally called patronage, but for women we should rather employ the term matronage because we are dealing with a slightly different concept.72 On the basis of her access to the ruler Livia could—​like any of his friends and protégées—​obtain personal favors for herself or others. As a woman, however, she was not able to hold any office (except priesthoods) or act in court, 392

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let alone take on military responsibility. She therefore could only appoint people in the realm of her own household and on the basis of her personal property, all over the empire. No doubt, Livia’s authority reached into the highest decision-​making body, but never directly. For instance, in its sentence on Calpurnius Piso, the Roman senate publicly approved of Livia’s intervention to save her protégée Plancina from conviction. Beforehand, the Augusta had to turn to the princeps and make him act in her name. The senate justified its decision in favor of Plancina, who does not seem to have been entirely innocent, with two arguments. First, Livia was entitled to implore the senate because of her services and benefactions (merita et beneficia) toward the state and all orders, including her having given birth to Tiberius. Second, the senate honored Tiberius’ pietas (loyalty) toward his mother: the senate deemed Iulia Augusta, who was most well deserving of the republic not only because she gave birth to our princeps but also because of many and great kindnesses to men of every order—​although she rightly and deservedly should have the greatest influence in what she requested from the Senate, she used it most sparingly—​and the very great devotion of our princeps to his mother should be supported and indulged; that it was its pleasure that the punishment of Plancina be remitted. (SC Z, 115–​20, translation Potter and Damon 1999 )73 For the patronal system, this means that even a woman of Livia’s rank was predominantly in the broker’s position.74 On the political stage she could arrange favors for her protegées (saving Plancina in court, appointing men to high-​ranking positions), but she could not grant these favors single-​handed. That made her, at a certain point, dependent on remembrance and thus gratitude for benefits obtained. After the accession of Nero, his mother Agrippina Minor was pushed aside by those who earlier had cooperated with her to secure the young man’s succession. From that point of view, it is not surprising that Livia, like other Augustae, built up a great many close relationships with other women. Friends of the Augusta were, like friends of her husband, primarily and above all allies and favorites. The favored women themselves acted as patronesses of women and men. Plancina not only had an entourage of women, but also was flattered by the Armenian-​Parthian ruler Vonones, who had realized that the wife of the governor of Syria was held in high esteem at court. With plurima officia et dona (“numerous services and presents”) he tried to win over Plancina and was therefore venerated by her husband Piso (Tac. Ann. 2.58). Husbands and sons of women close to Livia achieved honors and offices. The female circle of Livia also encompassed the wives of client-​kings, making it easier to affiliate them to the principate. Tiberius attacked these amicitiae muliebris (“feminine friendships”)75 in the letter he wrote from Capri turning down the senate’s decrees after Livia’s death. Apparently he was targeting the consul Fufius Geminus, “who had risen by the favor of Augusta”76 and may have been responsible for the senate’s vote in 29 CE. Geminus’ wife Mutilia Prisca belonged to the friends of Livia and opened up the inner circle (inter intimos) for her husband.77 In any case the prominent timing of Tiberius’ critique illustrates that the princeps was not talking about his mother’s personal friends but the patronal system described. Women of the local elites either had close ties to the imperial court and/​or imitated the Augusta’s behavior, patronizing their own communities. This can best be proved by looking at endowments for public buildings.78 Priestesses of the imperial cult were of particular importance here, since they acted also as benefactresses out of their priestly role and made benefactions in their own name or on behalf of their children.79 In return, they gained public honors and privileges. It seems probable that individual women identified with the Augusta as being a good 393

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wife and imitated her as patron and broker of personal and family interests, but also tried to enhance their own social position and local prestige in their local communities by adapting patterns of matronage established by the Augusta. Livia’s particular involvement with women and their roles stimulated female integration into the political system of the principate and contributed to its stability.The incorporation of women was highly political. Augustus’ promiscuity was defended on the grounds that he was trying “to keep track of his adversaries’ designs through the women of their households.”80 During the late republic and in the triumvir period, women of the leading families had participated in political affairs through their family connections. The relationships with Livia renewed these opportunities and channeled ambitions at the same time. Since access to the Augusta provided disproportionally high chances for women to gain prestige, the number of women participating grew notably, but this also happened because they were no longer exclusively dependent on their male-​dominated family networks. The tendency to provide women prepared to adjust to the new political system with some kind of independence also accords with Augustan marital laws. Women of wealth who were prepared to give birth were rewarded with economic freedom of action (ius trium liberorum).

Conclusions In the principates of Augustus and Tiberius, Livia was decreed exceptional honors that acknowledged her distinguished position as princeps among the women. She personified the female interpretation of the Augustan principate. Public appearances in the religious sphere or as mother of successful commanders gave her the opportunity to present herself as guarantor of welfare and security. Her role was complementary to that of the princeps whom she emulated and supported. The mater domus Augusti (“the mother of the Augustan house”) transforms into mater patriae, “mother of the country.” Livia generates auctoritas (“authoritative dignity”) as the basis of her political agency through her intimate relationship with the ruler and participation in the patronal system. Her assets were a) access to the emperor, b) chances to build, maintain, and activate personal ties with relevant people, and c) disposal of material wealth. Matronage was an accepted social practice for influential families of the republic. Concentrating political power in the hands of a single ruler proportionally enhanced the opportunities of women in this family and those who had access to them. The female side of the principate was not limited to natural reproduction; it was reflected in the integration of leading women into the political sphere via matronage. The Augusta became the moral ideal in virtue as loyal wife and mother of the family and house, but she also became a broker of social opportunities and a stimulus to other women to engage in their home civitas to enhance their personal as well as their family prestige. In this way, Livia made her contribution as mater patriae and salus Augusta for acceptance and consolidation of the principate.

Notes 1 Cass. Dio 58.2; Tac. Ann. 5.2.1; Suet. Tib. 51.2. 2 Kunst 2008b. 3 Tac. Ann. 5.2.1; Suet. Tib. 51.2. 4 Ov. pont. 3.1.127–​8. 5 Ovid. pont. 125; see Ov. Tr. 1.6.25: “femina seu princeps.” 6 For the date of the consolatio: Schlegelmilch 2005; Jenkins 2009. 7 Cons. Liv. 349, 355–​6  :  “an melius per te virtutum exempla petemus,/​quam si Romanae principis edis opus?”

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Livia and the principate 8 RG 13; 30; 32: έπ’ έμοῦ ήγεμόνος (“in my time as princeps”). 9 SEG 11, 922. The monumentum ancyranum uses hegemon for princeps, cf. Kunst 2014. 10 Diod. 19.11.2; 51.6 (Olympias); Plut. Dem. 14 (Phila). 11 Asconius (p. 23St.) in his introduction to Cicero‘s speech pro Scauro; Hillard 1983. In the good old days a severa mater had bossed her sons around and made decisions concerning the farm’s economic welfare (Hor. Carm. 3.6.39f.). 12 Tac. Ann. 5.3.1. 13 For the following, see Kunst 2010: 147; 2013b: 7–​14. 14 See Plin. Ep. 10.26.3. See Saller 1982: 76. 15 See RG. 4; Ov. Fast. 1.606: “illa domus meritis maxima dicta suis.” 16 See Kunst 2014: 158–​9. 17 RG. 34; AE 1952, 156 (clipeus virtutis). 18 Two victories holding the shield: RIC 86a, RIC 42a. 19 Ov. Pont. 3.1.113–​18. 20 Liv. 23.7–​8: “vosque hortor ut, quod certamen virtutis viros in hac civitate tenet, hoc pudicitiae inter matronas sit.” 21 Harvey 2011: 335–​7; 2019. 22 Tiberius: RIC 42, 46f. For identification with Livia, see RPC I 1570. 23 Clauss 1999:  87 identifies Livia as Goddess Salus; for Livia‘s identification with Ceres, goddess of fecundity and agricultural wealth, see Bartman 1999, 93–​4. For Livia as Ceres on the Ara Pacis, see Spaeth 1994. 24 Augustus: RIC I² 219f.; Tiberius: RIC I² 25–​30, 71–​3; for explicit interpretations as Livia in provincial coins, see: RPC I 39 (Emerita), 66 (Italica), 341 (Caesaraugusta/​Tarrac.), 849 (Leptis Magna), 1569 (Thessaloniki), 2097 (Bithynia), 3919 (Cyprus), 4005 (Tarsos/​Cilik.). 25 Alexandridis 2004: 37–​8. 26 Cass. Dio 49.38.1. Scardigli 1982. See also Chapter 31 in this volume. 27 “Right of three children” = freedom from guardianship after having given birth to three children. 28 Cass. Dio 55.2.5. 29 Hor. Carm. 3.14. 30 Indicated by the close imitation of the Severan festival and the role of the empress Iulia Domna therein, see Cancik 1996; Schnegg-​Köhler 2002: 28–​9. 31 Purcell 1986; Šterbenc Erker 2013: 81; Hemelrijk 2015: 213ff. 32 CIL VI 883; Ov. Fast. 5. 148–​58. 33 Severy 2003: 135. 34 Cic. Har. Resp. 37–​38; 44; Brouwer 1989: 369. 35 Ov. Fast. 5. 148–​58: “ne non imitata maritum /​esset et ex omni parte secuta suum;” Herbert-​Brown 1994: 130; for the identity of the Vestal as Licinia, see Barrett 2002: 333–​4. 36 For the pudicita of the Vestal Virgins, see Stahlmann 1997: 117–​42. 37 Kunst 2014. 38 Suet. Tib. 7.1. 39 Rostovtzeff 1905: 23–​6; Buttrey 1973: plate 4, nos. 11–​13; 20.Virlouvet 1995: 349. 40 For integration of women into the triumph, see Flory 1990: esp. 491–​3. 41 Cass. Dio 55.2.4: “καὶ τοῦ δήμου τοὺς μὲν ἐν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ τοὺς δ´ ἄλλοθι πολλαχόθι ἐδείπνισε. Κἀν τούτῳ καὶ ἡ Λιουία μετὰ τῆς Ἰουλίας τὰς γυναῖκας εἱστίασε.” 42 Cass. Dio 55.2.5. 43 Dedication 9 BCE:  Fasti Praenestini (=InscrIt XIII 2,17); decree in July, 13 BCE:  RG. 12; Fasti Amiternini (=InscrIt XIII 2,25). 44 Feriale Cumanum:  InscrIt XIII 2,44:  “[III K(alendas) Febr(uarias) eo die ara Pacis dedicata] est supplicatio Imperio Caesaris Augusti custo[dis] /​[i(mperii) R(omani).” 45 For another feast in the celebration of the triumph in 12 BCE, see Suet. Tib. 21, but no activities of Livia known. Possibly the opening of the macellum Liviae on the Esquiline hill belongs in this context. 46 For the education together with triumph: Cass. Dio 55.8.1; for the portico: Plin. HN. 14.11; Ov. Ars. am. 1.71–​2; Ov. Fast. 6.639–​46; Cass. Dio 54.23.6 takes Augustus as benefactor who attached Livia’s name to the building (similarly Suet. Aug. 29.4), but this clearly contradicts Strabo and other cited testimonies. 47 Claridge 2010: 301–​40; Flory 1984.

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Christiane Kunst 48 In Livy’s Roman history from the Augustan period the lack of concordia is responsible for the catastrophic defeats against Hannibal, see Ridley 2000: 20, 38. 49 Cass. Dio 55.8.2. In 6 CE, he dedicated the temple of Castor (and Pollux) in his and his brother’s names (Cass. Dio 55.27.4) as part of the commemoration of Drusus, 15 years after his death; see CIL 6, 40339 = AE 1992, 159. 50 The fasti Verulani (InscrIt 13,2,22) composed between 14 and 37 CE give for January 16 [without year]: “XVII n(efas) p(iaculum) fer(iae) [e]‌x s(enatus) c(onsulto) quod eo die aedis /​C[o]ncordiae in foro dedic(ata) est;” whereas the fasti Praenestini (InscrIt 13,2,17 = AE 2007, 312) mention on January 16, 10 CE, “Concordiae Au[gustae aedis dedicat]a est P(ublio) Dolabella C(aio) Silano co(n)[s(ulibus)] /​Ti(berius) Caesar ex Pa[nnonia reversus dedic]avit.” 51 For concordia, see Noreña 2011: 132–​5. 52 Ov. Fast. (June 11) 6.637–​48. Kunst 2008a: 163–​5. 53 Openly connected to the temple of Tiberius: Ov. Fast. 1.649 (January 16). 54 CIL XII 433: “quod bonum faustum felixque sit Imp(eratori) Caesari […] coniugi liberis gentique eius senatui /​populoque Romano et colonis incolisque /​c(oloniae) I(uliae) P(aternae) N(arbonensis) M(artii).” 55 RG. 34; Suet. Aug. 101. 56 Cenerini 2016. 57 Tac. Ann. 1.14; Cass. Dio 58.2.3 cf. Cass. Dio 57.12.3–​4. The city of Leptis Magna issued coins with Livia as Augusta mater patria(e) (RPC 849). 58 Hahn 1994: 43–​105; for Livia’s cult in Greece, see Stafford 2013: 205–​38; Bräänstedt 2016. 59 Lictors were granted to chief magistrates who had imperium and thus showed their rank. From the Triumviral period on,Vestal Virgins were also given a lictor, apparently, however, to protect them when they left the Atrium Vestae (Cass Dio 47.19.4). 60 Kunst 2008a: 197–​9. 61 InscrIt 13,2,17 (fasti Praenestini): “[Viminalia] Iulia Augusta and Tiberius Augustus dedicated a statue to the father Augustus near the theatre of Marcellus” (sig[num] divo Augusto patri ad theatrum Marc[elli] /​Iulia Augusta et Ti[berius] Augustus dedicarunt); see Tac. Ann 3.64. 2. At Gytheion (SEG 11, 922), Livia was named after the deifeid Augustus, but before the living princeps Tiberius. 62 Cass. Dio 57.12.5. 63 CIL VI 32340 (January 11, 21 CE). 64 RIC² 51. 65 Vell. Pat. 2.75.3: “genere, probitate, forma Romanorum eminentissima…” 66 For the relevance of salutationes for people close to the emperor, see Cass. Dio 58.5.1–​4. 67 Cons. Liv. 350f:  “ad te oculos, auresque trahis, tua facta notamus /​Nec vox missa potest principis ore tegi.” 68 Vell. Pat. 2.130.5: “eminentissima et per omnia deis quam hominibus similior femina, cuius potentiam nemo sensit nisi aut levatione periculi aut accessione dignitatis.” 69 Cass. Dio 57.12.2: “Πάνυ γὰρ μέγα καὶ ὑπὲρ πάσας τὰς πρόσθεν γυναῖκας ὤγκωτο[…].” 70 Reynolds, J., Aphrodisias and Rome, London 1982, No. 13, commentary 104 –​106. Kunst 2008a: 77. 71 Cass. Dio 58.4.2 (Xiphilinos 145, 22): “καὶ τῶν βουλευτῶν τὸ μὲν εὐεργεσίαις τὸ δὲ ἐλπίσι τὸ δὲ καὶ φόβῳ προσεπεποίητο[…]” 72 Kunst 2010. 73 “senatum arbitrari et Iuliae Aug(ustae), optume de r(e) p(ublica) meritae non partu tantum modo principis nostri, sed etiam multis magnisq(ue) erga cuiusq(ue) ordinis homines beneficis, quae, cum iure meritoq(ue) plurumum posse in eo, quod a senatu petere deberet, parcissume uteretur eo, et principis nostri summa erga matrem suam pietati suffragandum indulgendumq(ue) esse remittiq(ue) poenam Plancinae placere.” 74 Seianus tried to use Livia and Livilla to discredit Agrippina and her children in the eyes of Tiberius, see Tac. Ann. 4.12.4. 75 Tac. Ann. 5.2.2. 76 Tac. Ann. 77 Mutilia Prisca allegedly opened the circle to her lover: Tac. Ann. 4.12.4. 78 Hemelrijk 2013. For the prominent Eumachia, see Cooley 2013: 31–​6; Edelmann-​Singer 2013. 79 See for example Lutatia CIL X 7501 (Gaulus/​Gozzo). 80 Suet. Aug. 69.1: “quo facilius consilia adversariorum per cuiusque mulieres exquireret.” Seianus was supposed to have liaisons for the same reasons; see Cass. Dio 58.3.8.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). RPC Burnett, A., and Amandry, M., and Ripollès, P.P. 1992–​. Roman Provincial Coinage, 10 vols. London.

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33 JULIO-​C LAUDIAN IMPERIAL WOMEN Francesca Cenerini

Introduction This chapter takes into consideration six women, chosen because they represent the continuity of the Julio-​Claudian family: Julia the Elder, Agrippina the Elder, Claudia Livia Julia, Valeria Messalina, and Agrippina the Younger. These women represent the most direct link with the charismatic blood of the founder of the empire, especially after his divinization. These women had the task of transmitting the blood of the god Augustus to their successors.These ties, necessary for the succession of the emperor and functional to the role of these women at court, are highlighted by their marriages. Until Nero’s death in 68 CE, the emperor always belonged to the same Julio-​Claudian family and the women examined in this chapter were the mothers of aspiring, designated, or actual successors. There are three major ancient works that discuss these women: the Annales of Tacitus (since the death of Augustus), the Lives of the 12 Caesars of Suetonius and the Roman History of Cassius Dio. Tacitus’ narrative is certainly political, but it is vitiated by his substantial hostility to the imperial court. Suetonius is a biographer who often indulges in gossip, while the version of Cassius Dio, dating from the third century CE and therefore the furthest from the events narrated, displays the attitudes of the court of the third century CE, a very different cultural and political world from that of the Julio Claudians.

Julia the Elder and Julia the Younger Julia the Elder, only daughter of Augustus and of his second wife Scribonia, played a key role in Augustus’ succession1. In 25 BCE Julia married her cousin Marcellus, son of Augustus’ sister Octavia. Two years later her husband died, and at the end of 21 BCE she married Marcus Vispanius Agrippa, a good military commander loyal to Augustus (Plut. Ant. 87. 1–​5; Suet. Aug. 63). The marriage produced five children: three sons, Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, and Agrippa named Postumus, since he was born after his father’s death in 12 BCE, and two daughters, Julia the Younger and Agrippina the Elder (Suet. Aug. 64). Julia, left a widow for the second time, married Tiberius, the older son of Livia, third wife of Augustus, while her sons Gaius and Lucius had already been adopted in 17 BCE by their grandfather Augustus as his designated heirs (Suet. Aug. 65). About 10 BCE Julia and Tiberius lost their newborn child (Suet. Tib. 7. 2–​3) and from 399

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9 BCE on, the relationship between the spouses declined in such an irreparable way that in 6 BCE Tiberius retreated to Rodi. Sources explain this voluntary exile in different ways; however, the passionate rivalry between Julia’s and Claudius’ family branches in view of Augustus’ succession was indisputable.2 In 2 BCE Julia was removed from Rome under the pretext of her scandalous way of life (Suet. Aug. 65.4; Dio 55.10.12–​16); her father, the emperor Augustus, supported the charge by writing a letter to the senate. On the grounds of adultery, Julia was relegated in insulam Pandataria (“to the island of Ventotene”) according to the legislation that Augustus had firmly supported in 18/​17 BCE with regard to the family law, the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis.3 It is clear, on the one hand, that ancient writers mainly reported the official version confirmed by Augustus, which identified the adulteries of Julia and her immoral way of life as the reason for her being sentenced. However, it is highly likely that the charge of adultery was created as a pretext;4 this fact should be read in a political way, as the reaction of some members of Augustus’ own entourage to the increasing conservatism of Augustus himself. Julia and her supporters pressed to make the monarchy more autocratic and populist, based on the support of both soldiers and the people, according to the model of Hellenistic monarchy. Tiberius, in contrast, was seen as the representative of the agreement with the conservative and traditionalist ruling class within the domus principis (the family and the court of emperor). Iullus Antonius was a key figure among Julia’s friends: accused of being her lover, he was heir to the political inheritance of his father Marcus Antonius. According to Cassius Dio (55.10.15), Iullus’ actions were driven by the desire to become emperor. Augustus’ subsequent propaganda would not have missed a chance to create a parallel between the old bond between Antonius and Kleopatra and the new one between Iullus Antonius and Julia. As Seneca wrote (Brev. vitae 4.6), Augustus could not accept iterum timenda cum Antonio mulier (“to fear for the second time a woman next to an Anthony”), after the danger represented by Kleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt. Despite the marriage Augustus imposed on Julia and Tiberius in 11 BCE, his conferment of proconsular power and the power of a tribune on Tiberius, his adoption of Julia’s children and the self-​imposed retirement of Tiberius, he had no intention of indulging the political plans of the Iulii branch. The charges against Julia and Iullus Antonius ratified their defeat (even if not actually definitive). Some years later, in 8 CE, Julia’s daughter, named Julia and called the Younger in order to distinguish her from the mother, would be involved in another conspiracy against her grandfather. In 4 BCE Julia the Younger married the noble Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who was related to Scribonia. Like her mother, Julia the Younger was also accused and charged with adultery. She was also a leading light of those in the court now antagonistic to the designated heir Tiberius rather than to Augustus himself. In 8 CE Julia the Younger and her husband L. Aemilius Paullus fell into misfortune: the adoption by Augusus of Agrippa Postumus, last son of Agrippa and Julia the Elder and therefore last direct heir of the Julii, was revoked, an adoption that had once been granted by Augustus. The young prince was exiled first to Sorrento then to Pianosa. Evidently, a heated dynastic dispute between the two branches of the Julio-​Claudian dynasty had taken place. The political faction connected to Julia the Younger looked to Agrippa Postumus as heir of Augustus and opposed Tiberius, who was, in turn, supported by the faction of Augustus and Livia. A plot was planned to free Agrippa Postumus and take him to Germany, where his brother-​in-​law Germanicus and sister Agrippina the Elder were located supposedly in order to raise the legions against Tiberius; the young man, however, was murdered, even if it is not clear from whom the order actually came. His slave Clement, who looked like him, took his place and was also killed while marching on Rome at the head of an army (Tac. Ann. 2.39–​40; Suet. Tib. 25; Dio 57.16.3–​4). The poet Ovid was somehow involved in the conspiracy of Julia the 400

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Younger and of L. Aemilius Paullus; for this reason, Augustus exiled Ovid to Tomi on the Black Sea and never let him return to Rome, despite the numerous and heartfelt pleas of the poet to the emperor. Ovid incriminated himself in two crimes, a carmen and an error. The carmen could be the Ars Amatoria, a work which did not suit the new moralism of Augustus; the error is still unknown but could be linked to the behavior of Aemilius Paullus and Julia the Younger.5

Agrippina the Elder The heir of Augustus, in the end, was Tiberius. Lucius and Gaius Caesar died prematurely, respectively in 2 CE and in 4 CE, in which year Augustus obliged Tiberius to adopt Germanicus, son of Drusus the Elder and Antonia the Younger (Suet. Cal. 1.1). Germanicus was very popular among the troops of the Germanic frontier since he had the support of the plebeians of Rome, many of whom were enlisted after the defeat of the legions of Varus (Tac. Ann. 1.16.3). Modern historians report the presence of his wife, Agrippina the Elder, and her effective role on the Rhine front between 14 CE and 15 CE together with their son Gaius Julius Caesar, also in relation to the different versions of Tacitus (Ann. 1.40.1–​4) and of Cassius Dio (57.5, 6–​7) based on different sources. In any case we must underline the presence near the military front of the wife of a military commander, despite her being pregnant and accompanied by a little child, just like her mother Julia, who appeared in front of the Roman populace while pregnant, on the occasion of the Saecular Games. Agrippina announced to the potential supporters of her husband Germanicus that she belonged to the domus of Augustus by blood (Tac. Ann. 1.40.3: se divo Augustus ortam) and proclaimed her role as heir of the domus via her several maternities. Such propaganda reasons, which were certainly present in the autobiographical work written by her daughter Agrippina the Younger,6 with a clear apologetic intent, were also present in Tacitus’ description of the role of Agrippina the Elder during the fight on the Rhine front. The novitas of an imperatoria uxor (the novelty of a woman who had the power) near the military front fits within a familial and dynastic context: the father Agrippa, the grandfather Augustus, the stepfather Drusus and the son Gaius (nicknamed Caligula, since he wore military shoes: Tac. Ann. 1.41.2). Once Tiberius was emperor, his natural son, Drusus Julius Caesar (called the Younger), played a relevant role in the succession. Drusus Julius Caesar could also boast a powerful marriage from a dynastic viewpoint: he was married to Claudia Livia Julia, who was not only the daughter of Drusus the Elder and of Antonia the Younger, but, more importantly, also the widow of Gaius Caesar, who had earlier been designated heir, and in 14/​15 CE was pregnant by her husband Drusus.7 Tacitus (Ann. 44.6) appositely identified the grounds of the dispute between the two couples.8 We have no information about possible and similar actions of (Claudia) Livia Julia on the Illyrian front where she might have accompanied her husband (since she had no daughter who could have recorded such possible actions). In any case, sources indicate that the marriage between Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder was characterized by affection and mutual devotion:  her modesty and love for her husband reinforced, however, her arrogant character (Tac. Ann. 1.33.3). After Germanicus’ death in 19 CE (under circumstances which had never been completely clarified) and the death of Drusus Julius Caesar in 23 CE, a conflict within Tiberius’ camp between Seianus, powerful praetorian prefect, and Agrippina the Elder took shape. In fact, after her husband’s death in Antioch, and notwithstanding the fact that she remained loyal to her husband’s memory (Tac. Ann. 4.12.2: pudicitia Agrippinae impenetrabili), she started to be dominandi avida (“power-​hungry”), and to behave in a way that was contrary to male conceptions of proper female behavior.9 After returning to Rome with the urn containing her husband’s ashes, Agrippina continued with a brilliant 401

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communication strategy aiming to present herself as the inconsolable widow of a “myth” and to prepare the succession as emperor of one of her sons.10 According to sources, her relationship with Tiberius further worsened after the death of Drusus Julius Caesar. In these years a split between Agrippina and Germanicus’ supporters developed. On the one hand, we find some friends of Germanicus joining forces with Seianus who were supported by Tiberius; on the other hand, we have Agrippina the Elder keeping her husband’s memory alive and looking for consensus among the senators. Seianus’ shrewd leadership further strained the relationship between Agrippina the Elder and Tiberius. In 26 CE Tiberius refused Agrippina the Elder permission to marry again, clearly intending to avoid strengthening her position. One again, Agrippina the Elder reminded Tiberius that she was descended from Augustus (Tac. Ann. 4.26.2: celesti sanguine ortam) and therefore had the right to play an important role within the new center of power, the domus Augusta (the family and the court of emperor),11 which was deeply divided about the appointment of Tiberius’ heir. In 29 CE, Tiberius, now retired in voluntary exile to Capri, acting at the instigation of Seianus, built a case against Agrippina the Elder and her older son Nero. Agrippina the Elder died in exile, while Nero was led to kill himself in 30 or 31 CE. The same fate descended on Nero’s brother Drusus, who was arrested in 30 CE and died in prison in 33. Caligula was now the only surviving son of Germanicus and of Agrippina the Elder.

Claudia Livia Julia Tacitus portrayed the elder Agrippina negatively, especially because she seemed to have passed down the desire to be Augusta to her namesake daughter. The importance of this power legacy on a family dynastic base was one of the distinguishing aspects of Tiberius’ heir Gaius (Caligula). Caligula may have inherited this feeling for the congruence of his family and imperial power from his mother; if so, Agrippina the Elder played an important role in the evolution of the principate.12 Seianus, in order to consolidate his position in the succession to the principate, planned to marry Germanicus’ sister, (Claudia) Livia Julia, widow of Gaius Caesar and of Drusus Julius Caesar, and also mother of the very young Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of the emperor, in order to aspire to a sort of regency. The praetorian prefect, however, underestimated Antonia the Younger, mother of Livia Julia, and widow of Drusus the Elder, brother of Tiberius. Antonia had her brother-​in-​law Tiberius deliver a letter in which she explicitly accused Seianus of laying claim to the power. The intervention of Antonia marked the end of Seianus, who was sentenced to death in 31 CE, and of Livia Julia, who died shortly after. In this case, Tacitus commented perceptively: he described the scheme of Seianus to pretend to be in love with Livia Julia and so led her to have a sexual relationship with him (Ann. 4.3). In this way, she would have lost her virtue and, consequently, any inhibitory brakes. Tacitus accused Livia Julia, driven by her desire for power, of having killed her husband to please Seianus, “hoping that they could then get married and reign together.” Thus, in Tacitus’ view, Livia Julia, granddaughter of Augustus, daughter-​in-​law of Tiberius, mother of the children of Drusus Julius Caesar, betrayed herself and her noble origins by loving a non-​noble man and by succumbing to the dark fascination of murder. We do not know whether Livia Julia really killed her husband or not. His death would certainly have weakened her position at court. Apicata, whom Seianus divorced in 23 CE, accused Seianus and Livia Julia of having poisoned Drusus Julius Caesar. Tacitus (Ann. 4.11.2) asserted that proofs of this charge would have been found in the confessions (extorted under torture) of a doctor and of the eunuch Ligido. Sentencing Livia Julia to death could suggest her actual participation in the “conspiracy of Seianus.” However, we must stress Tacitus’ disdain for a noble 402

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woman who linked herself to a man of non-​noble origins, even if he was the praetorian prefect; Tacitus considered it an unnatural marriage from which only monsters could be born.13 After the fall of Seianus, only two Iulii could aspire to the succession: Caligula, the surviving son of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder who was raised by his grandmother Antonia the Younger, and Tiberius Gemellus, son of Drusus Julius Caesar and Livia Julia. Tiberius elected them co-​heirs, but Caligula, thanks to his parents, had the support of both the army and the plebs. Tiberius also had to choose the husbands for the two daughters of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, Julia Drusilla and Julia Livilla, since the age of both girls did not permit further delays. The selected husbands were, respectively, Lucius Cassius Longinus (and, later, as indicated by Caligula, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus) and Marcus Vinicius (Tac. Ann. 6.15.1). Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 32 CE, son of Antonia the Elder, had been chosen five years before for the elder daughter, Agrippina the Younger. At the death of Tiberius in 37 CE, the senate elected as emperor Caligula, who was strongly supported by the praetorian prefect Macro.14 The short reign of Caligula was marked by the role played at court by women. Antonia the Younger died in May 37 CE. Despite sources suggesting an increasing conflict between grandmother and granddaughter (Suet. Cal. 23.2; Dio 59.3.6), the death of the old matron deprived Caligula of an important point of reference, as well as her huge clientele and influential friendships.15 In 37 CE Caligula entombed the ashes of his mother Agrippina the Elder in Augustus’ mausoleum, which had been built by the founder of the empire near the Ara Pacis. The inscription on the cremains vessel containing her ashes commemorated her as the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, granddaughter of the divine Augustus, wife of Germanicus Caesar, and mother of prince Caius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.16 Suetonius’ biography of Caligula focused on his sexual life:  marriages, adulteries, homosexuality, and incest. Caligula, clearly in search of an heir, had four wives who were barely more than bit players on the contemporary political scene. Junia Claudilla died in childbirth before 37 CE.17 His marriage to Cornelia Orestilla lasted only few months, perhaps because she did not get pregnant.18 In line with his attempt to give the Roman government a strong theocratic aspect, on the model of the Hellenistic monarchies, and, at the same time, to utilize the genetic Julian inheritance of the domus Augusta, between 37 and 38 CE Caligula granted special honors to his sisters (in the formulae of oaths and in coinage productions; Suet. Cal. 15.3).19 According to Suetonius (Cal. 24.3), Caligula had strong ties to Drusilla who was deified post mortem (38 CE), an act which has been interpreted as a celebration of the dynasty.20 However, Suetonius himself wrote (Cal. 24.1) that Caligula had incestuous relationships with all his sisters. After Drusilla’s death, Caligula looked again at the issue of the dynastic succession and decided to marry Lollia Paulina, wife of the consul P. Memmius Regulus, who had been repudiated because of her sterility (Dio 59.23.7). Milonia Caesonia, in advanced stages of pregnancy, became the last wife of Caligula in 39 CE and gave birth to a daughter, Julia Drusilla, who in any case was proclaimed as daughter of the emperor and daughter of Jupiter, the divinity with whom the emperor identified (Dio 59.28.7). The cruel character ascribed by Suetonius (Cal. 25.4) to this poor daughter killed when she was barely one year old, derived, of course, to propaganda hostile to Caligula.21 However, the maternity of Caesonia and the increasing influence on Caligula of people who did not belong to the family coterie led to the exclusion from the succession of Agrippina the Younger and Livilla, sisters of the emperor, and of their sons. This exclusion was probably the reason for the participation of his sisters in the plot hatched by two men:  M. Aemilius Lepidus, Drusilla’s second husband, the widowed lover of Agrippina the Younger and of Livilla (according to Dio 59.22.6), and personal friend of the emperor; and Gaetulicus, governor of the province of Upper Germania. Caligula, however, thwarted the plot: Gaetulicus and Lepidus 403

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were sentenced to death, while Agrippina the Younger and Livilla were exiled after their properties were put up for auction by their brother (Suet. Cal. 39.1). In any case, according to Tacitus (Ann. 14.2.2), even in these first years Agrippina the Younger would have been driven by a real “thirst for power.” After another plot, which put together members of the senate representing the domus Augusta and courtiers, had removed Caligula, his wife Caesonia, and his daughter Drusilla in January 41 CE, Claudius, younger brother of Germanicus, took power. According to the latest scholarship, Claudius, who was far from being the lame and stuttering laughing-​ stock of the family, had always had a prominent position within the domus Augusta, even if more limited compared to that of Tiberius and Germanicus himself.22 Caligula also sent away Claudius after the discovery of the family plot, even though Claudius was neither complicit nor even aware of it.23 One of the most important elements of the propaganda of the first years of Claudius’ empire was focused on his membership of the domus Augusta. Among his first actions, there was the deification of his grandmother Livia on January 17, 42 CE, the anniversary of her wedding to Augustus;24 her marble statue was also placed in the temple dedicated to the divus Augustus (Dio 60. 5. 2). He conferred on his mother Antonia the Younger the title of Augusta.25 In fact, Claudius continued a modified version of the policy of his predecessor Caligula, one aimed at establishing the high position of the women of the imperial domus who were seen as key elements in the transfer of power.26 Claudius’ behavior showed that the depiction of the divine origins, character, and deification of the ruling family were an essential part of imperial self-​ representation.27 Livia was adopted by Augustus in his testament: she changed her status from wife into daughter, changing her name from Livia Drusilla to Iulia Augusta as well, a change which represented the final statement of her legitimacy in the creation and transfer of power within the domus Augusta.28

Valeria Messalina At the time he came to power in 41 CE, Claudius was married to the noble Valeria Messalina. She went down in history as the “imperial prostitute” (meretrix Augusta), thanks to the portraits that Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio painted of her. Both ancient and modern authors depict Messalina as a feminine representative of the evil tria vitia: avaritia, saevitia, and libido (“greed for money, cruelty and sexual excess”). It is highly probable that this negative portrayal was inspired by a mystifying event, one that upset Claudius’ court and led to her death, one for which we cannot currently find a sufficiently clear explanation: her adulterous marriage to Caius Silius, elected consul, “the most beautiful man in Rome” according to Tacitus.29 According to ancient sources, Messalina was a slave to erotic passion. According to the author of praetexta Octavia, doubtless the closest source in time to the events, she was pray to sexual furor. In this work, her daughter Octavia blamed Messalina who, caught up in a sort of erotic excitement, wanted to get married again, ignoring her children, her husband, and the laws, only to die at the order of her enemies (257–​269). According to Cassius Dio (60.18), Messalina was not the only woman to be perverted, she also forced other women to act as she did. The report of Juvenal (6.116–​32) is well known: at night, she left the marriage bed, wearing a blond wig, and using the street name Lycisca she sold her body in a low-​class brothel, offering free the same womb that gave birth to Britannicus. As we can see, this is a portrait that was fundamentally shaped by prejudices, and tragic events involving Claudius’ wife followed. We must not forget that, for the first time, the emperor’s wife had given birth to a boy after the emperor had come to power, a fact that at first strengthened Messalina’s position at court so much that there are Alexandrian monetary emissions celebrating her fecunditas (“fertility”), as someone who 404

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brought health to the empire. In the year 47 CE Messalina seemed to reinforce her position at court and “to rule” according to her whims while fooling the emperor (Dio. 60.14, 16.2; 27.4.2). The story could simply be a rhetorical expedient used by sources to forewarn of the disaster. The portrait of the nymphomaniac and lethal dark lady reached its paroxysmal apex in the version by Cassius Dio. Tacitus also said that Messalina was increasingly angry and cruel. We have an example of this attitude during the Ludi Saeculares organized by Claudius in 47 CE, when the plebs on the occasion of the Trojan Games applauded Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, son of Agrippina the Younger and the future emperor Nero, more warmly than Britannicus, son of Claudius and Messalina. This was the context in which she lost her head over Silius, the most beautiful man of Rome (Tac. Ann. 11.12.2) and the appointed consul in 48 CE. Tacitus, with regard to the insane love of Messalina, used the verb exardesco (“to burn”), indicating the uncontrollable woman’s libido, a word that was already adopted by ancient writers to exemplify immoral women because of their passionate nature.Tacitus constructed a scale for the vices of Messalina, according to which her uncontrollable impudicitia is stronger than her ambition for power. Tacitus stressed that the lovers were without restraint and without shame, but contemporary historians wonder whether the actions of Silius and Messalina related to adultery or to political plot. No consensus has developed. Some reject the idea of any kind of conspiracy and explain the adultery of Messalina by saying that her marriage with Claudius was unhappy, that she was madly in love with Silius, that she needed sexual pleasure, or that she used her free sexuality against the prince’s power. In my opinion, this was an attempt to transfer the imperial power from Claudius to Silius through the mediation of Messalina, as Tacitus himself affirmed, and the two conspirators intended to physically eliminate Claudius.30 They hoped that celebrating a marriage between a patrician and the Augusta might somehow legitimate this arbitrary power-​transfer, essentially a “coup.” Messalina was necessary as a carrier of the charismatic blood of Augustus (through her grandmother Antonia the Elder, daughter of Octavia). According to the plan of the conspirators, Claudius would be removed by a noble who would marry his wife and then declare himself willing to adopt Claudius’ son Britannicus (Tac. Ann. 11.26.2). Their marriage was presented as legitimate; it was celebrated in front of witnesses and, as all valid marriages, it was meant to be prolific (liberorum causa) and the wedding itself was witnessed by the people, by senators and by soldiers, the fundamental sources of imperial legitimation. If Claudius did not react and did not ask for his wife back, Silius tenet urbem (“would take over the power”) (Tac. Ann. 11.30). With the creation of the domus Augusta, the female element became an integral and essential factor in the legitimation of new imperial power: the figure of the wife of the princeps and her physical and sentimental position were increasingly linked to the structure and the symbols of the imperial power and played a very defined role in the subjects’ expectations, for example, in the practices of their religion. A fundamental role was, in fact, played by the cult of the divae, the Augustae dead and divinized, which allowed wealthy women to play a role in economical and institutional life in the cities of the Roman empire. The conspirators were sentenced to death; Messalina faced Claudius accompanied by her sons, but their pleas were useless. Tacitus (Ann. 11.37.2) asserted that Claudius, befuddled by food, wine, and sex, could have forgiven Messalina, but that his freedman Narcissus commanded soldiers to execute her, as if Claudius had given the order. We could wonder about the reasons for Messalina’s second marriage:  in my opinion this decision was due to the increasingly commanding presence of Agrippina the Younger or, more specifically, because of the parties who identified themselves with her or with Messalina. Scholars stress that from the beginning of Claudius’ reign, Messalina took care to secure the succession to her son Britannicus.31 405

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Since at first Claudius seemed to consider Britannicus to be his heir,32 something must have happened that led Messalina to consider that the position of her son was no longer secure. It is also likely that Claudius himself started to see in Agrippina the Younger, rather than Messalina, a possible tool to strengthen his relationship with his brother and his sister-​in-​law Agrippina the Elder, who were supported by both troops and the people of Rome, the fundamental elements in public displays of consent to a new prince. Tacitus himself (Ann. 11.37.2), while discussing the people’s affection for the young Ahenobarbus rather than for Britannicus, talked about the memory of Germanicus of which only that male descendant remained. Tacitus’ narrative (Ann. 11.26) is enlightening concerning the difficulties of Messalina: Silius pressed to take action and, obviously, to overthrow Claudius. Messalina procrastinated. Silius said that mansuram eandam Messalinae potentiam, addita securitate (“Messalina would have been always powerful, but in an even safer position”). If the position of Agrippina the Younger at court was increasingly powerful, Messalina’s choice of a new husband fell on a figure whose father had been condemned under Tiberius for having honored his friendship with Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder. Messalina underestimated Claudius’ reaction and the conspiracy was repressed.

Agrippina the Younger After the death of Messalina, sources recount that each of three freedmen of Claudius proposed a new wife for him (Tac. Ann. 12.1–​2). Narcissus proposed the wife of the previous emperor, Aelia Paetina; Lollia Paulina, already the wife of Caligula, was supported by Callisto; and Agrippina the Younger, the one who would actually succeed, was supported by Pallas. Pallas underlined the doubly noble origins of Agrippina the Younger (Tac. Ann. 12.25): she belonged to the Julian branch on her mother’s side (Agrippina the Elder, daughter of Julia, daughter of Augustus) and to the Claudian branch on her father’s side (Germanicus, son of Drusus the Elder, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia). Furthermore, Agrippina brought with her the grandson of Germanicus, thereby allowing the reunification of the gens Iulia and of the gens Claudia, a fact that could benefit the empire. In the event, thanks to his marriage to Agrippina the Younger, Claudius controlled a woman of proven fertility and still able to produce children, a woman who could otherwise have transferred the prestigious blood of the Caesars to another domus. Assured of her marriage to Claudius (49 CE), Agrippina the Younger consolidated her position at court and realized that it was necessary to wed Nero to Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina. Tacitus commented as follows:  “Since from then on, the state was subverted, and everything obeyed a woman who, however, did not play with the fate of Rome for dissoluteness, as Messalina instead did” (Ann. 12.7.3). Tacitus characterized the actions of Agrippina the Younger, a prototype of the woman with mainly masculine traits, as suiting the austere and fair-​minded behavior typical of ancient matronly virtues: She behaved severely, as if she was a man; in public she was austere and increasingly proud, at home she did not indulge in any dissoluteness, unless it was useful for her power. She explained her wild desire for richness with the excuse of taking care of the state resources. (Tac. Ann. 12.7.3) On February 25, 50 CE, Claudius adopted the son of Agrippina the Younger, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who took the name of Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar, or also Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus.33 In this way, legally Nero became a member of Claudius’ 406

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family, including patrimonial rights. On this occasion, as wife of the emperor and as mother of the adopted son of the emperor, Agrippina the Younger was granted the title of Augusta (Tac. Ann. 12.26). In 53 CE Nero, whose rise to power occasioned the fall of Britannicus, married Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina. Claudius died on October 13, 54 CE.34 Ancient and modern authors35 have speculated that Agrippina the Younger intentionally poisoned Claudius with a plate of mushrooms, but, in my opinion, the attribution to Agrippina of the responsibility for the death of Claudius is functional for the ancient authors, to characterize her role at court even more negatively. Agrippina the Younger arranged Nero’s succession with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burros (Tac. Ann. 12.68; Suet. Cl. 45.1). Nero was elected emperor by the praetorians, the senate ratified this military decision, and the young man was allocated full power. However, the good relationship between mother and son did not endure and her influence on Nero came to an end. Agrippina the Younger urged that Nero and Octavia have a child in order to address the problem of succession. Instead, Nero started a personally fulfilling relationship with a concubine, the freedwoman Claudia Atte, who remained faithful until his death. Nero might have considered marrying her and to this end, invented a royal ancestry for Atte as the descendant of the Attalids, the ancient sovereigns of Pergamon (Tac. Ann. 13.12). Agrippina, aware of the dynastic importance of Nero’s marriage to Octavia, opposed the relationship with Atte (Tac. Ann. 13.12) and committed the error of supporting Britannicus. Nero, tired of her oppressive protectiveness, began to isolate her: he sent Pallas away from court and eliminated the support of men who had been faithful (an effort facilitated by her boasting about her descent from Germanicus, a figure who has always been loved by both troops and people). Britannicus died of poisoning in 55 CE (Tac. Ann. 13.16). Both ancient and modern scholars agree that Britannicus was likely killed at the command of Nero.36 Britannicus’ rapid and private burial increased suspicions; Nero likely wanted to avoid turning Britannicus’ funeral into an occasion to show opposition to his power. Tacitus seemed to dramatize the deaths by (assumed) poisoning of Claudius (by Agrippina the Younger) and of Britannicus (by Nero), suggesting that the son exceeded his mother in terms of atrocity. The end result could only be matricide (Tac. Ann. 13.16). From 55 CE to 59 CE, Agrippina the Younger was expelled from Rome by the will of Nero.37 However, in March 59 CE, he decided to have her killed. Why did Nero decide to commit such an extreme crime? Suetonius (Nero 34) claims that he had already tried to poison her three times, but Agrippina the Younger had been cleverer than he. According to Tacitus (Ann. 13.45), the final conflict between mother and son was caused once again by a woman, Poppaea Sabina, wife of Salvius Otho, the future emperor. Tacitus’ description of Poppaea Sabina corresponded to the usual Roman political cliché: noble, beautiful, rich, but dishonest and immoral. Agrippina the Younger feared the relationship between Nero and Poppaea and Poppaea herself realized that Agrippina the Younger could represent an obstacle to her wedding plans with the emperor. Tacitus (Ann. 14.2) even told of incest between mother and son, at the wish of one or the other, prompted by the usual “thirst for power” (Tac. Ann. 14.2.2: spe dominationis).The freedman Anicetus, commander of the fleet in Cape Miseno, organized a shipwreck, but Agrippina the Younger managed to swim away (Tac. Ann. 14.3–​69; Suet. Nero 34). People showed her their support and their joy at her narrow escape. Nero now sent Anicetus to kill her once and for all. There are reports about the courage that Agrippina the Younger showed her assassins: ventrem feri, strike my belly, she supposedly said to the man was about to stab her (Tac. Ann. 14.8) in a narration with a “movie” sequence.38 It is clear that this lurid narrative was the rhetorical expedient used by sources to condemn the atrocity of the matricide. The “monster” Agrippina the Younger, the woman who went beyond the limits of the ideal femininity, gave birth to the “monster” Nero who committed the most abominable murder, matricide, second only to 407

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patricide.Tacitus for the first time employed the adjective atrox (“fierce”) to describe a historical woman, not a mythological queen.

Conclusions Women who belonged to the Julio-​Claudian domus had only indirect influence on political matters, and always through male mediation. Furthermore, their aims concerned the long-​ established roles for a woman inside any domus: those of a daughter, of a wife, and above all of a mother. The words that Tacitus (Ann. 12.65) attributed to the freedman Narcissus were emblematic: Agrippina the Younger was the cause of maius flagitium, “total disgrace;” she was even harbinger of disasters and worse than the impudicitia of Valeria Messalina, also because as a bad stepmother, she plotted to extinguish the direct ancestry of Claudius. The final image provided no security: decus, pudorem, corpus, cuncta regno viliora habere, for Agrippina the Younger, “absolute power was worth more than anything, honor and decorum, decency, her own body” (Tac. Ann. 12.65.2). Tacitus’ portrait of Agrippina the Younger traced the motivation of her actions to the sphere of passions, but at other times to more rational concerns. According to Tacitus, Agrippina the Younger had a double personality. She was a woman behaving like a man (virago), who therefore had a volatile and contradictory personality, exemplified by the famous expression: Agrippina, quae filio dare imperium, tollerare imperante nequibat (Tac. Ann. 12.64.3), “she wanted to grant power to her son, but she could not bear him at the power.” The analysis of literary and documentary sources related to Agrippina the Younger does not allow us to know the real story, but only to recognize the ways in which her image was manipulated.39 The deification of Augustus introduced a new element into the dynamic of the aristocratic Roman marriage. In addition to the republican model, which was focused on the continuation of the family heritage and on the alliances with important political factions, generated by arranged marriages, now having the blood of Augustus, who was seen as a divinity, played an essential role in the legitimation of the imperial power itself.40 Furthermore, the Augustae could have an important and functional role with regard to the propaganda of the imperial regime, as it was testified by the several portraits and inscriptions in their honor by all components of Roman society and in all places of the empire: the presence of the Augustae, attested by the media, could play a positive role for the welfare of the citizens of the empire.

Notes 1 Most recently, see Arena and Marcone 2018. 2 Arena and Marcone 2018: 90–​91. 3 Lamberti 2017. 4 Rohr Vio 2011: 77–​100. 5 There is a distinction in Ovid’s lexicon between the voluntary guilt (scelus) and the involuntary, however fatal, mistake (error): Salvo and Colpo 2018. 6 See Lazzeretti 2000. 7 Kienast, Eck, and Heil 2017: 76. 8 Et coniunx Germanici Agrippina fecunditate ac fama Liviam, uxorem Drusi, praecellebat:  “and Germanicus’ wife, Agrippina, exceeded Livia wife of Drusus as far as fecundity and good name were concerned.” 9 Cenerini 2009a. 10 Cristofoli 2018: 3. 11 This term appears for the first time in an official paper in AD 19 on the public honors that were to be granted to Germanicus, the so-​called Tabula Siariensis (EDCS, 4550003). 12 Shotter 2000.

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Julio-Claudian imperial women 13 Cenerini 2016a: 124–​30. 14 Cristofoli 2018: 88–​92. 15 Cristofoli 2018: 99. 16 CIL VI  886. 17 Raepsaet-​Charlier 1987: 402. 18 Cristofoli 2018: 107. 19 RIC I2, 33. 20 Herz 1981. 21 Cristofoli 2018: 119. 22 Hurlet 1997. 23 Cristofoli 2018: 161. 24 Kienast, Eck and Heil 2017: 60. 25 Kienast, Eck and Hail 2017: 62. 26 Cenerini 2009b: 51–​3. 27 Flory 1995. 28 Cenerini 2014. 29 See Cenerini 2010. 30 For a deeper analysis, please refer to Cenerini 2010. 31 Cogitore 2002. 32 Wood 1992. 33 Kienast, Eck and Heil 2017: 88. 34 Ibid.: 82. 35 Buongiorno 2017: 230–​2. 36 So Champlin 2005: 111. 37 We know nothing about her in this period: Eck 2002: 155. 38 Champlin 2005: 329. 39 Ginsburg 2005: 245. 40 Cenerini 2016b.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). EDCS  Epigraphik-​Datenbank Clauss, M. et al. (eds). http://​db.edcs.eu/​epigr/​epi_​einzel.php?s_​sprache= en&p_​belegstelle=CIL%2013,%2000456 (accessed June 30, 2020).

Bibliography Arena, P. and Marcone, A. 2018. Augustus e la creazione del principato. Milan. Buongiorno, P. 2017. Claudio. Il principe inatteso. Palermo. Cenerini, F. 2009a. La donna romana. Modelli e realtà. Bologna. Cenerini, F. 2009b. Dive e donne. Mogli, madri, figlie e sorelle degli imperatori romani da Augustus a Commodo. Imola. Cenerini, F. 2010. “Messalina e il suo matrimonio con C. Silius.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae: Machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof. Berlin, 179–​91. Cenerini, F. 2014. “L’adozione in età romana.” In M. Garbellotti, M.C. Rossi, and M. Pellegrini (eds.), Figli d’elezione. Adozione e affidamento dall’età antica all’età moderna. Rome, 69–​84. Cenerini, F. 2016a. “Il matrimonio con un’Augusta: forma di legittimazione?” In A. Bielman Sánchez, I. Cogitore, and A. Kolb (eds.), Femmes influentes dans le monde hellénistique et à Rome, IIIe siècle avant J.-​C. –​ Ier siècle après J.-​C. Grenoble, 119–​42. Cenerini, F. 2016b. “Le matronae diventano Augustae:  un nuovo profilo femminile.” In F. Cenerini and F. Rohr Vio (eds.), Matronae in domo et in re publica agentes. Spazi e occasioni dell’azione femminile nel mondo romano tra tarda repubblica e primo impero. Trieste,  23–​49. Champlin, E. 2005. Nero. Rome-​Bari. Cogitore I. 2002. La légitimité dynastique d’Auguste à Néron à l’épreuve des conspirations. Rome.

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Francesca Cenerini Cristofoli, R. 2018. Caligula. Una breve vita nella competizione politica (anni 12–​41 d.C.). Milan. Eck, W. 2002. “Die iulisch-​ claudische Familie:  Frauen neben Caligula, Claudius und Nero.” In H. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms von Livia bis Theodora. Munich, 103–​63. Flory, M.B. 1995. “The Deification of Roman Women.” The Ancient History Bulletin 9: 127–​34. Ginsburg, J. 2005. Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire. Oxford. Herz, P. 1981. “Diva Drusilla. Aegyptisches und Römisches im Herrscherkult zur Zeit Caligulas.” Historia 30: 324–​36. Hurlet, F. 1997. “La Domus Augusta et Claude à son avènement, la place du prince claudien dans l’image urbaine et les strategies matrimoniales.” Revue des Études Anciennes 99: 535–​59. Kienast, D., Eck, W., and Heil, M. 2017. Romische Kaisertabelle: Gründzuge einer römischen Kaiserchronologie. Darmstadt. Lamberti, F. 2017. “Convivenze e unioni di fatto nell’esperienza romana:  l’esempio del concubinato.” Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité 64: 5–​24. Lazzeretti, A. 2000. “Riflessioni sull’opera autobiografica di Agrippina the Younger.” In Género, dominación y conflicto: la mujer en el mundo antiguo, Studia Historica. Historia antigua 18. Salamanca, 177–​90. Raepsaet-​Charlier, M.-​T. 1987. Prosopographie de femmes de l’ordre sénatorial (Ier-​IIe siècles), vols. I-​II. Leuven. Rohr Vio, F. 2011. Contro il principe. Congiure e dissenso nella Roma di Augustus. Bologna. Salvo, G. and Colpo, I. 2018. “Errore o colpa? Gli ‘indistinti confine’.” In F. Ghedini (ed.), Ovid, amori, miti e alter storie. Napoli: 73–​9. Shotter, D.C.A. 2000. “Agrippina the Elder: A Woman in a Man’s World.” Historia 49: 341–​57. Wood, E. 1992. “Messalina, Wife of Claudius: Propaganda Successes and Failure of his Reign.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 5: 219–​34.

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34 THE IMPERIAL WOMEN FROM THE FLAVIANS TO THE SEVERI Kordula Schnegg

Introduction This chapter looks at general issues concerning the place of women in the imperial milieu from the period of the Flavians until the Severi.1 To that end, its focus is directed toward social conditions and political networks; these indicate both the positions of women and their relationships to men in this milieu. Based on individual cases, this article pursues the importance of women as connecting links for political alliances (marriages), for dynastic hierarchies (the role of sisters, mothers, and wives) and for the representation of rule. Completing the analysis are considerations of possible autonomous political actions by individual female protagonists. The following section analyzes how the conditions of rule functioned through power relationships into which both men and women were integrated. These power relationships were arranged, among other things, by social status, gender relationships, and gender hierarchies. Employing such a perspective enables analysis of women in the imperial milieu not only as instruments of male domination but also as participants who shared in power. They had high social prestige and were of central importance for legitimizing the ruling order. Thus, the main focus is on examining how family relationships and social and political networks were put together to benefit the elite’s political ambitions.

Lucilla and Lucius Verus: a question of benefits The Historia Augusta provides information about the bridal procession of the approximately 14-​year old Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla, who is about to be married to the considerably older Lucius Verus in Ephesos.2 In the Life of Marcus Aurelius we read the following: In the midst of this war he entrusted his daughter, who was about to be married and had already received her dowry, to the care of his sister, and, accompanying them himself as far as Brundisium, sent them to Verus together with the latterʼs uncle, Civica. Immediately thereafter he returned to Rome […]. (SHA Aurel. 9.4–​5)3

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And we learn from the Life of Lucius Verus: Finally, however, at the insistence of his staff he set out for the Euphrates, but soon, in order to receive his wife Lucilla, who had been sent thither by her father Marcus, he returned to Ephesus, going there chiefly in order that Marcus might not come to Syria with her and discover his evil deeds. (SHA Verus  7.7)4 The marriage was preceded by a three-​year engagement, which was celebrated in 161 CE,5 immediately following Marcus Aurelius’ elevation to Augustus and the appointment of his adopted brother Lucius Verus as co-​emperor.6 The 11-​year-​old Lucilla, the eldest living daughter of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina Minor, was engaged to Lucius Verus in order to strengthen the alliance between the emperors.7 The bond was preceded by the political calculation of securing the position of the bride’s father as well as her future husband. After all, the bridegroom was no stranger to the bride. He had lived in Marcus Aurelius’ family surroundings as an adopted brother and to a certain extent had taken on the role of Lucilla’s uncle. When Lucius Verus married her, he was 31 years old. Lucilla and Lucius Verus’ wedding did not take place in Rome. This is because Lucius Verus was sojourning at the time in Antiocheia (Syria), at the front in the war against Parthia. Lucilla was therefore sent to him.The bridal couple were to meet in Ephesos and hold the wedding there. The young girl had to embark on a long journey. She did this without much family support because her mother had just given birth to twins and was recuperating in Rome.8 Lucillaʼs father accompanied her as far as Brundisium; from there Lucilla proceeded by ship with her entourage to Ephesos. Looking at the conditions of rule at the time of the Antonines, a question arises as to how this matrimonial arrangement between Lucilla and Lucius Verus benefited the persons involved. According to the Historia Augusta, the engagement was one of several favors Marcus Aurelius did for Lucius Verus.9 Lucius Verus was first elevated to the position of co-​emperor and thereafter he received the name Verus, which was a way of admitting him genealogically into Marcus Aurelius’ family.10 The engagement and the subsequent marriage positioned Lucius Verus, now son-​in-​law, in Marcus Aurelius’ core family. The political and family relationships generated between Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, however, were not at all egalitarian. They were arranged hierarchically, with Marcus Aurelius in a dominant position. Marcus Aurelius gained a co-​emperor who was obliged to him through family ties of loyalty and who was of use especially in military matters. Lucius Verus was a competent army officer, who could be deployed in crisis regions. For Marcus Aurelius this last point was important, because he probably did not see himself as a man of war. Thus Cassius Dio summed up Lucius Verus as “a vigorous man of younger years and better suited for military enterprises” who could be sent into the war against Parthia.11 Finally, the marriage opened up the possibility of an additional natural heir to the throne, one with high social prestige at that.12 Such an advantage was certainly important since child mortality in the imperial family was very high. Indeed, Marcus Aurelius and his wife had to bury many of their children.13 Marcus Aurelius recorded in his Meditations that one’s own children not only served to stabilize the rule but also to guarantee the continuation of one’s own family.14 The marriage conferred benefits on Lucius Verus as well. He could stake out his own field of action in the East of the empire, far from Rome and from emperor Marcus Aurelius. His marriage to Lucilla made him a close family relation of the emperor and offered him maximum security as co-​emperor. Indeed, in terms of power relationships during Marcus Aurelius’ 412

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lifetime, Lucius Verus could not have obtained more. As regards the emotional bonds between the couple, the sources leave no clues.They do make clear, however, that Lucius Verus continued to maintain an intimate relationship with his mistress Panthea probably until his death.15 But this need not mean that as a social and political alliance the marriage did not function. After all, Lucius Verus died at the age of 39, in CE 169, so the marriage lasted only a few years, and therefore the possibilities for analyzing the relationship between the spouses are limited. Lucilla’s role as a link between Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus was important. As the daughter of the Roman emperor, she held a top social position, which was then further elevated by the marriage.16 She herself was soon bestowed the honorary title Augusta—​a special tribute, as explained below (see p. 415).17 The marriage stabilized Lucilla’s top position in the imperial family, especially after she bore legitimate offspring. Lucilla as well as Lucius Verus functioned as essential pillars of a ruling strategy which served the political positioning of the higher-​ranking Augustus and the continuation of Marcus Aurelius’ lineage. However, Lucilla and Lucius Verus were probably aware of their functions, their positions, and thereby the limitations on their actions. Both appear to have been loyal to Marcus Aurelius, for the primary sources do not suggest anything to the contrary. That Marcus Aurelius made marital alliances with the goal of further securing his rule is also evident in Lucilla’s second marriage. Marcus Aurelius chose Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, a competent army officer who was also a loyal subordinate, as the husband for the too soon widowed Lucilla. This arrangement was extremely useful to Marcus Aurelius. The marital alliance is said to have been concluded without the consent of either Marcus Aurelius’ wife or his daughter; it seems that Lucilla married Pompeianus against her will and remained his wife for the rest of her life.18

Succession and a lack of sons The example of Lucilla’s marriage provides insight into a specific case and yet also points more generally to aspects of the exercise of power, of legitimacy, and of stabilization of rule as they were accounted for during the period between the Flavians and the Severi. Altogether the phase of the principate is distinguished by attempts to establish an inheritance, even though there was no institutional anchoring in the res publica for this purpose, and to put order into the dynastic hierarchical structure, although male heirs were few and far between. Augustus had already addressed these challenges. He did not have a natural son. But, through adoption of sons and through marriage alliances, for which he used female relatives, he was able to stabilize the imperial family for several generations.19 Both strategies were pursued also in the time from the Flavians to the Severi, used as required. During Flavian rule (69 to 96 CE), a mere two generations, succession was “natural” and passed from the father, Vespasian, to his two sons, Titus and Domitian.20 Titus’ daughter, Julia, died early, without descendants, in her uncle Domitian’s reign.21 With the death of Domitian, who left no natural son behind, the rule of the Flavian lineage ended. Following his assassination and damnatio memoriae, new political arrangements had to be forged. The period from Nerva to Antonine Pius (96 to 161) is marked by the political program of appointing the best man (optimus) to become the succeeding princeps. To this end, adoption by the incumbent princeps served to bring the successor into a family relationship. Nevertheless, for this phase of the principate too, the endeavor to establish the rule dynastically via natural children is visible, as it was for the Julio-​Claudians.Yet it is to be emphasized that precisely the principes from 96 to 192 suffered from a dearth of natural sons who could have succeeded as rulers. Only with Commodus (appointed princeps in 182) did a natural son once again succeed his father as 413

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ruler. Female heirs were therefore key in making sure that one’s own family was the starting point of the dynastic order. They were deployed deliberately in order to regulate and legitimize the ruling succession. This occurred in various ways, as the following illustrates.

Marriage policy and dynastic order The strategy of binding persons to the emperor via marriages to further secure the rule can clearly be seen in the connection between Lucilla and Lucius Verus. This form of political alliance was characteristic of the Nerva-​Antonine period. Two additional cases exemplify it. According to the sources, emperor Trajan was happily married to Pompeia Plotina. They had no children, however. Nevertheless,Trajan was able to regulate the succession within the Ulpian family, because his sister, Ulpia Marciana, had a daughter and granddaughters who could be employed for political marriages. Thus Trajan’s great-​niece Vibia Sabina was engaged to his chosen successor Hadrian, whom she later married. What tied this successor even more firmly to the Ulpian family was that Hadrian himself was distantly related to Trajan, had been raised under Trajanʼs guardianship, and had an obviously close relationship to Pompeia Plotina. The sources relate that Pompeia Plotina supervised Hadrian’s education and that she had a hand in organizing his adoption by Trajan and also his wedding to Vibia Sabina.22 Trajan’s second great-​niece, Mindia Matidia, assumed an important role as well. Although she had no children, she was affluent and acted as a rich aunt, for example, for Faustina Minor (the daughter of Antoninus Pius). The marriage between Hadrian and Vibia Sabina, which in the ancient sources is described as unhappy, remained childless.23 In contrast to Trajan, Hadrian did not set store by the progeny of his sister Domitia Paulina. Instead, he took care early on to find a successor via adoption. For his part, Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s successor, employed his daughter Faustina Minor in order to tie his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius, even more closely to his family. The importance of Faustina Minor for the succession may be recognized by the fact that her engagement to Lucius Verus (made during Hadrian’s lifetime, around 168) was broken off by Antoninus Pius in order to marry her to Marcus Aurelius, his preferred successor.24 Faustina Minor was about 15 years old when she married Marcus Aurelius. She bore her husband and the imperial family more than ten children, but few of them survived. Antonius Pius placed enormous importance on Faustina Minor’s first child, as the fact that, after she had given birth, Faustina Minor was awarded the honorary title “Augusta,” demonstrates.25 This female child was of political importance, even though she could not take up the position of a princeps. After all, daughters could be employed for political alliances in case sons were lacking. Antonius Pius pursued this strategy himself. Of his four children, two of whom were sons, only Faustina Minor reached adulthood. The fact that Faustina’s elevation to Augusta happened at a moment when her husband still held the position of a Caesar (an emperor-​in-​waiting) is remarkable in the light of power politics. Faustina Minor’s many pregnancies led to her fecundity being emphasized on coins.26 Eventually, a natural son of an emperor, Commodus son of Marcus Aurelius, survived and could be trained as successor, which must have satisfied the emperor. Of course the imperial house could not have foreseen that Commodus’ reign would mark the end of the Antonines. The close web of relationships within an imperial family is remarkable in the case of Faustina Minor. Several aspects of these relationships are worthy of further discussion. Faustina Minor was the daughter of Antoninus Pius and Faustina Major. She was the adoptive sister of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. All three grew up in the household of Antoninus Pius. Faustina Minor was originally engaged to Lucius Verus, but she eventually married Marcus Aurelius, to whom she bore, above all, Lucilla, who was married off to Lucius Verus. Faustina Minor, the 414

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adoptive sister and once a fiancée of Lucius Verus, would eventually become his mother-​in-​law. What is not handed down from the sources is how each individual coped with these changing relationships.

Imperial women’s honors as part of political communication Imperial women could be given various honors, for example, being awarded the title “Augusta,” being deified, or having cities named after them.27 In each case the women were honored in a special way: as members of the imperial family. These honors shone a light on the individuals as well as simultaneously increasing the prestige of the imperial family. They were also used for political benefit. Between 69 and 193, numerous women in the close imperial milieu were bestowed the honorary title “Augusta,” which required a senatus consultum. In this way, a practice was established to bestow the title during one’s lifetime.28 It was given to wives or daughters, for example, when their husbands or fathers were named emperor (e.g., Faustina Major, Iulia Titi).29 The senate bestowed it on daughters, wives, or mothers-​in-​law after a wedding (e.g., Salonia Matidia,Vibia Sabina, Lucilla) or after the birth of a child (e.g., Faustina Minor). Pompeia Plotina and her sister-​in-​law Ulpiana Marciana were given the title Augusta at the same time that Trajan received the title pater patriae. The title Augusta was bestowed not only on wives, but also on sisters such as Ulpiana Marciana and probably also Domitilla Minor, on daughters such as Faustina Minor or Lucilla, and on mothers-​in-​law such as Salonia Matidia. Flavia Domitilla, the mother of Titus and Domitian, was titled Augusta upon her death; this occurred during Titus’ rule. During Domitian’s rule, Domitilla, by contrast, was deified. In this way not only was honor bestowed to the deceased, but the honor directly reflected on the ruler Domitian, since he was now the child of a deified mother. Thus, the deceased Domitilla served to represent and legitimize the ruling order. The honorary title Augusta was directly connected to the esteem that the Senate accorded the princeps. Should a princeps be subject to a damnatio memoriae, the honorary title was revoked, which is what happened to Domitia Longina, Domitian’s wife. To be clear: the title Augusta did not indicate a political office nor was there any political authority connected to it. Rather, the title generated an association with Augustus, the first princeps of the res publica, and his wife Livia, who received the title in his will.30 This title and its bestowal thus served to legitimize the ruling order. Another honorary title for imperial women was added during the era of Marcus Aurelius’ rule: namely, the title mater castrorum (“Mother of the Camp”).This honor is attested for the first time for Faustina Minor; the army proclaimed it.31 It therefore denoted a special connection of wife of the emperor with the army, which was subordinate to the emperor. In fact, Faustina Minor accompanied her husband on his campaigns and her presence was, at least occasionally, perceptible to the soldiers. Earlier wives had traveled with their husbands on campaign: Pompeia Plotina (wife of Trajan), Vibia Sabina (wife of Hadrian), and Lucilla (wife of Lucius Verus). Yet these women received no honorary title. The title mater castrorum was awarded selectively. The emperors named are mainly the militarily active emperors of the end of the second century and of the third century who took advantage of the special significance of the title. Septimius Severus, for instance, let his wife, Julia Domna, receive the title (195/​196); the soldier emperors also resorted to this honorary title for female members of their family.32 A further honor for women of the imperial dynasty was their divinization after death. For this, too, a senatus consultum as well as a public act of consecration, the consecratio, were required. By the time of the Julio-​Claudian dynasty, a public cult was established along with the divinization.33 During the Flavian dynasty, Flavia Domitilla and Julia, Titus’ daughter, were 415

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divinized.34 During the Nerva-​Antonine dynasty, Ulpia Marciana, Pompeia Plotina, Salonia Matidia,Vibia Sabina, Faustina Major, and Faustina Minor were all divinized.35 In addition, representation of imperial rule now took on a female dimension. From the Nerva-​Antonine dynasty on, women of the imperial dynasty served as leading figures for political programs and thus became part of the dynastic and imperial publicity, as it were. The ruling order’s representation no longer concentrated only on the emperor: his wife and family were also important. The political programs of the coinage illustrate this new dimension particularly well. Trajan, for example, for the representation of his rule, had recourse to his wife and sister, because the image of the entire imperial family could be projected through these two women:36 his wife symbolized modesty and his sister represented fertility.37 The fertility of Faustina Minor was rendered in coinage in a similar fashion.38 Yet another phenomenon during this principate is noteworthy. According to the political program, the emperor’s wife was increasingly tied to her function as child-​bearer and mother. For example, the Augustae were more and more identified with fertility goddesses or else had alimentary charities named after them.39 These incarnations of femininity are parts of a political communication which not only addressed the family’s continuation and the dynasty’s stabilization, but also related to the growth of the empire’s population, something for which the emperor and his wife bore a shared responsibility.40 The naming of a city after a woman probably also belonged to the types of honors bestowed on women in the imperial milieu. This was already the case during the Julio-​Claudian dynasty. Emperor Claudius named the Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippensium after his wife. Trajan had a city founded in Numidia named after his sister, namely Colonia Marciana Traiana Thamugadi.41 Later, two cities in Danubia were named after women who were key for the ruling order’s program: Plotinopolis and Marcianopolis.42 And when Faustina Minor died during the campaign in Syria in 175–​176, Marcus Aurelius renamed a village in Kappadokia in his wife’s honor, namely Faustinopolis.43

Autonomous actions and political networks Occasionally, ancient sources discuss women in the imperial milieu who acted autonomously in the political field. Domitia Longina, Emperor Domitian’s wife, is an example. Domitia Longina came from a politically influential family. Her father was the successful general and senator Cn. Domitius Corbulo.44 Her first marriage was to an equally successful politician, L. Aelius Lamia Plautius (consul suffect in the year 80). The marriage apparently happened prior to 69 and the couple had a daughter, Plautila.45 Shortly thereafter Domitian seems to have become aware of Domitia Longina. Cassius Dio reports that Domitian “removed” Domitia Longina “from her husband and made her one of his own mistresses.”46 Her divorce from L. Aelius Lamia Plautius was brought about to open the way for Domitian to marry her. Later on, Domitian had Lamia executed. Suetonius insinuates that Domitian could no longer bear Lamia’s mocking of Domitian for robbing him of his wife.47 The actual relationship between Domitia Longina and Domitian is difficult to assess. Indications regarding Domitia Longina are incorporated into a literary discourse that predominantly characterizes Domitian negatively (e.g. as sexually excessive and addicted to domination and control) and insinuates that he was heavily dependent on Domitia Longina.48 In the context of these records, Domitia Longina’s own views and agency regarding certain acts (for instance, her divorce from Lamia—​who never remarried—​or her marriage to Domitian) remain unclear. That she bore the princeps children, all of whom died young, does not answer the question of whether it was a consensual marriage; it merely points to the fulfillment of her duties as 416

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wife. Both Domitian and Domitia Longina had extramarital affairs, according to Suetonius and Cassius Dio.49 Domitian, upon finding out about Domitia Longina’s sexual contact with an actor, for example, is said to have repudiated her at first, only to take her back into his household shortly thereafter.50 According to the ancient sources, he did this out of love. Recent studies suggest, however, that it was out of political calculation. Whether Domitia Longina participated in the murder of Domitian is uncertain. According to Cassius Dio, she had good reasons to do it.51 She herself had survived Domitian’s proscription and assassination.52 After Domitian’s damnatio memoriae, she simply had to relinquish the honorary title “Augusta,” which she had received at the start of his reign in 81.53 Looked at from the perspective of Domitia Longina’s milieu, her possible involvement in her spouse’s assassination can (also) be interpreted as being politically motivated, not simply inspired by personal feelings. She came from an influential senatorial family, and her first husband was a senator.54 Her father Corbulo, who enjoyed much popularity in the army, died ingloriously during Nero’s rule. He fell from Nero’s graces and was driven to suicide. The sources do not clarify whether Nero feared Corbulo’s power or whether he could prove that Corbulo was directly involved in the Pisonian conspiracy. In any case, Corbulo’s family became suspect. Domitian selected Domitia Longina as his wife despite the rumors about her family.55 We must correlate Domitia Longina’s career with the fact that it was precisely during Domitian’s rule that the senatorial aristocracy became ever more powerful in their opposition to the emperor’s policies. By virtue of the family of her birth and of her first marriage, she was part of the political milieu of this senate aristocracy.56 Domitian’s revocation of her repudiation may signify that Domitian could simply not afford politically to cast out Domitia Longina, esteemed as she was by the senate and the plebs urbana.57 Domitiaʼs prestige survived the murder and the damnatio memoriae of Domitian, as coinage and portraits illustrate.58 Autonomous action by an imperial woman did not necessarily mean acting against the ruler’s and/​or husband’s policies, as the next example illustrates. Pompeia Plotina, Emperor Trajan’s wife, clearly came from an influential and affluent family.59 “She was rich, educated and had extensive family and friends’ connections as well […].”60 She was already married to Trajan when he was adopted by Nerva in CE 97. The literary sources paint a picture in which Plotina decisively contributed to Hadrian becoming Trajan’s successor, although they also discuss the controversy about whether there was an adoption and whether Plotina had pursued it.61 Furthermore, it is reported that Plotina had advocated for the marriage between Hadrian and Vibia Sabina.62 Trajan’s guardianship of his distant relative Hadrian led, at any rate, to a close relationship between Hadrian and Plotina, which continued even after her husband’s death.63 Plotina’s continued presence in the imperial household after Trajan’s death indicates her ties not only to Hadrian but also to Vibia Sabina (Hadrian’s wife and Trajan’s great-​niece) and Salonia Matidia (Hadrian’s mother-​in-​law and Trajan’s niece). Perhaps the closeness in this family implies less about the emotional bonds among the protagonists than about their political networks, which, after all, were shaped actively by women. From the beginning of her husband’s reign, Plotina had to share the public role and the social prestige with her sister-​in-​law Ulpia Marciana, as well as with the latter’s daughters and granddaughters.64 If anything at all is written about the relationship among the imperial women around Trajan then what is emphasized is the concord among these women.65 Seen from the literary tradition, another specific feature stands out: Pompeia Plotina was presented more often and also more actively than Ulpiana Marciana. However, in the representation of Trajan’s rule, both women assume a central role, each with clearly defined competencies.66 417

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Concern for a secure future for themselves and for their family may have also induced Faustina Minor as well as Lucilla to enter into a connection with the successful army officer Avidius Cassius, in two phases.67 The first phase relates to Lucilla’s second marriage. According to the Historia Augusta, Avidius Cassius was a favorite of Lucilla and Faustina Minor.68 This successful army officer and deputy commander for Lucius Verus in the Parthian war, who was loyally devoted to Marcus Aurelius and who came from a respectable family, however, did not win the race to marry Lucilla. Marcus Aurelius chose Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus as his daughter’s husband. Six years later, according to the sources, Faustina Minor herself took up direct contact with Avidius Cassius.69 According to Cassius Dio, when Marcus Aurelius became seriously ill and had hardly any hope of surviving, Faustina Minor offered Avidius Cassius the position of emperor (after Marcus Aurelius’ death) and that of her spouse. Faustina Minor was clearly concerned about Marcus Aurelius’ successor. Again according to Cassius Dio, her son, Commodus, appeared too “young” and too “limited” to be emperor and she did not wish to contemplate retiring to a private life.70 Although on the one hand the historical record paints a negative image of Faustina Minor and blames her for “hoodwinking” the skillful and so far loyal Avidius Cassius so that he would revolt against Marcus Aurelius, it, on the other hand, attributes to her (unintentionally) the capacity of reflecting on the political and social repercussions caused by her husband’s death. The shift toward Avidius Cassius should thereby be judged as Faustina Minor’s strategic calculation. Finally, it should be recalled that some imperial women were quite affluent. Mindia Matidia, Trajan’s second great-​niece, for example, acted as a rich aunt to Marcus Aurelius’ children.71 Faustina Major, too, Antoninus Pius’ wife, was considered very wealthy as the owner of landed property and brickworks. Whether these women could freely dispose of their finances or not is a matter of scholarly debate.72

Conclusions: imperial women and patriarchal power The principate was a ruling structure with patriarchal features. The patriarchal organization of the citizens’ community, which was noticeable during the Roman republic, lived on in the principate. At its pinnacle stood a chosen man. He was the princeps and the optimus of the elite and therefore entitled to stand at the top of the res publica. As in the time of the republic, when the nobility tried to advance their own familia and gens into the future, so too was this practice continued during the imperial era, except that now their endeavors had repercussions for the entire Roman empire. Women played an important role in the dynastic bonds during the era of the Ulpian and Antonine dynasties.73 This central importance of women for the rule’s legitimacy may firstly be explained by the political dictum that the best (optimus) had to stand at the pinnacle of the res publica. Secondly, there was a lack of male heirs. Marriage alliances became important as a result. For the connection of the chosen successor to the incumbent emperor’s family to work, successors were adopted and taken into the imperial family. A traditional Roman practice employed adoptions to secure the continuation of the ruler’s own family. Patriarchally structured power placed women, as well as men who did not act as dominus and pater familias, in a subordinate position. Nevertheless, occasional female protagonists between 69 and 193 were politically engaged, whether they were involved in actions for or against the emperor or whether they dealt with future scenarios strategically. Despite the poor availability of ancient sources, we can see women in the imperial milieu acting and participating in power politics.

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Notes 1 I thank Laurie Cohen for her help in translating the text into English. 2 Lucilla received her name from her paternal grandmother; see Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 239. 3 “medio belli tempore et Civicam, patruum Veri, et filiam suam nupturam commissam sorori suae eandemque locupletatam Brundisium usque deduxit, ad eum misit Romamque statim rediit […].” See Levick 2014: 70–​1. 4 “ad Euphratem tamen impulsum comtium suorum sequendo profectus est. Ephesum etiam rediit, ut Lucillam uxorem, missam a patre Marco, susciperet, et idcirco maxime ne Marcus cumea in Syriam veniret ac flagitia eius adnosceret. nam senatui Marcus dixerat se filiam in Syriam deducturum.” See also SHA Verus 2.4. 5 All dates in this chapter are CE. 6 SHA Aurel. 7.5–​6:  “Post excessum divi Pii a senatu coactus regimen publicum capere fratrem sibi participem in imperio designavit, quem Lucium Aurelium Verum Commodum appellavit Caesaremque atque Augustum dixit […].” Further on, we read that this was the first time that the Roman Empire had two Augusti. 7 Cass. Dio 71.12.3; SHA Aurel. 7.5–​6; Hdn. 1.8.3. 8 Levick 2014: 76–​7. 9 SHA Aurel. 7.7:  “[…] he also betrothed him to his daughter Lucilla, though legally he was his brother […].” 10 Lucius Verusʼ birth name was Lucius Ceionius Commodus. After his fatherʼs adoption by Hadrian (136), his name was Lucius Aelius Commodus. After his adoption by Antoninus Pius in 138, he was named Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus. 11 Cass. Dio 71.12.3. 12 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 240. 13 Temporini-Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 236–​9. 14 Marcus Aurelius points to a corresponding epitaph, which bemoans the “last man of his lineage” (Med. 8.37). 15 See Demandt 2018: 154–​6; Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 242. Lucian makes Panthea the main protagonist in his opus Imagines. He celebrates her as lovely, virtuous, wise, and benevolent and describes her as the companion of the emperor (Im. 10–​11). Marcus Aurelius discusses how Panthea sits by Lucius Verus’ coffin (Med. 8.37). 16 The number of portraits and coinage in honor of Lucilla demonstrate her exceptional position after her marriage to Lucius Verus. Even after the deaths of Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius she retained her imperial privileges (e.g., title Augusta) until her execution. See Varner 2001: 73. 17 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 241. 18 SHA Aurel. 20.6–​7; Hdn. 1.8.3–​8. According to SHA Comm. 4.1–​4; Cass. Dio 72.4.4; Hdn. 1.8.6–​4, Lucilla took part in a failed conspiracy against her brother and emperor Commodus. As a consequence of the failed plot she was condemned and executed. 19 Colbier 1995. 20 According to Suetonius (Vesp. 25),Vespasian told the senate that only his two sons could succeed him. 21 Suetonius (Dom. 22.3) indicates that Domitian had had a relationship with Julia and compelled her to have an abortion, which led to her death. The trustworthiness of this account should be critically scrutinized, since this story about Julia’s death is used to exemplify Domitian’s immoral lifestyle. Julia’s death was also recorded in Mart. 6.3.13, 9.1. 22 Cass. Dio 69.1.2–​4; SHA Hadr. 2.10; 4.1–​5.10. Cf. Brennan 2018: 51–​4. 23 In SHA Hadr. 11.3 and 15.2, relationships with the praefectus praetorii C. Septicius Clarus and with the writer C. Suetonius Tranquillus are alluded to. See Brennan 2018: 82–​8. But the sources also point to intimate relationships between Hadrian and Antinous (Cass. Dio 69.11.2; SHA Hadr.), see Brennan 2018: 54–​8, 115–​24. 14.5. Julia Balbilla, a Roman poet, praised the beauty of Sabina during her stay with Hadrian in Egypt. About this she inscribed four epigrams on the statue of Memnon near Thebes; see Plant 2004: 151–​3; Brennan 2018: 127–​37. 24 Barnes 1967: 77–​8 interprets Faustina’s engagement to Lucius Verus, which Hadrian had ordered in connection with the adoptions of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, as evidence that Hadrian preferred Lucius Verus as his successor over Marcus Aurelius. If the decision to designate Marcus Aurelius as successor originated from Antoninus Pius, then the family relationship of Faustina Maior, that is Antoninus Pius’ wife and Marcus Aurelius’ aunt, might offer an explanation. The classical

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Kordula Schnegg sources offer another explanation. In SHA Aurel. 6.2–​3 und SHA Verus 2.3–​4 we learn that Lucius Verus was too young to marry his coeval Faustina. 25 SHA Aurel. 6.6. See Levick 2014: 63. 26 Ameling 1992. Kolb 2010: 14–​55; That was a special privilege she had received immediately after the birth of a son. 27 Coinage, portraits, foundations offered further possibilities for honoring imperial women. 28 Kuhoff 1993; Strothmann 2002: 908; Kolb 2010: 14–​55; Brennan 2018: 6–​8. 29 For Iulia Augusta, see RIC II nos. 54–​8 and Kuhoff 1993: 246. 30 For the main significance of the title “Augustus” and its sacred and political nature, see Temporini 1978: 42–​3, Kuhoff 1993; Strothmann 2002. 31 Cass. Dio 71.10.5; SHA Aurel. 26.8. See Levick 2014: 78–​9. 32 Strothmann 2002. 33 Verifiable for the first time for Drusilla, who is reported after her death in 38 as diva Drusilla. See Edelmann-​Singer 2016: 390. 34 Castritius 2002: 177. 35 Varner 2001:  43; Temporini-​ Gräfin Vitzthum 2002:  200, 209–​ 12, 224, 230–​ 1, 252. Cf. Levick 2014: 119–​37; Brennan 2018: 175–​93. 36 The first surviving coins which depict Plotina are dated 112; see Wegner 1956: 74–​6. 37 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 197–​8. 38 Ameling 1992; Levick 2014: 110–​12. 39 Temporini 1978: 71–​5. 40 Temporini 1978: 76–​7. 41 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 194. 42 Temporini-Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 196. 43 SHA Aurel. 26.4–​9. 44 Cass. Dio 62.19.2. The political importance of the family is evident from the fact that Corbulo’s half-​ sister, Milonia Caesonia, was married to Caligula. See Suet. Calig. 25; Cass. Dio 59.23.7–​8; 59.28.7.This marriage draws attention to the exclusive circle that, during the early empire, participated in political power and developed close ties to the emperor through family relationships. 45 Her son, Lucius Ceionius Commodus, would later be adopted by Emperor Hadrian, but Commodus died before Hadrian. 46 Cass. Dio 65.3.4; cf. Suet. Dom. 1.3. 47 Suet. Dom. 10.2; cf. Juv. 4.154. 48 Cf. Suet. Dom. 2.3, 3.1, 22.1; Cass. Dio 67.3.1–​2. 49 In Suet. Titus 10.2, Domitia Longina had to defend herself from accusations of having had a relationship with her brother-​in-​law Titus. 50 Suet. Dom. 3.1. 51 Cass. Dio 67.15.2 cites that Domitia Longina “stood in terror of her life.” See also Suet. Dom. 14.1. 52 Until 126/​127 bricks were burned with her name: CIL XV 548–​58. See Bodel 1983: 37. In CE 140 freed slaves erected a temple in her honor in Gabii (CIL XIV 2795). See also Balsdon 1962:  132; Castritius 2002: 186. 53 According to Suet. Dom. 3.1, Domitia Longina received the title Augusta from Domitian after the birth of her first child. 54 Varner 1995: 187–​8. 55 As a member of a noble family Domitia can be seen as important link between the equestrian Flavians and the Roman nobility: see Varner 1995: 188; Castritius 1969: 494–​5. 56 Varner 1995: 187–​8; Castritius 2002: 182. For critical reflections on literary sources which portray imperial women negatively because of their “tyrannical” husbands, see Hemelrijk 2004: 116. 57 Cass. Dio 67.3.2. According to Suet. Dom. 3.1, the political dimension of the revocation was intended to save Domitian’s face in public, but in reality he missed his wife a great deal; critical of this is Castritius 1969: 497; 2002: 182–​4. 58 See Varner 1995 for detailed analysis. 59 Only vague inferences may be drawn regarding her precise family structures, her place of birth, and her life prior to Trajan becoming emperor, because the availability of sources is inadequate. See Temporini 1978: 18–​22. 60 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 189. See also Hemelrijk 2004: 116–​18. 61 Cass. Dio 69.1.2–​4; SHA Hadr. 4.10.

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Imperial women from Flavians to Severi 62 SHA Hadr. 2.10. Balsdon 1962: 139; Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 195. 63 For example, in Plotina’s letter to Hadrian (ILS 7784), she acts like a patronus for the Athenian EpICUReans; see Hemelrijk 2004: 117. For her divinization and the erecting of a temple in Nîmes (her native city?) in her honor under the rule of Hadrian, see Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 212. 64 Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 198–​9. 65 Plin. Pan. 84.1–​8. According to Pliny, the women supported Trajanʼs politics with their actions. 66 Temporini 1978; Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 192–​4, 198–​201. 67 C. Avidius Cassius came from Cyrrhus in Syria. He was of a respected family, see Cass. Dio 69.3.5; SHA Aurel. 25.12; SHA Avid. Cass. 1.1–​3.8. 68 SHA Aurel. 20.6. 69 Cass. Dio 72.22.3. Cf. Levick 2014: 83–​7. 70 Cass. Dio 72.22.3–​23.1; Hdn. 1.6.4–​7; SHA Avid. Cass.  7.1–​2. 71 Cf. Bruun 2010: 228–​33. 72 Kunst 2013 and 2010: 153–​6 asserts the financial independence of imperial women, while Boatwright 1991 considers that the imperial women of the period of Trajan and Hadrian were especially restricted. 73 Cf. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002: 232.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ameling W. 1992. “Die Kinder des Marc Aurel und die Bildnistypen der Faustina Minor.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 90: 147–​66. Balsdon, J.P.V.D. 1962. Roman Women: Their History and Habits. London. Barnes, D.T. 1967. “Hadrian and Lucius Verus.” Journal of Roman Studies 57: 65–​79. Boatwright, M.T. 1991. “The Imperial Women of the Early Second Century A.C.” The American Journal of Philology 112, 4: 513–​40. Bodel, J.P. 1983. Roman Brick Stamps in the Kelsey Museum. The University of Michigan, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Studies 6. Ann Arbor. Brennan, T.C. 2018. Sabina Augusta: An Imperial Journey. Oxford and New York. Bruun, C. 2010. “Matidia die Jüngere –​Gesellschaftlicher Einfluss und dynastische Rolle.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewußte Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof. Herrschaftsstruktur und Herrschaftspraxis II, Akten der Tagung in Zürich 18.–​20.09.2008. Berlin, 211–​33. Cary, E. (Trans.) 1961. Dioʼs Roman History, vol.VIII. London and Cambridge, MA. Castritius, H. 1969. “Zu den Frauen der Flavier.” Historia 18, 4: 492–​502. Castritius H. 2002. “Die flavische Familie: Frauen neben Vespasian,Titus und Domitian.” In H.Temporini-​ Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Theodora. Munich, 164–​85. Corbier, M. 1995. “Male Power and Legitimacy through Women: The Domus Augusta under the Julio-​ Claudians.” In R. Hawley and B. Levick (eds.), Women in Antiquity:  New Assessments. London and New York, 178–​93. Demandt, A. 2018. Mark Aurel. Der Kaiser und seine Welt. Munich. Edelmann-​Singer, B. 2016.“Die Kaiserpriesterinnen in den östlichen Provinzen des Reiches –​Reflexionen über Titel, Funktion und Rolle.” In A. Kolb and M.Vitale (eds.), Kaiserkult in den Provinzen des Römischen Reiches: Organisation, Kommunikation und Repräsentation. Göttingen, 387–​405. Hemelrijk, E.A. 2004. Matrona Docta:  Educated Women in the Roman Élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. London and New York. Kolb, A. 2010. “Augustae  –​Zielsetzung, Definition, prosopographischer Überblick.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewußte Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof. Herrschaftsstruktur und Herrschaftspraxis II, Akten der Tagung in Zürich 18.-​20.09.2008. Berlin, 11–​35. Kuhoff, W. 1993. “Zur Titulatur der römischen Kaiserinnen während der Prinzipatszeit” Klio 75: 244–​56. Kunst, C. 2010. “Patronage/​Matronage der Augustae.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewußte Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof. Herrschaftsstruktur und Herrschaftspraxis II, Akten der Tagung in Zürich 18.-​20.09.2008. Berlin, 145–​161.

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Kordula Schnegg Kunst, C. 2013. “Das Vermögen der Frauen um Umfeld der Adoptivkaiser.” In C. Kunst (ed.), Matronage. Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke antiker Herrscherfrauen. Beiträge eines Kolloquiums an der Universität Osnabrück vom 22. bis 24. März 2012. Osnabrücker Forschungen zu Altertum und Antike-​Rezeption, 20. Rahden, Westfalen, 107–​22. Levick, B. 2014. Faustina I and II: Imperial Women of the Golden Age. Oxford and New York. Magie, D. (Trans.) 1967. The Scriptores Historiae Augustae (3 vols), vol. I. London and Cambridge, MA. Plant, I.M. (ed.) 2004. Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology. London. Strothmann, M. 2002. “Augusta.” Der Neue Pauly 12, 2: 908–​9. Temporini, H. 1978. Die Frauen am Hofe Trajans. Ein Beitrag zur Stellung der Augustae im Principat. Berlin. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum, H. 2002. “Die Familie der ‘Adoptivkaiser’ von Traian bis Commodus.” In H. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Theodora. Munich, 187–​262. Varner, E.R. 1995. “Domitia Longina and the Politics of Portraiture.” American Journal of Archaeology 99: 187–​206. Varner, E.R. 2001. “Portraits, Plots, and Politics:  ʻDamnatio Memoriaeʼ and the Images of Imperial Women.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 46: 165–​8. Wegner, M. 1956. Das Römische Herrscherbild. II. Abteilung, Band 3:  Hadrian, Plotina, Marciana, Matidia, Sabina. Berlin.

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35 PORTRAITURE OF FLAVIAN IMPERIAL WOMEN Annetta Alexandridis

The women of the Flavian dynasty (69–​96 CE) have been portrayed in multiple ways and media. Similar to many other female relatives of Roman emperors, they appear in ancient “historical” texts and in modern scholarship, in poetry and in honorific inscriptions, in miniature images stamped on coins, or carved in precious stone, and in (more than) life-​size likenesses sculpted in the round.1 Depending on who created them, when, where, how, why, and for whom, these portrayals shaped ideas about which roles a woman of the imperial family (domus Augusta) could or should assume and which not. Closeness to power and public prominence of women always meant a provocation, for Roman patriarchal society in general, and for the Roman principate in particular, especially in its early years.2 As a system of government that (to some) looked like a monarchy yet was not supposed to be one, the republic “restored” under Augustus (res publica restituta) could not, unlike Hellenistic kingdoms, tolerate a male–​female couple at the top.3 The respective women’s public prominence would have to be cast as an extension of their private or domestic functions.4 Accordingly, various honorific titles, privileges, and priestly functions were introduced for the first emperor’s wife, Livia, to define and legitimate her role.5 Visual representations of the emperor’s female relatives—​an exceptional honor rarely granted to women during the republic—​proved to be critical to meet the initial challenge. The imagery developed under the Julio-​Claudians set the stage and remained a benchmark for all future domus Augustae.6 The Flavian dynasty’s follow-​up offers insights into how the gradual institutionalization of the principate played out in its self-​representation. Upon seizing power, after all, the Flavians were facing a situation somewhat comparable to that Augustus had encountered: after a civil war, an old order had to be restored and also reinvented. How did that impact the role and image of the imperial family’s female members? This chapter focuses on four overlapping aspects of the women’s private and simultaneously public roles: family or dynasty, exemplary womanhood, beauty or luxury, and divinity. Predominantly based on coinage and honorific names or “titles”—​evidence that comes closest to how the imperial house wanted to be perceived—​it charts how imagery in different media shaped these ideas. Focus will be mostly on the imperial center’s strategies rather than their reception in the provinces.7 A short methodological introduction explains potential pitfalls in interpreting the evidence.

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Female portraits for “monarchs”—​evidence and methods Ancient rulers made conscious use of imagery to communicate, promote, and simultaneously legitimate their power. It remains, however, difficult to determine how much impact such “propaganda” had in a specific context, or who exactly was responsible for conceiving, designing, and implementing it.8 Not every decision was established in a top-​down manner from the imperial court to be imitated by its subjects. In using coins issued for empresses, for example, dedicating statues to them, or putting up likenesses in less conspicuous materials, various people participated in disseminating the women’s portraits and in establishing their presence. The process might have been stimulated by the center, but was not necessarily managed by it. Also, different media of representation did not only target different audiences; they involved different agents since they resulted from different mechanisms of production.9 This does not diminish the level of thought and investment the imperial center would have put into promoting its image. The Flavians are a striking case. They shaped their official lineage by means of releasing or suppressing portraits. Only three of the rulers’ close female relatives were considered relevant enough to have their likenesses officially disseminated. The imperial mint in Rome circulated images of the following women:  Flavia Domitilla, whether Vespasian’s wife (the elder) is intended or his daughter (the younger), neither of whom lived to see the emperor assume power (Figures 35.1, 35.2; figures for this chapter appear at the end of the chapter); Titus’ daughter Flavia Julia (or Julia Titi, also Iulia), who was born while her father was still heir apparent to the throne, and died under her uncle’s reign (Figures 35.3–​5, 35.8); and Domitian’s wife Domitia Longina, who would survive her husband (Figures  35.6–​8).10 Numismatic evidence allows for further specification.11 Under Vespasian (69–​79 CE), no female relative at all appeared on coins.12 Sesterces issued under Titus commemorated the emperor’s mother, not with a portrait but with the depiction of a funerary cart.13 Julia Titi’s likeness appeared on several coin types. Under Domitian, profiles of his wife and his niece were circulated. In addition, a posthumous, first portrait type was developed for Flavia Domitilla, the emperor’s mother or sister.14 This narrow selection, in tandem with the rather sparse record from other media—​at least when compared to the Julio-​Claudian evidence—​has until recently led scholars to underestimate the ideological (and real life) importance of the Flavian dynasty’s female members.15 Vespasian’s refusal to have any of them officially portrayed seemed to support reports of his wife’s humble and thus unworthy origins.16 In any case,Vespasian’s decision reduced the period during which distribution of the Flavian women’s portraits was encouraged to about 27 years. Evidence is further impaired by the fact that none of the Flavian imperial women’s offspring lived long enough or remained adequately connected to higher circles of power to warrant continuous commemoration of their female imperial ancestors and maintenance of their effigies.17 The example of Domitia Longina seems a striking, if at first an unlikely, case in point. Born to a family of excellent pedigree—​her father was the eminent politician and military leader Cnaeus Domitius Corbulo; her mother Cassia Longina was related to the Cassii—​Domitia could claim to be a scion of emperor Augustus. Her ancestry, in combination with her substantial (family) wealth, made her a perfect bride for an emperor to be.18 The couple had a son who, however, died in childhood. Unlike so many other imperial consorts, Domitia survived her husband and his damnatio memoriae for a long time.19 Though she did so in peace, in material prosperity, and well respected, this was likely due more to her older family connections and wealth than to her relation to the emperor. At Gabii, in 140, two of her freedpeople erected a temple in her honor and memory and that of her domus; the local assembly decreed a celebration of her birthday each year, and statues were dedicated.20 Even though the inscription does not specify, we can posit that a likeness of Domitia would have been part of the ensemble of statues. Her parents, 424

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for whom heroic honors are attested elsewhere, were probably depicted too, rather than her condemned husband.21 Some of the gaps in our evidence, however, might originate precisely in the enormous effort that was put into the Flavian women’s official imagery. Inconsistent facial features displayed by Julia Titi and Domitia on coins challenge traditional methods of portrait identification. But they could easily result from confusion in the die-​cutters’ workshop. This is suggested by the minting of coins for Domitia immediately after her husband took office, and later by simultaneous emissions for both women.22

Portraits and dynasty: between family resemblance and Julio-​Claudian  model The gens Flavia had what seems a particularly close-​knit “family identity.” Not only did cousins intermarry (a fairly widespread habit among larger gentes), but a restricted number of cognomina (Vespasianus, Domitianus, Domitilla) was transmitted with the nomen gentile (Flavius, Flavia) over generations. At the same time, connections to the Julio-​Claudians were sought on various levels, as for example through Domitia’s lineage. Recently, the tempting suggestion has been made that Titus’ daughter Julia was named after the first empress Livia (also known as Julia Augusta, after her adoption into her husband’s gens of the Iulii). 23 Once she had been declared Augusta, Flavia Julia’s name was indistinguishable from that of Augustus’ wife. Julia, in this context, would also refer to Venus, the first imperial family’s divine ancestor and, as mother of Aeneas, of all Romans.24 Portraits of the Flavian women display a similar mixture of “family-​features” and continuation of Julio-​Claudian traditions, their coiffures combining older and novel styles. Busts of Flavia Domitilla show her with a long, looped plait at her neck made up of multiple braids.The front and temples are covered by several rows of big, snail-​shaped curls (see Figures 35.1b, 35.2). Structurally, the hairdo is close to that of Nero’s mother Agrippina Minor.25 Julia Titi’s hair in some of her first (coin) portrait types clearly breaks away from this fashion: the small and dense curls on the forehead form a bushy coronet, whereas the braids at the back, instead of hanging down, are either coiled up into a snail-​like bun or gathered into a tuft (see Figure 35.5).26 On some coins Julia displays a tight bun closer to the neck and reminiscent of Livia’s hairdo (see Figure 35.4a).27 Domitia’s coiffures, if sporting a somewhat more extravagant coronet of curls, also follow two basic patterns, one with a long plait, the other with a bun (see Figures 35.6a and 35.7a).28 Family resemblance might have been suggested when busts of father and daughter or husband and wife were paired on the two sides of a coin, as attested for all three women in a series issued by Domitian (see Figure 35.1).29 Finally, statue groups showcased the whole gens Flavia, women included.30 At times, their dedicators added them to pre-​existing Julio-​Claudian ensembles. At the sanctuary of Olympia, for example, the temple of Meter had been transformed into a site for the imperial cult. Next to statues of Augustus, Claudius, and Agrippina Minor stood other effigies of Julio-​Claudians. Some of them were modified to represent members of the Flavian family, among them two women.31 The statue types emulate classical styles and were popular with imperial and non-​ imperial sitters alike in the first century CE.They showed the women in richly folded garments that cling to the body so as to emphasize its female forms. Additional attributes have not survived, but could here have included a libation bowl (patera) to match the religious context.32 Both in its composition and in the individual statue types, this group continued Julio-​Claudian traditions and expanded them to incorporate members of the Flavian gens. Other dedications in the Greek East focus on imperial couples in different constellations. This might be rooted in 425

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local predilection for ruling couples in Hellenistic tradition, yet a double dedication for Julia and Domitia is also attested.33

Portraits and exemplary womanhood Traditional female “functions” such as wedlock and motherhood constituted a central aspect of imperial women’s official representation, in both visual and verbal form. Honorific “titles” (or names) such as Augusta helped conceptualize the idea of a dynasty and the women’s role in it. Under the Julio-​Claudians, the title of Augusta had been awarded retrospectively to mothers or grandmothers of emperors.34 Nero was the first to bestow it precociously upon his wife Poppaea Sabina and their baby daughter. The Flavians seem to have systematized this tradition: all of an emperor’s close female relatives who effectively or potentially guaranteed dynastic continuity received the title. According to the numismatic evidence, Julia Titi was declared Augusta once her father had become emperor.35 The honoree would at this point have been the only living descendant of an emperor and expected to secure succession. Domitia was declared Augusta as soon as her husband seized power.Their little son had already died but Domitia could still have been expected to bear an heir. Coins provided an effective means to communicate the domestic and simultaneously public relevance—​literally the two sides—​of exemplary female lives and tasks. While the obverse featured the profile bust of an individual woman, personifications or symbols on the back emphasized a specific female sphere or quality, additionally designated in the legend.36 Coinage issued under Titus for his daughter in various denominations is the first systematically to exploit the medium’s compactness and consequently pair the woman’s bust on the obverse with different reverse types. During his short reign, a set of female virtues was composed for Titus’ daughter that would provide a template for many Augustae to come.37 The goddesses and personifications depicted here—​Ceres, Concordia, Pax, Salus, Venus, and Vesta—​could all be related to ideal female virtues such as fertility (fecunditas), chastity (castitas), beauty (pulchritudo) and harmony (concordia) (see Figures 35.3b and 35.4b).The addition AVGVSTA, AVGVSTI, or AVGVSTAE in the reverse legends tied them directly to the emperor, imperial women, and the imperial house.38 Many of the goddesses had important cults in Rome, which expanded their relevance to society at large. Seen together, then, all these figures propagated (with varying emphasis) matrimony, fertility, or the blessings of marriage and household when harmonious and well taken care of. The figure of Vesta, seated with patera and scepter, connected this message to the political realm: guarding the imperial hearth and house secured the stability of the state.39 Venus—​shown with helmet and scepter as Victrix—​referred to the progenitor of the first imperial family (and by extension of their successors) and of the Roman people (see Figure 35.3b). None of the types were new, but the fact that they did not include “male” symbols underscores the desire to compose a fitting design.40 Obverse and reverse could additionally be linked by specific iconographic details. Several of the busts, for example, feature the Flavian women wearing a stola. What looks like a necklace of pearls, actually depicts the straps of this garment that marked the freeborn Roman married woman (matrona) (see Figure 35.1b). Highly ideologically charged, especially under Augustus, it signified not only a woman’s civic status, but her proper behavior including matrimonial virtues such as chastity and modesty (castitas, pudicitia). In the second half of the first century CE the stola successively disappeared from public representation, both in imperial and non-​imperial portraiture.41 On the Flavian women’s coins, it must have seemed a deliberately conservative

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element that evoked both republican tradition and Julio-​Claudian attire. Julia wears it on obverses that are paired with a Ceres-​or a Vesta-​reverse (see Figure 35.4a). Reverses depicting Venus are combined with obverses on which the Augusta sports a diadem, an attribute with originally divine associations, but which also seems to denote the Augusta, at least in coinage (see Figure 35.3a).42 Domitian’s emissions for his wife followed a different strategy in that they focused almost entirely on pietas. As duty or loyalty toward the gods (erga deos) and the family (erga parentes), pietas encompassed in both cases aspects of public and private or domestic life. Images consequently render the personification in two different ways, either standing veiled in front of an altar while pouring a libation, or sitting, with a scepter in her arm, one hand stretched out to one or more children.43 The legend, spreading over both sides of the coins, reads DOMITIA AVGVSTA/​DIVI CAES(AR[IS]) MATER (“Domitia Augusta/​mother of the deified Caesar”). This way it collapses a traditional iconography into a depiction (labeled as that) of the empress (see Figure 35.6). 44 The anonymous child consequently “is” her deceased and deified son. A separate emission pairs the bust of Domitia on the obverse with the deified (baby-​)boy on the reverse, sitting on a globe and surrounded by stars.45 The “shades” of divinity conveyed by the specific combination of legend and images encompass Domitia herself to varying degrees.46 Wreaths and infulae (knotted woolen ribbons) also visualized pietas. Deities and priest(esse)s alike were depicted wearing these attributes, which could therefore denote both the executor and the receiver of a pious act.47 The wreath of wheat, rendered on a marble portrait of Flavia Domitilla, could thus also refer to Ceres, patron goddess of fertile crops and of marriage, and in this way celebrate the sitter’s female virtues while simultaneously conveying a touch of divinity.48 The wreath also recalled portraits of the first dynasty’s women.49 Alignment with Julio-​ Claudian models is even better manifested in a cameo now in Stuttgart. Originally depicting a woman of the Claudian family, it was slightly re-​carved to portray Domitia.50 The laurel wreath crowning the woman’s head and the infula holding it together remained unaltered. While women in the procession on Augustus’ Ara Pacis wear such wreaths, the laurel also connoted spheres that were gendered male, such as the celebration of a triumph, the god Apollo, or the emperor Augustus who had made it his “signature plant.” For the Julio-​Claudians this iconography of pietas might have been connected to a particular form of religious service: the cult of the deified emperor. Livia and Antonia Minor were made the first and only priestesses of this cult.51 Flavian women and their successors, in contrast, rarely display wreaths or infulae, if at all. This might be another effect of the gradual institutionalization of the principate and the women’s role within it. No priesthood had to be invented to justify their closeness to divinity. In the end, the imperial women’s own deification—​prepared so strongly under Domitian—​would become the norm in the second century CE.52

Portraits and pomp A common allegation ancient authors raised against women in general, and female members of the imperial house in particular, was their love of excessive luxury. Even though beautification of the female body was key for displaying status and dignity, imperial women almost never appear with jewelry in official imagery.53 Their coin portraits are especially striking in this respect when contrasted with those of Hellenistic queens or portraits in other media.54 Kleopatra is shown on coins wearing a necklace and earrings, but so are Julia Titi or Domitia on gem stones or cameos.55 In the case of the Flavian women, luxury is not only conveyed by the

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iconography. Crafted exquisitely of precious material, these images targeted a more exclusive audience.56 The majority of portraits in marble, in contrast, seem to have followed the “official” standard, although we might miss additions in paint or other materials. Flavia Domitilla’s colossal portrait now in Copenhagen, for example, and a bust of Julia Titi have their earlobes pierced, undoubtedly for the insertion of earrings (see Figures 35.2 and 35.5). And yet, portraits of the Flavian women did not renounce luxury entirely. Their coiffures with their sumptuous coronets of curls conveyed a sense of expenditure, both for the real-​life model and its effigy. Hairdos of the Julio-​Claudian women, although giving an impression of restraint and austerity, would already have required a lot of time and skilled labor to be arranged. For Neronian and subsequently Flavian coiffures, locks had to be piled up in front while tightly braiding and bundling up the hair in the back. This style showcased extravagance and virtuoso craftsmanship, both of the hairdresser and of the sculptor.57 Compared to how non-​imperial women were represented, however, the Flavian Augustae did not particularly stand out.58 If anything, they would have looked rather old-​fashioned, for instance, when shown wearing the stola.

Portraits and divinity By consecrating his son, niece, and either mother or sister, Domitian systematically tried to build a divine lineage for himself and the gens Flavia.59 Apart from launching a posthumous, first portrait type for the new Diva Domitilla, long after her death (see Figures 35.1b and 35.2), new iconographies were developed for theomorphic representations of the imperial family.60 As discussed earlier, the power of Hellenistic royal women had constituted a provocation in the beginning stages of the principate, as did another characteristic feature of Hellenistic kingship, the rulers’ assimilation to deities.61 Initially banned from official self-​representation, portrayals in divine guise of the emperor and his relatives did however circulate in other, more exclusive media, such as cameos.62 Caligula reintroduced Hellenistic tradition in official imagery, which from there found its way into the self-​fashioning of the lower strata of society.63 Especially popular in funerary art, theomorphic likenesses deployed a metaphorical language to praise their sitters. When the Flavians came to power, portraits in divine guise were no longer restricted to the imperial family. Visual language developed under Domitian seems to have reacted with a more immediate, less metaphorical way to depict divinity. Coinage, as discussed, could suggest an assimilation of the person on the obverse to the goddess or personification on the reverse. The latter, because of their repetitiveness and formulaic nature, ultimately remained abstract. They symbolized female virtues, but they did not embody them. The emissions issued for Domitia as mother of the deified Caesar, or those for the deified child himself, instead made divinity “real.” Text and image worked in tandem:  Pietas is not the pietas of the Augusta, or the Augusta as Pietas—​she simply is the Augusta. Similarly, Domitia’s deified son is not simply designated as divus (deified), but depicted as a god: a giant baby, sitting on a globe among the stars (see Figures 35.6 and 35.7). A similar, if more complex strategy is deployed by the poet Martial when, in one of his epigrams, he praises a statue of the deified Julia in the guise of Venus.64 As the poet’s description follows the figure’s posture, it collapses the Augusta’s beautiful and sensuous body with that of the goddess and simultaneously its masterful, “life-​like” effigy.65 The text suggests that erotic aspects were prevalent—​Julia/​Venus loosens her breast band—​although we cannot tell how much of the body was exposed. Given the manifold connections of Julia to Venus and

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to the Iulii, as we have seen, it is likely that a statue of the Augusta in the guise of the goddess existed. Women of the Julio-​Claudian family had often been aligned with, if not assimilated to Venus Genetrix, progenitor of the Romans. All of these depictions, however, showed them fully dressed, accompanied by an Eros figure and/​or scepter, and only occasionally exposing the collarbone. 66 Two replicas of a female marble bust that have been identified as probable portraits of Julia in the guise of Venus break away from this pattern.67 Their wavy hair, loosely bundled up on top of their heads, is inspired by depictions of the goddess after having taken a bath. The Copenhagen bust, once part of a statue, also indicates that the woman’s upper right chest was nude. The replica in the Vatican has the hair arranged slightly differently. In the back of the head, it forms a loose bun that is reminiscent of Julia Titi’s coiffure. Real model, artifice, and goddess seem to merge again. Statues and poem do not allow for reconstructing a statue of Julia in the nude, but they share a similar aesthetic. Collapsing mimetic and metaphorical representation, simultaneously displaying highest artifice and corporeal immediacy, they made the divine palpable.68 The most extraordinary honor bestowed on imperial women, finally, was their deification proper.69 A small chalcedony group in the British Museum is the first to visualize this act (see Figure 35.8). Its precious material suggests it would have been accessible only to a very select group of people, if not individuals in the palace itself. It shows a female bust, with floating mantle, on a peacock which is fanning its tail. Identification of the woman is debated. Given the interchangeability of their coiffures and facial features, she could be Julia Titi or Domitia. In the first case, we would look at a “legitimate” rendering of Titus’ daughter as Diva. Emissions issued under Domitian explicitly refer to her consecration.70 In the second case, the bust would depict an anticipated (and ultimately unjustified) deification, for Domitia survived her husband and died when no longer a member of the imperial house.71 A cameo in the Ponsonby collection with the laureate bust of Domitian and that of his wife (or Julia?) on a winged eagle could support this interpretation. Moreover, the imperial consorts’ assimilation to Jupiter and Juno, the Roman Pantheon’s two highest divinities, could have celebrated them as true gods. This would find confirmation in Domitian’s alleged wish to be addressed as dominus et deus (rather than divus) during his life.72

Conclusion The women of the Flavian dynasty have been described as belonging to a “transitional period.”73 What is the case for their public role and dynastic situation, also applies to their visual representation. Evolving from complete absence under Vespasian, alignment with Julio-​ Claudian traditions under Titus, and divinization under Domitian, these portraits established the presence of women in how an imperial house wanted to be seen. The Flavians were the first systematically to develop a visual, dynastic program for their female relatives and to mint regular coinage for them, always responding to Julio-​Claudian, but also to non-​imperial traditions of depicting women as family members, as exemplary, beautiful, luxurious, and even divine. Under Domitian, a posthumous portrait type was developed for Flavia Domitilla; theomorphic likenesses of Julia Titi and Domitia followed a new, less metaphorical visual language. The presence of women in the representation of rule and the rulers’ assimilation to deities once had conjured up the specter of Hellenistic monarchy. They now seemed almost a requirement.

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Illustrations

Figure 35.1  Aureus of Domitian, depicting Divus Vespasianus on the obverse (a) and Diva Flavia Domitilla with stola on the reverse (b) (RIC II2 136) Source: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 35.2  Colossal marble head of Flavia Domitilla with metal pins for diadem (?); the back of the head was worked separately Source: Courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (IN 3186), Copenhagen

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Figure 35.3  Denarius of Titus with Julia Titi on the obverse and Venus with helmet and scepter on the reverse (RIC II2 88) Source: Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums (2005.115.118)

Figure 35.4  Dupondius of Titus with Julia Titi on the obverse (a) and Ceres with torch and ears of wheat on the reverse (b) (RIC II2 391) Source: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

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Figure 35.5  Portrait of Julia Titi, head on modern bust, marble. Rome, Museo Nazionale delle Terme Inv. 8638 Source: Courtesy of German Archaeological Institute Rome DAInst Neg. 57.619

Figure 35.6  Sestertius of Domitian, with Domitia on obverse (a) and Domitia seated with child as mother of the divine Caesar on reverse (b) (RIC II2 132) Source: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

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Figure 35.7  Aureus of Domitian, with Domitia on obverse (a) and her son as Divus Caesar on reverse (b) (RICII2 152) Source: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 35.8  Cameo bust of Julia Titi/​Domitia (?) in apotheosis Source: Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum (Inv. 1899.07–​22.4)

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Notes 1 Overview (if in part outdated) in Daltrop et al. 1966: 115–​25, pls. 42–​59; Hausmann 1975. 2 The discursive strategies of how ancient literary texts responded to the situation—​predominantly by marginalizing or condemning imperial women in an attempt to target the emperor—​have been analyzed many times; for the Flavians see e.g. Vinson 1989; Hidalgo de la Vega 2003b; on the “social power” of women see Temporini 1998; Späth 2010. 3 See ­chapters 6–​11, 15–​18, 26–​34 in this volume. 4 In general: Kampen 1991. 5 Frei-​Stolba 1998; 2008: 358–​78; see also chapters 32 and 33 in this volume. 6 See Alexandridis 2004. 7 For that see Hahn 1994: 228–​49; Alexandridis 2010: 219–​22; Boruch 2012: 211–​13, 226–​31. 8 In the desire to ascribe agency to the women, scholars often cast them as “sitters” who single-​handedly decided how they wanted to be rendered in order to make a specific (fashion) statement: e.g. Castritius 2002: 177–​8; Fraser 2015: 223–​6. On “propaganda” see Weber 2003; Mayer 2010. 9 Alexandridis 2010 with further literature; on portraits see also Fejfer 2008: 407–​25; D’Ambra 2013. 10 FOS 357 or 368, 371, 327 respectively. On these women, see recently Castritius 2002; Cenerini 2009:  83–​94; Hidalgo de la Vega 2012:  81–​98; ­chapter  34 in this volume. No coin portraits were issued for Vespasian’s granddaughter, also called Flavia Domitilla (FOS 369), whose two sons would be adopted by Domitian as Vespasianus and Domitianus (both probably perished in the context of the conspiracy against the emperor in 96 CE). Also excluded were Titus’ two consorts: Arrecina Tertulla (FOS 93), most probably Julia’s mother, died before Titus assumed power; while still Caesar he also divorced Marcia Furnilla (FOS 525). A statue of a woman in the guise of Venus now in Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek inv. 711, cannot be identified as Titus’ second wife; Barrow 2018: 110–​22, fig. 15. 11 This is the merit of the revisions provided in RIC II2. 12 It does not follow that no dedications at all were made in their honor; see e.g. CIL VI 8.2: 40452 and AE 1994, 244 (both from Rome) in honor of Flavia Domitilla; Cogitore 2000:  250–​1; Rosso 2007: 131–​3. 13 RIC II2 262–​4.The reverse type refers to similar ones for Agrippina Maior issued under Caligula (RIC I2 55), and for Agrippina Minor issued under Claudius (RIC I2 103). 14 Debate is still ongoing as to whether the coins refer to Vespasian’s wife or his daughter. While most scholars seemed to have settled on an identification of the former (Kienast 1989; Frei-​Stolba 2008: 386–​ 8; Wood 2010), recently the idea that Domitian deified his sister has gained renewed momentum, also due to the revisions provided in RIC II2; see Rosso 2007: 143–​6; Morelli and Filippini 2014, with full bibliography. 15 But see below and p. 428–9 on Domitia Longina who has received increased attention: Chausson 2003; Levick 2002; 2003; Fraser 2015. 16 Castritius 2002: 170–​2; Cenerini 2009: 83–​6; Hidalgo de la Vega 2012: 86–​8. 17 Domitia herself had such connections, see Chausson 2003: 118–​29; Fraser 2015: 242–​4. 18 Chausson 2003 with further literature. 19 Ibid.; Fraser 2015. 20 Gabii: CIL XIV 2795 (= ILS 272). Pace Varner 1995 and Frazer 2015: 246–​54 it is so far impossible to identify a portrait type created for Domitia after Flavian rule ended. Fittschen and Zanker 1983: 50 n. 3 is still valid. 21 ILS 9518 from Peltuinum. 22 Coins issued immediately after Domitian took power show Domitia resembling Julia Titi; later coins of Diva Iulia assimilate her to Domitia; see RIC II2 132–​6, 147–​8, 678–​84, 760. 23 Gregori and Rosso 2010: 195–​6; see Castritius 2002: 184–​5 for a stemma. The suggestion could find support in the reconstruction coins issued under Titus which include a type with Livia in the guise of Salus: RIC II2 409. 430. 24 Gregori and Rosso 2010: 197–​201, who also point out that Titus had close personal connections to the Julio-​Claudians. In addition, Julia’s birthday (September 26) falls on the day the inauguration of the temple of Venus Iulia was celebrated. 25 See Alexandridis 2004: nos. 99, 102 , pl. 24 1.2. 26 While Roman women wore extensions of hair, even more extravagant coiffures could be created without such artificial additions; Ziegler 2000; Bartman 2001; Stephens 2008.

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Portraiture of Flavian imperial women 27 Compare RIC II² 391 and 409, 430 (reconstructions); Wood 1999: 317–​8. 28 RIC II2  146–​8. 29 Ibid. But see Alexandridis 2010: 205–​6. 30 The Augusteum at Herculaneum featured, next to several statues of Julio-​ Claudians, dedicatory inscriptions for Flavia Domitilla, Julia, and Domitia:  CIL X 1419, 1422; Boschung 2002:  119–​25; Gregori and Rosso 2010: 200–​2. 31 Their heads have not survived. Hitzl 1991; Boschung 2002: 100–​5, pls. 79–​81. 32 Hitzl 1991; Alexandridis 2004: 61–​3, cat. nos. 160, 161 pl. 29. 1.2. 33 Deppmeyer 2008:  vol. 2:  9 (cat. no.  9, Brykos:  Domitian and Domitia), 46 (cat. no.  14, Thyssanous: Domitian and Domitia), 59 (cat. no. 19, Pinara: Julia Titi and Domitia), 63–​5 (cat. no. 22, Stratonikeia: Titus, Domitia, and the donor); see also chapters 29 and 30 in this volume. 34 Flory 1988, who also thinks that it was initially bound to the office of priestess of the cult of the deified emperor; Kuhoff 1993. 35 An inscription from the Augusteum at Herculaneum might date this moment a little earlier, for it names Titus as Caesar. Gregori and Rosso 2010: 201, however, suspect this could have been an error of the stone-​cutter. 36 See also Scheer 2006; Ercolani 2012. 37 Keltanen 2002; Alexandridis 2004: 18–​20; 2010; Scheer 2006. 38 The abbreviated AVG(VST) granted all the options. 39 According to Foubert 2015, however, there is no evidence for explicit cultic connections between Vesta and the imperial women. 40 Scheer 2006: 300–​5; Alexandridis 2010: 201–​4. 41 Alexandridis 2004: 51–​5. 42 Alexandridis 2004: 49–​50. 43 RIC II2 132, 133, 135, 136; Alexandridis 2004: 74–​81. Women are rarely shown sacrificing, but see Hemelrijk 2006. 44 RIC II² 156, which shows a seated woman with scepter and child, has the legend PIETAS AVGVSTA. On the figure of the (imperial) mother: Morelli 2009; 2010; 2012. 45 Desnier 1979. 46 The titles were made up by Domitian; Rosso 2007: 127–​8. 47 The infula also adorned sacrificial victims. 48 San Antonio, former collection Denman:  Alexandridis 2004:  173 cat. no.  146 pl. 31, 1.2. On Ceres: Späth 2010; Erker 2006. 49 Alexandridis 2004: 77–​9, pls. 56–​57. 50 Alexandridis 2004: cat. no. 158, pl. 56, 6. 51 Hidalgo de le Vega 2003a; Hemelrijk 2006; Frei-​Stolba 2008. 52 Rosso 2007: 140–​6; Morelli and Filippini 2014. 53 Berg 2002; Alexandridis 2004: 71–​3. 54 RRC 543/​1; Alexandridis 2003. 55 Bartman 2001; Berg 2002; Alexandridis 2004: 174–​5, cat. no. 152, 153, pl. 57.8. 56 Megow 1997. 57 Bartman 2001. 58 Fejfer 2003; Alexandridis 2010: 206–​10; D’Ambra 2013. 59 Rosso 2007: 140–​7. 60 Portraits of colossal dimensions (e.g. Fig. 35.2) also visualized divinity; Ruck 2006: 216, 289, 290, cat. nos. 41, 66. 61 See chapters 9 and 30 in this volume. 62 Megow 1997. 63 Wrede 1981; Matheson 1996. 64 Martial, Epigrams 6.13. 65 Alexandridis 2014: 84–​6 with further literature. 66 Alexandridis 2004: 84–​7. 67 Rosso 2007: 142–​3; Alexandridis 2004: 173 cat. nos. 147, 148, pl. 31, 3. 4; 2014: 71–​7, 84–​7; see also D’Ambra 2000. It should be noted that there is no definitive proof for this identification. 68 Alexandridis 2014. 69 Flory 1995.

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Annetta Alexandridis 70 RIC II2 717, 718.The reverses show a carpentum (funeral cart) drawn by mules or the Diva herself sitting on such a cart drawn by elephants. The first representation of an imperial woman’s apotheosis, i.e. ascending to heaven on a winged creature, is attested for Hadrian’s wife Sabina. Earlier examples exist in the more panegyric and exclusive genre of cameos, including prematurely anticipated depictions of Nero in apotheosis; Alexandridis 2004: 92–​5. 71 Julia Titi:  Rosso 2007:  143; Julia Titi/​Domitia (?):  Alexandridis 2004:  176, cat. no.  159, pl. 59.4; 2010: 212–​3. 72 Suet. Dom. 13.2; Cass. Dio 67.4.7. 73 Boatwright 1991: 537.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). FOS 

Raepsaet-​Charlier, M. 1987. Prosopographie des femmes de l’ordre sénatorial (I°-​II° siècles). Louvain.

Bibliography Alexandridis, A. 2003. “Schmucklos oder trachtlos? Bildnisse römischer Frauen vom 1. Jh. v.–​2. Jh. n.Chr.” Anodos 3: 9–​22. Alexandridis, A. 2004. Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses. Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna. Mainz. Alexandridis, A. 2010. “The Other Side of the Coin: The Women of the Flavian Imperial Family.” In N. Kramer and C. Reitz (eds.), Tradition und Erneuerung: Mediale Strategien in der Zeit der Flavier. Berlin and New York, 191–​237. Alexandridis, A. 2014. “Mimesis oder Metaphor? Aphroditekörper im römischen Frauenporträt.” In D. Boschung and L. Jäger (eds.), Formkonstanz und Bedeutungswandel.Archäologische und medienwissenschaftliche Reflexionen. Paderborn, 67–​102. Barrow, R J. 2018. Gender, Identity and the Body in Greek and Roman Sculptures. Cambridge. Bartman, E. 2001. “Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment.” American Journal of Archaeology 105, 1: 1–​25. Berg, R. 2002. “Wearing Wealth: Mundus Muliebris and Ornatus as Status Markers for Women in Imperial Rome.” In P. Setälä (ed.), Women,Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire. Rome, 15–​73. Boatwright, M.T. 1991. “The Imperial Women of the Early Second Century A.D.” American Journal of Philology 112: 513–​40. Boruch, W. 2012. “Kobiety na monetach dynastii flawijskiej.” in: L. Mrozewicz (ed.), Studia Flaviana II. Poznań, 201–​31. Boschung, D. 2002. Gens Augusta. Untersuchungen zur Aufstellung, Wirkung und Bedeutung der Statuengruppen des julisch-​claudischen Kaiserhauses. Mainz. Castritius, H. 2002. “Die flavische Familie. Frauen neben Vespasian,Titus und Domitian.” In H.Temporini-​ Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Iulia Domna, Munich, 164–​86. Cenerini, F. 2009. Dive e donne:  Mogli, madri, figlie e sorelle degli imperatori romani da Augusto a Commodo. Imola. Chausson, F. 2003. “Domitia Longina. Reconsidération d’un destin impérial.” Journal des Savants 1: 101–​29. Cogitore, I. 2000. “Les honneurs italiens aux femmes de la famille impériale de la mort de César à Domitien.” In M. Cébeillac Gervasoni (ed.), Les élites municipales de l’Italie péninsulaire de la mort de César à la mort de Domitien. Classes sociales dirigeantes et pouvoir central. Rome, 237–​66. Daltrop, G., Hausmann, U., and Wegner, M. 1966. Die Flavier. Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Julia Titi, Domitilla, Domitia. Berlin. D’Ambra, E. 2000. “Nudity and Adornment in Female Portrait Sculpture of the Second Century.” In:  D.D.D. Kleiner and S.B. Matheson (eds.), I, Claudia II. Women in Roman Art and Society. Austin, 101–​14. D’Ambra, E. 2013. “Mode and Model in the Flavian Female Portrait.” American Journal of Archaeology 117, 4: 511–​25.

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Portraiture of Flavian imperial women Deppmeyer, K. 2008. Kaisergruppen von Vespasian bis Domitian. Eine Untersuchung zu Aufstellungskontexten und Intentionen der statuarischen Präsentation kaiserlicher Familien. Hamburg. Desnier, J.-​L. 1979. “Divus Caesar Imp Domitiani F.” Revue des études anciennes 81: 54–​65. Ercolani, E. 2012. “Lessico e sintassi delle emissioni a nome delle Augustae dai Flavi ai Severi.” In R. Pera (ed.), Il significato delle immagini: Numismatica, arte, filología. Rome, 295–​343. Erker, D.S. 2006. “Die Göttin Ceres in der späten Republik und in der augusteischen Zeit.” Mythos 1: 117–​35. Fejfer, J. 2003. “Images of the Roman Empress and Her Fellow Élite-​and Kinswomen.” In M. Büchsel and P. Schmidt (eds.), Das Porträt vor der Erfindung des Porträts. Mainz, 77–​87. Fejfer, J. 2008. Roman Portraits in Context. Berlin and New York. Fittschen, K. and Zanker, P. 1983. Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom III. Kaiserinnen-​und Prinzessinnenbildnisse. Frauenporträts. Mainz. Flory, M.B. 1988. “The Meaning of Augusta in the Julio-​Claudian Period.” American Journal of Ancient History 13: 113–​38. Flory, M.B. 1995. “The Deification of Roman Women.” Ancient History Bulletin 9, 3–​4: 127–​34. Foubert, L. 2015. “Vesta and Julio-​Claudian Women in Imperial Propaganda.” Ancient Society 45: 187–​204. Fraser, T.E. 2015. “Domitia Longina. An Underestimated Augusta (ca. 53–​ 126/​ 8).” Ancient Society 45: 205–​66. Frei-​Stolba, R. 1998. “Recherches sur la position juridique de Livia, l’épouse d’Auguste.” Études de lettres 1: 65–​89. Frei-​Stolba, R. 2008. “Livia et aliae: le culte des divi et leurs prêtresses; le culte des divae.” In F. Bertholet, A. Bielman Sanchez, and R. Frei-​Stolba (eds.), Égypte –​Grèce –​Rome. Les différents visages des femmes antiques. Bern, 345–​95. Gregori, G.L. and Rosso, E. 2010. “Giulia Augusta, figlia di Tito, nipote di Domiziano.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof? Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis. Zürich, 193–​210. Hahn, U. 1994. Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses und ihre Ehrungen im griechischen Osten anhand epigraphischer und numismatischer Zeugnisse. Saarbrücken. Hausmann, U. 1975. “Zu den Bildnissen der Domitia Longina und der Iulia Titi.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Rom 82: 315–​28. Hemelrijk, E.A. 2006. “Imperial Priestesses, a Preliminary Survey.” In L. de Blois, P. Funke, and J. Hahn (eds.), The Impact of Imperial Rome in Religions, Ritual and Religious Life in the Roman Empire. Leiden, 179–​93. Hidalgo de la Vega, M.J. 2003a. “La importancia de las princesas imperiales em el culto imperial.” Mediterraneo Antico 6, 1: 393–​407. Hidalgo de la Vega, M.J. 2003b. “Esposas, hijas y madres imperiales: el poder de la legitimidad dinastica.” Latomus 62: 47–​72. Hidalgo de la Vega, M.J. 2012. Las emperatrices romanas. Sueños de púrpura y poder oculto. Salamanca. Hitzl, K. 1991. Die kaiserzeitliche Statuenausstattung des Metroon. Berlin and New York. Kampen, N.B. 1991. “Between Public and Private: Women as Historical Subjects in Roman Art.” In S.B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History. Chapel Hill, 218–​48. Keltanen, M. 2002. “The Public Image of the Four Empresses: Ideal Wives, Mothers and Regents?” In P. Setälä (ed.), Women,Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire. Rome, 105–​46. Kienast, D. 1989. “Diva Domitilla.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 76: 141–​7. Kuhoff, W. 1993. “Zur Titulatur der römischen Kaiserinnen während der Prinzipatszeit.” Klio 75: 244–​56. Levick, B. 2002. “Corbulo’s Daughter.” Greece & Rome 49: 199–​211. Levick, B. 2003. “Corbulo’s Daughter.” In P. Defosse (ed.), Hommages à Carl Deroux III. Histoire et épigraphie, Droit. Brussels, 250–​70. Matheson, S.B. 1996. “The Divine Claudia : Women as Goddesses in Roman Art.” In D.D.D. Kleiner and S.B. Matheson (eds.), I, Claudia.Women in Ancient Rome. New Haven, 182–​93. Mayer, E. 2010. “Propaganda, Staged Applause or Local Politics? Public Monuments from Augustus to Septimius Severus.” In B.C. Ewald and C.G. Noreña (eds.), The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual. Cambridge, 111–​34. Megow, W.-​R. 1997. “Zur Frage der Funktion kaiserzeitlicher Kameen.” In M. Avisseau-​Broustet (ed.), La glyptique des mondes classiques: mélanges en hommage à Marie-​Louise Vollenweider. Paris, 71–​81. Morelli, A.L. 2009. Madri di uomini e di dèi: La rappresentazione della maternità attraverso la documentazione numismatica di epoca romana. Bologna.

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Annetta Alexandridis Morelli, A.L. 2010. “Potere femminile potere della Mater.” In M. Caltabianco, C. Racchia, and E. Santagati (eds.), Tyrannis, basileia, imperium. Forme, prassi e simboli del potere politico nel mondo greco e romano. Messina, 459–​76. Morelli, A.L. 2012. “L’iconografia della mater nella monetazione romana imperiale.” In R. Pera (ed.), Il significato delle immagini: Numismatica, arte, filología. Rome, 263–​93. Morelli, A.L. and Filippini, E. 2014. “Divinizzazioni femminili nella prima età imperiale. Analisi della documentazione numismatica.” In T. Gnoli and F. Muccioli (eds.), Divinizzazione, culto del sovrano e apotesoi. Bologna, 211–​50. Rosso, E. 2007. “Culte impérial et image dynastique: les divi et divae de la Gens Flavia.” In T. Nogales and J. Gonzalez (eds.), Culto imperial. Política y poder. Rome, 125–​52. Ruck, B. 2006. Die Grossen dieser Welt. Kolossalporträts im antiken Rom. Heidelberg. Scheer, T.S. 2006. “Bilder der Macht? Repräsentationen römischer Kaiserinnen.” In S. Schroer (ed.), Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art. Fribourg and Göttingen, 295–​321. Späth,T. 2010.“Augustae zwischen modernen Konzepten und römischen Praktiken der Macht.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof? Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis. Zürich, 293–​308. Stephens, J. (2008). “Ancient Roman Hairdressing.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 21: 111–​32. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum, H. 1998. “Frauen und Politik im alten Rom.” In P. Kneissl and V. Losemann (eds.), Imperium Romanum, Studien zu Geschichte und Rezeption. Stuttgart, 705–​32. Varner, E.R. 1995. “Domitia Longina and the Politics of Portraiture.” American Journal of Archaeology 99: 187–​206. Vinson, M. 1989. “Domitia Longina, Julia Titi and the Literary Tradition.” Historia 38: 431–​50. Weber, G. 2003. “Propaganda, Selbstdarstellung und Repräsentation:  Die Leitbegriffe des Kolloquiums in der Forschung zur frühen Kaiserzeit.” In G. Weber and M. Zimmermann (eds.), Propaganda—​ Selbstdarstellung—​Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreich des 1. Jhs. n. Chr. Stuttgart, 11–​40. Wood, S.E. 1999. Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.–​A.D. 68. Leiden and Boston. Wood, S.E. 2010.“Who Was Diva Domitilla? Some Thoughts on the Public Images of the Flavian Women.” American Journal of Archaeology 114, 1: 45–​57. Wrede, H. 1981. Consecratio in formam deorum. Vergöttlichte Privatpersonen in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Mainz. Ziegler, D. 2000. Frauenfrisuren der römischen Antike: Abbild und Realität. Berlin.

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36 THE FAUSTINAS Stefan Priwitzer

Introduction Aelius Aristides characterized the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–​161 CE) as the heyday of peace and prosperity,1 and Marcus Aurelius (161–​180 CE) is considered a philosopher king because of his Meditations. With Marcus Aurelius’ reign ended, according to Cassius Dio, “a kingdom of gold” (Cass. Dio 72.36.4 [Xiph.]).2 Edward Gibbon judged: If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. (Gibbon 2005: 103) Faustina Maior (the Elder), wife of the emperor Antoninus Pius, and her daughter Faustina Minor (the Younger), married to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, lived during this peak of the high empire. What do we know about these women?3 Those who are interested in women in antiquity normally find themselves with little information. The sources are usually scant, even for women of the upper classes and of the imperial family (domus Augusta). Information about the Faustinas, however, is relatively abundant.4 This is especially surprising in the case of Faustina Maior, as she died only two years after her husband’s accession to power. Consequently, Faustina Maior has a modest presence in the literary tradition, but still appears in archaeological, epigraphic and, especially, numismatic artifacts, decades after her death. A large number of coins and sculptures, and an increased interest by ancient authors reflect her daughter Faustina Minor’s over 30 years of “service” to the dynasty as a daughter, wife, mother, and mother-​in-​law. Still, the Faustinas were treated only as part of the historiography of the ruling men and integrated into the representation of the emperor in the form of coins, buildings, portraits, and inscriptions.5

The family of Faustina Maior Faustina Maior, exact name probably Annia Galeria Faustina and born at the end of the first century CE, descended from the family of the Annii Veri on her father’s side.6 This family was 439

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originally from Baetica (southern Spain), as were Trajan (98–​117 CE) and Hadrian (117–​138 CE), the first non-​Italic emperors. The mother of Faustina Maior, Rupilia Faustina, also bore two sons, as well as a daughter, to her husband M. Annius Verus. Faustina Maior’s older brother married Domitia Lucilla; one of the children of this marriage, Marcus Aurelius (a nephew of Faustina Maior) later became emperor. The family of Antoninus Pius, husband of Faustina Maior and later emperor, came from Nemausus (Nîmes) in the province of Gallia Narbonensis (southern France). The women of the families involved brought considerable wealth, particularly from brick production, into their marriages.7 This outline shows that the families of the two Faustinas and of the later emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius combined economic and political power at a very high level. Nevertheless, it was by no means foreseeable that Faustina Maior would someday become empress and mother of an empress.

The succession arrangements of Hadrian and the role of the Faustinas In modern scholarship, the succession arrangements of Hadrian are interpreted very differently, with some far-​reaching consequences for the understanding of the rule of the males involved. All interpretations, however, assert that women played a central role. In 136 CE the childless Hadrian adopted L. Ceionius Commodus, henceforth called L. Aelius Caesar. Hadrian’s adopted son in turn had a biological son, subsequently emperor Lucius Verus, and two biological daughters. Most scholars, however, believe that Hadrian had intended the future emperor Marcus Aurelius as his successor and that L. Ceionius Commodus had been elected only as a placeholder for the 15-​year-​old Marcus.8 Supporting this view of affairs is the engagement of Marcus to Ceionia Fabia, the eldest daughter of L. Ceionius Commodus.9 Even biological daughters could be used to secure the succession by marrying them off to the desired candidate (who was often adopted as well). Julia, the daughter of Augustus, at the beginning of the imperial era, is a prominent example of this approach.10 Whatever Hadrian’s earlier planning, it was thwarted by the death of Aelius Caesar at the beginning of 138 CE. Hadrian then (on February 25) adopted Antoninus and made him his chosen successor. Antoninus, on the orders of Hadrian, adopted his 16-​year-​old nephew Marcus and 7-​year-​old Lucius, son of the deceased Aelius Caesar. By this time Antoninus had already lost his two biological sons and, of his two daughters, only Faustina Minor was still alive. The older adopted son, Marcus, now clearly was in pole position for the succession to the throne after Antoninus. This interpretation contradicts the assumption that in 136 CE and in 138 CE Hadrian intended the Ceionii Commodi and thus Lucius, the son of Aelius Caesar, as successors.11 Following this theory, Faustina Minor plays a crucial role: in correlation with the adoptions in 138 CE Hadrian would have requested that Lucius should be engaged to the daughter of his designated successor Antoninus, Faustina Minor.12 Apart from the role of Antoninus, whether the succession regulation of 138 CE was aimed primarily at Marcus or at Lucius is debated. Most scholars choose a middle course as a solution:13 Lucius was initially engaged to Faustina Minor, at the request of Hadrian, but Antoninus Pius broke this engagement after the death of Hadrian, and instead betrothed Marcus to his daughter, thus thwarting Hadrian’s plans. The sources support this interpretation, but, surprisingly, assign Faustina Maior a decisive role: she supposedly asked Marcus, on behalf of Antoninus Pius, if he was ready to break the engagement with Ceionia Fabia and become engaged to Faustina Minor.14 Why would Antoninus not have asked Marcus himself?15 Regardless of how these 440

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contradictions might be resolved,16 it has become clear which central legitimizing function has been assigned to Ceionia Fabia and above all Faustina Minor by ancient and modern observers. Possible family relationships are brought into play (with the women of the families again central) to explain the fact that Hadrian reportedly found his desired successor in Marcus, if only in the second generation.17 Since the participating families, not at least the women, were active in tile production, some have attributed ownership changes in production facilities to inheritance-​based family relationships.18 Ancient sources refer to these alleged family relationships with only general, ambiguous phrases.19 The recognized importance of family ties for imperial succession, even in the period of the “adoptive” emperors Trajan and Hadrian, explains this sometimes desperate search for family connections.

Faustina Maior as empress and her early death July 10, 138 CE was the day on which Antoninus Pius came to power. A short time afterwards Faustina Maior was awarded the title Augusta.20 Since Trajan, the title Augusta (during the first century CE not yet regularly awarded to women of domus Augusta), had gained more importance. Apart from Trajan’s wife, Plotina, also his sister, Marciana, and after the death of the latter, her daughter Matidia Maior, were given this title.21 In this way, Hadrian, through his wife Sabina, a daughter of Matidia Maior, was connected with Trajan.22 The early awarding of the Augusta title to Faustina Maior and certainly its subsequent awarding to Faustina Minor were likely related to dynastic concerns. The death of Faustina Maior in 140 CE did not change that.23 Faustina Maior was raised to diva (“goddess”), and a temple at the Forum Romanum was consecrated to her.24 Never before had a diva been worshiped alone (at least for almost 20 years until the death of Antoninus Pius) in the traditional heart of the res publica.25 Antoninus permitted the presentation of pictures of diva Faustina Maior on the occasion of circus games, which took place in front of several hundred thousand spectators.26 Even long after her death, presumably until the year 161, coins for the diva Faustina Maior were minted.27 Diva Faustina Maior Maior played a more prominent role in public than any previous diva Augusta; some earlier Augustae were not so prominent even during their lifetimes.

The good marriage and the construction of a dynasty Faustina Maior’s prominence is understandable considering a central theme of Antoninus Pius and its dynastic implications: in the context of Roman society and especially within the domus Augusta, Faustina Maior (and her daughter) symbolized the good and legally valid marriage and the children born of such a connection. A  decree of the Decurions of Ostia (CIL XIV 5326) invited all wedding couples to offer a sacrifice at a monument erected for this purpose. It refers to the concordia (“harmony”) of the couple Antoninus Pius and Faustina Maior, although the latter had already died. The Ostian decree accepts a Roman senatus consultum (“resolution of the senate”), which was adopted after the death of Faustina Maior in autumn 140 CE, i.e. very early in the reign of Antoninus Pius.28 A few decades later, a corresponding senatus consultum for Rome is documented for Marcus Aurelius and Faustina Minor, again after the death of the wife.29 Presentation of the “exemplary” imperial marriage superseded actual chronology.30 The joint apotheosis relief of Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina Maior on the base of Antoninus Pius’ column, although created after his death and over 20  years after her death, still reflects this central aspect of the reign of Antoninus Pius. A  foundation for the support of girls (puellae Faustinianae, “girls of Faustina”), set up in tradition of charitable donations (alimenta) and in memory of diva Faustina Maior, references the children of such a marriage.31 441

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Antoninus Pius considered his “exemplary” marriage to Faustina Maior and the fruit of this matrimony, his daughter Faustina Minor, important in the context of his dynastic politics, particularly the marriage between Faustina Minor and Marcus Aurelius. Aurei (gold coins), struck on the occasion of the marriage, can be understood as a reflection of Antoninus Pius’ dynastic politics (RIC III Antoninus Pius no. 434). It is worth comparing the position of the spouses on these coins with those depicting a sacrificial bridal couple in front of the altar of Antoninus Pius and Faustina Maior (RIC III Antoninus Pius no. 601): the woman, Faustina Minor, not the man, Marcus, stands on the right, the “better”, high-​ranking side of the central figure, Concordia personified. Also, the Fasti Ostienses (inscribed public calendar from Ostia) starts the entry for the wedding with Faustina: Annia Faustina M. Aurelio Caesari nupsit. (Fasti Ostienses frg. Pa, line 3)32 Even the deceased Faustina Maior was involved in the celebrations: the reverse stamp of the coin just mentioned (RIC III Antoninus Pius no. 434), that depicted under the legend VOTA PVBLICA (“public vows”) the dextrarum iunctio (“clasping right hands”) between Marcus and Faustina Minor, was used for aurei for diva Faustina and for Marcus Caesar (“crown prince”).33 This emphasis on Faustina Minor appears during Marcus’ career as a presumptive successor. On November 30, 147 CE, Faustina Minor gave birth to a child; a day later, Marcus was awarded the tribunicia potestas (“tribunician power”) and an imperium proconsulare (“powers of a proconsul”), i.e. the powers of a Roman emperor, and Faustina Minor the title Augusta.34 Whether or not one wishes Faustina Minor to be the more honored of the two,35 it is obvious that Marcus would not (yet) have received the awards at this time without Faustina Minor and her motherhood.The official powers of a Roman emperor were transferred to Marcus not as an individual or, for example, as a military conqueror, but only in conjunction with and dependent upon his wife Faustina Minor, the daughter of Antoninus Pius. The significance of the dynastic function of the two Faustinas can also be clearly recognized by the exceptionally high proportion of coins representing women in relation to the entire emission of coins (see Table 36.1).36 The importance of the coins for the Faustinas is even more evident in some details.37 Coins for divus Hadrianus under Antoninus Pius are virtually undetectable in the hoards and Antoninus is never named divi (Hadriani) filius (“son of god (Hadrian)”) on coins.38 In the period between 140 and 161 CE, however, coins commemorating diva Faustina Maior make up 20.5–​28.5% of the different denominations. Antoninus Pius gave much more publicity to his deceased wife and thus to the mother of Faustina Minor, the fiancée and later wife of the “crown prince” Marcus than to divus Hadrianus, who had laid the foundation for the rule of Antoninus Pius and Marcus in 138 CE. An investigation of the coin legends, the inscriptions on coins, supports this interpretation of the coinage policy of Antoninus Pius.39 The legends on these coins refer to her, during her lifetime, as Faustina Augusta or as the wife of Antoninus Pius. For Plotina, under Trajan, and Sabina, Table 36.1  Proportion of coins representing women in relation to all coins of the reigns in the era of the Faustinas

Hadrian (128-38 CE) Antoninus Pius (138–61 CE) Marcus Aurelius (161–80 CE) Commodus (sole rule 180–92 CE)

Gold

Silver

Bronze

16% 30% 29% 3%

14% 39% 34% 12%

7% 30% 42% 15%

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under Hadrian, there are similar legends. One would expect this scheme to be used for Faustina Minor, i.e. that she was presented as the wife of Marcus. However, legends of this kind did not exist for Faustina Minor, but legends do exist that put her in relation to a man, namely as the daughter of Antoninus Pius (filia Augusti). The father, Antoninus Pius, was the central reference person, not the husband Marcus, who benefited from the father–​daughter line.40 Some years before the death of Pius, the filiation in the legends of the coins for Faustina Minor began to be omitted,41 but was not replaced by a reference to her husband Marcus. She was now simply Faustina Augusta and later diva Faustina. Most likely only members of the senatorial aristocracy had enough familiarity with the conventions of legends on coins to notice.42 Resistance to the deification of Hadrian revealed his difficult relationship with the Senate immediately after his death. Antoninus Pius faced a dilemma. Since Hadrian had brought him to the throne by his adoption, ignoring Hadrian was not an option;43 rather, in times of crisis, Antoninus Pius reminded Romans of Hadrian’s regulations governing the succession as a basis for his own legitimacy.44 Given the mood in the Senate, however, it was appropriate to distance himself partially from Hadrian. One consideration was the legitimation of power for the generation of his successor. The central message of the coins’ legends about the two Faustinas, in conjunction with the enormous quantity of coinage, was that the legitimacy of the designated successor, Marcus, was founded on the family of Antoninus Pius. The link between Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius was Faustina Minor. As a result, the real creator of the two-​generation adoption regime, Hadrian, had to take a back seat. The fact that this message conveyed by Antoninus Pius was appreciated in the aristocracy is revealed by a bon mot ironically attributed to Marcus Aurelius: When Marcus Antoninus was told about her [i.e. Faustina’s adulterous life], so that he might divorce her—​if not execute her—​he is reported to have said, ‘If we send our wife away, we must give back her dowry too’, and what dowry did he have but the empire […] (SHA Marc. 19. 8–​9 )45

Faustina Minor: the multiple mother Prior to his accession to the throne in 161 CE, Marcus Aurelius and Faustina Minor, thanks to their numerous children, remained in the public eye. Faustina gave birth to at least 10, more likely, 11, and possibly 14 children.46 Two of these children, the later Emperor Commodus and Lucilla, wife of Lucius Verus, made a name for themselves. This immensely fertile marriage symbolized fecunditas (“fertility”) and therefore the stability of the state. In this sense, the births of the children were exploited in propaganda. That little children, whether girls or boys, were among the main themes of the pictorial representations on coins, and the fact that their births gave rise to new sculptural portrait types of the mother shows their great importance for the dynasty.47

Mater castrorum Completely new and formative for the women of the domus Augusta after Faustina Minor was the title of mater castrorum (“mother of the camp”).48 For the first time, a woman was officially connected with the Roman military, an obviously male domain.49 The title was probably given to Faustina Minor in the summer of 174 CE.50 Faustina Minor’s stay with her husband and the

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troops during the war on the Danube border, probably contributed to the award of the title, but such a stay by itself was not so unusual that it would have demanded a new title. Perhaps the title was awarded to Faustina Minor in connection with an acclamation of Marcus Aurelius as imperator (whether spontaneously by the soldiers, or by Marcus Aurelius himself, perhaps taking up an idea of the imperial office, is disputed),51 after a spectacular or hard-​fought victory on the battlefield.52 Her dynastic importance and her bearing of many children certainly played a role in the new creation of this title. Additionally, a new connection was established between the imperial family and the soldiers, who knew Faustina Minor through the images on the coins especially as a mother. The coins with the legend mater castrorum include a religious component: as a new type, a Pietas (“dutiful behavior”), sacrificing in front of an altar, and several standards appear. This flag shrine (where the standards of the legion were stored) on the coins, the cult of the emperor, and the domus Augusta were all closely related. The mater castrorum also suggested diva Faustina Minor’s protective function for the soldiers.

Faustina Minor as mother of Commodus Granted the importance of the ruler’s children, it is not surprising that women’s fertility was given high priority. In this respect, Faustina stood apart from her predecessors by having an unusually large number of children and especially by the fact that, for the first time in 80 years, a natural son, Commodus, succeeded his father. One would expect that ancient writers would value Faustina’s role as a mother, but, instead, literary tradition portrays her in a decidedly negative way, contrary to their extremely positive portrayal of Marcus Aurelius. Different “types” of women could characterize imperial husbands, fathers, or sons, in literary tradition.53 If a man was to be discredited, sources either assigned him adulterous and power-​ hungry women or emphasized that women could exercise power under his weak (because effeminate) rule. Messalina, the meretrix Augusta (“imperial whore”), and Agrippina Minor, a ferox atque impotens mulier (“unrestrained and intemperate woman”) under Claudius serve as examples. Sources assigned women connected to “good” rulers traditional positive qualities.54 Alternatively, exemplary women could serve as a foil for “bad” rulers, making them even more repulsive. Often writers used female characters as “coloring” for the men associated with them, rather than attempting to portray the women’s individual personality. Why did writers provide such a lurid picture of Faustina Minor? While imperial coinage celebrated Faustina Minor for her numerous children, literary tradition pictured one of these births as fateful. On August 31, 161 CE, Faustina Minor gave birth to the twin brothers T. Fulvus Aurelius Antoninus and L. Aurelius Commodus.While T. Fulvus Aurelius Antoninus died at the age of 4, Commodus survived his father Marcus Aurelius and became his successor in 180 CE. The completely contrary character traits of Commodus and Marcus Aurelius raised a fundamental question: how could it be that such a “good” (because respected in senatorial circles) emperor such as Marcus had such a “bad” (because unpopular and hated in senatorial circles) son like Commodus? At this point, Faustina Minor comes into play:  undeniably the mother of the “tyrant” Commodus, she offered an opportunity to explain the unworthy nature of Commodus and to free Marcus Aurelius from this blemish:55 Faustina Minor must have committed adultery. Given the gladiatorial character of Commodus, a gladiator must have been the biological father, as reflected in anecdotes about his conception in the Historia Augusta.56 In one version, Faustina Minor is said to have fallen madly in love with a gladiator. She had confessed this love to her husband, who had consulted the Chaldeans (Babylonian soothsayers).Their solution was radical: kill the gladiator, bathe Faustina Minor’s abdomen in his blood (or, rather less strangely, anoint 444

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her with the blood) and then she was to have immediate sexual intercourse with Marcus. In a second version, Faustina simply conceived Commodus by committing adultery with a gladiator. The case of Agrippina Maior illustrates how much the literary intent can determine the representation of a woman with a comparable biography. She was the wife of Germanicus, a man glorified like Marcus Aurelius, and was mother of nine children, but among them was the later despotic emperor Caligula. In order to present Agrippina Maior in a positive light, Tacitus portrayed her and her husband Germanicus as an outstanding example of a marital bond even in difficult times, while he simultaneously downplayed Agrippina’s role as mother.57

The rebellion of Avidius Cassius In 175 CE Avidius Cassius, successful commander and, since 169 CE, controller of the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, proclaimed himself emperor, but was murdered only a short time later. If this were all we knew about the coup d’état of Avidius Cassius, we would regard it as the unsuccessful act of a power-​hungry general.58 Cassius Dio, however, presents information that ascribes a prominent role in the coup to Faustina Minor. He reports that Faustina Minor had incited Avidius Cassius to insurrection. She had believed her husband’s death to be imminent because of a serious illness, and concluded that her son, Commodus, because of his age (13) and his intellectual limitations, would not be suitable for the throne. “Someone” could seize imperial power and she would have to accept the retreat into private life.59 Although there are no other indications of a serious illness of Marcus Aurelius in 175 CE, what would a successful usurpation have meant for Marcus’ bereaved family? Faustina Minor had been involved in dynastic politics for over 30 years, but her dynastic and legitimizing potential would have been a double-​edged sword after Marcus’ death. Faustina Minor and her children could have served as a link to the domus Augusta or as a potential threat to a pretender to the throne, such as a usurping general. In the latter case, the statement of Cassius Dio, that Faustina feared to become a private citizen, was understated: her fear would have been, as a minimum, about exile, more likely about death.60 According to Cassius Dio, Faustina Minor therefore suggested that Avidius Cassius take over the rule and marry her after the death of Marcus Aurelius. While Avidius Cassius was thinking about Faustina Minor’s proposal, believing a false report of the death of Marcus Aurelius, he proclaimed himself emperor. However, an “external” solution with Avidius Cassius would have raised numerous problems, such as the integration or exclusion of Commodus, or the question of long-​term viability of the arrangement, not least in the light of the biological children of Avidius Cassius. An “internal” solution with the sons-​in-​law of their daughters would have been safer and probably more successful in the long term. The participation of Faustina Minor is doubtful; it is unclear why ancient sources blame her.61 Two explanations are plausible. The rebellion triggered numerous measures in favor of the pretender Commodus, culminating in his elevation to co-​Augustus in 177 CE; the rebellion led to the rule of Commodus. The step from an adulterous to a scheming Faustina Minor is not far: she is thus blamed not only for character defects, but also for the onset of the reign of terror of Commodus. There is a second possibility, relating to a contradiction in the sources. Cassius Dio complains that Avidius Cassius did not wait for confirmation of the alleged death of Marcus Aurelius, implying that Faustina Minor was the source of the death message. This could explain Dio’s puzzling claim that Faustina Minor had deceived Avidius Cassius. The deception would then have been that Avidius Cassius had not questioned the message because of its supposedly safe 445

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source (Faustina Minor).The (eastern) senatorial supporters of Avidius Cassius could have blamed Faustina Minor for the failure of the rebellion and exculpated Avidius Cassius with this episode.62 At the same time, the “ideal” emperor Marcus was not personally threated with usurpation, since Avidius Cassius started from the assumption that Marcus Aurelius was dead.

The death of Faustina Minor Cassius Dio links Faustina Minor’s involvement in the uprising with her death soon after: it was suicide out of fear of punishment.63 Faustina did die very soon after the uprising, in the fall of 175 CE in Cilicia, accompanying her husband on his return from the East. However, this picture can easily be reversed: the timing of her death, shortly after the uprising, may have led to rumors that Faustina was involved. And, as Cassius Dio admits, the death may have had natural causes. Like her mother, numerous measures honored the deceased Faustina Minor. Her place of death, Halala, a village in Kappadokia (Cappadocia), was elevated to city status as Faustinopolis. She was made diva Faustina and there must have been a temple for the diva Faustina Minor in Rome. The charitable foundation instituted to her mother’s memoria was renewed as novae puellae Faustinianae (“new girls of Faustina”). Her marriage was central even after her death: Ceionia Fabia, once the fiancée of Marcus, is said to have tried “to be united with him in marriage” (SHA Marc. 29.10).64 However, Marcus Aurelius, like Antoninus Pius after the death of Faustina Maior, renounced a new marriage. A legally non-​binding partnership with a concubine not only recognized the libido of the two emperors, but also prevented new competition through biological or adoptive sons.

Conclusions Perhaps Faustina Minor really was a scheming adulteress and aspects of the emperor’s representation of her served as cover-​up.65 But the androcentric and partly misogynistic view of many ancient authors instead suggests a purposeful misrepresentation of her, and some modern researchers continue to accept.66 Maybe Faustina Minor lived only to legitimate the power of her husband and to mother her many children. The traditional and schematic appreciation of his wife by Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations could be so interpreted, “that my wife is such as she is, so obedient, so affectionate, so straightforward” (M. Aur. Med. 1.17).67 Conclusions regarding personal impulses such as private mourning for the deceased wife or domestic bliss are difficult.68 The coins reliably reflect only the importance of the Faustinas for the emperor’s public image and representation. A dynastic role, as we can see for Faustina Maior and Minor, had previously been assigned to women of the domus Augusta.69 But the public image of the empresses in this context increased to an unprecedented degree of quality and of quantity, especially in the coinage, which also opened doors to further developments in the future. However, these representations were of their time, and thus limited, and can only be seen in retrospect as partially groundbreaking for the women of domus Augusta. Despite this extraordinary prominence in public representation, there is no proof of an active political role for the Faustinas,70 even though literary sources have attributed such an active role to them.This could be explained, apart from the reasons already mentioned, by recalling that the sources came from a later era and thus that the women of the Severan dynasty may have served as the model for their treatment of the women of the earlier domus Augusta. My analysis of the tradition about the two Faustinas may seem very limited regarding their actual personalities, but everything more would be mere speculation. 446

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Notes 1 My special thanks to Juliane Kerkhecker for the great help in correcting the English text. Martin Beckmann generously allowed me to look at his manuscript. Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller have shown great patience and improved the text in many passages. All remaining mistakes are mine. E.g. Aristid. Or. 14.69–​71 and 94–​9. 2 Translation: Cary 1927: 69. 3 For a wide-​ranging study on the Faustinas, see Levick 2014. For a shorter and thus more superficial overview see Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum 2002:  220–​54; Burns 2007:  140–​78; Freisenbruch 2011: 204–​15; Cenerini 2015; 2017 (with a main emphasis on Faustina Minor). 4 The main ancient literary sources for the Faustinas are Cassius Dio, a Greek senatorial writer of the third century CE, and the Historia Augusta, a collection of biographies of emperors and usurpers by an unknown writer probably of the fourth century CE (for the dating controversy see e.g. Cameron 2011: 743–​82). 5 There was no women’s right to coin, see Scheer 2006: 313–14; Levick 2014: 36–​8. For a short overview over the coinage for the Faustinas see Baharal 2000; Keltanen 2002; Alexandridis 2004: 23–​6. 6 For these and the following family relationships see Priwitzer 2009: 22–​9. 7 Chausson and Buonopane 2010; Kunst 2013: 111–12; Charles-​Laforge 2015. 8 E.g. Birley 1987: 38–​48; 2000: 146–​8. 9 SHA Marc. 4.5. 10 See Chapter 33. 11 The main representatives of this thesis were Pflaum 1964 and Barnes 1967. 12 It must be emphasized that only the wish, not the execution of the engagement has been handed down: SHA Ant. Pius 4.5–​6; Hadr. 24.1; Marc. 6.2; Ael. 6.9; Verus  2.2–​3. 13 E.g. Weiss 2008: 40; Eck 2012: 97; Birley 2012a: 144; 2012b: 155; Börner 2012: 17;Yarrow 2012: 430; Adams 2013: 74; Levick 2014: 53–​6, 62; Kulikowski 2016: 34, 37. Lindsay 2009: 214, mentions the engagement in the context of adoption only marginally. 14 SHA Marc. 6.2. 15 Fündling 2008: 36, wants to recognize a certain closeness between Marcus and Faustina Maior, based on her alleged mediating role. 16 Maybe Hadrian’s supposed desire for a betrothal between Lucius and Faustina Minor was a misunderstanding, arising because Marcus and Lucius have been nicknamed “Verus” at different times, see Priwitzer 2009: 63–​83; 2010: 239–​44; Priwitzer 2017a: 20, n. 121; Michels 2018: 25. 17 Surprisingly, an engagement between Lucius and Faustina Minor is accepted even by those researchers (e.g. Chausson 2007), who believe in a kinship between Hadrian and Antoninus Pius or Marcus (as e.g. Vita-​Evrard 1999; Letta 2005). Hekster 2001: 44, already noted that such a kinship “would not further clarify the earlier choice for Ceionius Commodus.” 18 Setälä 2002: 190, who had been an advocate of the relationship thesis for the changing ownership of brickworks, now admits that it is not impossible that the sites were simply sold. 19 Priwitzer 2009: 31, 57–​9, 89–​92. 20 On the title of Augusta see Kuhoff 1993. 21 See Chapters 34 and 35. 22 Temporini 1978; 120–​56; Tausend 2011: 15. 23 For the date of death see Weiß 2008: 7–​8. For the commemoration of empresses in general see Davies 2000: 102–19. 24 Beckmann 2012: 41–​50; Michels 2018: 154–​60. 25 A model could have been the temple of diva Matidia Maior, which Hadrian had erected for his mother-​in-​law. 26 For the honors after her death see Michels 2018: 150–​4. 27 Beckmann 2012: 11, 63–​72; Michels 2018: 167–​73. 28 Weiß 2008: 6–​10. 29 Cass. Dio 72,31,1–​2 [Xiph.]. 30 Weiß 2008; Michels 2018: 161–​7. 31 Levick 2014: 104–​6. 32 SHA Ant. Pius 10.2: nuptias filiae suae Faustinae, cum Marco Antonino eam coniungeret […]. For possible interpretations of RIC III Antoninus Pius no. 601 see Scheer 2006: 303 n. 36. 33 Beckmann 2012: 51–​5; Michels 2018: 185–​6. 34 Fasti Ostienses 1982: frg. Pb, line 14–​15; SHA Marc. 6.6. 35 Michels 2018: 188.

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Stefan Priwitzer 36 Duncan-​Jones 2006; Yarrow 2012:  433–​4. Similar numbers are shown by the studies of Rowan 2011: 992; Hobley 1998: 55, 70, 87–​8, 99; Claes 2013: 191–​2 with graph 9, 201–​6, and 215 with graph 15. Coins from the reign of Hadrian are evaluated only from the period of the elevation of Sabina to Augusta on; the numbers would be much lower regarding the whole of the reign of Hadrian. About the meaningfulness of statistical evaluations see Scheer 2006: 316. 37 Priwitzer 2017b: 98–​9. 38 Michels 2018: 61. 39 Meyers 2016. 40 Hadrian evidently chose a different approach. Sabina was referred to either as Sabina Augusta or Hadrian’s wife. As a daughter of Matidia Augusta she played (at least in the coin legends) no role, see Priwitzer 2017b: 101–​2. 41 Beckmann 2014: 44. See also Beckmann forthcoming. 42 On other target groups and the reception in other media (inscriptions and sculpture) and in the provinces of the Roman Empire see Priwitzer 2017b: 102–​6; Beckmann 2012: 73–​91. 43 Cass. Dio 70.1.2-​3 [Xiph.]: “Well, then, I will not govern you either, if he has become in your eyes base and hostile and a public foe. For in that case you will, of course, soon annul all his acts, of which my adoption was one” (translation: Cary 1925: 469). 44 Börner 2012: 80–​101. 45 Translation: Birley 1976: 127. For the dynastic importance of Faustina Minor also see Tausend 2011. 46 For an (incomplete) overview of the different counts, see Petraccia Luceroni 2006: 483–​6. Fittschen 1982: 18 n. 9, notes that Faustina may also have had miscarriages; Fittschen sees representations of Spes (“hope”) on coins as an indication of pregnancies. 47 Fittschen 1982; adjustments by Ameling 1992; Beckmann 2014. 48 Speidel 2012, with detailed discussion of earlier scholarship; Cenerini 2016: 38–​43; 2017: 111–​13. 49 Scheer 2006: 308–9, 312, 316; for a concise view on women and the military see Langford 2013: 24–​31. 50 Cenerini 2016:  38–​9; 2017:  111–​12, dates the event in 171 CE; however, then years would have passed before the first use of the title on coins. Birley 2012c: 228, arranges the awarding anachronistically (Faustina Minor was clearly awarded the title clearly before the rebellion) as a reaction to the uprising of Avidius Cassius (see p. 445). 51 Speidel 2012:  soldiers; Cenerini 2016; 2017:  Marcus Aurelius or his imperial office/​ central administration. 52 Langford 2013: 33–​48, thinks that “it [the title mater castrorum] was designed […] to convince civilian populations in Rome and throughout the provinces that the emperor had the army’s unflinching support for his reign and the establishment of his dynasty” (47). 53 Priwitzer 2009: 4. 54 Tausend 2011: 14. 55 Priwitzer 2009: 170–​4; 2010: 244–​50; Adams 2013: 175. 56 SHA Marc. 19–​1–​7. 57 Hälikkä 2002: 82, 85; Priwitzer 2009: 174. 58 For the usurpation see Priwitzer 2009: 175–​207, with detailed discussion of earlier scholarship, and Levick 2014: 83–​7. 59 Cass. Dio 72.22.3 [Xiph.]. 60 SHA Avid. Cass. 10.5. 61 Cenerini 2015: 8–​9; Cenerini 2017: 104–​8; Birley 2012c: 228–​9, does not even mention the allegations against Faustina. 62 Cenerini 2015: 9; Cenerini 2017: 107. 63 Astarita 1983: 91, 107–​18, and esp. 137–​8, follows Dio’s interpretation. 64 Translation: Birley 1976: 137; Cenerini 2015: 16. 65 See e.g. Eck 2006 on the honors for Faustina Minor after her death: “These measures were probably taken by Marcus Aurelius with the intention of countering rumors about her.” 66 Some male historians assume that they have in-​depth knowledge of how women tick. See, e.g. the assessment of allegations of adultery against Faustina Minor by Schipp 2011: 55, “She was a young woman and was often left alone”, or Eck 2006 regarding the title mater castrorum, “perhaps also as a compensation for her unlooked-​for sojourn on the Danube.” 67 Translation: Hard 2011: 9. 68 Fündling 2008: 67–​8; Michels 2018: 173; Cenerini 2015: 5. 69 Corbier 1995.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

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Stefan Priwitzer Davies, P.J.E. 2000. Death and the emperor: Roman imperial funerary monuments, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge and New York. Di Vita-​ Évrard, G. 1999. “La famille de l’empereur:  pour de nouveaux ‘Mémoires d’Hadrien.’” In J. Charlesgaffiot and H. Lavagne (eds.), Hadrien.Trésors d’une villa impériale. Milan, 27–​36. Duncan-​Jones, R.P. 2006. “Crispina and the Coinage of the Empresses.” Numismatic Chronicle 166: 223–​8. Eck, W. 2006. “Faustina: [3]‌Annia Galeria F.” In Brill’s New Pauly, English edition [online]. http://​dx.doi. org/​10.1163/​1574-​9347_​bnp_​e410290 (accessed June 16, 2019). Eck, W. 2012. “The Political State of the Roman Empire.” In van Ackeren 2012: 95–​109. Fittschen, K. 1982. Die Bildnistypen der Faustina Minor und die Fecunditas Augustae. Göttingen. Freisenbruch, A. 2011. The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars. London. Fündling, J. 2008. Marc Aurel. Darmstadt. Gibbon, E. 2005. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume the First (1776) and Volume the Second (1781). Ed. D. Womersley. London. Hälikkä, R. 2002. “Discourses of Body, Gender and Power in Tacitus.” In P. Setälä, R. Berg, R. Hälikkä, M. Keltanen, J. Pölönen, and V. Vuolanto (eds.), Women, Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire. Rome, 75–​104. Hard, R. (trans.) 2011. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations. Oxford. Hekster, O. 2001.“All in the Family.The Appointment of Emperors Designate in the Second Century A.D.” In L. De Blois (ed.), Administration, Prosopography and Appointment Policies in the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the First Workshop of the International Network, Impact of Empire (Roman Empire, 27 B.C. –​A.D. 406), Leiden, June 28–​July 1, 2000. Amsterdam,  35–​49. Hobley, A.S. 1998. An Examination of Roman Bronze Coin Distribution in the Western Empire A.D. 81–​192. Oxford. Keltanen, M. 2002. “The Public Image of the Four Empresses: Ideal Wives, Mothers and Regents?” In P. Setälä, R. Berg, R. Hälikkä, M. Keltanen, J. Pölönen, and V.Vuolanto (eds.), Women,Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire. Rome, 105–​46. Kuhoff, W. 1993. “Zur Titulatur der römischen Kaiserinnen während der Prinzipatszeit.“ Klio. Beiträge zur alten Geschichte 75: 244–​56. Kulikowski, M. 2016. The Triumph of Empire: The Roman world from Hadrian to Constantine. Cambridge, MA. Kunst, C. 2013. “Das Vermögen der Frauen im Umfeld der Adoptivkaiser.” In C. Kunst and A. Schulz (eds.), Matronage: Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke antiker Herrscherfrauen. Beiträge eines Kolloquiums an der Universität Osnabrück vom 22. bis 24. März 2012. Rahden, 109–22. Langford, J. 2013. Maternal Megalomania: Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood. Baltimore. Letta, C. 2005. “Faustina Minore discendente di Adriano ‘in linea femminile’? Nota testuale a Erodiano 1, 7, 4.” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 133, 2: 202–​5. Levick, B.M. 2014. Faustina I and II: Imperial Women of the Golden Age. Oxford and New York. Lindsay, H.M. 2009. Adoption in the Roman World. Cambridge and New York. Meyers, R. 2016. “  ‘Filiae Augustorum’:  The Ties That Bind in the Antonine Age.” Classical World 109: 487–​505. Michels, C. 2018. Antoninus Pius und die Rollenbilder des römischen Princeps. Herrscherliches Handeln und seine Repräsentation in der Hohen Kaiserzeit. Berlin. Petraccia Lucernoni, M.F. 2006. “Sulle tracce del ‘divus Fulvus’ venerato dagli ‘iuvenes’ di Thessalonica.” In A. Bertinelli, M. Gabriella, and A. Donati (eds.), Misurare il tempo, misurare lo spazio: atti del colloquio AIEGL-​Borghesi 2005. Faenza, 477–​86. Pflaum, H.-​G. 1964. “Le règlement successoral d’Hadrien.” In J. Straub (ed.), Bonner Historia Augusta Colloquium 1963. Bonn, 95–​122. Priwitzer, S. 2009. Faustina Minor:  Ehefrau eines Idealkaisers und Mutter eines Tyrannen:  quellenkritische Untersuchungen zum dynastischen Potential, zur Darstellung und zu Handlungsspielräumen von Kaiserfrauen im Prinzipat. Bonn. Priwitzer, S. 2010. “Dynastisches Potential von Kaiserfrauen im Prinzipat am Beispiel der Faustina Minor:  Tochter, Ehefrau und Mutter.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis. 2: ‘Augustae’: machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof? Akten der Tagung in Zürich, 18.-​20.9.2008. Berlin, 237–​51. Priwitzer, S. 2017a. “Marc Aurel und der Doppelprinzipat.” In V. Grieb (ed.), Marc Aurel. Wege zu seiner Herrschaft. Gutenberg, 1–​21. Priwitzer, S. 2017b. “Antoninus Pius, die beiden Faustinen und die Ehe.” In C. Michels and P.F. Mittag (eds.), Jenseits des Narrativs. Antoninus Pius in den nicht-​literarischen Quellen. Stuttgart, 89–​108.

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The Faustinas Rowan, C. 2011. “Communicating a Consecratio: The Deification Coinage of Faustina I.” In N. Holmes (ed.), Proceedings of the XIVth International Numismatic Congress Glasgow 2009. Glasgow, 991–​8. Scheer, T.S. 2006. “Bilder der Macht? Repräsentationen römischer Kaiserinnen.” In S. Schroer, Silvia (ed.), Images and gender: contributions to the hermeneutics of reading ancient art. Fribourg (Suisse), 295–321. Schipp, O. 2011. Die Adoptivkaiser. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marc Aurel, Lucius Verus und Commodus. Darmstadt. Setälä, P. 2002. “Women and Brick Production –​Some New Aspects.” In P. Setälä, R. Berg, R. Hälikkä, M. Keltanen, J. Pölönen, and V. Vuolanto (eds.), Women, Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire. Rome, 181–​201. Speidel, M.A. 2012. “Faustina –​mater castrorum. Ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte.“ Tyche. Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte, Papyrologie und Epigraphik 27: 127–​52. Tausend, S. 2011. “Die Frauen der Adoptivkaiser.” In J. Gießauf, A. Penz, and P. Wiesflecker (ed.), Im Bett mit der Macht. Kulturgeschichtliche Blicke in die Schlafzimmer der Herrschenden.Vienna. Temporini [-​Gräfin Vitzthum], H. 1978. Die Frauen am Hofe Trajans. Ein Beitrag zur Stellung der Augustae im Principat. Berlin and New York. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum, H. 2002. “Die Familie der ‘Adoptivkaiser’ von Traian bis Commodus.” In H. Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzhthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Theodora. München, 187–​264. Van Ackeren, M. 2012. A Companion to Marcus Aurelius. Malden, MA. Vidman, L. (ed.) 1982. Fasti Ostienses. Prague. Weiß, P. 2008. “Die vorbildliche Kaiserehe: zwei Senatsbeschlüsse beim Tod der älteren und der jüngeren Faustina, neue Paradigmen und die Herausbildung des ‘antoninischen’ Prinzipats.” Chiron. Mitteilungen der Kommission für alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 38: 1–​45. Yarrow, L. M. 2012. “Antonine Coinage.” In W.E. Metcalf (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage. Oxford and New York, 423–​52.

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37 WOMEN IN THE SEVERAN DYNASTY Riccardo Bertolazzi

Introduction It is beyond question that the imperial women who lived during the Severan age were all but elusive figures.Three out of the five emperors who formed the Severan dynasty, Geta, Elagabalus, and Severus Alexander, are reported to have been murdered while clinging to their mothers—​ Julia Domna, Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea, respectively—​which is indeed striking. To be sure, after Livia and Agrippina Minor, it was the first time that imperial women whose sons inherited the purple survived the deaths of their husbands. They consequently found themselves in a unique position to assert their authority and, as in the cases of Livia and Agrippina, to overstep the traditional norms defining the role of high-​ranking women in Roman society. Their agency is occasionally documented through literary evidence, such as the (lamentably epitomized) Roman History written by the contemporary senator Cassius Dio, the History of the Empire Since the Death of Marcus composed by the otherwise unknown Herodian, and the imperial biographies of the Historia Augusta (HA). On the other hand, artworks, coins, and inscriptions, which were abundantly produced in this period, provide us with valuable insights regarding their presence in public life. I  will briefly describe the most salient events which characterized their staying in power for over 40 years, as well as the most important transformations that the public image of imperial women underwent in this period. I will start with Julia Domna, wife of emperor Septimius Severus (193–​211) and mother of Caracalla (198–​217) and Geta (209–​211), and then pass to her sister Julia Maesa, mother of both Julia Soaemias (mother of emperor Elagabalus [217–​222]), and Julia Mamaea (mother of emperor Severus Alexander [222–​235]).

Dawn of the dynasty: Julia Domna and the early reign of Severus The reasons why Septimius Severus, an ambitious senator from the African city of Leptis Magna, decided to marry Julia Domna, a noblewoman from Emesa, in Syria, are not clear. Marriages like these were quite unusual, but the HA, our best source about Severus’ life, says that he was attracted by her horoscope, according to which she was destined to marry a king (Sev. 3.9; cf. also Geta 3.1 and Alex. Sev. 5.4). This story might well be a propagandistic invention, though it is important to bear in mind that Emesa had been the capital of a small kingdom 452

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ruled by “great kings” between the first century BCE and first century CE. Members of the Emesene aristocracy were still politically active during the second century CE, and one of them, Julius Alexander, “a prominent man” according to Dio (73[72].14.1), seems to have even attempted to stir up a revolt against Commodus. We cannot be totally sure that Domna was related to these people, but thanks to the Epitome de Caesaribus (23.1) we do know that her father, Julius Bassianus, was priest of the sun god Elagabal, Emesa’s main deity whose cult enjoyed great renown in the East. It is interesting to note that it took Severus some negotiations and the intervention of certain friends to secure the hand of Domna (Sev. 3.9). Moreover, their firstborn son, Septimius Bassianus (the future emperor Caracalla), was named after Domna’s father, whereas only the second-​born, Septimius Geta, received a cognomen typical of Severus’ family. Remarkably, the cognomen Bassianus was also transmitted through the marriage of Julia Maesa. She married a Syrian knight, Julius Avitus Alexianus, but their firstborn daughter was named Julia Soaemias Bassiana, whereas the second was named Julia Avita Mamaea in honor of her father. Finally, the child born from the marriage between Soaemias and a knight from Apamea, Sextus Varius Marcellus, became Varius Avitus Bassianus (later to be known as emperor Elagabalus). This not only demonstrates that Domna’s lineage was regarded as more important than Severus’, but also indicates that the idea of dynasty was rooted in her family background.1 After Severus was acclaimed emperor by the legions of Pannonia in 193, Domna was almost immediately given a distinctive place within the regime. In 195 she already appears as Augusta on a statue base in Panhormus, in Sicily (CIL X 7272), and on the pediment of a temple in Thugga, in Africa (CIL VIII 1482 = 15504 = 26498); she was also mentioned in a list of omens which had predicted the accession of Severus, who had dreamed that Marcus Aurelius’ wife Faustina had prepared the nuptial chamber when he was about to marry Domna. A further promotion came in 196, at around the same time as the elevation of Caracalla to the rank of Caesar, when she was granted the title of “mother of the camps” (mater castrorum), which Faustina Minor had already possessed. According to the HA (Clod. 3.5), Domna persuaded Severus to get rid of his former Caesar and ally Clodius Albinus, the governor of Britannia who was eventually defeated and killed in 197. As this anecdote is not confirmed by other sources, it could be quickly dismissed as gossip. It seems more likely, however, that it reflected the importance that contemporaries would attribute to her influence. Her maternal role was, in fact, greatly emphasized from the beginning of Severus’ reign, as clearly demonstrated by a striking number of coins and inscriptions where she is either mentioned or depicted together with her husband and with her two sons, Caracalla and Geta (respectively Augustus and Caesar since 198). An early cameo portrays her as the goddess Victoria—​an equation which does not seem to be documented with respect to previous imperial women—​thereby attesting to her role as personification of the victories of Severus.2 Nevertheless, such a great exposure made Domna a dangerous enemy. According to Dio (76[75].15.6), the powerful prefect of the Praetorian Guard C.  Fulvius Plautianus, a friend and fellow countryman of Severus, hated her to such a degree that he would miss no opportunity to discredit her before the emperor. The enmity between the Augusta and the prefect probably started during the long stay of the imperial court in the East between 197 and 202. At this time, in fact, Plautianus took advantage of his position to accumulate riches to the detriment of local populations, to whom Domna was naturally sympathetic on account of her Syrian origin and cultural background. As Aurelius Victor (Caes. 20.35) reports that Severus retained Domna despite her infidelity and treacherous behavior, it is probable that some of Plautianus’ accusations ended up circulating outside the imperial court. Interestingly, a large amount of coins produced for Domna during this period display the legends pi etas (“loyalty”) and p vdiciti a (“demureness”). Dio (76[75].15.7) tells us that she retired to a life of 453

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seclusion among philosophers chiefly on account of Plautianus’ accusations. With Domna on the defensive, Plautianus managed to persuade Severus to betroth Caracalla to his daughter, Fulvia Plautilla. The marriage was celebrated in Rome in 202 and Plautilla received the title of Augusta. Apart from a laconic comment by Dio, who calls her “a most indecent woman” (77[76].3.1), she remains a very elusive figure, though traces of a distinctive personality indeed arise when considering that she is portrayed on coins with at least five different coiffures in less than three years. At any rate, Caracalla bore a strong hatred toward both his spouse and his father-​in-​law. Hence the suspicion that Domna somehow nurtured this hostility, which finally led Caracalla to kill Plautianus in front of Severus in 205. Dio (77[76].4.4) notes that this caused joy to Domna and grief to Plautilla, who was immediately banished to the island of Lipara (77[76].6.3).3

The last years of Severus and the reign of Caracalla The removal of Plautilla left Domna as the only Augusta at court. Although by now she was no longer expected to generate heirs to the throne, her role as mother of the dynasty continued to be extensively advertised. Some of her most innovative coin types belong to this period. Among these, it is worth mentioning the type bearing the unprecedented legend mate r avg g (“mother of the Augusti,” following Geta’s promotion to the rank of Augustus between 208 and 209) and displaying Kybele on a chariot pulled by four lions, as well as the type dedicated to Vesta (the goddess of hearth, home and family) with the new legend ve sta mate r (“mother Vesta”). Moreover, she also appears at least six times in the surviving panels that decorated the famous Severan arch of Leptis Magna, in one instance returning to the persona of Victoria. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that, when Severus died in 211 and the rivalry between Caracalla and Geta violently erupted, Domna was identified as the only person who could keep peace between them. Herodian explicitly hints at her role of mediator by putting in her mouth a pathos-​filled speech with which she tried to instill harmony between her two sons (4.3.8–​9). Beginning in 211, she is called “faithful, blessed mother of the camps, the senate and the fatherland” (Pia, Felix, mater castrorum, senatus et patriae) on coins and inscriptions. Aside from mater castrorum, this was the first time that an imperial woman was awarded such an array of titles, which evidently recalled those borne by emperors. Coins issued during this year also depicted her holding a scepter while either standing or sitting on a throne, a scene which is quite telling about her enhanced authority. Despite this, Caracalla had Geta treacherously murdered by the end of the year during a supposedly reconciliatory meeting called in the apartments of Domna. In a highly dramatized scene described by Dio (78[77].2.1–​4), Geta tried in vain to escape his assassins by seeking refuge in the arms of his mother, who ended up covered in his blood and wounded on her hand.4 The violent suppression of Geta’s supporters immediately followed, and it appears to have marked a deterioration in the relationship between Caracalla and Domna. The HA says that, in the aftermath of the assassination, Caracalla was tempted to kill his mother as well (M. Ant. 3.3), whereas Dio reports that she was forbidden to mourn Geta and kept under close watch (78[77].2.5–​6). Curiously, coins minted for her during this period do not display any particular innovation, thus corroborating the impression that she was forced to reduce her presence in public life. Yet the situation soon began to change. In 213 Caracalla left Rome to campaign against the Alamanni and Domna accompanied him. When a victory was achieved toward the end of the year, the Arval Brethren (priests who offered sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests) in Rome celebrated it as a success of both Caracalla and his mother. This was probably a consequence of the fact that, as Dio notes, Caracalla “used to include her 454

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name, in terms of high praise, together with his own and that of the legions, in his letters to the senate, stating that she was well” (78[77].18.2). Dio was also present when the imperial court, on its way to the East, wintered in Nicomedia between 214 and 215, and it was presumably on this occasion that he saw her “holding public receptions for all the most prominent men, precisely as did the emperor” (78[77].18.3). Furthermore, she would give Caracalla “many and excellent recommendations” (78[77].18.1), being also entrusted with the managing of the imperial correspondence in both Greek and Latin (78[77].18.3). Although this task did not imply any official power, it put the Augusta in an unprecedented position to decide which matters would be prioritized and submitted to the attention of the emperor. An inscription from Ephesus reporting two letters, one from Domna and the other from Caracalla (IEph 212 ll. 9–​22), nicely illustrates how this mechanism might have worked. In her letter, Domna praised the city and stated that she wanted all the communities of the empire to receive benefits from her son; immediately after a separate letter from Caracalla granted the privileges sought by the Ephesians. Along with her prevalence in literary sources, it is noteworthy that her general presence in inscriptions remarkably increased in this period. At this time some of her most innovative imperial coin types were also struck, most notably the double denarii depicting a lunar crescent under her bust, which paired with the double denarii portraying Caracalla with the radiate crown symbolizing the sun. It is finally important to mention the famous Warsaw relief, where Domna is for the third time depicted as the personification of Victoria while placing a laurel crown upon the head of her son in military attire. Dio’s references to her “craftiness” (78[77].6.1a and 10.2) are, after all, telling of her ability to overcome the fluctuations of fortune, and this certainly impressed contemporary politicians. At a more popular level, a variety of jibes hinting at an incestuous relationship between Domna and Caracalla started to circulate: the HA reports the anecdote about her alleged affair with her son (M. Ant. 10.1–​4); and Herodian (4.9.3) claims that the Alexandrians nicknamed her Jocasta.5 The close cooperation between the Augusta and the emperor turned out to be fatal for both of them. In early 217, a letter from the prefect of the city to Caracalla informing the emperor of a conspiracy hatched by the prefect of the guard Opellius Macrinus was diverted to Domna, who was residing in Antiocheia while her son campaigned in Mesopotamia.The warning never reached Caracalla, and the conspirators consequently took the emperor by surprise and killed him on April 6, 217. To show continuity with the Severan regime, Macrinus, now emperor, at first allowed Domna to keep her titles and retinue, but later ordered her to return to Emesa as a private person, upon discovering that she was trying (without success) to incite the praetorians against him. Unable to tolerate such a humiliation, Domna committed suicide. Notably, she is the only Augusta to whom Dio dedicated an obituary, deprecating her attachment to power and recalling the numerous adversities she had faced during the reigns of her husband and son (79[78].24.1–​3). Her remains were brought to the tomb of Gaius and Lucius in Rome, presumably by her sister Maesa, who later moved them to the mausoleum of the Antonines, where the bones of Severus and her two sons had also been placed. She was also deified together with Caracalla under either Macrinus or Elagabalus.6

The dynasty strikes back: Elagabalus and the Syrian Augustae Following the death of Domna, Macrinus forced Maesa and her two daughters, Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea, to leave the imperial court and retire to Emesa. However, Macrinus’ inability to successfully conclude the Mesopotamian war started by Caracalla, his decision to come to terms with the Parthians, and his refusal to grant an increased salary to the new recruits made him less and less popular among the soldiers. Presumably aware of this, Maesa foresaw an 455

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opportunity to bring the dynasty back to power. According to Herodian (5.3.10–​12), by promising money and spreading word that the son of Soaemias, the 14-​year-​old Avitus Bassianus, was the illegitimate son of Caracalla, she managed to have him acclaimed emperor on May 16, 218, under the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus by the legionaries of the Legio III Gallica (which was stationed not far from Emesa). Dio reports a similar story (79[78].31.2–​4), but he attributes the whole plan to a freedman of Maesa, Eutychianus, who claimed that the god Elagabal had bidden him to bring the young Bassianus to the legionary camp.This was probably the official version of the story which Maesa put into circulation. Although she was immediately proclaimed Augusta and avia Augusti (“grandmother of the Augustus,” a new title which was expressly created for her), she seems to have been particularly concerned with keeping a low profile. An imperial woman who would take too much initiative was, in fact, generally frowned upon, for which reason Domna had been accused of incest and, after Caracalla’s death, of aspiring to “become sole ruler” in the same fashion as Eastern queens from the legendary past. As a result, Eutychianus was put in command of the troops supporting Antoninus’ claim to the throne, though, as observed by Dio (79[78].38.4), Maesa and Soaemias had to intervene during the final battle to restrain the soldiers from fleeing. Once Macrinus had been defeated and killed, Eutychianus was entrusted with the task of teaching the young Antoninus how to behave as an emperor, but Herodian noted that the current affairs “were set in order for him by his grandmother and his advisors” (5.5.1). Soaemias soon became Augusta as well, bearing also the title of mater Augusti (“mother of the Augustus”).7 Problems started to arise, nonetheless, quite early in the new reign, for the emperor soon grew intolerant of the supervision of Eutychianus, eventually killing him while the imperial court was returning to Rome during the winter of 218–​219. Antoninus made no mystery of his intention to present himself as an emperor who was above all chief minister of the god Elagabal, as coins and inscriptions referring to him as sacerdos amplissimus dei Solis Invicti Elagabali (“most elevated priest of the Invincible Sun God Elagabal”) clearly indicate. Furthermore, our sources attribute to him a long list of cruelties and sexual extravagances, though verifying the truthfulness of all this information remains difficult. It is certain that the new emperor, who was soon nicknamed Elagabalus, turned out to be unbearable to the conservative senatorial elite and, most importantly, to the praetorians, whose role in making and unmaking emperors had been determinant only a few decades before, as the cases of Pertinax and Didius Julianus demonstrate. Herodian says that Maesa tried in vain to moderate the excesses of her grandson (5.5.5). Notably, her prudent and pragmatic conduct appears quite clearly in her coinage, which is entirely dedicated to traditional deities and virtues of the Augustae such as Juno, Pudicitia, Fecunditas, etc. Soaemias adopted a quite different stance. Her strong attachment to Elagabalus is stressed by the HA, where it is noted that the emperor “was wholly under the control of his mother […] so greatly that he did no public business without her consent” and, predictably, “she lived like a harlot and practiced all kinds of indecencies in the palace” (Heliogab. 2.1). She was, moreover, authorized to enter the senate and to sit on the bench of the consuls and eventually to create a “senate of women” (senatus mulierum), whose function was to legislate for privileges for matrons (Heliogab. 4.1–​4).This latter passage has been generally dismissed as fiction, but it seems quite revealing of how her influence over the emperor and unusual behavior inconvenienced the elites of Rome. Traces of unconventional conduct might also be found in her coinage. This places a conspicuous emphasis upon Venus Caelestis, an incarnation of Venus appearing for the first time on Roman imperial coins and personifying the Carthaginian goddess Urania, whom the emperor wanted to symbolically marry to the god Elagabal.8 The numerous marriages of emperor Elagabalus seem also to reflect the differing views of Maesa and Soaemias.These seem to have influenced the boy emperor in opposite ways, pushing 456

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him to alternately pursuing traditional and theocratic styles of rule. Soon after his arrival in Rome, in 219, Elagabalus married a distinguished noblewoman, Julia Cornelia Paula, but he divorced her the following year when he decided to marry Aquilia Severa, a Vestal virgin, with the apparent purpose of creating a sacred union between himself, the priest of Elagabal, and a priestess of Vesta. Inasmuch as this decision violated one of the most sacred Roman traditions, this new marriage caused an immense scandal. Yet, besides the title of Augusta, Aquilia Severa was also awarded the titles mater castrorum, senatus et patriae which had belonged to Julia Domna. A third marriage in 221, this time with a great-​granddaughter of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina Minor, Annia Faustina, was probably meant to regain credibility, but it did not seem to have had the desired effect, particularly because Elagabalus returned to Aquilia Severa shortly thereafter.9 Amid such chaotic events, Maesa realized that the only way to stay in power was to replace Elagabalus before an uprising would eliminate both him and the members of his family. According to Herodian (5.7.1–​2), by using a good deal of persuasion Maesa convinced Elagabalus that the best way for him to fulfill his priestly duties was to delegate some power to his 12-​year-​old cousin Gessius Alexianus, the son of Julia Mamaea, by bestowing the title of Caesar upon him.The ceremony, which also included Elagabalus’ adoption of Alexianus and the bestowal of the new name Marcus Aurelius Alexander upon him, took place in the senate in June 221. Dio (80[79].17.2–​3) also records this event, though he omits the details of Maesa’s work behind the scenes, simply noting that she was present together with Soaemias at the side of the emperor. Interestingly, Elagabalus affirmed that it was a prophecy of the god Elagabal that had persuaded him to adopt his cousin.This detail recalls the alleged prediction of Elagabal which had urged Eutychianus to bring Elagabalus to the legionary camp three years before. Hence the probability is that Maesa made use of this stratagem once again, displaying her authority by coming to the senate, but prudently avoiding an overt role as the mastermind behind the operation.10 The promotion of Alexander to the rank of Caesar did not imply the granting of any conspicuous powers, his new title of nobilissimus Caesar imperi et sacerdotis (“most noble Caesar of the empire and the priesthood”) being a clear allusion to his subordination to the priest-​emperor. Nevertheless, the accession opened the way to the ambitions of Julia Mamaea, who started to work hard to win support for her son among senators and praetorians. Thanks to Herodian we know, in fact, that she kept Alexander under close watch in order to prevent him from joining the emperor when he was worshiping Elagabal (5.7.5), had him educated according to Greek and Roman customs (same passage) and, finally, that she started to secretly distribute money to the praetorians (5.8.3). Once Elagabalus became aware that something was coming down the pike and started to plot the removal of his cousin, Maesa and Mamaea joined forces to protect Alexander. At some point before the end of 221, a first attempt by Elagabalus to murder Alexander was frustrated with the help of the praetorians, who took Alexander and Mamaea under protection in their camp. It was only thanks to the intervention of the praetorian prefect Flavius Antiochianus that the soldiers spared Elagabalus. His prestige was at this point severely damaged, and Maesa’s hatred of him reportedly drove her to favor Severus Alexander as the only “true son” of Caracalla. A second plot was discovered a little later, on March 11 or 12, 222, inevitably resulting in another outcry of the praetorians. In order to placate them, Elagabalus went to the camp with Alexander, but this time Dio notes that a violent quarrel broke out between Soaemias and Mamaea, who were also present, causing excitement among the soldiers (80[79].20.1–​2); when Elagabalus tried to take advantage of the confusion to escape, he was seized and killed together with his mother, who died while clinging tightly to him (same passage). Their bodies were mutilated and dragged through the streets of Rome, the corpse of Elagabalus eventually being thrown into the Tiber, quite symbolically near the outlet of the Cloaca Maxima.11 457

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Severus Alexander and the rule of mamma Alexander was acclaimed emperor with the name of Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander immediately after the assassination of Elagabalus. At the same time, Mamaea took the place of her murdered sister by assuming the titles of Augusta and mater Augusti. Maesa retained both her titles and position of influence. According to Herodian (6.1.1–​2), Maesa and Mamaea, who were de facto controlling the management of imperial affairs, carefully selected the men who were to form Alexander’s council of advisors (consilium principis) by including the most authoritative senators, thus communicating an idea of rupture with the policies of Elagabalus and promoting a reconciliation with the senatorial class. The Byzantine chronicler Zonaras, who says that Mamaea “gathered wise men about her son […] with whom she shared all that had to be done” (12.15), and the HA, which affirms that the emperor “while still a boy, used to do everything in conjunction with his mother, so that she seemed to have an equal share in the rule” (Alex. Sev. 14.7), partially confirm this information. Furthermore, the New History by the late-​antique historian Zosimus says that Mamaea entrusted the jurist Ulpian, a knight who had perhaps been Alexander’s secretary when he was still a Caesar, with a sort of supervision over the praetorian prefects, Julius Flavianus and Geminius Chrestus (1.11.2–​3). These were nevertheless replaced by Ulpian as sole prefect already in 222. As one of the foremost experts in law and Mamaea’s trusted man, Ulpian was expected to foster legal protection under the law as the main trait of the new regime, checking the excessive power which courtiers and praetorians had accumulated under Elagabalus. His tenure did not last for long, however, since the imperial freedman and influential courtier Epagathus formed a conspiracy against him. The details of the plot are wrapped in obscurity, but we are certain about the involvement of the praetorians, whose hostility toward Ulpian had been brewing in the meantime. During a riot between the soldiers and the mob, Ulpian was chased down by a group of soldiers and killed in the imperial palace, in front of Alexander and Mamaea, who watched the scene helplessly. In order to punish Epagathus without upsetting the praetorians, Alexander had to appoint him prefect of Egypt and have him killed away from Italy at some point in 224.12 The death of the elderly Maesa, which should be dated not long after Ulpian’s, must have further weakened the regime, but the spirit of cooperation between emperor and senate did not deteriorate. In 225, Alexander married Gnaea Seia Herennia Sallustia Barbia Orbiana, the daughter of the senator Lucius Seius Sallustius. The latter was probably made Caesar, a move which was evidently supposed to strengthen Alexander’s position by adding an elder and authoritative male individual to the imperial family. This experiment, however, was short-​ lived. Both Herodian (6.1.9–​10) and Zonaras (12.15) report that Mamaea treated Sallustius and Orbiana in an insolent way, and that Alexander did not dare to restrain his mother. In 227 Seius Sallustius tried, in vain, to appeal to the praetorians for protection, but Mamaea managed to have him charged with conspiracy and put to death. As for Orbiana, she was exiled to Africa.13 That Mamaea did not want to lose her position of influence appears quite clearly from the examination of the epigraphical dedications, where she was systematically given precedence over Orbiana, thus making it clear that her omnipresence was anything but diminished after her daughter-​in-​law had been granted the title of Augusta. Furthermore, starting from this period, Mamaea assumed the titles of mater castrorum, senatus et patriae, which had already belonged to Julia Domna. This seems to indicate that Mamaea progressively distanced herself from the prudent policies of Maesa, resuming a protagonist role like that of Domna. Curiously, as in the case of her aunt, jokes about Mamaea’s attachment to her son seem to have been in circulation. This time, though, more emphasis was placed on her overly controlling attitude and on Alexander’s dependency on her: according to the HA, some halls in the imperial palace which the emperor 458

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had named after Mamaea were popularly renamed Ad Mammam (Alex. Sev. 26.9), and another anonymous text, the Epitome de Caesaribus, relates that she would force her son to feast with leftovers from previous meals (24.5).14 It is not surprising, then, that Mamaea met the same tragic fate as Alexander. She followed her son in the campaigns against the Persians and the Germans between 232 and 235, and, together with him, she became the target of the dissatisfaction of the soldiers. According to Herodian (6.5.8 and 6.8.3), they blamed the lack of decisive victories on Alexander’s poor military leadership and dependency on a mother who was also accused of embezzling the money of the donatives (6.9.4). These accusations were evidently so widespread that even the HA, the source most favorably inclined toward Alexander, admits that the soldiers “were speaking of him as a child and of his mother as greedy and covetous” (Alex. Sev. 59.8) and hated Alexander because they thought that Mamaea “wanted to abandon the war against the Germans and return to the East in order to display her power there” (Alex. Sev. 63.5). This resentment was exploited by an ambitious official in charge of training the recruits, Maximinus, who was acclaimed emperor by his soldiers while the court was still in Germany, in February or March 235. Nobody rose in defense of the emperor and the Augusta, who were slain while clinging to each other in the imperial headquarters near Mogontiacum. Maximinus ordered the destruction of their images and the erasure of their names from inscriptions. Although the senate restored the name of Alexander and deified him after the death of Maximinus in 238, the same honors were not granted to Mamaea, as no coins or inscriptions refer to her as a goddess. She was probably still blamed for the death of Seius Sallustius and the banishment of Orbiana, but the impression remains that such a treatment was unfair. After all, it was she who, together with Maesa, had engineered the philo-​senatorial regime of Alexander in the first place.15

Conclusions This discussion of Roman imperial power demonstrates that one cannot really study the political history of the Severan age without considering the agency of its Augustae. There is no doubt that they surpassed previous imperial women in both visibility and influence. Several factors made this possible. The first is Severus’ decision to establish a dynasty, which allowed Domna and her successors to play an important role in the transmission of power. The second is the availability of young princes whom they could influence. The third, and perhaps most important one, is their extraordinary political perspicacity and courage: Domna managed to survive Plautianus and the assassination of Geta, coping with Caracalla in such a successful way that she was granted honors never before achieved by an imperial woman; Maesa overthrew an emperor, put a theocrat in power, and then replaced him with a senate-​friendly regime when she concluded that the latter would better serve her purposes; neither Domna nor Soaemias nor Mamaea showed hesitation when they realized that addressing the soldiers was the only way to stay in power; lastly, through thick and thin, Mamaea managed to remain a point of reference in Roman politics for over 13 years. It is attractive to think that their Syrian (and therefore Hellenistic) background provided them with precious knowledge on how to navigate dynastic struggles and conspiracies, insofar as this kind of conflict had a much older tradition in the East than in the West. They were able to achieve, all things considered, more honors and power than Livia and Agrippina, who were both mothers of emperors. Yet, apart from Maesa, who died of old age, Domna, Soaemias and Mamaea had to succumb to the vicissitudes of the army, the real emerging, powerful force which would dominate imperial politics during the rest of the third century. One might note, however, that their style continued to be imitated. Otacilia Severa (wife of Philip the Arab), 459

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Cornelia Solonina (wife of Gallienus), and Ulpia Severina (wife of Aurelian) were also matres castrorum, senatus et patriae; on coins they were portrayed with hairstyles recalling those of the Severan Augustae, and their busts were often placed over lunar crescents. The memory of the Syrian imperial women had not completely faded away.

Notes 1 Marriage: Okoń 2010. Dynasty of Emesa: Levick 2007: 6–​22 and references there. Julius Alexianus: Letta 1985; Buraselis 1991. Caracalla as Septimius Bassianus: PIR2 S 446. Domna’s lineage and dynastic tradition in her family: Buraselis 1991: 32; Chausson 1995: 698–​9. 2 Dream: Dio 75(74).3.1. Mater castrorum: Kienast, Eck, and Heil 2017: 137 (Faustina), 152 (Domna). Cf. also the discussion in Langford 2011: 23–48; Conesa Navarro 2019: 283–7. Maternal role on coins and inscriptions: Bertolazzi 2019: 465–​71; Nadolny 2016: 113–​32 with further references. Cameo: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen of Kassel (Germany): inv. no. Ge 236. Cf. Alexandridis 2004: 205–6 no. 233 (tab. 60 fig. 3); Lichtenberger 2011: 358. Domna as Victoria: Ghedini 1984: 132–​5; Lichtenberger 2011: 357–​9. 3 Hatred with Plautianus: Bertolazzi 2018. Connection between pi etas and pvdicitia types (RIC 572, 885 and 575–​76) and Domna’s retirement: Lusnia 1995: 130. Contra: Levick 2007: 76. Cf. also Rowan 2011: 250–​1 on the quantity of coins in circulation. Domna and philosophers: Buraselis 1991; Levick 2007: 107–​23. On Plautianus and Plautilla, González Fernández and Conesa Navarro 2014; 2018; Bingham and Imrie 2015. On Plautilla’s coiffures,Varner 2004:164–​5. 4 On the mate r avgg and ve sta mate r types (RIC 562, 858, 885 and 583–​6, 868, 892–​3), Bertolazzi 2019 and bibliography there. Arch of Leptis: Ghedini 1984: 55–​110. Presence on arches: Cassibry 2014. New titles:  Kienast, Eck, and Heil 2017:  152; cf. also Bertolazzi 2019:  476–​7. Coins depicting her while holding a scepter: RIC 380–​1, 588, 601. 5 Lack of innovations on coins after Geta’s murder:  Bertolazzi 2019:  477–​8. Arval Brethren:  CIL VI 2086 = 32380 = Scheid 1998: 284 no. 99a ll. 23–​5. Presence in Caracalla’s letters and public receptions, cf. Bertolazzi 2015. Tuori 2016:  196 stresses Domna’s peculiar position in managing the imperial correspondence. Increased presence in inscriptions:  Nadolny 2016:  88. Innovative types:  Bertolazzi 2019:  477–​80. Relief:  National Museum in Warsaw inv. no.  139678, cf. Ghedini 1984:  113–​19 (fig. 12); Alexandridis 2004: 205 no. 230 (tab. 53 fig. 2); Lichtenberger 2011: 358 (fig. 283); Heckster 2015: 152–​3. On the incest, Davenport 2017. 6 Letter: Dio 79(78).4.2–​3. Failed plot and suicide: Dio 79(78).23.1–​6. Remains: Dio 79(78).24.3. On the impression Domna left on Dio, cf. Scott 2017. 7 Maesa’s retirement to Emesa:  Dio 79(78).30.3; Hdn. 5.3.2. Macrinus and the army:  cf. in general Potter 2014:  146–​51. Maesa Augusta:  upon co-​opting Antoninus, at some point between June and July, the Arval Brethren included Maesa as Augusta and avia Augusti nostri in their prayer (CIL VI 2104  =  32388  =  Scheid 1998:  297 no.  100 l.  21). Domna as sole ruler:  Dio 79(78).23.3. On Eutychianus, who is sometimes referred to as Gannys, Scott 2018: 86–​7. Dio 80(79).6.2–​3 stresses his role as tutor of Antoninus. Soaemias Augusta: Kienast, Eck, and Heil 2017: 168. 8 Eutychianus’ death: Dio 80(79).6.1, cf. Scott 2018: 121; for a general overview of the reign of Elagabalus, cf. Potter 2014: 151–​7; McHugh 2017: 61–​85 with further references. According to Dio (80[79].6.2), Soaemias had an affair with Eutychianus, “who was virtually her husband.” This relationship probably contributed to foment rumors about her unconventional behavior. Interestingly, before Elagabalus’ accession, Soaemias had dedicated the tomb of her late husband, Sex.Varius Marcellus, by calling him “most beloved husband” (CIL X 6569  =  IG XIV 911), thus displaying herself as a devout widow. Senatus mulierum:  Kettenhofen 1979:  68–​9; Elefante 1982; Wallinger 1990:  99–​103. Coins:  Rowan 2011: 261–​7. 9 Cornelia Paula: PIR2 C 660. Aquilia Severa: PIR2 A 648. Annia Faustina: PIR2 A 710. 10 On the connection between the predictions of the god Elagabal and the agency of Maesa, cf. Bertolazzi (forthcoming). 11 Nobilissimus … sacerdotis: cf. McHugh 2017: 70–​1. Dio (80[79].19.1–​2) narrates Elagabalus’ first attempt to murder Alexander, stressing the role of Maesa and Mamaea in protecting Alexander. Herodian (5.8.3) talks of several failed plots, also noting the agency of Maesa and Mamaea. Cf. Scott 2018: 144–​5. Elagabalus spared: HA, Heliogab. 13.4–​5. Maesa’s hatred: Dio 80(79).19.4. Cloaca Maxima: Hdn. 5.8.9. 12 On the reign of Alexander in general, cf. Potter 2014: 151–​67; McHugh 2017. On Alexander’s consilium, cf. also Letta 1991: 690–​1; Davenport 2011; Schöpe 2014: 208–​10. Mamaea’s titles: Kienast, Eck, and

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Women in the Severan dynasty Heil 2017: 174. Dio, who became a protégé of Alexander, attributes the appointment of Ulpian to the latter (80.1.1). Cf. Scott 2018: 148–​9. Assassination of Ulpian: Dio 80.2.2–​4. 13 On Maesa’s death and deification, cf. the discussion in McHugh 2017: 129–​30, who places her death between the end of 225 and 226. Kettenhofen 1981, who suggests a date before August 224 sounds, however, more convincing: in Ostia, a dedication to Alexander and Mamaea dating to August 3, 224 (CIL XIV 125) refers to the latter as mater […] totius domus divinae, thus indicating that Maesa was no longer present as a member of the court. Cf. also Letta 1991:  692. Her deification likely took place after November 7, 224, for the number of deities to whom the Arval Brethren sacrificed on this date (CIL VI 2107 = 32390 = Scheid 1998: 315 no. 105b ll. 13–​14) was still the same as in 218 (CIL VI 2104  =  32388  =  Scheid 1998:  293 no.  100a l. 4); cf. Kettenhofen 1981: 247. Marriage with Orbiana: Hdn. 6.1.9. Dating: Kienast, Eck, and Heil 2017: 173; McHugh 2017: 132–​3. Overthrow of Seius (PIR2 M 27 and S 81) and exile of Orbiana: Hdn. 6.1.10. Dating: Kettenhofen 1981: 247. 14 Mamaea’s titles on inscriptions: Kettenhofen 1979: 156–​63; coins: Kosmetatou 2002. 15 Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (6.21.3) attests to Mamaea’s presence in Antiocheia during the campaign against the Persians. Assassination in Mogontiacum: Hdn. 6.9.6–​7.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections not listed here are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). IEph

Wankel, H., et al. (eds.) 1979–​1984. Die Inschriften von Ephesos. Bonn.

Bibliography Alexandridis, A. 2004. Die Frauen des Römischen Kaiserhauses. Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna. Mainz am Rhein. Bertolazzi, R. 2015. “The Depiction of Livia and Julia Domna by Cassius Dio: Some Observations.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 55: 413–​32. Bertolazzi, R. 2018. “On the Alleged Treachery of Julia Domna and Septimius Severus’ Failed Siege of Hatra.” In E.D. Carney and C. Dunn (eds.), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. New York, 67–​86. Bertolazzi, R. 2019. “Julia Domna and her Divine Motherhood: A Re-​Examination of the Evidence from Imperial Coins.” The Classical Journal 114, 4: 464–​86. Bertolazzi, R. (forthcoming). “Cassius Dio, Julia Maesa, and the Omens Foretelling the Rise of Elagabalus and Severus Alexander.” In C. Bailey, A. Kemezis and B. Poletti (eds.), Cassius Dio in His Intellectual Context: Greek and Roman Pasts in the Long Second Century. Leiden and New York. Bingham, S. and Imrie, A. 2015. “The Prefect and the Plot: A Reassessment of the Murder of Plautianus.” Journal of Ancient History 3, 1: 76–​91. Buraselis, K. 1991. “Syria, Emesa and the Severans: Political Ambitions and Hellenistic Tradition in the Roman East.” In O ελληνισμóς στην Aνατoλή (Hellenism in the East). Athens,  23–​39. Cassibry, K. 2014. “Honoring the Empress Julia Domna on Arch Monuments in Rome and North Africa.” In L.R. Brody and G.L. Hoffman (eds.), Roman in the Provinces:  Art on the Periphery of the Empire. Chicago,  75–​90. Chausson, F. 1995. “Vel Iovi vel Soli: quatre études autour de la Vigna Barberini (191–​354).” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Antiquité 107, 2: 661–​765. Conesa Navarro, P.D. 2019. “Faustina la Menor y Julia Domna como matres castrorum. Dos mujeres al servicio de la propaganda imperial de las dinastías Antonina y Severa.” Lucentum 38: 281–99. Davenport, C. 2011. “Iterated Consulships and the Government of Severus Alexander.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 177: 281–​8. Davenport, C. 2017. “The Sexual Habits of Caracalla:  Rumour, Gossip and Historiography.” Histos 11: 75–​100. Elefante, M. 1982. “A proposito del senaculum mulierum. S.H.A. Ant. Hel. 4,3–​Aurel. 49,6.” Rendiconti della Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti 57: 91–​107. Ghedini, F. 1984. Giulia Domna tra oriente e occidente. Le fonti archeologiche. Rome.

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Riccardo Bertolazzi González Fernández, R. and Conesa Navarro, P.D. 2014. “Plauciano: la amenaza de la domus Severiana.” Potestas 7: 27–​50. González Fernández, R. and Conesa Navarro, P.D. 2018. “Fuluia Plautilla, sponsa Antonini Augusti et iam Augusta noncupata. Política dinástica del emperador Septimio Severo.” Latomus 77: 671–​93. Hekster, O. 2015. Emperors and Ancestors: Roman Rulers and the Constraints of Tradition. Oxford. Kettenhofen, E. 1979. Die syrischen Augustae in der historischen Überlieferung. Bonn. Kettenhofen, E. 1981. “Zum Todesdatum Julia Maesas.” Historia 30, 2: 244–​9. Kienast, D., Eck, W., and M. Heil. 2017. Römische Kaisertabelle: Grundzüge einer römischen Kaiserchronologie, 6th edition. Darmstadt. Kosmetatou, E. 2002. “The Public Image of Julia Mamaea:  An Epigraphic and Numismatic Inquiry.” Latomous 61, 2: 398–​414. Langford, J. 2011. Maternal Megalomania. Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood. Baltimore. Letta, C. 1985. “Dal leone di Giulio Alessandro ai leoni di Caracalla. La dinastia di Emesa verso la porpora imperiale.” In S.F. Bondì, S. Pernigotti, F. Serra, and A.Vivian (eds.), Studi in onore di Edda Bresciani. Pisa, 289–​302. Letta, C. 1991. “La dinastia dei Severi.” In A. Schiavone (ed.), Storia di Roma, vol. II.2. Turin, 639–​700. Levick, B.M. 2007. Julia Domna: Syrian Empress. London. Lichtenberger, A. 2011. Severus Pius Augustus. Studien zur Sakralen Repräsentation und Rezeption der Herrschaft des Septimius Severus und seiner Familie (193–​211 n.Chr.). Leiden. Lusnia, S.S. 1995. “Julia Domna’s Coinage and Severan Dynastic Propaganda.” Latomus 54, 1: 119–​40. McHugh, J.S. 2017. Emperor Alexander Severus: Rome’s Age of Insurrection AD 222–​235. Barnsley. Nadolny, S. 2016. Die severischen Kaiserfrauen. Stuttgart. Okoń, D. 2010. “Mariage de Septime Sévère avec Julia Domna au fond des stratégies matrimoniales des familles sénatoriales romaines à la charnière des IIe et IIIe siècles.” Eos 97: 45–​62. Potter, D.S. 2014. The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–​395, 2nd edition. London and New York. Rowan, C. 2011.“The Public Image of the Severan Women.” Papers of the British School at Rome 79: 241–​73. Scheid, J. 1998. Recherches archéologiques à la Magliana: Commentarii fratrum Arvalium qui supersunt. Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 av.–​304 ap. J.-​C.). Rome. Schöpe, B. 2014. Der römische Kaiserhof in severischer Zeit (193–​235 n. Chr.). Stuttgart. Scott, M.G. 2017. “Cassius Dio’s Julia Domna:  Character Development and Narrative Function.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 147: 413–​33. Scott, M.G. 2018. Emperors and Usurpers: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History. Oxford. Tuori, K. 2016. “Judge Julia Domna? A  Historical Mystery and the Emergence of Imperial Legal Administration.” The Journal of Legal History 37, 2: 180–​97. Varner, E.R. 2004. Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture. Leiden. Wallinger, E. 1990. Die Frauen in der Historia Augusta.Vienna.

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38 WOMEN IN THE FAMILY OF CONSTANTINE Michaela Dirschlmayer

Dynastic potential (the prelude)1 The ideology of the tetrarchy—​two Augusti ruling the Roman Empire together with two Caesares—​conceded no influential position to imperial women, yet even without an explicit statement it is clear that the dynastic potential of the empresses was used to encourage loyalty to the newly appointed Caesares within this system, through the matrimonial policy of the tetrarchs:2 Galeria Valeria, daughter of Diocletian and Prisca, was married to Galerius;Theodora, daughter of Eutropia (wife of Maximianus—​also known as Maximian), to Constantius I; Fausta, daughter of Maximianus and Eutropia, to Constantine I; Valeria Maximilla, daughter of Galerius, to Maxentius (son of Maximianus); and Constantia, half-​sister of Constantine I, to his imperial colleague Licinius. We do not know much about these women, just little snippets—​sometimes they are not even mentioned by name, and sometimes they are mentioned only to play a certain role within a tendentious account. Let us focus on Galeria Valeria.3 From coins and inscriptions we know that she bore the titles Augusta and mater castrorum (“mother of the army camps”), and from Ammianus Marcellinus and Aurelius Victor that Galerius named a province after her. But most information is conveyed in the account of Lactantius. According to this contemporary author,Valeria and her mother Prisca were forced by Diocletian to sacrifice to the pagan gods, found refuge at the court of Maximinus Daia after Galerius’ death, only to have to flee once again because of Maximinus’ sexual advances and intention to marry Valeria. But this Roman empress preferred to remain an univira, a Roman woman married only once. Together with her mother she was banished to Syria and both were beheaded in the province.4 Besides the few facts provided by Lactantius, namely her flight to Maximinus Daia rather than appearing at Licinius’ court as her dying husband had ordered, her exile to Syria and execution under the rule of Maximinus Daia, our Christian author is painting here a certain picture: the tetrarch emperors are bloodthirsty devils, while Valeria and Prisca, the female part of the imperial court, seem to be the modest (Christian) counterpoint.5 In addition to the stereotypical description of Roman empresses, we see here the main problem of the sources about women in the family of Constantine. On the one hand we now have Christian sources emphasizing that Roman empresses were supporters of the Christian faith, and on the other hand pagan sources condemning them for this support or emphasizing

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that they took the pagan side.The present chapter about the women in the family of Constantine is written with these concerns in mind.

Sisters, a bargaining chip Anastasia6 and Constantia,7 daughters of Constantius I and Theodora and thus half-​sisters of Constantine, are mainly mentioned in the context of the matrimonial policy just described. After the defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE, Constantine arranged the marriage between his sister Constantia and Licinius, a marriage that took place in Milan in 313, and another marriage between his sister Anastasia and a senator named Bassianus.8 The first part of the Anonymous Valesianus reports that Licinius favored Bassianus as Caesar (perhaps for the Italian region), but these hopes did not last long. Bassianus was executed, the conflict between Licinius and Constantine broke out openly, and Licinius took his wife Constantia, his son, and his treasuries and headed for Dacia.9 With the death of Bassianus, Anastasia disappears from sight. Constantia, on the other hand, is mentioned after Licinius’ defeat at Nicomedia in 324, in different sources, as interceding for the life of her husband and, of course, her son.10 At first her pleas seem to have been successful; Licinius was sent to Thessaloniki, to continue his life in safety as a private individual. But shortly afterwards, in 325, Licinius was killed and—​if we follow the fourth-​century writer Eutropius—​just one year later their son Licinianus was too (Licinianus had been proclaimed Caesar in the year 317 together with Constantine’s sons Crispus, a son from his first marriage to Minervina, and Constantinus II).11 Of these three Caesares just one survived the fateful year 326, when Constantine executed his son Crispus and his wife Fausta. Constantia’s later fate is unclear: the literary sources do not mention her again. Her son Licinianus would have been 11  years old then, and Fausta, Constantine’s wife and Augusta of the Roman Empire, would have been in her late 20s or early 30s.

The two Augustae, Fausta and Helena Panegyrics from the tetrarchic period mention Fausta12 in a completely typical way for that time: if at all, then within a picture or in allegory, but not by name.13 The Panegyric of the year 307, delivered on the occasion of Constantine’s appointment as Caesar and the wedding of Fausta and Constantine, describes a picture (probably a mosaic) in which the young empress hands over an adorned helmet to her future husband.14 The intention of the orator in this case is clear: to signify that Fausta and Constantine were meant to be married, and were promised to each other a long time before, obscuring the actual circumstances: in the years before 307, Constantine had already been married, to Minervina. Their son Crispus is praised as an excellent commander of the troops in 321,15 so it can be assumed that in 307 he was no longer an infant. What happened to Minervina is unclear, because the sources neither refer to the death of Constantine’s first wife nor stress an end of the marriage (or concubinate) that left the way free for Fausta. Flavia Maxima Fausta was most likely born around 298.16 Her marriage to Constantine, at a very young age, was intended to tie the bond between the Augustus Maximianus and the Caesar Constantine, so in handing over the adorned helmet Fausta is handing over an imperial insignium. Another snippet is given in an oration of Julian (later known as the Apostate), an encomium written for Constantius II: The city, that rules over them all was your mother and nurse, and in an auspicious hour delivered to you the imperial scepter […] I meant that, even if men are born 464

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elsewhere, they all adopt her constitution and use the laws and customs that she has promulgated, and by that fact become Roman citizens. But her claim is different, namely that she [the city of Rome] gave your mother birth, rearing her royally and as befitted the offspring who were to be born to her. (Iul. Or. 1.5C–​D)17 The skillfully created allegory linking Fausta and Rome is an indication that Fausta was born in the imperial city and grew up there, emphasizing once more the dynastic potential of the empress. After her wedding to Constantine, the sources describe Fausta as a loyal spouse, granting her a special role in the events around her father’s death. While still very young, she did not shrink from accepting the death of her father, uncovering a plot by Maximianus to kill Constantine in 310.18 The conspiracy failed and the former Augustus was forced to commit suicide. Just two years later, in 312, Constantine defeated Fausta’s brother Maxentius, who had reigned at Rome for six years, at the Milvian Bridge, and so within a very short period Fausta lost her father and brother. The young empress and her mother Eutropia probably lived in her natal city of Rome from that point on. It was four further years until Fausta bore her first child, Constantinus II, in 316,19 followed by Constantius II in 317, Constans in 323, and in between two daughters, Constantina and Helena the Younger, later wife of Julian. It can be assumed that Fausta lived with her children in Rome on an estate known as domus Faustae, west of the Lateran basilica.20 This imperial property may have been part of Maximianus’ estates and after his death of those of Maxentius. In the vicinity were the quarters of the equites singulares, a military unit under Maxentius (which had supported him in the civil war), that was dispersed by Constantine in 312.21 In all probability this estate was Fausta’s residence in Rome, since she was one of the last survivors of Maximianus’ family, along with Theodora, her (half-​)sister and widow of Constantine’s father Constantius I, and their six children.22 A large fresco, found in a corridor, which was added in the early fourth century to an existing structure, shows the imperial family with Constantius I (who was already dead by that time), Theodora, Constantine, and Fausta, and perhaps Crispus and his wife Helena.23 This was the official representation of the family for the years between 312 and 317, the year when the little Caesares, Fausta’s children, would have been added.24 Next to the domus Faustae was the palatium Sessorianum, where Fausta’s mother-​in-​law, another Helena, lived. Since Severan times the palatium Sessorianum or Sessorium had been an imperial property; it was a large complex with numerous different buildings, a race-​track, an amphitheater, the burial site of the equites singulares, and baths, the so-​called Thermae Helenae.25 Four inscriptions were found in this area and provide an insight into the activity of imperial women living in Rome.26 These inscriptions honor Constantine’s mother Helena for rebuilding the public baths and the aqueduct. They term her the genetrix of the Constantinian dynasty, as mother of Constantine the Great, and avia, grandmother of the Caesares, requiring us to date them after 317. Furthermore, three of the four inscriptions give her the title Augusta. Fausta and Helena both received the title Augusta in 324/​325 when Constantine’s rival Licinius was defeated and the Roman Empire was once again in the hands of a sole ruler. Thus, the inscriptions must date between 325 and 328 (the latter being the probable year of Helena’s death). With the title Augusta, Fausta and Helena also obtained the right to mint coins, though, of course, under imperial control.27 Their images were presented as profile busts on the obverse with the title Augusta and their name, and on the reverse the two Augustae were identified as personifications of salus and spes, as the well-​being and hope of the Roman Empire. For Fausta 465

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the aspect of hope is underlined by picturing her with children, since she fulfilled her dynastic duty of producing heirs; Helena embodies well-​being and security as the mother of the ruling emperor. Thus, both are presented in a traditional Roman way that had been well established by previous empresses. We have little information about Fausta’s life but even less about Helena’s.28 Literary sources—​as well as scholars of our time—​agree on Helena’s low birth, her concubinage to Constantius I, and her being the mother of Constantine. Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the late fourth century, in his oration on the death of Theodosius I, used the following words: They claim that she was originally the hostess of an inn [stabularia], and as such known to the elder Constantius, who subsequently obtained imperial office […] Christ raised her from dung to royalty, according to what is written, that He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the dung [and later, on finding the True Cross:] The wood shone, and grace sparkled, because just as previously Christ had visited a woman in the person of Mary, so now the Spirit visited a woman in the person of Helen. (Ambr. obit.Theod. 40–​8)29 Contrary to the pagan, anti-​Constantine sources, which revile Helena for her low birth, Ambrose employs this detail to exalt her to the level of Mary. When Constantius I  became Caesar as part of the first tetrarchy, he had to leave Helena to marry Theodora, (step)daughter of Maximianus, sometime after 293. Whether Helena remained with her son at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia, or later at the court of Constantine in Trier is unknown, but sometime after the defeat of Maxentius in 312 it is most likely that she was living in a suburban villa in Rome, the palatium Sessorianum. According to the liber pontificalis the possessions of Helena comprised two properties, the palatium Sessorianum and the fundus Laurentus, but it is not explicitly stated since when, and it could be an entry dating from later times.30 Literary sources from the late fourth century onward stress Helena’s role in finding the True Cross in Jerusalem and her role as a founder of several churches in the Holy Land and elsewhere. By assuming the female role next to Constantine at what had become the first Christian court of the Roman Empire, Helena became a saint of the Christian church. But why did Helena rather than Fausta, the young beauty who handed the helmet to Constantine, who bore at least five children including three Caesares, assume this role? The events in the year 326 seem to answer this question. According to Zosimus, Constantine killed his own son Crispus (his son from his first marriage and Caesar from 317 onwards) for having a sexual liaison with his stepmother Fausta, who therefore also met her death (in an overheated bath).31 Zosimus’ explanation for these events seems dubious because the sexual liaison of a stepmother and stepson is a well-​known topos of ancient literature, not necessarily a serious explanation for the death of these two figures who, next to Constantine, were the highest-​ ranking persons of the Roman Empire. The fourth-​century author Eutropius hints at another explanation:  “But Constantine, made somewhat arrogant by his success, changed from his former agreeably mild temperament. First he persecuted his relatives and killed his son, an outstanding man, and his sister’s son, subsequently his wife and afterwards numerous friends.”32 The moral decline of a ruler toward tyranny, paranoia, and violence is, unfortunately, also a topos. Since what happened may never be clear because of lack of information,33 historians’ interpretations vary and are often speculative. Some take the affair seriously, even interpreting Fausta’s death in the hot bath as an attempted abortion.34 However, considering Crispus’ residence at the court in Trier and Fausta’s at Rome, an affair between the two is more than doubtful. Others

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suggest that Fausta herself invented the adultery in order to strengthen the position of her own sons in the succession.35 The elimination of Crispus, Licinianus (Constantine’s nephew), Fausta and numerous friends could suggest the elimination of a usurpation conspiracy. In 326, Constantine was on his way to Rome to celebrate the 20-​year jubilee of his reign (the vicennalia) and Crispus his tenth jubilee (the decennalia). Perhaps his son expected to be rewarded with the title Augustus or that his father might lay down the scepter after 20 years in power, the intended procedure within the tetrarchic system.36 Instead, Crispus was stopped on his way to Rome in Pola (today’s Pula in Croatia), and killed. Fausta’s participation in these little-​known events is still questionable, but the erasure of her name on inscriptions implies some involvement, as does her complete lack of mention by Eusebius in his Vita Constantini.37 Helena’s involvement in these events, mentioned in the non-​ Christian sources, is also unknown. These sources blame Helena, grief-​stricken for her grandson, for the accusation that led to Fausta’s death. Considering that there were two different branches of the imperial house (the dynasty of Maximianus and his wife Eutropia, their offspring Theodora and Fausta, with all their children; and Helena, her son Constantine and her grandson Crispus) and that, when in Rome, Helena, Fausta, and Crispus lived next to each other, tensions could be expected. Whatever happened, after the death of her grandson and daughter-​in-​law, Helena left Rome and began her journey to the Holy Land: As she [Helena] visited the whole East in the magnificence of imperial authority, she showered countless gifts upon the citizen bodies of every city, and privately to each of those who approached her; and she made countless distributions also to the ranks of the soldiery with magnificent hand. She made innumerable gifts to the unclothed and unsupported poor […]. Others she set free from prison and from mines where they labored in harsh conditions, she released the victims of fraud, and yet others she recalled from exile. (Eus.V. Const. 3.44)38 Eusebius of Caesarea in his Vita Constantini, written between 337 and 339, describes Helena’s progress through the Eastern provinces, acting as expected of an Augusta. Her grand progress argues against the theory that the empress was exiled for intrigues at court.39 Just two years after Licinius’ defeat and after the deaths of Fausta and Crispus, Helena was chosen to represent her son in the Eastern part of the Roman empire and she apparently did this in a striking way. Helena not only visited cities and soldiers, but also showed care for the poor—​a genuinely Christian kind of action by the emperor’s mother, as Eusebius emphasizes—​and above all she is supposed to have discovered the True Cross while building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.This inventio crucis is a literary construction from the second half of the fourth century, reaching its fullest extent in the account of the Church historians.40 According to the account of Sozomen, to single out one of them, it was Helena’s religious zeal that led her to find the tomb of Christ and the wooden cross on which he died.41 Underneath the base of the temple of Aphrodite, three crosses were finally found, one of which, in the presence of Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem and the emperor’s mother, was identified by a sick woman as the True Cross. From the nails of the cross, a helmet and harness were made for Constantine, to protect the first Christian emperor. Helena died in about 329, at 80 years of age, perhaps on her way back from her journey, and was buried in Rome, in the mausoleum at Santi Marcellino e Pietro. For the next 50 years, no other imperial woman would be honored with the title Augusta.

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Constantina42 and Helena (the Younger)43 In 335 Constantine the Great celebrated 30 years in power (the tricennalia) and shortly after this event he seems to have arranged for his succession. He nominated four Caesares, a similar division of power to the system of tetrarchy:  his three sons Constantinus (II), Constantius (II), and Constans, and a descendant from the line of Constantius I and Theodora, Delmatius. (Hannibalianus, a brother of Delmatius, was a kind of fifth member, a rex for the territory of Armenia.)44 Matrimonial alliances continued in order to tighten the dynastic bonds:  in 335 Hannibalianus married Constantine’s elder daughter Constantina.After the death of Constantine in 337 the next generation took over the rule of the empire, but not as Constantine had planned. Once again we do not really know what happened. In 337 descendants of Constantius I and Theodora, among them Delmatius and Hannibalianus, were killed in Constantinople, most likely by order of Constantius II.45 Just three years later Constantinus II died, so the Roman Empire from now on had just two emperors, Constantius II and Constans, neither of whom chose Rome as their residence. Milan, Aquileia, Constantinople, and Antiocheia remained their cities of residence. Constantina, now a widow, apparently stayed in Rome, judging by her building activity. Next to the Via Nomentana, on the supposed gravesite of the martyr Agnes, Constantina founded an ambulatory basilica in honor of this female martyr; the remains of the huge external wall that leads around the coemeterium S.  Agnetis are still visible today. A  14-​line inscription refers to Constantina as the founder and to Agnes “the victorious virgin.”46 The first letter of each line, the epigram’s acrostic, forms the two words Constantina deo, corresponding to the inscription’s first line Constantina deum venerans christoque dicata (“I, Constantina, venerating God and consecrated to Christ”).47 Since the third century, Roman society women had been collecting the bones of Christian martyrs and arranging for an appropriate burial, so Constantina was acting in precisely this early Christian “female” tradition, not just as an ordinary benefactor, but as the daughter of the late emperor and, of course, as the sister of the reigning emperors. The narrative about Agnes’ martyrium may have originated in fourth-​century Rome. A son of Rome’s praefectus urbi Simphronius wants to marry the young Agnes, but she refuses this offer because she is already promised to Christ; after her refusal she suffers martyrdom.Virgins who dedicated their lives to Christ were an increasingly popular ideal for women in those times. The Church Fathers also considered the univira (a woman who married only once) exemplary. Perhaps Constantina chose Agnes to honor because, after her brief marriage to Hannibalianus, she aimed to live a life dedicated to Christ, not as a virgin, but as univira. The mausoleum constructed nearby, Santa Costanza, also expresses the strong connection between Agnes and Constantina. Shortly after founding the basilica, Constantina built a mausoleum, connected to the basilica to the south by a narthex, where she and her sister Helena (the Younger) were buried.48 In the years between 338 and 350, Constantina’s power may have been enormous. According to Philostorgus, a fifth-​century Church historian, Constantina intervened in political matters after the death of Constans, during the usurpation of Magnentius in 350.49 She appointed as Roman emperor the magister militum Vetranio, one of the most influential strategists in command of the Illyrian army, and sent him against the usurper, with success. Philostorgus writes that she was in a position to do so because her brother Constantine had given her the title Augusta. Since no other literary sources, coins, or inscriptions award her the title, she probably did not have it, but her actions still show Constantina’s influence in these events. After the defeat of the usurper, Vetranio gave back his imperial title (voluntarily or not)50 and Constantina, failing in her aim to remain an univira, was married again, this time to Constantius Gallus. 468

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Gallus, Caesar from 351 to 354 and a descendant of Constantius I and Theodora, resided in Antiocheia with his newly married wife Constantina. By choosing this place of residence for them, Constantius II killed two birds with one stone. The couple were to represent the imperial court in the East while the emperor was still busy in the west with the conflict with Magnentius. Furthermore, Antioch’s distance from Rome kept Constantina far away from where her network functioned, where she, as the daughter of an emperor, could have lived and acted independently, without a male counterpart. On the other hand, appointing Gallus to the position of a Caesar and marrying him to a daughter of Constantine the Great must have given the impression of serious succession plans. Gallus moved successfully against Persian forces and also against those who envied him this achievement. Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote in the fourth century, describes the brief reign of Gallus and Constantina as harsh. Through spies Gallus and Constantina always knew what was going on, people fell victim to false accusations, and were killed. Especially for Constantina, Ammianus uses harsh words: To his [Gallus’] cruelty his wife was besides a serious incentive, a woman beyond measure presumptuous because of her kinship to the emperor […] She, a Megaera in mortal guise, constantly aroused the savagery of Gallus, being as insatiable as he in her thirst for human blood. (Amm. 14.2)51 Ammianus describes the cruelties committed by the imperial couple in hyperbolic detail. Remarkably, his description puts Caesar and empress on the same level, both being blamed for misgovernment. This is evidence of Constantina’s political influence, if not necessarily of her personal fury.52 Ammianus (or his source) took offense at the conviction of the praefectus praetorio Domitian, who was sent to the court of Gallus by Constantius II and was accused of conspiracy.53 Perhaps to resolve this contentious issue, Constantina tried to meet Constantius II, but died in Bithynia in 354; Gallus was executed shortly after her death. Constantina found her last resting place in the church of Santa Costanza, which she had built only a few years previously. Once again the succession of Constantius II was open, but a woman with dynastic capital was still available: Helena the Younger. In 355 Constantius II proclaimed Julian (Gallus’ stepbrother) Caesar, dressed him in the imperial purple, and married him to Helena, “the virgin.”54 There is much to say about Constantina, but not much about Helena, her little sister. Helena probably lived in Rome until she married Julian, after which she accompanied her husband through the western parts of the empire, to Gaul, but also to Rome, and Paris. Their marriage had no surviving children, although Helena gave birth to at least one child, who died soon after birth. Ammianus focuses on her only on this occasion since he is painting a hostile picture of the relationship between Helena and Eusebia, her sister-​in-​law. First, Ammianus reports that Eusebia “coaxed Helena to drink a rare potion, so that as often as she was with child she should have a miscarriage.” Second, he recounts a tale in which Helena lost a child, because the “midwife had been bribed with a sum of money […] to cut the umbilical cord more than was right” and so killed the baby.55 Ammianus is presumably simply retelling some kind of court gossip, but the passage does indicate rivalry between the two women. If we contextualize this within the family structure, this strife probably had its roots in the two rival lineages.56 Helena was now, as the wife of Julian, a part of the Constantius I—​Theodora line, the one that faced elimination in 337. This continuing struggle clearly found its expression when, in 360, the troops, in the presence of Helena, proclaimed Julian, the last surviving descendant of the line of Constantius

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I and Theodora, as Augustus in Paris. In the same year Helena died and was buried next to her sister in Rome.

Eusebia (the aftermath)57 With the deaths of Constantina and Helena the Younger, the two last female descendants of Constantine the Great were gone, leaving behind Constantius II as his last son, who had since 353 been married to Eusebia. In the case of Eusebia, literary sources from three different points of view are available, enabling the possibility of a multi-​layered picture of the empress. Zosimus describes her in a positive way as a highly educated and wise woman who persuaded her husband to appoint Julian as Caesar;58 Eusebia’s support for the new Caesar, who changed course in religious matters, is not in doubt. Zosimus is one of the last pagan writers and Julian was the last pagan Augustus, so this is no surprise. Julian himself provides us with a panegyric on the empress, composed in 356/​357, with the main purpose of thanking her for her support.59 In this speech he stresses female exempla, citing well-​known exemplary women drawn from the Homeric world, especially Penelope, wife of Odysseus.60 Penelope’s virtue, according to Julian, is marked by faithfulness to her husband, support for his decisions, stewardship over his domains during his absence, and her behavior as a woman of virtue when suitors pursued her. Thus Julian, grateful for her support and her fostering of his position, paints an idealized picture of the empress. Ammianus generally confirms this picture of a good consort and advisor, portraying their partnership as exemplifying the ideal of Concordia, but he also, as we have seen, describes her malicious side, in her treatment of Helena.61 In describing Eusebia as an ideal consort of the emperor, Ammianus constructs an opposing image to the negative ideal picture of Constantina—​the “Megaera.” For Constantina, too, the role of counselor is emphasized but in a contrary way: her advice was misleading and overambitious, and ended up bringing in a cruel reign. We can presume Eusebia’s death simply from the date of Contantius II’s next marriage in 360/​ 361; thus she died at nearly the same time as Helena the Younger. Roman empresses have one thing in common: we rarely know their year of birth and seldom their year of death. Ammianus offers some last words on the empress: she was “a lady distinguished before many others for beauty of person and of character, and kindly in spite of her lofty station, through whose well-​ deserved favor (as I have shown) Julian was saved from dangers and declared Caesar.”62 After just seven years at the side of a Roman emperor, Eusebia left remarkable footprints in literary sources, as Constantina did too.

Conclusion Just one generation after the tetrarchic women Galeria Valeria, Theodora, and Fausta, about whose lives only snippets are known, imperial women found different ways to become more visible. Helena represented her son Constantine on her journey to the eastern provinces, a hitherto unknown action by an imperial woman that was required by the special circumstances. Then, due to the absence of an emperor in Rome, Constantina took over the “matronage” of building a church for a female martyr; beyond this, she strengthened the position of her husband Gallus in the East. And finally Eusebia assumed the “patronage” role in fostering the next emperor. With these imperial women the position of the Roman empress changed, pioneering new paths for the next generations.

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newgenrtpdf

DIOKLETIAN (284305)∞ Prisca Eutropia ∞ 1. Afranius Hannibalianus GALERIA VALERIA ∞ GALERIUS (308–311)

2. MAXIMIAN ?

(305–311)

CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS ∞ 1. (concubine) HELENA (324328)

MAXIMIANUS (286305) ∞ Eutropia

2. FAUSTA

Hannibalianus

Dalma‰us

Julius Constana Constan‰us 1.Galla∞2.Basilina

Maxen‰us ∞ VALERIA Maximilla

Anastasia

Eutropia

∞ LICINIUS (308324)

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Crispus (317326) ∞ Helena Licinianus Licinius (317324/6?) CONSTANTINUS II (337340)

Delma‰us (335337)

CONSTANTIUS II (337363) ∞ Eusebia Hannibalianus (335337) Constanna ∞ 1. (335) ∞ 2. (351) CONSTANS

Constan‰us Gallus (351354)

(337350)

Helena (the Younger) ∞ (355)

Figure 38.1  Genealogical chart of the family of Constantine. Dates are regnal dates

JULIAN (361363)

Women in the family of Constantine

CONSTANTINE I THE GREAT (306337) ∞ 1. Minervina

CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS ∞ 2. Theodora

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Notes 1 For an overview of the Constantinian dynasty, closely interwoven with the tetrarchic families, see the genealogical chart at the end of this chapter (Fig. 38.1); due to the quantity of publications, especially concerning Constantine I and Helena, the literature taken into account is not exhaustive and focuses on recent publications in order to present the current state of research; late antique literary sources are abbreviated according to the PLRE. 2 Explicitly mentioned in Eutr. 9.22.1; for imperial women in tetrarchic times see recently Chen 2018: 42–​82 as well as James 2013: 93–​112; Harris 2012: 257–​8; Clauss 2002: 340–​5. 3 PLRE 1 Galeria Valeria, 937; Barnes 1982: 38. 4 Lact. Mort. Pers. 15.1 (sacrifice); 39.2 (escaped to Maximianus’ court); 41.1 (exiled to the Syrian desert); 51.1–​2 (beheaded). 5 James 2013: 106. “Valeria served as a device for Lactantius to criticize Maximinus.” 6 PLRE 1 Anastasia 1, 58. 7 PLRE 1 Constantia 1, 221. 8 For Constantia see Anon.Val. 5.13; Lact. Mort. Pers. 43.2. Licinius and Constantia were already engaged in 311, one of the reasons (in the account of Lactantius) for Maximinus Daia to ally with Maxentius. For Anastasia see Anon. Val. 5.14; Barnes 1982: 37 dates the marriage of Anastasia and Bassianus to the year 316 while Hillner 2017: 61 suggests 315, when Constantine was celebrating the decennalia in Rome. 9 Anon.Val.  5.17. 10 Anon.Val. 5.28; Aur.Vict. Epit. 41.7; Zos. 2.17.2. 11 Eutr. 10.6; Barnes 1982: 45 proposes that Licinianus’ death happened at the same time as his father’s. 12 PLRE 1 Fl. Maxima Fausta, 325–​6. 13 For panegryrics in Constantinian times see recently Omissi 2018:  41–​67; for imperial women in panegyrics, see Wieber 2010: 254–​257. 14 Pan. Lat. VII (VI) 6. 1–​2. 15 Pan. Lat. IV (X) 36.3–​5. 16 See detailed discussion in Barnes 1982: 34. He prefers an earlier date around 289/​290, but most recent publications assume Fausta’s birth date was around 290; for references see note 18. 17 Translation from Wright 2014: 12–​15. 18 Lact. Mort. Pers. 30; Eutr. 10.3; Zos. 2.11. 19 PLRE I Fl. Maxima Fausta, 326 suggests Fausta had a role as stepmother not only to Crispus but also to Constantine II, in opposition to Barnes 1982: 44–​45; for a short discussion, see Harris 2014: 203–​4; the large gap between marriage and the birth of the first child supports the argument that Fausta was a young age when she married Constantine, see for instance Drijvers 1992a: 502; Potter 2009: 146; Hillner 2017: 62. 20 The domus Faustae: Scrinari 1991: 136–​222; Harris 2014: 203; Hillner 2017: 63–​5. 21 Drijvers 2016: 148. 22 For the land tenure, see Curran 2000: 93–​6. 23 PLRE I Helena 1, 409. 24 For the mural painting of the fourth century see Scrinari 1991: 136–​61, and on the epigraphic evidence and composition of the plates see 162–​73; McFadden 2013: 83–​114 and Hillner 2017: 64 with new interpretation. 25 For the possession of Helena, see Hillner 2017: 67; Drijvers 2016: 147–​53; Dirschlmayer 2015: 43–​6 and Angelova 2015: 131–​9. 26 CIL VI 1134;VI 1135;VI 1136;VI  36950. 27 On how the virtues that dominated the coins of the Roman period were resumed in the late antique era, see Brubaker and Tobler 2000: 572–​94, especially 575–​8 for Fausta and Helena; some new aspects concerning the coinage of the two Augustae are approached in Centlivres Challet and Bähler Baudois 2003: 269–​80, Longo 2009: 97–​129, Angelova 2015: 90–​2. 28 PLRE I Fl. Iulia Helena, 410–​11; for a new biography see Hillner forthcoming. 29 Translation from Liebeschuetz 2005: 198–​9. 30 Liber pontificalis XXXIIII, XXVII; Curran 2000: 94. 31 Zos. 2.29.2. 32 Eutr. 10.6; translation from Bird 1993: 66.

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Women in the family of Constantine 33 Drijvers 1992a: 504–​6; Woods 1998: 71–​86; Potter 2009: 137–​54; Olbrich 2010: 104–​16. 34 Woods 1998. 35 Olbrich 2010; Potter 2009: 152 asks if Constantine’s decision to move his court to Constantinople was the main reason for Crispus opposing his father and suggests that Fausta may have fostered this position. 36 For the coincidence of these dates see Clauss 2002: 353; for Crispus’ imperial residence and journeys, Barnes 1982:  83–​4; and for Constantine’s stay in Rome at the end of July and his stay in Split in September, Barnes 1982: 77. 37 For a discussion of these inscriptions see for example Drijvers 1992a: 501; 1992b: 49; Hillner 2017: 66; for a numismatic documentation and interpretation of the events in 326, see R.-​Alföldi forthcoming. 38 Translation from Cameron and Hall 1999: 138, 295 (with a commentary and further literature). 39 For discussion of the controversial opinions on this subject as well as her journey to the Holy Land and her church foundation see Dirschlmayer 2015: 32–​52. 40 Drijvers 1992b: 119–​45; 2011 presents a detailed discussion of the inventio crucis. 41 Soz. HE 2.1. 42 Omissi 2018: 189 tends to deny Constantina’s influence. 43 PLRE I Helena 2, 409–​10. 44 Mosig-​Walburg 2005: 229–​54 gives a profound insight into the position of Hannibalianus. 45 For a detailed analysis, see Di Maio and Arnold 1992: 167–​8. 46 ICUR IIa 44–​5. 47 For a general overview about the Coemeterium S. Agnese and the female epitaphs see Trout 2014: 214–​ 34, with an English translation of the verse; about the legendary conjunction between the empress and Agnes see especially Jones 2007: 115–​39; Curran 2000: 128–​9 emphasizes the importance of the place for the ruling Constantinian dynasty. 48 For Constantina’s presence in Rome and Antioch, and her description in the literary sources and church foundations see Dirschlmayer 2015: 52–​67 with further literature and summary. 49 Philost. HE 3.22. 50 Bleckmann 1994:  29–​68 and Drinkwater 2000:  131–​59 both discuss this point; Clauss 2002:  359 suggests a peaceful solution. 51 Translation from Rolfe 1950: I, 5. 52 Wieber-​Scariot 1999: 74–​195 is a detailed study of a female discourse especially for Constantina in Ammianus’ Res Gestae; Günther 2000: 60–​1 takes Ammianus’ description of Constantina’s behavior in Antiocheia not as a transgression from female to male but as one towards bestial behavior. 53 Philost. HE 3.28. 54 Amm. 15.8.80. 55 Amm. 16.10.19; translation from Rolfe 1950: I, 253. 56 Murder by poison and infanticide in the literary sources are addressed in Wieber-​Scariot’s examination of Ammianus Marcellinus and the presentation of imperial women in his oeuvre, see Wieber-​Scariot 1999: 238–​48; Clauss 2002: 362. 57 PLRE I Eusebia, 300–​1. 58 Zos. 3.1.2. 59 Iul. Or. 3; see Tougher 1998: 105–​23 for a detailed examination of the text and James 2012: 47–​60 for new interpretation. 60 Thoroughly researched by Wieber 2010: 257–​69. 61 Tougher 2000 discusses Eusebia’s “split personality” and concludes that Ammianus’ positive picture of Eusebia is a result of his assessment of her brothers and that the author himself is the one “who emerges a split personality” (Tougher 2000: 100). 62 Amm. 21.6.4; translation from Rolfe 1950: II, 119.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and collections of documents not listed here are those used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​). ICUR

Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae

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Bibliography Angelova, D.N. 2015. Sacred Founders: Women, Men, and Gods in the Discourse of Imperial Founding, Rome trough Early Byzantium. Oakland. Barnes, T.D. 1982. The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine. Cambridge, MA and London. Bird, H.W. (trans.) 1993. Eutropius: Breviarium. Translated Texts for Historians, vol. 14. Liverpool. Bleckmann, B. 1994. “Constantina,Vetranio and Gallus Caesar.” Chiron 24: 29–​68. Brubaker, L. and Tobler, H. 2000. “The Gender of Money: Byzantine Empresses on Coins (324–​802).” Gender and History 12: 572–​94. Cameron, A. and Hall, S.G. (trans.) 1999. Eusebius: Life of Constantine. Oxford. Centlivres Challet, C.-​E. and Bähler Baudois, M. 2003. “Les femmes sur les monnaies impériales romaines. Quelle influence à l’origine de la monnaie de Fausta trônante?” In R. Frei-​Stolba, A. Bielman-​Sánchez, and O. Bianchi (eds.), Les femmes antiques entre sphère privée et sphère publique. Actes du Diplôme d’Étude Avancées, Universités de Lausanne et Neuchâtel, 2000–​2002. Bern, 269–​80. Chen, A.H. 2018. “The (Non-​)Role of Imperial Women in Tetrarchic Propaganda.” Journal of Late Antiquity 11: 42–​82. Clauss, M. 2002. “Die Frauen der diokletianisch-​konstantinischen Zeit.” In H.Temporini-​Gräfin Vitzthum (ed.), Die Kaiserinnen Roms.Von Livia bis Theodora. Munich, 340–​69. Curran, J. 2000. Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century. Oxford. Di Maio, M. and Arnold, D.W.-​H. 1992. “Per Vim, per Ceadem, per Bellum: A Study of Murders and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Year 337 A.D.” Byzantion 62: 158–​211. Dirschlmayer, M. 2015. Kirchenstiftungen römischer Kaiserinnen vom 4. bis zum 6. Jahrhundert –​die Erschließung neuer Handlungsspielräume. Münster. Drijvers, J.W. 1992a. “Flavia Maxima Fausta: Some Remarks.” Historia 41: 500–​6. Drijvers, J.W. 1992b. Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross. Leiden. Drijvers, J.W. 2011. “Helena Augusta, and the Cross and the Myth: Some new Reflections.” Millennium 8: 125–​74. Drijvers, J.W. 2016. “Helena Augusta and the City of Rome.” In M. Verhoeven, L. Bosman, and H. van Asperen (eds.), Monuments and Memory: Christian Cult Buildings and Construction of the Past, Essays in Honour of Sible de Blaauw. Turnhout, 147–​54. Drinkwater, J.F. 2000. “The Revolt of Magnentius and Ethnic Origin of Magnentius (350–​353) and the Rebellion of Vetranio (350).” Chiron 30: 131–​59. Günther, L.-​M. 2000. “Geschlechterrollen bei Ammianus Marcellinus.” In R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (eds.), Geschlechterrollen und Frauenbild in der Perspektive antiker Autoren. Innsbruck, 57–​86. Harries, J. 2012. Imperial Rome AD 284 to 363: The New Empire. Edinburgh. Harries, J. 2014. “The Empresses’ Tale, AD 300–​360.” In C. Harrison, C. Humphrees, and I. Sandwell (eds.), Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark. Oxford, 197–​214. Hillner, J. 2017. “A Woman’s Place: Imperial Women in Late Antique Rome.” Antiquité tardive, revue internationale d’histoire et d’archéologie 25: 75–​94. Hillner, J. forthcoming. Helena Augusta. Women in Antiquity. Oxford. James, L. 2012. “Is There an Empress in the Text? Julian’s Speech of Thanks to Eusebia.” In N. Baker-​Brian and S. Tougher (eds.), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate. Swansea, 47–​60. James, L. 2013. “Ghosts in the Machine: The Lives and Deaths of Constantinian Imperial Women.” In B. Neil and L. Garland (eds.), Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society. New York, 93–​112. Jones, H. 2007. “Agnes and Constantina:  Domesticity and Cult Patronage in the Passion of Agnes.” In K. Cooper and J. Hillner (eds.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–​900. Cambridge, 115–​39. Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.G. (trans.) 2005. Ambrose of Milan:  Political Letters and Speeches. Translated Texts for Historians, vol. 43. Liverpool. Longo, K. 2009. Donne di Potere nella tarda antichita. Le Auguste attraverso le Immagini Monetali. Reggio Calabria. McFadden, S. 2013. “A Constantinian Image Program in Rome Rediscovered:  The Late Antique Megalographia from the So-​called Domus Faustae.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 58: 83–​114. Mosig-​Walburg, K. 2005. “Hannibalianus Rex.” Millennium 2: 229–​54. Olbrich, K. 2010. “Kaiser in der Krise –​religions-​und rechtsgeschichtliche Aspekte der ‘Familienmorde’ des Jahres 326.” Klio 92: 104–​16.

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Women in the family of Constantine Omissi, A. 2018. Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy. Oxford. Potter, D. 2009. “Constantine and Fausta.” In P.B. Harvey Jr. and C. Conybeare (eds.), Maxima Debetur magistro Reverentia:  Essays on Rome and the Roman Tradition in Honor of Russel T.  Scott. Biblioteca di Athenaeum 54. Como, 137–​53. R.-​ Alföldi, M. forthcoming. Der Fall des Konstantin Sohnes Crispus und die Wende in der kaiserlichen Bildersprache ab 326. Sitzungsberichte der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt. Rolfe, J.C. (trans.) 1950. Ammianus Marcellinus: History, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA. Scrinari, V.S.M. 1991. Il Laterano imperial, vol. I:  Dalle «aedes Laterani» alla «Domus Faustae.” Città del Vaticano. Tougher, S. 1998. “In Praise of an Empress: Julian’s Speech of Thanks to Eusebia.” In M. Whitby (ed.), The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity. Leiden, 105–​23. Tougher, S. 2000. “Ammianus Marcellinus on the Empress Eusebia:  A Split of Personality?” Greece and Rome 47: 94–​101. Trout, D. 2014. “‘Being Female’: Verse Commemoration at the Coemeterium S. Agnetis (Via Nomentana).” In C. Harrison, C. Humphrees, and I. Sandwell (eds.), Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark. Oxford, 215–​34. Wieber, A. 2010. “Eine Kaiserin von Gewicht? Julians Rede auf Eusebia zwischen Geschlechtsspezifik, höfischer Repräsentation und Matronage.” In A. Kolb (ed.), Augustae. Machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof? Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis II. Akten der Tagung in Zürich 18.–​20.9.2008. Berlin, 253–​75. Wieber-​Scariot, A. 1999. Zwischen Polemik und Panegyrik. Frauen und Herrscherinnen des Ostens in den Res gestae des Ammianus Marcellinus. Bochumer Alterumswissenschaftliches Colloquium vol. 41. Trier. Woods, D. 1998. “On the death of the empress Fausta.” Greece and Rome 45: 70–​86. Wright, W.C. (trans.) 2014. The Works of the Emperor Julian, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA.

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PART VII

Reception from antiquity to present times

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39 SEMIRAMIS Perception and presentation of female power in an Oriental garb Brigitte Truschnegg

Introduction Focusing on aspects of female power, this chapter will seek to define the characteristics of Semiramis as an important literary figure in classical sources from the fifth century BCE (Herodotos) to the fifth century CE (Orosius). The varied depictions of Semiramis have been affected by each author’s individual perspective on Assyrian history, the quality of the sources used in each case, and, not least, by each of these authors’ cultural backgrounds and views on gender issues. I will show that different cultural elements and gender performances were moved in different streams of tradition, each interpreting Semiramis in their own way. The steadily increasing emphasis on her negative moral qualities illustrates the mounting uneasiness of the classical tradition about the performance of a female Assyrian ruler, who did not fit the political and social norms of either Greece or Rome. This uneasiness could be responsible for the consistent presentation of Semiramis with alien, “Oriental” stereotypes of luxury and promiscuity. Current discussions of Semiramis deal with the historical background and/​or the literary aspects of the legend, as well as the cultural and historical context of the sources. There are those who are skeptical about the importance of the historical figure in the background,1 but there are also scholars who support the view that there is a deeper historical Assyrian background for Semiramis.2 It is unclear how much the Greeks knew about the historical figure of Sammu-​ramat, but the similarity of the names is hardly coincidental.3 Semiramis became an object of interest to scholars of the ancient Near East and classical history more than 100 years ago.4 Her status as one of the ancient “exceptional women” was of particular interest at the time.5 Certain aspects and the perception of the legendary Semiramis (e.g. the hanging gardens of Babylon) have been discussed before.6 Her effect as a sort of “role model” for the presentation of subsequent rulers (e.g., Alexander the Great who reportedly emulated her (and Kyros II) on his march through the Gedrosian desert) have also been investigated in recent years.7 Recently, scholarly debate on the subject has turned from the 1970s discourse on Semiramis as an “exceptional women” into a topic discussed in terms of gender issues and roles.8 A recent study focused on the gender performance of Sammu-​ramat and of the literary figure of Semiramis.9 Semiramis also appears to serve as a basis for transmitting Greek and later Roman ideas of power, rulership, and femininity.

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Semiramis in the classical sources Classical sources from the fifth century BCE to the fifth century CE narrate the story of an Assyrian queen named Semiramis and depict her in various ways. The textual evidence is not easy to assess: the various texts belong to different literary genres and the classical authors write about Semiramis in the context of their perspectives on Assyrian history, influenced by their primary sources, their specific cultural backgrounds, and, not least, by their views on gender issues and female power. Current research has investigated a cross-​section of these aspects, but a longitudinal section, so to speak, is better able to visualize recurrent narrative elements.This has been successfully presented in a recent study that completed a detailed contextualization of the Classical sources with an analysis of important narrative patterns (Erinnerungsbausteine literally “memory building blocks”) on Semiramis in the longue durée.10 How do the classical sources on Semiramis deal with female power and how does their representation change over time?

Aspects of female power The classical sources depict Semiramis in the diverse situations of royal female life: as a ruling queen, as a general, as the wife of a king, and as the mother of the next king. Semiramis’ power is expressed, on the one hand, in public political space (as queen and in terms of rulership, military expansion, and building projects where she broke political norms) and on the other hand in social space (motherhood, promiscuity), where she breaks social norms.

Ruling an empire and building monuments Two narrative elements representing public political space appear in almost all descriptions of Semiramis and form a constant basis for the various forms of the story: her role as female ruler and her building projects. And it is Herodotos who lays the foundation for this. In the middle of the fifth century BCE, Herodotos introduces Semiramis into classical literature as one of two queens who ruled over the Babylonians (1.184). As a further detail of her rulership, he mentions that she has created amazing dams on the plain of Babylon that protect the land from flooding. A gate named after Semiramis indirectly refers to further building projects of hers in the city (3.155).11 From this time onwards, the classical sources present Semiramis as a ruler who initiated impressive construction projects. The most detailed story about Semiramis is based on Ktesias of Knidos (fourth century BCE) and handed down by Diodoros in the first century BCE (2.4–​2.20), who stresses the following aspects: after Ninos’ death, Semiramis ruled the Assyrian Empire, founded the city of Babylon, and built streets, tunnels and palaces (e.g. Ekbatana).12 She is admired both as a great builder (for instance, the Bisutun relief was ascribed to her) and as a ruler. The importance of prestigious building projects for the image of a ruler may be seen in the short comment on Semiramis by Berossos the Babylonian, at the beginning of the third century BCE. Berossos criticizes the existing historical tradition on Semiramis (Jos. c.Ap. 1.20) and depicts his favorite kings Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonid as initiators of numerous important buildings at Babylon. He thus adapts history to his personal interests and denies Semiramis the fame that went with these achievements. Geographical works from the time of the early Roman Empire also deal with the queen and her building activities. At the beginning of the first century CE, the Greek geographer Strabon describes her as the wife of king Ninos and mother of his successor. He presents her as a successful builder of various monuments that are shown in Babylonia and beyond in her 480

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empire (Strab.16.1.2). He depicts her as the founder of Babylon (2.1.17)13 and as a constructor of walls (11.14.8: Opis) and mounds (12.2.7: Zela; 2.1.17 and 16.1.2).14 In the first century CE, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (De chorographia libri tres) presents a positive image of Semiramis that is primarily based on her qualities as a ruling queen (1.63).15 Under her reign, Syria was at the top of its power. She is described as an excellent ruler, who founded Babylon and built an artificial water system (1.63): “Her works certainly have many distinctive characteristics: two in particular stand out: Babylon was built as an city of amazing size, and the Euphrates and Tigris were diverted into once dry regions.”16 The Roman Historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, who wrote a history of Alexander the Great, probably in the second half of the first century CE, reflects in several passages on the admiration Alexander had for the achievements of Semiramis.17 Semiramis is described as the founder of Babylon, a city whose beauty is explicitly named (5.1.24); she appears as a constructor of various monuments (9.6.23); and she was adored for her admirable deeds and her fame (7.6.20). Also in the first century CE, Pliny the Elder offers some short comments on Semiramis in his extensive work Naturalis Historiae, focusing in particular on her qualities as a founder of various cities (he names Melita in Kappadokia, Arachosia, Abaisamis and Saraktia) and as a builder of monuments (altars in Sogdiana).18 The Roman historian Suetonius in the second century CE mentions Semiramis in his biography of Julius Caesar, at a point when Caesar is faced with criticism that he is acting like a woman (Iul. 22.2). Suetonius describes her female rulership positively, although he clearly ascribes it to Asia and thus as far distant from Rome. It is not until the second century CE that classical sources demonstrate a need to explain female rulership. Arrian mentions Semiramis first in passing when he reports that it was common in Asia that women ruled over men (Anab. 1.23.7).19 He confirms the existence of the rulership of women over men and his comment characterizes this rulership as an exceptional aspect of a foreign society, one which has to be addressed.20 He does not report anything on Semiramis’ construction activity. At the end of the fourth century CE, a detailed narrative on Semiramis again enters the historical tradition. Once again, female power as reigning queen and building activities are combined to form a positive picture. Marcus Junius Justinus’ Epitome historiarum Philippicarum is a condensed compilation of the lost Historiae Philippicae by the Augustan historian Pompeius Trogus.21 It is very likely that Justin’s dependence on Trogus is responsible for the “revival” of a more detailed narrative about Semiramis. As the wife of King Ninos, Semiramis played a central role in the Assyrian government. Justin ascribes the founding of Babylon and the construction of the famous city walls to Semiramis. And, like Arrian, Justin has to explain Semiramis’ regency. However, he does not blame “Asian customs” for it, but a trick of the extraordinary Semiramis. According to Justin, Semiramis did not dare to take over the rulership on her own or to give it to her young son after her husband’s death. Neither did she expect that a woman would be accepted as a ruler of the empire. She therefore disguised herself as a man. Wearing long garments and a turban on her head, she pretended to be her son (1.2.1).22 With this explanation, Justin indicates that for his readership, a queen as an absolute ruler would have been unthinkable even for Assyrians (a strange and faraway people). After she has been very successful politically, Semiramis lays down her male costume and reveals herself to her people as a woman. Her reputation was not reduced by this: “a woman surpassing not only women but men, too, in manly achievement!” (1.2.6)23 Rather casually, the story ends with the remark that her son killed her because she desired him. Christian literature takes up this explanation of female rule, but paints a negative idiom of the Assyrian ruler. At the beginning of the fifth century CE, Paulus Orosius from Bracara in Portugal wrote the first Christian universal history, Historiae adversum paganism, a work in seven volumes.24 Published in 416–​417/​418, it begins with the fall of mankind (1.1.4) and starts with 481

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the king who built the first great empire, the Assyrian Ninos.25 That Justin was a major source for his work is well demonstrated by the passage dealing with Semiramis.26 This passage shows both strong parallels to, as well as remarkable differences from Justin, especially in the areas of rulership, sex-​change, conquests, and building activities. Orosius narrates that Semiramis started her public performance as a man: “She had her husband’s spirit and took on his son’s appearance.”27 But, in contrast to Justin, she is characterized very negatively by Orosius.This is not because she is a woman, since her husband was, according to Orosius, a “bloodthirsty” and “greedy” man and Semiramis is declared to have surpassed her husband in this regard. It is her sex life in particular that Orosius describes as licentious and unnatural: “This woman, ablaze with lust and thirsting for blood, lived amid an unending fornication and murder” (1.4.7).28 She killed all her lovers and “on illicitly conceiving a son, she vilely exposed him. Then, when she learned that she had indulged in incest with him, she covered her personal disgrace by inflicting this crime on all her people” (1.4.7).29 The political and military ability of Semiramis, which Justin rated rather positively, Orosius treated negatively. The Christian author stresses the bad moral qualities and the bloodthirstiness of the foreign queen. This negative characterization quite overshadows her building activities in Babylon, which she made the capital of her empire.30

Leading an army Leading an army is another aspect of female power in the public sphere and Semiramis is not only described as a reigning queen and a builder of famous buildings, but she also leads military campaigns with cleverness and great drive and successfully enlarges the Assyrian Empire.31 Like her rulership, Semiramis’ military successes were not questioned in the Greek and Roman sources for a long time and often are mentioned only briefly. According to Ktesias (apud Diod. Sic. 2.6.5–​9), who is the first to mention the military qualities of Semiramis, these already played a role in her time as wife of Ninos. During that time, Semiramis supported him in the war against Baktria. After Ninos’ death Semiramis expanded the Assyrian Empire and conducted military campaigns against distant countries (Aithiopia, India: Diod. 2.13–​14, 16–​20). She also started a well-​prepared campaign against the Indian King Stabrobates. Even though both parties had to withdraw from the battle, she is reported to have fought bravely. In the first century CE, Strabon completes this list of military campaigns with Semiramis’ crossing of the Gedrosian Desert (15.1.5–​6). However, according to him, Semiramis died before she could start her campaign on India (15.1.6). Quintus Curtius Rufus picks up this topic in his passages on Alexander’s admiration for the deeds of Semiramis. In a speech to his army, Alexander emphasizes that Semiramis subjugated people (5.1.24), and appeals to his soldiers not to lose their ambition before they have reached the same fame as this woman. Following the same tradition as Strabon, Arrian agrees that Semiramis died before she could start a military campaign to conquer India (Ind. 5.7), but reports (referring to Nearchos) that she successfully crossed the Gedrosian desert (Anab. 6.24.2). Probably due to his source Pompeius Trogus, Justin again picks up the Indian campaign and reports Semiramis’ military activities in Ethiopia and India, attesting that she turned out to be a very skillful military leader (1.2.7). As with previous observations on Semiramis’ rulership and building projects,  the evaluation of her character—​more positive (Justin), respectively more negative (Orosius)—​dominates the depiction of her campaigns. According to Orosius, she even surpasses her greedy and bloodthirsty husband in the military field: “This woman […] crushed Aithiopia in war, drenched it in blood […] At that time hunting down and slaughtering peoples who lived in peace was a more cruel and serious matter than it is now” (1.4.5–​6). 482

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Preliminary results on aspects of female power in the public space Since Herodotos, aspects of female power in the public space (rulership, building projects, army leadership) have been recurrent narrative elements in the description of Semiramis, independent of the literary genre and the scope of the stories handed down. Apart from a few exceptions, all texts mention these three components, which were clearly seen as positive until the first century CE. It was not until the second century CE that, for the first time, there was felt to be a need to explain the regency of a woman. In the sources of the fourth and fifth centuries CE, narrative elements attributing negative moral qualities to Semiramis move to the foreground of the descriptions. The most important result of this overview is that the female power in the public space attested for Semiramis does not differ in its representation from male power in the public space. The only difference is that a woman exercises it. This is particularly highlighted by the texts naming Semiramis as a model for Alexander III:  successful expansion and crossing of the Gedrosian desert (Strab.15.1.5, 2.5; Arr. Anab. 6.24.2) and honoring her as a ruler over Syria (Suet. Iul. 22.2). That the walls of Babylon could be perceived as a monument for eternal memory is emphasized by a passage in Dionysios of Halikarnassos about the legendary king Servius Tullius (Dion.Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.25.3–​4). The project appears to be unsuitable for Servius Tullius, as it only serves to heighten the reputation of a single person and not the welfare of many. When, according to Curtius Rufus, Alexander III told his soldiers to remember the fame of a queen, he was playing, on the one hand, with Semiramis as a positive role model (7.6.20), and on the other hand, with the idea that men should surpass women (9.26.23). Julius Caesar also turns the accusation of behaving like a woman into a positive one by presenting Semiramis as a positive role model (Suet. Iul. 22.2). The positive image of Semiramis during the first century CE, which had been based on her rulership and activities, developed even further, even making her a role model for men.

Female power in the social space Semiramis’ power in the social space is described in the sources above all when Semiramis fails to observe standards for female behavior as a queen, wife, mother, and woman and becomes subject to moral assessments.

An Assyrian queen and “mundus muliebris” A remarkable passage on Semiramis by Valerius Maximus dates from the first third of the first century CE. His Facta et dicta memorabilia is the oldest complete collection of exempla in the Latin language.32 The passage on Semiramis in book nine (­chapter 3: “De ira aut odio”), starts with a reference to the Punic general Hannibal as a child (Semiramis is referred to in the following as “Samiramis”).33 Such was the force of hate in a boy’s heart, but in a woman’s too it was no less potent. Samiramis, queen of Assyria, was busy doing her hair, when news came that Babylon had revolted. Leaving one half of it loose, she immediately ran to storm the city and did not restore her coiffure to a seemly order before she brought it back into her power. For that reason her statue was set up in Babylon showing her as she moved in precipitate haste to take her vengeance. (Val. Max. 9.3, ext. 4)34 483

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This is the only mention of Semiramis in the whole of Valerius’ collection of almost 1000 exempla.35 Here, Semiramis is put into a typical female environment, practicing a typical female activity. She is staying in her private rooms, taking care of her appearance. She is located exactly where women are supposed to be according to the so-​called mundus muliebris; she had only left it for a short period to fulfill her rulership and military commitments and then returned to caring about her appearance again!36 The presentation of her as an Assyrian queen depends mainly on the Greek sources, but the image also corresponds to the cultural background and the current gender concerns of the Roman texts. Her active reaction and her immediate campaign against the revolting city can be considered as a hallmark of typically male behavior. However, even though she acts swiftly and successfully, she reaps little positive attention for it. It is the manner in which she reacts to the report of the rebellion, which exposes her—​in the presentation of Valerius Maximus—​as a typical female. Not wise consideration, but quick-​tempered anger characterizes her abrupt reaction. Semiramis is driven by her emotions, a severe character deficiency for both genders, from a Roman point of view. However, lack of control of emotions is described primarily as characteristic of women.37 Valerius Maximus emphasizes her undue haste by her unfinished, inappropriate hairstyle for a public appearance.

Semiramis under moral judgment—​motherhood, promiscuity and stereotypes Semiramis mainly survived in Roman literature as an exemplum of outstanding female behavior, which had different values in different contexts. As a female ruler, she did not fit into the Roman worldview. The increasing emphasis, perceptible from the second century onwards, on her moral qualities clearly demonstrates the growing uneasiness of the Roman authors about the gender-​crossing performance of this Assyrian queen. From the first century CE onwards, the sources refer with increasing frequency to Semiramis’ origin from the “East,” using this circumstance to explain her extraordinary position, power, and behavior.The Roman History of Cassius Dio (second/​third century CE) can be seen as a turning point in the evaluation of Semiramis. The Assyrian queen explicitly serves as a negative role model for Iulia Domna, the mother of the Roman Emperor Caracalla. According to Cassius Dio, Iulia Domna was accused for trying to rule on her own and alone (79.23): “how she might attain the imperial position rendering herself the peer of Semiramis and Nitocris, since she came in a way from the same regions as they.”38 The passages in Arrian and Justin explaining to the audience why a woman can rule in Assyria have already been discussed. Together they depict the strangeness of Semiramis. An exceptional passage in Pliny the Elder fits in with this. Pliny focuses in particular on Semiramis’ qualities as a founder of various cities and then he reports one quite outstanding aspect. In book 8 of Naturalis Historiae, which deals with the nature of horses, Pliny (referring to the Numidian king Juba) reports that Semiramis loved her horse so much that she had sex with it (8.64, 155).39 However, after this stunning announcement, Pliny gives no further comment on her behavior. The passage seems primarily intended to demonstrate the estimation of the horse and only in a secondary capacity highlights an abnormal sexual activity. It appears that the image of the Assyrian queen was already linked with abnormal sexual practice so closely that the passage needed no further explanation. This is emphasized in the fourth century CE by the single passage in Ammianus Marcellinus recording foreign customs demonstrating immoral behavior. Ammianus Marcellinus carries on the image of Semiramis as a negative role model and uses her as a mirror for Roman society. He accuses “Samiramis” of being the one “who was the first of all to castrate young males, thus 484

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doing violence, as it were, to Nature” (14.6.16–​17).40 While criticizing the decadent behavior of Roman nobles in Roman bathhouses, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Semiramis was overwhelmed with flatteries by her people, just as the Roman nobles were overwhelmed with flatteries by prostitutes in the Roman bathhouse (28.4.9).41 With regard to gender issues, it is of great interest that a powerful female figure acting in a typical male sphere for decades is made responsible for the instigation of a custom that emasculates men (castration).The fact that Ninos is defined as her husband (and not the other way around: 23.6.22) is possibly the only reflection to the strong position that is generally ascribed to Semiramis after her husband’s death. The portrayal of Semiramis by Justin begins very promisingly with her founding Babylon, the construction of the famous city walls, and her successful military activities in Ethiopia and India. But this success story does not have a happy ending. According to Justin, Semiramis developed an “unnatural” desire for a sexual relationship with her son, Ninyas. He did not resist, but slayed her after their affair was revealed (Just. 1.2.10).The death of the Assyrian queen is not glorious, in contrast to her military and political achievements. The fact that her son, according to Justin, did not act like a man at all, that he lived like a woman together with other women, appears to be a result of the incorrect gender behavior of his mother: Her son, Ninias, was content with the empire built up by his parents and completely abandoned military activity. Further, almost as if he had exchanged sex with his mother, he was rarely seen by men and he grew old surrounded by women. ( Justin, 1.2.11)42 Her illicit sexual lifestyle is emphasized here. Her “criminal passion” for her son forces him to kill her. In this way, she is responsible for her own death and for the fact that her son committed matricide. Even after her death, she appears to be responsible for the further development of Ninyas, who is not interested in extending the empire (in contrast to his mother) and who prefers to live the life of a woman (among women) that she never lived. According to Justin she failed terribly, both as a wife and as a mother. Her deeds as a female ruler, founder, and military leader are obscured and overpowered by her negative characteristics such as her greed for power and viciousness. At the beginning of the fifth century CE, Paulus Orosius intensifies the negative evaluation of Semiramis. He shows strong parallels with, as well as remarkable differences from, Justin in the aspects of Semiramis’ rulership and sex-​change. Paulus Orosius, quoted above (1.4.7), describes the sex life of Semiramis as especially licentious and unnatural. It is obvious that these passages are influenced by the tendency to condemn war and by Christian moral standards of behavior, especially in sexual life. Semiramis suffers from a lack of shame (pudicitia) and a lack of chastity (modestia), two typical virtues expected of Roman women. She is bloodthirsty and is able to force men to follow her will, in contrast to the ideals of a Roman/​Christian woman. Various lovers are the victims of female sexual violence. This sounds like the exact antithesis of the descriptions of some male rulers in Roman sources. At least the incestuous relationship with her son documents the climax of sexual misbehavior for which she paid with her life, and her son with matricide. Beyond that this atypical sexual behavior fits in perfectly with Orosius’ intention of putting the barbarians at the service of the narrative by using stereotypes of traditional historiography.43 If we look at the representation of Semiramis in various sources over the centuries, the legendary queen starts out with a fairly positive image, but is defamed more and more as a sinful and vicious woman, greedy for power, with an unnatural sexual lifestyle and an unacceptable way of life. 485

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Conclusion Narrative patterns in the reception of the Assyrian queen move along in the stream of tradition from the fifth century BCE to the fifth century CE, each layer of narrative interpreting the figure of Semiramis in its own way. Different literary genres, various cultural contexts, a number of primary sources, and the author’s own perspective all affect the purpose of the text. Against the background of numerous investigations into these aspects, the long-​term view provides the opportunity to compare the textual sources in order to uncover patterns of female power. With the depiction of Semiramis as ruler and successful builder, in the fifth century BCE Herodotos introduced two basic elements of female power in the public space into the representation of Semiramis. All traditions on the Assyrian queen until late antiquity mention these two narrative elements. They remain influential, independent of the cultural and historical background of the respective source. In the first century CE, the rulership of a woman needs explanation for the first time. Arrian and the later author Justin find different ways to explain Semiramis’ rulership. However, Semiramis’ military activities are not called into question. The classical sources present Semiramis with female power, but in “male action.” Female power does not differ in its representation from male power in public space. In any case, the appearance of an authoritative female figure also connects with the construction of female power:  all literary traditions can be seen as constructing and evaluating female power in public space. Semiramis’ power in social space is characterized by Semiramis exceeding social norms. Her behavior as a queen, wife, mother, and woman becomes subject to moral assessments. In the classical sources, Semiramis survived particularly as an exemplum of outstanding female behavior that had different values in different contexts. As a female ruler, she does not fit into the Greek and Roman idea of female behavior. The passage in the exempla of Valerius Maximus contrasts the traditional ideas of the Assyrian queen with the ideals of the daily life of a Roman matrona. Narratives dealing with female power displayed in social space increasingly emphasized both the queen’s origin from the “East” and her “bad” or unusual sexual behavior supposedly characteristic of the “East.” The increasing emphasis on her (negative) moral qualities demonstrates the growing uneasiness of the authors about the unusual gender performance of this Assyrian queen. The moral criticism of Semiramis as an authoritative and promiscuous woman and a bad mother plays a crucial role in the classical sources and became markedly stronger over time.

Notes 1 E.g., Rollinger 2010; Lanfranchi 2011:  175–​223; Kuhrt 2013:  6133–​4; Bichler 2014:  55–​71; Heller 2015: 331–​48. 2 E.g., Pettinato 1988; Dalley 2005: 11–​22. On historical archetypes for the legendary Assyrian queen, see Frahm 2001: 377–​8. 3 See Rollinger 2010: 385; Novotny 2002: 1083–​5; Weinfeld 1991: 99–​103. 4 Lehmann-​Haupt 1901/​1902 and 1918; Hommel 1921; Lenschau 1940: 1204–​12; Schramm 1972: 513–​ 21; Dietrich 1989: 117–​82; Fuchs 2008: 61–​145, esp. 74–​5; Siddall 2013. 5 For the idea of exceptional women as a phenomenon of “andro-​normative” historiography, see Asher-​ Greve 2006: 324. 6 Bichler and Rollinger 2005: 153–​217; Rollinger 2008: 487–​502; Rollinger 2010; Dalley 2013. 7 Bichler 2014; Szalc 2015: 495–​507; Nearchos, BNJ 133 F 3a/b = Arr. An. 6.24.3; Strab. 15.1.5. For a current compilation of the history of research see Droß-​Krüpe 2019. 8 Bleibtreu 1992: 57–​72; Comploi 2000: 223–​44; Melville 2004; Dalley 2005: 11–​22; Asher-​Greve 2006; Svärd 2015: 49–​51; Svärd 2014: 17–​23. 9 Svärd and Truschnegg forthcoming.

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Semiramis 10 Droß-​Krüpe 2019: 1–​124. In addition, Droß-​Krüpe offers a detailed and up-​to-​date compilation of the relevant research literature on Semiramis. 11 The second one was named Nitokris and lived five generations later than Semiramis (Hdt. 1.185). Herodotos describes her as cleverer than Semiramis and as a great builder:  she diverted the river Euphrates in order to better protect Babylonia and also created a huge lake above Babylonia to allow navigation. On women in Herodotos, see Bichler 2000: 80. 12 For a detailed discussion of all passages on Semiramis by Diodoros, see Stronk 2017: 86–​121. 13 Her husband Ninos dedicated the foundation of Ninive as capital city in (As)Syria (Strab. 2.1.17). 14 Strab. 11.14.8; 12.2.7, 3.37. 15 On the close connection of the mythical past and outstanding female behavior, see Rollinger 2000: 209, n. 84. 16 Translation from Romer 1998 (cf. Rollinger 2000). 17 How far his presentation is related to the Greek sources and to what extent it is related to his positive presentation of Alexander himself, see Comploi 2013. 18 Also see Plin. HN 6.8; 6.49; 6.92; 6.145. On women in Pliny the Elder, see Vons 2000. 19 Günther 2002: 437 points out that for Arrianus, Semiramis embodies an “Oriental” type of ruler. The passage is dealing primarily with the Karian queen Ada. 20 Günther (2002: 436) characterizes Arrianus’ understanding of gender roles as a simple one: “Dass bei Arrian also ein sehr schlichter, holzschnittartiges Verständnis der Geschlechter vorliegt.” 21 In contrast to earlier studies, which dated the epitome into the second or third century CE, more recently—​because of the specific nature of the text as a breviarium—​a more plausible date in the fourth century CE has been suggested, see Schmidt 1999; Emberger 2015: 11. 22 Translation from Yardley 1996. 23 On the narrative of Semiramis in Justin see Comploi 2002, esp. 338–​9. 24 See van Nuffelen 2012. 25 Eigler 2000: 53–​4; Fear 2010: 15. 26 This strengthens the point of Eigler 2000: 53 who stated: “He appears to have made particular use of the world history by Pompeius Trogus in Justin’s Epitome.This is also certainly the source of his classification of the course of history into four empires (Babylonian, Macedonian, Carthaginian and Roman).” 27 Translation from Fear 2010: 15. 28 “haec, libidine ardens, sanguinem sitiens, inter incessabilia et stupra et homicidia.” 29 Van Nuffelen 2012:  128 notes that Orosius was fascinated by women overstepping the limits of their sex. 30 “Semiramis, his wife and ruler of Asia, rebuilt the city of Babylon and decreed that it should be the capital of the Assyrian kingdom” (2.2.1). See also 2.2.5, 3.1. 31 Bichler 2014: 55–​8 pointed out that Semiramis was seen in competition with great male conquerors. 32 Written late in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, it offers almost 1000 exempla, that is, moral anecdotes, in nine books. The nine books are divided into different categories, including exempla domestica and exempla externa. The examples in general represent more or less outstanding human behavior, almost exclusively drawn from the upper classes. On the exempla of Valerius in the framework of situation ethics, see Langlands 2011: 100–​22. 33 All the other exempla externa in that chapter present men as military leaders. The story of Semiramis thus perfectly fits here and gains additional importance by contrasting military matters with the female morning toilette. 34 Translation from Shackleton Bailey 2000 (Loeb). 35 This episode is reported first by Valerius Maximus and later by Polyainos (8.26). 36 On the continuity of this theme in visual arts see Asher-​Greve 2006: 344–​5. 37 When one remembers the beginning of the passage referring to Hannibal, who acts angrily and full of hate as well, it is also probably understood as behavior typical of non-​Romans. Nonetheless, one must recall that the famous Punic general is described when a child not as an adult. However, a child in an angry temper tantrum is not a very flattering comparison for Semiramis. 38 For general remarks on women in the Roman History of Cassius Dio, see Schnegg 2006: 259–​60. 39 For the narrative in detail and its reception, see Droß-​Krüpe 2019: 102–​7. 40 Translation from Rolfe 1950–​8 (Loeb). 41 Günther 2000. 42 Translation from Yardley 1996. 43 Yardley 1996: 176.

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Acknowledgments This chapter benefits from a presentation given at the 9th Melammu Conference in Helsinki/​Tartu 2015 in cooperation with Saana Svärd (Helsinki) on “Sammu-​ramat and the figure of Semiramis—​Reflections on Gender.” The author would like to thank Saana Svärd, Robert Rollinger, and Sebastian Fink for valuable hints and Stefanie Hoss for improving the English of the paper.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works, and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Ancient sources Fear, A.T. (trans.) 2010. Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans. Liverpool. Rolfe, J.C. (trans.) 1950–​8. Ammianus Marcellinus: Res Gestae. Cambridge, MA and London. Romer, F.E. (trans.) 1998. Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World. Ann Arbor. Shackleton Bailey, D.R. (ed. and trans.) 2000. Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings. Cambridge, MA and London. Yardley, J.C. (trans.) and Develin, R. (intr. and notes) 1996. Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Atlanta.

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Brigitte Truschnegg Schramm, W. 1973. Einleitung in die assyrischen Königsinschriften, zweiter Teil, 934–​722 v. Chr. Leiden. Seymour, M. 2008. “Babylon’s Wonders of the World: Classical Accounts.” In I. Finkel and M. Seymour (eds.), Babylon: Myth and Reality. London, 104–​9. Siddall, L.R. 2013. The Reign of Adad-​nīrārī III: An Historical and Ideological Analysis of An Assyrian King and His Times. Leiden. Stronk, J.P. 2017. Semiramis’ Legacy: The History of Persia according to Diodorus of Sicily. Edinburgh. Svärd, S. 2014. “Political Leadership: Ancient Near East.” In J. O’Brien (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies, vol. 2. New York, 17–​23. Svärd, S. 2015. Women and Power in Neo-​Assyrian Palaces. Helsinki. Svärd, S. and Truschnegg, B. forthcoming. “Sammu-​ramat and the Figure of Semiramis –​Reflections on Gender.” Szalc, A. 2015. “Semiramis and Alexander in Diodorus Siculus’s Account (II 4–​20).” In R. Rollinger and E. van Dongen (eds.), Mesopotamia in the Ancient World: Impacts, Continuities, Parallels. Münster, 495–​507. Truschnegg, B. 2002. “Das Frauenbild in der Exempla-​Literatur am Beispiel des Valerius Maximus.” In C. Ulf and R. Rollinger (eds.), Geschlechter –​Frauen –​Fremde Ethnien in antiker Ethnographie, Theorie und Realität. Innsbruck, 360–​97. Truschnegg, B. 2011. “Geschlechteraspekte in den Schriften des Ktesias.” In J. Wiesehöfer, R. Rollinger, and G.B. Lanfranchi (eds.), Ktesias’Welt. Wiesbaden, 403–​47. Van Nuffelen, P. 2012. Orosius and the Rhetoric of History. Oxford. Vons, J. 2000. L’image de la femme dans l’œuvre de Pline l’Ancien. Brussels. Weinfeld, M. 1991.“Semiramis. Her Name and Her Origin.” In M. Cogan and I. Eph’al (eds.), Ah,Assyria… Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to H.  Tadmor. Jerusalem, 99–​103.

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40 TANAQUIL AND TULLIA IN LIVY AS ROMAN CARICATURES OF GREEK MYTHIC AND HISTORIC HELLENISTIC QUEENS Judith P. Hallett and Karen Klaiber Hersch

In fond memory of Larissa Bonfante (1931–​2019)

Introduction This chapter analyzes Livy’s representation of Tanaquil and Tullia, wives of Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus—​Rome’s fifth and seventh Etruscan kings respectively—​in Book One of his Ab Urbe Condita, maintaining that they are Roman caricatures of Greek mythic and historic, both earlier and contemporary, Hellenistic queens. We argue that Livy depicts these two women as embodying the negative aspects of Etruscan rule in early Rome by focusing almost exclusively on their political ambitions and behind-​the-​scenes maneuverings. Their conduct, we contend, is meant to underscore, for Livy’s Augustan-​era audience, the dangers inherent in hereditary monarchic government, especially the opportunities it offers female kin of male rulers to exercise unaccountable control over the Roman state. Furthermore, we observe that Livy’s portrait of these two women as exercising formidable political influence, albeit only by exhorting and promoting their male family members to assume the actual responsibilities of Roman rule, omits key details about Tanaquil attested in other ancient sources.The information that Livy excludes permits a more complex and nuanced understanding of how Romans of his milieu would have viewed Tanaquil and her contributions to Roman culture, among them her positively charged associations with fertility, healing and wool-​working as well as divination.We will first, however, explore resemblances between Livy’s portrayal of Tanaquil—​as the supernaturally knowledgeable wife of Tarquinius Priscus and “maternal” advocate of the lowly-​born outsider Servius Tullius—​and two depictions of Greek royal women, one mythical and the other historical: Iokaste, wife and mother of Oidipous in Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex, and Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, in Plutarch’s life of her son. Similarly, we will look at how Livy’s description of the equally ambitious but far more morally corrupt Tullia—​whom he identifies as wife of Rome’s last Tarquin king, daughter-​in-​law of Tanaquil, and mother of the arrogant prince whose rape of the noblewoman Lucretia ended 491

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Rome’s monarchy—​recalls characterizations of Klytaimnestra in Greek and Roman tragedy, and of Kleopatra VII in Roman literary and Greek historical sources.1 We will additionally consider how Vergil’s depiction of Dido in his Aeneid not only recalls Livy’s representation of Tanaquil but also seeks to warn his readers about the disastrous downside of female monarchic power, at the same time recognizing key differences between Dido and Tanaquil in their relationship to the responsibilities of royal rule. Finally, we will reflect on how Livy’s portraits of Tanaquil and Tullia may have influenced Roman governmental practice from the Augustan era onwards. Although the Julio-​Claudian principate accorded a great deal of unaccountable political power to the wives and mothers of successive principes such as Augustus’ wife Livia and great-​granddaughter Agrippina Minor, it never assigned women formal and official roles as rulers or regents for future rulers. Before undertaking our analysis of how, and why, Livy likens these two, legendary women married to Etruscan kings to earlier female figures from Greek mythic and historical Hellenistic royal houses, we need to acknowledge challenges posed by our ancient sources. Sheila L. Ager argues that Livy’s depiction of Tullia as well as earlier Hellenistic accounts may have influenced the representation of a Greek royal couple from the second century BCE—​Antiochos VIII Grypos and Tryphaina—​by Livy’s contemporary, the history writer Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, and/​or Trogus’ later epitomizer Justin.2 Ager’s findings raise the possibility that other, later authors writing about earlier Hellenistic royal women may similarly have drawn upon Livy’s portraits of Tullia and Tanaquil to illustrate female abuse of political power under monarchic rule. Ager’s essay additionally prompts us to ponder whether other historians writing in Livy’s own, Augustan era also represented certain women from Hellenistic regal families as negative examples of what monarchic rule of Rome might entail. Livy himself may have been drawing on earlier Hellenistic historical accounts. Fanny Cailleux has compared the king-​making tactics of Tanaquil and Tullia with the efforts of Damarata, who talked Adranadorus into seizing power in Syracuse in 214 BCE.3 Livy himself is our source for this episode, at 24.22.1; he may well have meant to recall his own depictions of these two early Roman female kingmakers even if he had simultaneously relied on other, earlier, Hellenistic and Roman accounts. Livy may even have alluded to the behavior of Etruscan women in his own day. John Hall postulates that Livy may have patterned his depiction of Tanaquil at 1.34–​47 on the Etruscan matriarch Urgulania, friend and confidant of Livia.4 It is, of course, also possible to explain the resemblances between Livy’s portrayals of Tanaquil and Tullia and the later Plutarch’s depiction of Olympias, discussed below (p. 494), by positing Livy’s influence on Plutarch and assuming that Plutarch is drawing on earlier Hellenistic historical accounts. Whatever Plutarch’s sources, he and Livy appear to be communicating similar messages about women’s misappropriation of regal power. Whether or not any historical basis exists for what Livy reports about Tanaquil and Tullia is another matter entirely.5

Livy’s Tanaquil, Sophokles’ Iokaste and Plutarch’s Olympias Admittedly, Livy’s description of Rome’s first female “ruler” Tanaquil differs from Sophokles’ portrayal of Oidipous’ wife—​and mother—​Iokaste in major regards. One dissimilarity is linguistic. Livy twice refers to Tanaquil with the noun regina, “queen,” each time in depicting her efforts at king-​making. At 1.39.2, he uses the word regina when relating that Tanaquil restrained a slave who attempted to extinguish the flames bursting from the head of a child residing in the royal palace, Rome’s future ruler Servius Tullius, apparently because she recognized these bursts of fire as portending Servius’ political greatness. At 1.39.5, Livy calls Tanaquil the “Roman queen” (regina Romana) when stating that she rescued the boy’s mother from slavery. 492

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Significantly, Tanaquil is the first woman referred to as regina by Livy, and the only woman so described in Book I. Other Augustan authors, as we shall observe, use the noun regina for such foreign female monarchs as the legendary Carthaginian Dido and the historical Hellenistic ruler Kleopatra VII.6 English translations of Sophokles’ Oedipus Tyrannos occasionally refer to Oidipous’ wife and mother Iokaste with the word “queen.”7 But in fact the Greek text does not refer to Iokaste with nouns elsewhere applied to women who wield royal power in the way that Livy labels Tanaquil with regina, their Latin equivalent. At OT 579, however, Iokaste’s brother Kreon asks King Oidipous if he rules the land of Thebes on an equal basis with her; Oidipous replies in 580 that she “has everything she wants from him.” Kreon’s characterization of Iokaste’s political role in Thebes points to a second major difference between these two female literary figures. Livy does not depict Tanaquil as sharing or even as interested in sharing royal rule and regal duties at Rome, either with her husband, King Tarquinius Priscus, or with his successor and her own protégé, Servius Tullius. Rather, Livy represents Tanaquil as chiefly engaged in anointing and appointing, without the formal authority to do so: identifying each man as destined for royal rule; then influencing, indeed goading, both to pursue lofty political ambitions of their own, and successfully ensuring that each achieves those goals.8 Livy relates that, since the Etruscans [in the city of Tarquinii]: socially scorned [Tanaquil’s husband], as the offspring of a foreign exile, she was unable to bear this indignity, and having forgotten her inborn affection for her fatherland, provided that she might see her husband publicly esteemed, she conceived the plan of emigrating from Tarquinii. (1.34.4–​7 ) Livy then claims that Tanaquil convinced Tarquin to do so by characterizing Rome as a place “where high political status was acquired quickly and on the basis of excellence,” and which had welcomed earlier kings from other places, concluding that she “easily convinced a man desirous of political advancement and for whom Tarquinii was only his mother’s fatherland” (facile persuadet ut cupido honorum et cui Tarquinii materna tantum patria esset). What is more, Livy states, when they arrived in Rome, after an eagle alighted on her husband’s head, she quickly removed and replaced his cap as if to crown him, relying on her skill at interpreting prophecies to tell her husband to hope for a high and exalted position (excelsa et alta sperare). So, too, Livy depicts Tanaquil as publicly misrepresenting her husband’s death as merely a serious injury, and similarly inspiring Servius Tullius to seize royal power after Tarquin’s murder: After Servius had been hastily summoned, when she had shown him her husband, almost lifeless, holding his right hand she begged that he not allow the death of his father-​in-​law to go unavenged, and that he not allow his mother-​in-​law to be a laughing stock to her enemies. “The kingdom is yours,” she said, “Servius, if you are a man, and does not belong to those who have committed this most disgraceful crime through the hands of others. Raise yourself up and follow the gods as your leaders, for they once signaled that this head of yours would be renowned by the heavenly flame poured around it. Now let that heavenly flame spark you, now truly proceed onward. Although we are foreigners, we also reigned. Reflect on who you are, not where you were born. If your plans are paralyzed in this sudden crisis, you should follow my plans.” (1.41.2–​4 ) 493

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Yet Livy’s Tanaquil resembles Sophokles’ Iokaste in enabling men who are outsiders to attain power and legitimate their political control.Tanaquil does so as an outsider herself in facilitating her husband Tarquin’s rise to power, but as an insider in securing the royal rule of Servius Tullius. To be sure, she does not empower or legitimate the latter through marrying him and bearing his children, as does Iokaste. But she adopts a maternal role toward him; Iokaste, of course, is also Oidipous’ biological mother. And the skills at foretelling the future attributed to Tanaquil by Livy call to mind Iokaste’s own claims of expertise when dealing with prophets and their predictions in Sophokles’ tragedy. She provides what she represents as her own, authoritative interpretation of the oracle who reported to her late husband Laius that he would die at his own son’s hands (OT 707–​25); the words Sophokles later assigns her, dismissing oracles as a waste of time, reaffirm her interpretative authority (OT 848–​59). Olympias’ facilitation of the political efforts by two outsiders from Macedonia—​first her husband Philip and then her son Alexander—​to reign supreme in the Greece of their day also warrants comparison with the role that Livy assigns to Tanaquil.9 Moreover, Plutarch (Alex. 2.2) relates that Olympias dreamed, on the night before her marriage was consummated, that a thunderbolt fell upon her womb, kindling fire that burst into wide-​traveling flames, and was then extinguished.10 The similarities between the details of Olympias’ dream, predicting her son Alexander’s brilliant if brief career of military conquest, and the scenario that Livy’s Tanaquil supposedly interpreted as portending the young Servius Tullius’ glorious political future, merit notice. So does Plutarch’s statement (Alex. 2.4), that Olympias’ husband Philip ceased sleeping at her side, fearing she might deploy magic spells and charms against him. While Plutarch immediately explains Olympias’ putative efforts to exercise supernatural powers as conduct common among Thrakian women addicted to Orphic rites and Dionysian orgies, he refers to her ecstatic practices, among them providing fellow female revelers with serpents which terrified male onlookers, as wild in the extreme. Plutarch (Alex. 3.3) also relates that Olympias may have imparted to Alexander, when he set out on his ambitious conquests, her special “secret”: that the god Apollon, in the form of a serpent, had impregnated her with him. Plutarch’s portrayal of Olympias later in his biography underscores that scheming and deception, like the devious ruses employed by Tanaquil in ensuring the succession of Servius Tullius, were integral to Olympias’ political intervention. He quotes examples from a letter she wrote to Alexander, begging him to find less generous ways of favoring those he loved without entirely depriving himself of resources (Alex. 39.5). Plutarch then adds that Olympias often corresponded with him in this manner, but Alexander almost invariably kept her writings secret. As we have observed, Tanaquil only “anoints and appoints” her husband Tarquinius Priscus and surrogate son Servius Tullius, and does not intervene in their decision-​making. But her involvement in choosing the men who obtain and wield political power allows her to control Rome’s future in two important instances. Livy’s portrait of Tullia bears certain resemblances to Plutarch’s characterization of Olympias as well. Plutarch (Alex. 2.1) represents the marriage of Olympias to Philip, like Tullia’s second marriage to Tarquinius Superbus, not as a parentally negotiated arrangement but a genuine love match. In addition, both Olympias and Tullia do not merely encourage their male kin to pursue political power but relentlessly pressure them to that end. Similarities between the bloodthirsty, scheming behavior of both women and the conduct of their sons warrant attention too. Plutarch (Alex. 10.4) relates that both Olympias and Alexander were alleged to have been involved in the murder of Philip; Plutarch then observes that Alexander was merely angry at Olympias when, as Pausanias reports (8.7.5), she had Philip’s infant son and his mother Kleopatra killed after Philip’s death. Livy blames Tullia not only for 494

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the deaths of her first husband and her own sister, so that she could wed her sister’s more ambitious spouse, but also for the death of her own father, so that her new husband could seize political power (1.46.5–​9). His statement leaves no doubt about where he feels culpability lies: “but the starting point of stirring up all things arose from the woman” (sed initium turbandi omnia a femina ortum est—​1.46.7). And he portrays Tullia’s son Sextus Tarquinius, presumably fathered by her second husband, as raping the noble matron Lucretia after threatening to kill her, murder a male slave, and place his naked body by her side as proof that she had been killed because of shameful adultery (1.58.4). Strikingly, Livy depicts Tullia as identifying with Tanaquil herself. Indeed, he portrays her as obsessed with Tanaquil’s earlier successes at spurring both Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius to seize political power, as envious that she herself had not been as successful, and as sharing both her envy and obsession with her husband as she goaded him: She stirred up the young man by faulting him with these and other charges, nor was she herself able to rest easily if, although Tanaquil, a woman of foreign birth, had, by virtue of her determination, been able to bring it about that she bestowed two successive kingships, on her husband and then on her son-​in-​law, whereas she, born from royal stock, was making no headway in bestowing and ending a kingship. (1.47.6 ) As noted earlier, we contend that Livy seeks to remind his Augustan audience of the dangers inherent in allowing the women of Augustus’ household to exercise unaccountable political control under a new mode of governance, monarchic in all but name.Yet is plausible that Livy is also critiquing political developments in the late republic that helped cause and create the conditions of Augustus’ rule. Perhaps his representation of Servius Tullius as an “outsider” and a “new face” on the Roman regal political scene, and of Servius’ daughter Tullia as trying to wield regal power through her husband, is meant to recall another member of the gens Tullia, the “new man” Marcus Tullius Cicero, and his aggressive mode of insinuating himself into the late Roman republican power structure, facilitated through marital alliances he engineered for his own daughter.11

Livy’s Tullia, Klytaimnestra and Kleopatra Like the mythic Greek queen Klytaimnestra in both Greek and Roman tragedy, Livy’s Tullia has her husband killed for the political benefit of her lover, whom she then weds.12 No less important, both Tullia’s lover and subsequent husband Tarquinius Superbus and Klytaimnestra’s lover and subsequent husband Aigisthos are close kin to the men murdered. Their female lovers represent both Aigisthos and Tarquin the Proud similarly, as having been unjustly deprived of their inherited political due by those men.13 In Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon, Aigisthos does not even appear on stage until line 1577, after Klytaimnestra’s husband has been murdered. Yet Klytaimnestra’s words about Aigisthos a hundred lines earlier in the play, as well as Aigisthos’ own speech when he enters, characterize the murder of Agamemnon as vengeance for the slaughter of Aigisthos’ brothers, fed to their father Thyestes by Agamemnon’s father Atreus. At 1.45.4–​5 Livy’s Tullia refers to her husband, in his role as son of Tarquinius Priscus, as entitled to the Roman throne currently possessed by her own father Servius Tullius. Unlike Tullia, of course, Klytaimnestra is murdered by her own son Orestes, who also slays Aigisthos. Livy relates that Tullia was merely forced into political exile as a result of the rape of Lucretia by her son Sextus Tarquinius, who had forced Lucretia to submit by threatening 495

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her with murder and posthumous disgrace (1.59.13). But earlier Livy represents Tullia’s own goading of her second husband with the phrase muliebriis furiis, “furies characteristic of a woman” (1.47.7). He also portrays her, not their son himself, as pursued by hostile furies much as Aiskhylos depicts Orestes in the Libation Bearers and Eumenides. Livy relates that Tullia “is said to have driven her carriage over her father’s body, crazed, with the furies of her sister and her husband driving her” (quo amens, agitantibus furiis sororis ac viri, Tullia per patris corpus carpentum egisse fertur—​1.48.7); later, he depicts her as surrounded by “men and women cursing her wherever she went and invoking the furies of her ancestors,” when fleeing into exile (exsecrantibus quacumque incedebat invocantibusque parentum furias viris mulieribusque—​1.59.13). Earlier in that same chapter, Livy may be alluding to the avenging furies when stating that Brutus invoked the gods who avenge parents (invocatique ultores parentum di) in his speech rousing the Romans to expel the Tarquins after the rape and suicide of Lucretia (1.59.10).14 Livy’s diction describing Tullia also calls to mind a celebrated portrayal of a Hellenistic queen whose abuses of royal power, and harmful influence over legitimate Roman political leaders, must have been fresh in the memories of his readers:  Kleopatra VII of Egypt, lover of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. As Livy’s depiction of Tullia itself emphasizes, the two women have a great deal in common.Tullia’s desecration of blood and marital relationships through her involvement in the deaths of her own sister and father, Servius Tullius, and of her first husband, resembles Kleopatra’s alleged involvements in the murder of her own brothers, one of whom, Ptolemy XIV, was also her husband, and indeed that of her own sister Arsinoë IV.15 Specific echoes of Horace’s language depicting Kleopatra (Odes 1.37, probably written soon after Kleopatra’s death in 30 BCE, and hence, in all likelihood, shortly before the first book of Livy’s history) resound in Livy’s description of Tullia.16 The echoes deserve close scrutiny. Most notably, in the final lines of the poem (1.37.31–​2), Horace describes the triumph of Octavian, the future Augustus, a public spectacle in which Kleopatra refused to participate by taking her own life. He refers to it with the adjective superbo, “proud,” and to Kleopatra herself with the litotic phrase non humilis, meaning the same thing. Superbus is, of course, an adjective formally, and traditionally, applied to Tullia’s husband Tarquinius. One might, of course, interpret its appearance here as primarily critical of Augustus. Yet its close proximity to a synonymous expression used for Kleopatra creates an association between her and superbo too, prefiguring Livy’s characterization of the arrogant and entitled Tullia as no less deserving of this pejorative term than her husband. Horace (Odes 1.37.12) describes Augustus as having diminished Kleopatra’s madness (minuit furorem), continuing his representation of “the queen” as “preparing mad ruins” (regina dementes ruinas—​1.37.7). As we have indicated, Livy represents Tullia as both driven and cursed by furies (furiis), and, with amens, an adjective kindred to demens, as crazed. Horace’s characterization of Kleopatra (Odes 1.37.29) as ferocior, “more than ordinarily fierce” once she had premeditated her suicide, may be echoed by Livy’s reference (1.46.6) to Tullia as ferox when goading her husband; his claim about Kleopatra’s “daring” with the word ausa (1.37.25) by Livy’s use of audaciam and audacia for Tullia in the same chapter; his reference to Kleopatra’s palace (1.37.25) as regiam by Livy’s domus regia (1.47.4); his use of the adjective contaminato for Kleopatra’s “herd” of eunuchs in her retinue (grege turpium morbo virorum; 1.37.9) by Livy’s reference to Tullia (1.48.7) as contaminata by her father’s blood. Horace, as critics have underscored, elicits a certain amount of sympathy for Kleopatra in his representation of how Augustus pursued her, and how she refused to allow Augustus to humiliate her.17 Livy, however, portrays Tullia as utterly unsympathetic. But such is Livy’s political agenda: implying the danger that women like Tullia, once given free rein to pursue their ambitions for their male kin, posed to the Roman state.

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A more complex Tanaquil: the evidence of other Roman and Greek authors Livy’s political agenda likewise seems to account for his decision to omit information about Tanaquil provided by other ancient Roman and Greek sources. Through his unwavering focus on her manipulative king-​making, and on her role as a regina fulfilling certain functions of a rex, he fails to acknowledge the range of her cultural associations and the complexity of her image in his own day.18 Even though many of the texts postdate his own Augustan era, the details they furnish about her would seem to have been familiar to Romans of earlier times. Nevertheless, Livy differs from our other major narrative source about Tanaquil, the Augustan antiquarian writer Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who represents her as not merely anointing and appointing two Roman kings, but actually exercising political power in the way that male rulers do.19 The Augustan poet Ovid, when recounting the origins and rituals of the goddess Fortuna’s feast day, portrays Tanaquil as an agent of divine fertility, overseeing the physical conception of Servius Tullius himself from the seed of the god Vulcan.20 Ovid relates that: the temple [of Fortuna] had burned:  nevertheless fire spared the statue of Servius Tullius: the metalworking god himself brought aid to his son. For Vulcan was the father of Servius, and his mother was Ocresia of Corniculum, outstanding in her beauty. After customary sacred rites had been performed with Ocresia,Tanaquil ordered her to pour wine on the decorated hearth. Among the ashes was—​or appeared to be—​the male organ not to be mentioned in public: but it was actually there. The captive woman, ordered by Tanaquil, sat on the hearth: Servius, conceived by her thus has seeds of a race from heaven. His sire Vulcan then signaled his paternity when he touched his head with blazing fire, and in his hair there burned a cap of flame. (Fast. 6.625–​36) What is more, the elder Pliny, writing in the first century CE, quotes the first-​century BCE writer Varro to associate Tanaquil with innovative wool working as well as female and male fertility. He notes: Marcus Varro is the authority that the wool on the distaff and spindle of Tanaquil, who was also called Gaia Caecilia, was still preserved in the temple of Sancus; and also in the shrine of Fortune a pleated royal robe made by her, which Servius Tullius had worn, and from there arose the practice that maidens about to be wed were accompanied by an adorned distaff and a spindle with thread. Tanaquil was the first to weave a straight tunic of the kind that men wear with the plain white toga and newly married brides. (HN 8.194) Several decades later Plutarch gives two answers to the question of why Romans, as they conduct the bride to her home, order her to say, “Where you are Gaius, there I  am Gaia.” The second answer is: because [of] Gaia Caecilia, wed to one of Tarquin’s sons, a fair and virtuous woman whose bronze statue stands in the temple of Sanctus [sic].21 And both her sandals and her spindle were in ancient times dedicated there as tokens of her love for her home and domestic activity. (Mor. 271e) 497

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Admittedly, Plutarch does not identify Gaia Caecilia as Tanaquil; and Tanaquil was wed to the first Tarquin king, not his son.Yet the elder Pliny’s earlier claim that Tanaquil was also known as Gaia Caecilia and possessed weaving equipment that was still in the temple of Sanc[t]‌us, would suggest that she was not only the woman to whom Plutarch refers but honored by a bronze statue as well. The moralistic writer Valerius Maximus, writing prior to Pliny in the first third of the first century CE, helps confirm the identity of Tanaquil as Gaia Caecilia, and as associated with both wool working and brides: Gaia is famous for one use above all, since they say that Gaia Caecilia, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus, was the best wool worker and as a result the custom was instituted that when young brides were asked what they were called outside their husband’s door, they would say that they were Gaia. (10.7 ) Finally, the second-​ century CE grammarian Festus illuminates the Latin noun praebia (amulets) by observing: [the early imperial grammatical authority] Verrius again says that these implements of healing are called praebia, which Gaia Caecilia, wife of Tarquinius Priscus, is thought to have invented, and to have mixed them into the genital area, the woman whose girdled statue is in the temple of Sancus, the god who is called dius fidius [“god of oaths”]; and from its genital area those in physical difficulties take scrapings. (276 L) He thereby provides more details about her statue in the temple of Sancus mentioned by Plutarch, chief among them her association with the invention of gynecological remedies, presumably for infertility, a condition which scrapings from that statue were thought to have helped heal. Nevertheless, it warrants attention that Dionysios’ account of Tanaquil’s role in regal Roman rule, diverges from Livy’s in important ways. While Dionysios denies her any involvement in her husband’s decision to move to Rome, he adds a lengthy tale of her crucial intervention in the story not only of the conception and birth of Servius Tullius, but also of his princely rearing and accession to the kingship (3.47.4–​5). He assures us, too, that she bore multiple royal princes and princesses, and elevates her to the exalted status of orator not merely by assigning her many more speeches than Livy does, but even by placing in her mouth one of the longest speeches delivered by a female character in his Roman Antiquities. Dionysios therefore resembles Livy in highlighting Tanaquil’s political activities, including the speechifying ordinarily viewed as a male prerogative, as well as pursuits traditionally expected from the wives of kings, such as facilitating reproductive success by women in her care and giving birth to numerous offspring herself. Curiously, since Tanaquil is said to have defied cultural norms in Rome by both prophesying and assuming certain royal functions, one would expect her to be vilified in Roman history. But as this evidence from other sources documents, she was never maligned until the time of Tacitus. Rather, she was commemorated and celebrated in a variety of rites and monuments. Where Livy does portray her in a negative light is in his depiction of Tullia, who misuses Tanaquil’s example and perverts her legacy. Livy and Dionysios both steer their readers to the conclusion that Tanaquil’s deeds were remarkable, and ultimately acceptable, because they arose from a 498

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tradition of Etruscan female leadership paired with divinely granted supernatural abilities. But a second powerful Etruscan queen on the throne of Rome, who possessed no talents other than frenzied, bloodthirsty ambition, recalling the most troubled and troubling female rulers of Greek mythology and Hellenistic history, is shown to be unacceptable.

Vergil’s Dido, Greek mythic and historical queens, and Livy’s Tanaquil Livy’s first book is widely thought to have antedated Vergil’s Aeneid, perhaps by as much as a decade; the poet had not yet completed the epic to his satisfaction when he died in 19 BCE.22 We therefore have good reason to assume that Vergil may be seeking to recall Livy’s regina Tanaquil in his representation of Dido, who is frequently referred to with the noun regina. Both Tanaquil and Dido demonstrate prophetic skills and cultic expertise. Both are foreign; Dido is not only not a Roman, but also a refugee from Phoinikia to Carthage; Tanaquil is similarly an exile, albeit by choice.23 Both women consequently call to mind royally born spouses from other locales exogamously wed to Greek—​and mythic Trojan—​males belonging to monarchic houses, such as Homer’s mythic Andromache and Helen and including the historical Olympias and her daughter-​in-​law Roxana. Several such women are portrayed as improperly intervening in the political and military decision-​making of their husbands.24 Dido, however, suffers in ways that Tanaquil does not. Although she is initially able to handle the demands of political leadership after being widowed by Sychaeus, she falls to pieces when abandoned by Aeneas, and as a result can no longer carry out her official duties.25 Vergil, perhaps as a result of what he himself had witnessed in the conduct of Kleopatra after the death of Mark Antony, thereby implies that royal women cannot function without royal men. Indeed, Livy depicts both Tanaquil and Tullia as fortunate not only in the opportunities they have to influence several different men—​husbands, fathers, sons, and son surrogates—​ but also in their ability to rely on these men to handle the realities and demands of actual political rule.

Foreshadowing Julio-​Claudian women Previous scholars have examined similarities between Tacitus’ account of how Livia dealt with the death of Augustus in 14 CE, long after Tanaquil and Tullia lived, and Livy’s Book 1, describing how Tanaquil handled the royal succession at her own husband Tarquin’s death. Richard Bauman has argued that Livy revised Book I  of his Ab Urbe Condita shortly after Augustus’ death so as to represent Tanaquil’s conduct as closely resembling that of Livia.26 He maintains that Tacitus not only portrays Augustus’ death accurately, but may also have drawn on Livy’s veiled depiction of Livia’s conduct in Book I. More likely Tacitus’ account of how Livia handled her husband’s death and handed Roman rule over to her own son is based on Livy’s account of how Tanaquil managed to secure royal power for her surrogate son and protégé Servius Tullius, upon the death of her husband. Whatever the relationship between these two accounts, both testify to the opportunities afforded the wives of autocratic, unaccountable rulers for controlling the Roman state when their husbands died, even if they themselves were not capable of handling the actual duties of political leadership.

Conclusions In conclusion, Livy caricatures both Tanaquil and Tullia, her aspiring successor in queenship, as merely a species of female political operative—​if not as female political animals—​so as to 499

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illustrate just how narrowly the Romans escaped from being ruled, or at least co-​ruled, by manipulative women during the regal period. He neglects to share other details about how they are represented in other sources, and in Tanaquil’s case represented reverentially, in sharpening his focus on their pursuit of power. And, whether or not he saw the women of Augustus’ household as already usurping male political prerogatives at the time that he wrote Book I, he evidently recognized their potential to behave in the manner of Livy’s royal Etruscan women, and the mythic Greek and historical Hellenistic queens they call to mind, with catastrophic consequences for the Roman state.

Notes 1 Livy represents Servius Tullius’ daughter Tullia as having married, in succession, two of Tanaquil’s sons by her husband Tarquinius Priscus (1.42.1). Dionysios of Halikarnassos however, maintains that Servius Tullius married Tanaquil’s daughter, making Tullia her granddaughter (Ant. Rom. 4.3); see further p. 497–8 on other differences between Livy’s and Dionysios’ account. 2 Ager forthcoming. 3 Cailleux 2017. 4 Hall 1985. 5 See Glinister 1997, who considers the historicity of Tanaquil and Tullia. 6 For Tanaquil as regina, see most recently Hersch 2019; for Horace on Kleopatra as regina at Odes 1.37.7, see p. 496. 7 See the translation of Fitts and Fitzgerald 2002, originally published in 1939. Even the usually scrupulous Jebb 1904 translates δάμαρ, “wife,” as “queen.” 8 As Feldherr 1998: 216, points out, “Tanaquil has no authority to act as augur, and so her performance [“anointing” Servius Tullius] can be read as an illegitimate substitute for the actual inauguratio, which Tullius lacks.” In private correspondence, Joseph Roisman has called further differences between Livy’s Tanaquil and Sophokles’ Iokaste to our attention:  while Iokaste tries to interpret prophecies, she misreads them; she does not encourage her husband (and son) Oidipous to take action but actively discourages him from doing so; she does not empower Oidipous, who keeps legitimating his rule by reference to his solving the Sphinx’ riddle and saving the city of Thebes. Arthur Eckstein, in private correspondence, also perceives major differences between Iokaste and Tanaquil: viewing Iokaste as so greedy to hold on to her power that she has failed to support Oidipous, first by allowing him to be exposed as a baby, then by marrying him even though she knew the prophecy about him, despite the fact that she is old enough to be his mother. What is more, Iokaste is a native of and not an immigrant to Thebes. But Tanaquil’s role as both wife and mother–​figure to two Etruscan kings resembles Iokaste’s role as both wife and mother to Oidipous the king. So, too, the damage Iokaste inflicts on the city of Thebes owing to her relationships with powerful men is recalled in the harm Livy’s Tanaquil ultimately wreaks on the Roman state through her support of her surrogate son Servius Tullius, the abhorrent conduct of Tanaquil’s biological son and Servius’ daughter, and eventually the violent behavior of their son Sextus Tarquinius. 9 As Joseph Roisman has pointed out in private correspondence, the Epeirote Olympias was technically an outsider in Macedonia, and Philip and Alexander insiders. But both Olympias’ husband and her son were outsiders in Athens, and in the Greece of their day. 10 Plutarch may well have derived this dream-​scenario from his account of the flame interpreted by Tanaquil about the political promise of Servius Tullius, though he may also draw on earlier sources, to whom Livy is alluding, and/​or from whom Livy has appropriated the details. See Hamilton 1969:  3–​4, who claims that Plutarch’s source for Olympias’ alleged dream portents may be the fourth-​century BCE Greek historian Ephoros (BNJ 70 F 217). What seems significant, however, is the similarity between Tanaquil and Olympias in their employment of this “fiery” supernatural event to engineer the political ascendancy of a surrogate or biological son. In private correspondence, Stanley Burstein has emphasized that except for her role in the events surrounding the death of Philip, Olympias’ intrusion into politics was limited during the reigns of both Philip and Alexander. Indeed, she truly came into her own after Alexander’s death, when her conduct increasingly resembles that which Livy ascribes to Tanaquil and Tullia, through her ruthless pursuit of

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Tanaquil and Tullia in Livy Alexander’s throne for Alexander’s son, Alexander IV by leading armies, murdering Philip III and Eurydike, and issuing threats. 11 Van Der Blom 2010 makes no mention of Cicero’s own efforts to claim Servius Tullius as a remote ancestor when seeking high political office, despite Cicero’s disadvantages as a novus homo without similarly named male consular kin of previous generations. Perhaps Cicero judged royal relations, however remote, as a liability rather than an asset in his own day. Still, one might conjecture that, even if Cicero did not wish to be associated with Rome’s monarchic past, his contemporaries connected his nomen gentilicium Tullius with that of Rome’s sixth king much as they did Brutus’ name with that of the legendary republican hero who ended the reign of the seventh. 12 The mythic Greek queen Klytaimnestra must have been a familiar figure to Livy and his audience. Not only did all three of the Attic tragedians—​Aiskhylos in his Oresteia trilogy, Sophokles in his Elektra and Euripides in both his Elektra and Orestes—​write plays about Klytaimnestra and/​or her family, but a Roman tragedy entitled Clytemnestra, by the second-​century BC playwright Accius, was also, according to Cicero (Ad Familiares 7.1.2), performed at the opening of Pompey’s theater in 55 BC. We have focused on Aiskhylos’ trilogy here because the second and third play feature the “Furies,” to whom Livy’s narrative clearly alluded. 13 For the House of Atreus, and the “backstories” of Agamemnon and Aigisthos, see Lefkowitz 2010. 14 For Livy’s representation of Tullia as recalling and responding to [Greek and Roman] tragedies, particularly those about the houses of Atreus and the Theban Laios (the family of Oidipous), see Ogilvie 1965: 186–​94,  228–​9. 15 For Kleopatra’s involvement in the death of her co-​ruler and brother Ptolemy XIII in 47 BC, see [Caes.] BAlex. 31; Flor. 60; for her role in ordering Mark Antony to put her sister Arsinoë IV to death in 41 BC, and on the death of her brother and husband Ptolemy XIV, see Joseph. Ap. 2.57; AJ 15.89; App. B.Civ. 5.9; Cass. Dio 48.24.2; Porphyry, BNJ 260 F 2, 16. See also the discussion by Roller 2010: 16, 18, 26, 37, 53, 56–​65, 71–​5, 80, 114, 124, 147–​60, 164–​5, 179. Our thanks to Stanley Burstein for explicating the complexities of this familial situation. 16 For the date of Livy Book I, see Luce 1965. Although Burton 2000 would contend that Livy began his history prior to that date, allowing for the possibility that Horace drew on Livy’s portrait of Tullia in his characterization of Kleopatra, we accept the traditional dating of the early 20s BCE. 17 See Commager 1958 for Horace’s sympathetic portrayal of Kleopatra in this poem, as well as Roller 2010: 172. 18 Studies on ancient sources about Tanaquil outside the political realm, and what their evidence suggests, especially about her puissance in the religious sphere, include Briquel 1998; Calhoun 1997, who views Lucretia’s suicide as ritual atonement for the conduct of Tanaquil and Tullia; Martin 1985; Meulder 2005; Montero 1994; and Santini 2005. 19 See Noggler 2000, for the distinctive features of Dionysios’ portrait of Tanaquil. 20 For Greek and Roman perceptions of Etruscan sexual conduct, and its alleged deviation from Greek and Roman cultural norms, see Roisman 2014. 21 Plutarch appears to have misunderstood the name of the Roman god [Semo] Sancus as “Sanctus,” the Latin word for “sacred.” 22 Although it is unclear when Vergil began to write the Aeneid, scholars generally concur with Morwood 1991 that he started it upon completing the Georgics in 29 BC. Again, although Burton 2000 would contend that Livy began his histories prior to that date, allowing for the possibility that Vergil drew on Livy’s portrait of Tanaquil in his characterization of Dido, we accept the traditional dating of the early 20s BCE. 23 For Dido’s attempt to use the examination of sacrificial animals to determine whether or not the gods approve of her love for Aeneas, see O’Hara 1993; for Dido as exile, see Harrison 2007. 24 See, for example, Andromache’s exchange with Hektor at Iliad 6.405–​39:  she urges him to remain fighting on the Trojan wall, out of fear that she will be widowed and their little son orphaned, right after she has recounted her foreign origins, and the losses that Hektor’s foe Achilles inflicted on her family. 25 For Dido’s inability to continue functioning as a responsible political leader after Aeneas abandons her, see the discussions of Hallett 2012 (including a lengthy discussion of Livy’s Tullia) and Keith 2012. 26 See Bauman 1994; Santoro L’Hoir 2006: 49–​50 makes a strong linguistic case for Livy’s portrayal of Tanaquil’s actions upon the death of Tarquin as Tacitus’ model. See also the excellent discussion of Tanaquil as peregrina at Santoro L’Hoir 1992: 88–​9.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Ager, S. forthcoming.“Fama and Infamia: The Tale of Grypos and Tryphaina.” In R. Faber and S. Ager (eds.), Celebrity, Fame and Infamy in the Hellenistic World. Toronto. Bauman, R.A. 1994. “Tanaquil, Livia and the death of Augustus.” Historia 43: 177–​88. Briquel, D. 1998. “Les figures féminines dans la tradition sur les rois étrusques.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-​Lettres 2: 397–​414. Burton, P. 2000.“The Last Republican Historian: A New Date for the Composition of Livy’s First Pentad.” Historia 49: 429–​46. Cailleux, F. 2017. “Tanaquil, Tullia and Damarata: Women Secretly Advising Kings in Livy’s History of Rome and the Degradation of Monarchy.” Dialogues D’Histoire Ancienne 17: 487–​509. Calhoun, C.G. 1997. “Lucretia, Savior, and Scapegoat: The Dynamics of Sacrifice in Livy 1, 57–​59.” Helios 24: 151–​69. Carney, E.D. 2006. Olympias: Mother of Alexander the Great. New York and London. Commager, S. 1958. “Horace, ‘Carmina’ 1.37.” Phoenix 12: 47–​57. Feldherr, A. 1998. Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History. Los Angeles and London. Fitts, D. and Fitzgerald, R. 2002. The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. New York. Glinister, F. 1997. “Women and Power in Archaic Rome.” In T. Cornell and K. Lomas (eds.), Gender and Ethnicity in Ancient Italy. London, 115–​27. Hall, J.F. 1985. “Livy’s Tanaquil and the Image of Assertive Etruscan Women in Latin Historical Literature of the Early Empire.” Augustan Age 4: 31–​8. Hallett, J.P. 2012. “Women in Augustan Rome.” In S.L. James and S. Dillon (eds.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Malden, Oxford, and West Sussex, 372–​84. Hamilton, J.R. 1969. Plutarch: Alexander: A Commentary. Oxford. Harrison, S. 2007. “Exile in Latin Epic.” In J.F. Gaertner (ed.), Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-​Roman Antiquity and Beyond. Leiden, 129–​54. Hersch, K.K. 2019. “Peregrina Tanaquil.” Paper presented at Panel 17, “The Marital and the Martial: Exemplary Women Beyond Lucretia,” 12th Celtic Conference in Classics, Coimbra, Portugal, June 26. Jebb, R.C. 1904. The Tragedies of Sophocles: Translated into English Prose. Cambridge. Keith, A. 2012. “Women in Augustan Literature.” In S.L. James and S. Dillon (eds.), A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Malden, Oxford, and West Sussex, 385–​99. Lefkowitz, M.R. 2010. “Atreus, House of.” In M. Gagarin (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. www.oxfordreference.com/​view/​10.1093/​acref/​9780195170726.001.0001/​acref-​ 9780195170726-​e-​140 (accessed October 1, 2019). Luce, T.J. 1965. “The Dating of Livy’s First Decade.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 96: 209–​40. Martin, P.A. 1985. “Tanaquil la ‘faiseuse’ de rois.” Latomus 44: 5–​15. Meulder, M. 2005. “Trois femmes, trois fonctions: Tanaquil, Tullia, Lucrèce (Tite-​Live, ‘Histoire romaine’, livre I).” Revue des études anciennes 107: 543–​57. Montero, S. 1994. “Livia y la adivinación inductive.” Polis 6: 225–​67. Morwood, J. 1991. “Aeneas, Augustus, and the Theme of the City.” Greece and Rome 38: 212–​23. Noggler, L. 2000. “Die edle Tanaquil: zum Bild der Frau bei Dionysios von Halikarnass.” In R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (eds.), Geschlechterrollen und Frauenbild in der Perspektive antiker Autoren. Innsbruck, 245–​71. Ogilvie, R.M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy: Books 1–​5. Oxford. O’Hara, J. 1993. “Dido as ‘Interpreting Character’ at Aeneid 4.56–​66.” Arethusa 26: 99–​114. Roisman, J. 2014. “Greek and Roman Ethnosexuality: Evidence and Interpretations.” In T.K. Hubbard (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities. Malden, Oxford, and West Sussex, 398–​416. Roller, D. 2010. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford. Santini, C. 2005. “Tanaquil vel Fortuna: una figura femminile nel percorso tra mito, testo e icona.” Giornale italiano di filologia: rivista trimestrale di cultura 57: 189–​210.

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Tanaquil and Tullia in Livy Santoro L’Hoir, F. 1992. The Rhetoric of Gender Terms: “Man,” “Woman,” and the Portrayal of Character in Latin Prose. Leiden. Santoro L’Hoir, F. 2006. Tacitus, Rhetoric, and the Historiography of Tacitus’ Annales. Ann Arbor. Van Der Blom, H. 2010. Cicero’s Role Models: The Political Strategy of a Newcomer. Oxford.

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41 ROMAN EMPRESSES ON SCREEN An epic failure? Anja Wieber

Introductory remarks Twentieth-​century epic films about antiquity and, due to film remakes, even some examples of twenty-​first-​century productions, mostly adhere to traditional old-​fashioned gender roles. In this genre, deeply rooted in nineteenth-​century novels, the female leading lady is often a damsel in distress to be saved by the mythic or historic hero.1 An independent heroine, most certainly a woman in power, represents a paradox in many ways. As such, she is often seen as belonging to “the dark side of the force”: corrupt, cruel, and craving for power and lust.Those characteristics are grounded in topoi of ancient sources about bad women, and served ancient historiographers of senatorial rank as well as nineteenth-​century historians and novelists as a means to denounce monarchy in general and to deal with gender trouble of their respective eras. Given the breadth of a topic such as cinematic representation of powerful women from ancient times, this chapter will concentrate on the question of how Roman empresses are characterized in epic cinema or comparable TV shows. Emphasis is thereby put on the monarchic representation of the empresses and their political agency against the historical background of antiquity and the time of the film’s production. For my exemplary case studies I have chosen two women of the Julio-​ Claudian dynasty who pass, prima facie only, for “the good and the bad wife,” Livia and Poppaea, and will finally contrast them briefly with empresses from late ancient times.

Livia—​founding mother of the dynasty or serial killer? Since antiquity, empress Livia has had an ambiguous reputation: on the one hand she is the exemplary wife of Augustus and a symbolic mater patriae (“mother of the Fatherland”); on the other hand Tacitus and other historians characterize her as a scheming and plotting murderess.2 Modern historical novels, especially Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God (1934), adopted the bad side of her character, and thus the sinister Livia is deeply inscribed into our cultural memory.3 Graves aimed at doing justice to Claudius and his unjustified image as a stammering, fumbling fool by his fictional account of the Julio-​Claudian dynasty, a first-​person narrative by Claudius, later emperor. Graves did not write this novel in defense of the female members of the dynasty; instead, he used some of their characters to cope with his own marital 504

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problems, as Maria Wyke has argued.4 Therefore, not only should Graves’ construction of the Messalina character of the novel be read as a response to the experiences he had with dominant women (his first wife, the painter Nancy Nicholson, and the author Laura Riding), the same is true about Livia as a protagonist,5 who is referred to in the novel as “one of the worst of the Claudians.”6 Up to now there have only been two screen adaptations of the novels by Graves:  one is an unfinished British movie by Josef von Sternberg from 1937 and the other is the BBC series from 1976.7 Although the 1930s film never entered cinemas, the 1965 BBC documentary The Epic That Never Was of 1965 (about that film project) rescues nearly 30 minutes of footage.8 Alexander Korda produced the film in Denham Film Studios in Britain, founded by him to compete with Hollywood. Korda was then famous for his lavishly decorated period films (e.g. The Private Life of Henry VIII).9 The project failed for many reasons, one of them being that Charles Laughton, who played the main character Claudius, could not get on with the extravagant Austrian director Josef von Sternberg.10 The scene under discussion (from the film fragments) depicts a meeting of Livia with her grandson Claudius and her great-​g randson Caligula in the year of her death (29 CE).11 They meet to attend a ceremony for the deceased deified emperor Augustus and to learn about a prophecy that Livia’s death is near and Caligula and Claudius will be the next emperors.The whole scene happens in the open air with the citizens of Rome being present.12 Livia is every inch the dowager empress, cynical13 and wise in her eighties, played by the character actress Flora Robson, who at 35 had already acquired a reputation for impersonating famous rulers: Tsarina Elisabeth (1934) and Queen Elizabeth I (1937). The meeting is obviously set on the stairs of the Ara Pacis, the monumental altar of peace that closely connected with Augustus’ political agenda and his family policy, inaugurated on January 30 in the year 9 BCE, on Livia’s birthday.14 Consequently, the filmic Livia is enthroned exactly in front of the figure on the altar relief (south side) that has been identified as Livia (Figure 41.1).15 The other parts of the processional frieze seem to be condensed and constructed in reverse order.16 Perhaps this physical setting was chosen to refer to Livia’s role as a priestess for the deceased Augustus. A woman with a license to sacrifice was very unusual from the ancient point of view.17 To comment on this in an epic film would be a very interesting feature; it is a pity that this film never was. Livia’s impressive robe looks like a monumental cloak of the palliola type (cape);18 its decorative elements remind one of magic signs and resemble late ancient or Byzantine fashions (as seen on the mosaics of Ravenna) more than clothes from the time of Livia.The train was typical for ancient theater costumes.19 In modern times, even up to the twentieth century, this train could also be part of a coronation robe: Napoleon was dressed this way and a similar coronation mantle of Augusta, Queen of Prussia and later German empress, survives from the year 1861.20 Using modern sources of inspiration in combination with ancient sources is quite common in epic films about antiquity. Creating a special ceremonial dress for Livia by employing elements from other epochs is necessary as no robe of that kind existed at the beginning of the imperial era. Singling her out from the other female film characters clad in typical clothes of the Augustan era (tunica—​“tunic,” stola—​“overdress,” and palla—​“mantle”) lends some weight to her political role. The pattern of Livia’s dress, however, connects to star symbols that were quite common in ancient monarchies (emperor and empress form a pair like sun and moon, as depicted on coins and other media).21 Livia’s costume can be read as the film version of the ancient monarchical representation: the dress stands for the dignity of Livia, who had been adopted by Augustus and given the honorary name Augusta.22 During her conversation with Caligula and Claudius we learn that she has seen through Claudius: 505

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Figure 41.1  Livia in front of the Ara Pacis: Flora Robson in I, Claudius Source: Hulton Archive/​Stringer/​Getty  Images

Be silent, you impudent puppy [to Caligula]. You take your uncle for a fool, but he’s not. I sometimes think he pretends to be one, so as to make fools of us. Far from being a fool, he’s the last decent man left alive in Rome. (The Epic That Never Was: 0:35) Such a portrayal of an empress distinguishes itself from the usual parts for women in historical feature films in those days: in 1933 Philip Lindsay, novelist and historical consultant for The Private Life of Henry VIII, wrote about his and the audience’s expectations concerning the genre: We will see heroic deeds and splendid women […] Costume films, I firmly believe, will bring back a sense of honor and honesty. Instead of lads striving to be Cagneys they will wish to be d’Artagnans; and the women will expect a certain finesse, a certain beauty about love-​making. (Lindsay 1933: 10–​11) This Livia is a real puppet master, not a passive, splendid face only to be looked at by the male viewer, adored by the screen hero, or emulated by the female audience.The fact that she is an old lady and a widow (believed to be asexual and therefore different from the typical female love interest of the male hero) may relate to her strong presence; not for nothing her black robe, especially the cape, and her small veil recall Queen Victoria’s dress code.23 506

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In the BBC series of 1976, Siân Phillips, a much-​awarded Welsh actress, played the role of the empress. Herbert Wise, who was an expert in shooting TV series, directed all the episodes.24 Sandra Joshel has demonstrated that the TV version of Graves’ novels turned ancient history into a soap opera (serial drama with a focus on family and its emotional relationships, originally named after the soap manufacturers sponsoring such shows in the USA).25 Historical soaps about the period from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1930s were already very popular on British TV (e.g. The Forsyte Saga BBC 1967; Upstairs—​Downstairs ITV 1971–​5).26 Typically for this genre, the main setting is the interior and dialogue is the central form of action.Therefore—​to give but one example—​we do not see the imperial family inaugurate the gladiatorial games, but we only hear, for a short time, people applauding them when they enter the imperial lodge (ep. 3, 0:30–​0:31)27. By domesticating ancient history and using colloquial language this show could also carry modern subtexts and current issues from the 1970s, as in the change of family structure or gender roles. When Britannicus tells his father Claudius, “You are old, father, and out of touch” (ep. 12, 0:43), he echoes the generation gap of modern days. Martin Lindner, on the other hand, has argued that in I, Claudius the presentation of imperial family history resembles a crime drama with comic elements more than a soap opera, and that the concentration on the domestic scenery, i.e. indoor shots, can be explained by budgetary concerns.28 In the second chapter of Graves’s novel, the narrator Claudius summarizes Livia’s relationship with her husband Augustus as follows, having mentioned her several times before: “Augustus ruled the World, but Livia ruled Augustus.”29 The TV show opens with the narrator Claudius on screen and his voice commenting off-​screen; he sits in front of his desk, obviously starting his project to write his family’s history (which includes Livia, introduced as his grandmother), meant for posterity. In the next scene we see Livia in person, during a festive dinner party in the palace. While we witness guests at the party exchanging pleasantries and a poet reciting some verses commemorating the Battle of Actium, the off-​screen narrator Claudius and the camera introduce the inner circle, “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, old friend and commander of the armies of Augustus […] Emperor of Rome, a most remarkable man. But even more remarkable was Livia, his second wife. If Augustus ruled the world, Livia ruled Augustus” (ep. 1, 0:11). By this filmic device the narrator acts like the ancient nomenclator, the slave who prepares his master with people’s names and ranks; the film puts a certain emphasis on Livia’s characterization by formally introducing her, so that, from the beginning, the audience is left with a stronger impression of her marital dominance than in the novel. In the first part of the series, until her death, her crimes constitute one of the determining themes.We follow a trail of allusions, ambiguities, and partial confessions associated with a series of poisonings within the Julio-​Claudian family launched by Livia. Augustus (Brian Blessed), who has found out too late that his family has made him a fool, long seems to be the jovial patriarch without the slightest clue what is going on, masterfully manipulated by his wife (ep. 4, 0:16:55). Already in the first episode, the all-​knowing viewer notices that Livia is responsible for the death of Augustus’ nephew and son-​in-​law, Marcellus. Hence her remark that her husband’s grandsons Gaius and Lucius “still have a long way to go,” has a sinister connotation (ep. 1, 1:36). A conversation between Livia and the sorceress Martina is full of deadly irony: the latter regrets that the empress, with all her knowledge of poisons, is not able to practice that profession (ep. 5, 0:34:35). In the series, Livia poisoned all those Augustus has appointed as successors:  Marcellus, Gaius, Lucius, and Germanicus. Finally, she poisoned Augustus and, after his death, ordered the death of Agrippa Postumus, the last survivor of the Julian side of the family. Ancient sources do support these accusations, but often leave some room for doubts.30 Already in the novel, combining so many sources, omitting any doubts, and accusing Livia of crimes not previously mentioned, enhances 507

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their effect.31 The series further intensifies this impact by extending scenes or fabricating further charges (e.g. the conversation with the sorceress Martina). The whole series is listed in the Internet Movie Database with the tagline, “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”32 Moreover the fourth episode has the meaningful title, “Poison is queen,” clearly referring to Livia. In the novel, one can read this dictum twice, but embedded in an explanatory context: once it refers to a Greek inscription, “Poison is queen,” inside an old chest accompanied by a portrait resembling Livia, and the next time it is an exclamation of the sleepy Claudius, who unexpectedly hears about the death of Augustus, but rejects this phrase immediately as the consequence of a nightmare.33 The filmic version of this quote is less embedded, less speculative, and therefore catchier than the references in the novel. Besides, the whole episode ends with the old Claudius still being haunted by a laughing Livia: he then shouts twice, “Poison is queen” and six times, “Stop it” (0:49:40–​0:50). Not surprisingly, Livia’s poisoning of Augustus is portrayed as her masterpiece. Shortly before, the viewer has learned that Augustus has paid a visit to the exiled Agrippa Postumus. As he is the last possible male successor of the Julian side of the family, this visit poses a threat to Livia’s son from her former marriage, Tiberius, and his succession—​which mother and son until then believed to be a done deal.34 Whereas ancient sources mention a meeting between Agrippa and Augustus, the earlier scene, where Livia convinces the Chief Vestal to open Augustus’ testament by promising her money for the temple, cannot be verified by ancient sources. Now for the scene itself:  with his friends and family, Augustus is entirely enjoying parlor games, when suddenly he collapses with cramps (0:35:51–​0:43:17). We understand that Augustus knows about his wife’s intentions to poison him by the way their glances are directed. At the same time, she knows that he knows; the effect is enhanced by the use of the subjective camera whereby we see the events through the eyes of the characters.35 In the novel the poisoning covers only a few lines,36 whereas in the film it takes some minutes, splendidly cut. A nice montage connects Livia’s thoughtfully peering at the figs with the court physician’s report that Augustus has decided from now on only to eat figs he has picked himself.37 Now the omniscient viewer suspects her sinister plans. The effect is intensified by counterpoint music: the twittering of birds mocks the idyll. Augustus, on his death bed with his facial expression completely frozen, resembles prey mesmerized by the serpent, an animal that is by now well known to the viewer, as a coiling serpent is part of the opening credits, done in ancient mosaic style.When Livia starts to criticize Augustus, saying that he should have listened more to her and that he has pushed her into the background, this message is made literal by having her be audible, but off-screen. But after having shed some tears, Livia is again ready to take charge of the events which follow. En passant, she addresses her son with words heavy with meaning: “By the way […] don’t touch the figs.” Suspicions of poisoning are common in historical sources dealing with monarchies without a fixed order of succession. Moreover, aristocratic Roman women were familiar with medical knowledge, as they were responsible for the well-​being of their numerous families, including relatives and slaves. The physician Scribonius Largus collected medical recipes, naming Livia and other imperial ladies as his sources for some.38 These facts could explain the accusations. Finally, ancient reports about Livia’s misdeeds—​whether true to a certain degree or not—​must be read as criticism of overwhelming female influence directly generated by monarchy. But what could the twentieth century gain from that image of Livia? In the 1970s, the TV show was advertised by the producer with the slogan, “It’s about a family business called ruling the world.”39 Considering the modern subtexts, the audience of those days could watch and learn what happens to a “business” in which a woman like Livia has her own agenda, against her husband’s will.This business is doomed to fail—​like the Julio-​Claudian family in the end. In the 508

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heyday of the second British women’s liberation movement, Livia’s story became a cautionary tale about the consequences of violating classic gender roles and expectations.40 How far the viewer response to the TV show as it was broadcast could be that of simply drawing an analogy between Rome and modern days is also documented by an US article from 1982. The sociologist Harry Perlstadt argued that, “Viewers of I, Claudius were both fascinated and horrified as the television drama performed an almost ritualistic function of explaining the present through exploring an allegory based on the past.”41 People saw similarities in the political crisis in Rome (the end of the republic and corruption of imperial Rome) and in the USA of the 1970s (Vietnam War and Watergate) and in decaying family values (among other things, female emancipation) in both societies. Livia, in his interpretation, made a perfect example of liberated women who are not reluctant to commit crimes and “mask their power behind innocence and modesty.”42 Juliette Harrison has given ample proof of the continuing impact of this image of Livia, ranging from being the namesake for Livia Soprano, matriarch in the TV show The Sopranos about a mafia clan, to inspiring the character of Atia, Octavian’s mother, in the series Rome (USA/​GB/​I 2005–​7).43 Is there room for another Livia? In 2013, the BBC produced a documentary in three parts presented by the historian and expert on ancient cultural history Catherine Edwards. Leaving aside the attention grabbing title Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome, the first part of this documentary shows the other side of the coin, Livia and her financial resources as well as her role as an intermediary in political conflicts, best summarized by the neologism matronage.44 Some years before, in 2005, the popular historian Mary Mudd had published her answer to I, Claudius, a biography with the title: I, Livia. The Counterfeit Criminal which would make an interesting starting point for a new feature film.

Poppaea—​the wickedest woman in the world? Cecil B. DeMille, one of the most successful directors in Hollywood in the era of silent movies as well as in the times of the talkies, was famous for a cinema of sensations. In 1932 he asked the ladylike actress Claudette Colbert whether she would like to play Poppaea, “the wickedest woman in the world,” and she said yes.45 The film, The Sign of the Cross, based on a nineteenth-​ century play by Wilson Barrett, was completed within the year. Main characters are the insane and effeminate emperor Nero and his infamous wife Poppaea,46 who is in love with the (fictional) city prefect of Rome, Marcus Superbus. However, Marcus’ love interest happens not to be the empress but the Christian girl Mercia. First he tries to seduce the innocent girl, but finally he falls in love with her. When the jealous empress condemns Mercia to death, together with other Christians, Marcus follows her to the arena and they both face their afterlife confidently. The plot, presenting a Roman society that in its cruelty and corruption should be understood as the exact opposite of ancient (and modern) Christianity and its values, resembles the famous novel Quo Vadis? (Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1896). The Christian varnish proves thin. The film offers, on a visual and narrative level, sufficient sex and crime to satisfy viewers’ voyeurism, in the days before the enforcement of the Hays Code (the rigid self-​censorship of the American film industry from 1934 up to the 1960s). The glamorous sins of Rome took people’s minds off everyday problems in the Depression era.47 Although the Church criticized the film’s offensive depiction of sadism in the arena, of homosexuality, specifically lesbianism, and the bristling eroticism of many scenes, The Sign of the Cross was a box office hit.48 One of the great erotic attractions was certainly Poppaea bathing in ass’s milk. This incredible luxury, already described by the elder Pliny,49 is made obvious by making the viewer a witness of how many hands are necessary to carry the milk to the palace. In the comfort of her bath, the empress grants 509

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audience to her friend Dacia, to listen to her report about her love interest Marcus Superbus, who has made himself scarce. Poppaea even invites Dacia to share her bathing pleasures. Despite Poppaea’s spectacular entrances she does not take up much of the film’s running time.50 The first meeting between the empress and Marcus Superbus witnessed by the viewer is a scene when Poppaea is bored and leaves a party. Meanwhile Marcus, who wants to save his beloved Mercia from trouble, chases through the city and his chariot damages Poppaea’s carriage. Poppaea, standing on the top of a huge staircase and monitoring the carriage crash, converses with Marcus, who addresses her from the street: Marcus: […] I shall beg your pardon properly tomorrow. Poppaea: Why not tonight? Marcus: Because I’m in great haste tonight, on the Emperor’s most urgent business. Poppaea: Come here! I’m the Emperor’s most urgent business. Do as I tell you! (0:55–​0:58) Although she twice tells Marcus to obey her, he does not strictly follow her orders. Though he leaves his carriage and climbs up some stairs, he tries to evade her clutches by postponing the meeting. Then he rushes away with a short, “Good night,” while Poppaea leaves her position on the staircase only to gaze after him and to shout, “Marcus, I insist!” without any success. The hierarchical gap between Poppaea and Marcus expressed by their position on the staircase changes to a situation of a passive woman abandoned by an active man. In terms of the film’s running time, it takes only a few minutes to dethrone the powerful woman. The next morning, we watch the empress receiving Marcus at court (1:05–​1:12). Reclining lazily on a couch, she resembles a seductress from harem fantasies, accompanied by a leopard, surrounded by all the luxuries (e.g. furs and fruits), and slaves playing a harp and holding a fan. Despite all her sex appeal, her love for Marcus proves to be unrequited; he leaves after quarreling with her, not following the empress’s order to forget the Christian girl Mercia. When Poppaea realizes her defeat, we watch her anger crosscut with shots of her pet: one cannot be certain who is hissing, the empress or the wild animal. Next she hurries to what could be a great shiny gong she wants to strike with a stick, perhaps in order to summon her subordinates. But, after a moment of hesitation, she seems to have found another solution: an intrigue she will machinate.The sound of drums in the background indicates the empress is on the warpath. Actually, shots from this scene make her look like a “domina” holding the gong stick, similar to a club or a scepter (Figure 41.2). She does then turn Nero against the Christian girl with the intent to save Marcus, but in vain, as in the end he refuses to be spared by her. No matter how powerful this empress may be, the 1930s Poppaea does not succeed in making the man of her choice an obedient lover. Epic films about antiquity sometimes mention the concept of women who can wield power over male sexuality: this is the case with empresses but also with female slave owners. The aristocratic women in Spartacus (USA 1960) indulged in voyeurism when watching the gladiators, a concept that has been exaggerated in the modern TV show Spartacus (USA 2010–​13). Most certainly the empress Poppaea is not a woman exerting control over a man’s body, which would have caused (and still would cause?) real scandal in those days. Nonetheless the actress Claudette Colbert saw a powerful woman in Poppaea, as she said in an interview at the time the movie was released: We modern women could learn a lot from Poppaea. We go about demanding our rights, arguing with men for what we want. But Poppaea knew a trick which was far more effective. She flattered him [i.e. Nero]. She let down her hair, perfumed her 510

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Figure 41.2  Poppaea plotting: Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross Source: Photo12/​WolfTracerArchive,  Alamy

body and arrayed herself in her loveliest and most daring costumes for his pleasure. Then she did just whatever she pleased. He was so enchanted with her that he never noticed the things she did. (Quoted in Kakutani 1979 ) Similarly, the Australian film critic and author John Howard Reid called Poppaea, “a miniature minx of unbridled power.”51 A  minx is “a girl or young woman who knows how to control other people to her advantage.”52 Power, in this context, turns into a spectacle with an empress whose resources are youth, sex appeal, and quick-​wittedness, used to manipulate the effeminate husband, though failing with manly men. This Poppaea may be a “queen of screwball” (some of her dialogue points in the direction of the humorous battle of the sexes typical for that genre), 53 but she does not pose a threat to men and their political prerogatives. In 1932, the year The Sign of the Cross was released, as much as 12 years after American women had won the struggle for the vote, Hattie Wyatt Caraway was the first woman to be elected to the Senate and there was still much ground to cover.54 Considering DeMille’s moralistic intentions (he saw himself as a sort of preacher and stresses similarities between Rome’s corruption and the American depression era),55 Poppaea’s character could also be read as a criticism of contemporary American women, the society ladies and party girls, committing adultery out of sheer boredom.Tacitus had labeled the future empress as an adulteress,56 and so only hints are needed in the film to refer to an extramarital affair and we hear her say to Marcus, “You haven’t wanted a vile court intrigue with me. I haven’t either particularly. But what else is there?” 511

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A change of gender roles in late antiquity? The examples of the two Julio-​Claudian empresses we have seen so far are defined by crimes or sins. This result would not have been different, even had there been room to include other notorious women of imperial families or more recent screenings of those empresses. Since in late antiquity the empresses markedly gained political power,57 one might well wonder whether this change has had influence on their cinematic representation. In Sign of the Pagan (USA 1954),58 one of the many epic movies about Attila the Hun, we meet Pulcheria Augusta, sister of the emperor Theodosius II; the setting is Constantinople of the fifth century CE.The Roman centurion Marcian, who has recently fled from Hunnish captivity, and general Paulinus are plotting to bring down the emperor, who is under suspicion of joining forces with Attila the Hun. In the context of a Hunnish take-​over of the eastern capital, they convince Pulcheria to take over the emperorship. At first the empress shows some determination: she not only orders Theodosius to abdicate, but also appoints Paulinus as regent and Marcian as the commander of the forces to assist the western empire against the Huns. Confident of gaining a victory over the barbarians, she plans to go to Italy to pray that Rome, as a symbol of Christianity, will last forever (0:53–​0:58). Sometime later, Pulcheria and Marcian are staying in Italy, when they receive the message that Valentinian, the emperor of the western Roman empire, is actually leaving Rome. In their subsequent conversation, Pulcheria tells Marcian that she cannot rule an empire alone: she asks him to come back and to rule the people with her. She closes with, “Happy the woman to whom you come,” and then they exchange kisses (1:03:40–​1:06:30). Actually, the reign of Theodosius was ended by his death in a riding accident. Pulcheria had acted as regent for her younger brother Theodosius for many years. Moreover, she was famous for her austerity and her vow of chastity, even after her marriage to the emperor-​to-​ be Marcian. The filmic empress is promoted to her rank by men’s initiative. In the last sequence discussed, we see her gazing after the men who are riding away and then turning her face to the viewer. Her cloak, with a pinkish satin-​trimmed hood, makes her look like a Madonna.This gentle and beautiful woman admires her future husband for climbing the social ladder. Also, she freely admits that she needs masculine assistance (or guidance?) to fulfill her role as empress. She stays away from the battlefield, which women should not enter. No doubt, her actions illustrate the ideal world of the 1950s with gender boundaries intact and wives supposed to submit to their husbands. So, for Pulcheria, the happy ending means getting married to the hero. For epics of the 1950s and 1960s, this result is quite typical, no matter whether their heroines are mythical figures like Helen of Troy or historical queens like Kleopatra or Zenobia.59 They are all eager to give up the business of ruling for Mr. Right, or to quote the Palmyrene queen Zenobia (Sign of the Gladiator—​Nel segno di Roma, I 1958): “To be able to win every man is not as worthwhile as to be chosen by one man” (0:49:51–​0:50).60 In the films discussed so far, empresses (especially if they are young) are used to discuss gender trouble and marriage ideals that were relevant at the times the films were shot.61 Their characterization does not usually break with the tradition of ancient sources about those empresses, although sometimes the filmic depiction exaggerates. Examining the TV show Rome in the context of the battle for viewing ratings, Anise K. Strong has aptly described the phenomenon of presenting ancient deviant sexuality as, “Vice is nice.”62 This formula is also relatively valid in earlier film productions and their portrayal of ruling women. Wicked and oversexed empresses served as a means to distract viewers from their problems and to mislead the censors in times of harsh censorship. To guarantee that everything is back to normal in the end, the upside-​down world with women on top has to stop. So those women are either punished by death or tamed by men, by marriage, or by being rejected in love: ultimately they fail. Historical facts in such 512

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cautionary tales are twisted at random.The filmic Justa Grata Honoria, Galla Placidia’s daughter, suffers a dramatic death in the Hunnic camp, stabbed by advancing Romans in the film Attila (Attila, il Flagello di Dio, I/​F 1954, 1:06). Although her date of death is as uncertain as her political alliance with Attila is much debated by scholars,63 there are no ancient sources for this version of her death, which seems to be a poetic (here filmic) justice for her unwomanly ambition and her betrayal of the Romans. Most astonishingly another topos that is quite common in the depiction of eastern queens like Kleopatra or Zenobia is also applied to late ancient empresses from the East and the West: female rulers are Orientalized and turned into dancing harem girls, and thus stripped of their political power.64 In Revenge of the Barbarians (La Vendetta dei Barbari, Italy 1960) Galla Placidia (Daniela Rocca) appears as a sort of Mata Hari, entering the camp of the Visigoths disguised as a member of a circus troupe: her performance is a belly dance, so her costume consists of a glaring red bikini and a veil. In contrast to the Italian film versions, the historical Galla Placidia was indeed a successful regent. However, it is obvious that showing empresses at everyday work, enacting non-​boudoir power has usually been outside the scope of filmmakers.

Notes 1 My thanks go to the following for their help in the different stages of preparing this paper: Filippo Carlà-​Uhink, Judith Rhodes and Stefan Sandführ. Wieber-​Scariot 1998: 84. 2 See Barrett 2002: esp. 229–​47 on Livia and on the ancient sources see Kunst 2008. 3 Kunst 2009: 336. 4 Wyke 2002: 356–​9. 5 Gibson 2015: 283–​4, 286. 6 Graves 2006a: 16. 7 Gibson 2015: 287–​92. 8 The documentary is part of the BBC 5-​DVD edition of I Claudius from 2002 (disc 5: special features). 9 For the impact this movie had on the British film industry see Richards 2010: 257–​72. 10 For the film project see: Solomon 2001: 29–​30, 78; McFarlane 2008; from the viewpoint of a family member: Korda 2002: 115–​18. 11 The Epic That Never Was, 0:34–​0:36:40. 12 In the novel a comparable scene is set during a dinner in the palace (Graves 2006a: 280–​8). 13 She tells Claudius that she is going to kill her magician if his prophecy proves to be wrong, otherwise she will take him with her: “I can use a clever old vulture like that, even in death.” 14 Zanker 1988: 117–​23, 172–​83, 203–​7; Severy 2003; for Livia as a representation of Ceres in the processional frieze see Späth 1994: 88–​90. 15 For the sardonyx showing an enthroned Livia as a priestess of Augustus and a goddess see Zanker 1988: 235, fig. 184. 16 Späth 1994: 73–​5;  89–​90. 17 Kunst 2008: 188–​217. 18 Her cloak resembles, from the front, a palliola, a short palla (outer garment for women), combined with an unusual train at the back; the complex decoration of the fabric is typical for late antiquity (Cleland, Davies, and Llewellyn-​Jones 2007: 136–​7). 19 For the so-​called syrma (a robe with a train, emphasizing the character’s high status) as a stage costume see Cleland, Davies, and Llewellyn-​Jones 2007: 179. 20 www.dhm.de/​ s ammlung- ​ f orschung/ ​ s ammlungen0/​ b ildende-​ k unst-​ i /​ i nhalt/​ n apoleon-​ i -​ i m-​ kroenungsornat.html (accessed June 22, 2019); www.spsg.de/​aktuelles/​ausstellung/​frauensache-​ exponate/​(accessed June 22, 2019). 21 For the sun in the monarchic discourse of antiquity see Schmid 2005: 76–​91; for sun and moon in dynastic discourses see Wieber-​Scariot 1999: 266–​8. 22 Kunst 2008: 190–​7.

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Anja Wieber 23 For the patterned cape, see the dress she wore to St Paul’s Cathedral for her Jubilee thanksgiving service in 1897 (https://​images.historicenglandservices.org.uk/​historic-​images/​1870s-​1900/​queen-​victoria-​ 1897-​d880039-​3718540.html; accessed June 22, 2019); for her veil, which had been black since her widowhood and was only changed to white for special family occasions, see Baird 2016: 409. 24 See Visual History with Herbert Wise, Interviewed by Mike Newell. www.dga.org/​Craft/​VisualHistory/​ Interviews/​Herbie-​Wise.aspx (accessed June 22, 2019). 25 Joshel 2001: 137–​50. 26 See also Harrison 2017: 272–​4. 27 All the following quotes are based on the DVD edition in 12 parts with a longer first episode, mentioned in n. 8; episodes numbers and timestamps will be given in brackets. 28 Lindner 2013: 299–​300; see also Harrison 2017, 276–​7. 29 Graves 2006a: 20. 30 Suet. Tib. 22; Tac. Ann. 1.3.3; Cass. Dio 53.33.4, 55.10a.10, 56.30.1–​2. 31 Livia Medullina Camilla, referred to in the novel as Camilla, was betrothed to Claudius and died on her wedding day; ancient sources do not connect her sudden death with Livia (Stegmann 1999). 32 The last line of a poem from the novel, written by Claudius to cope with Messalina’s death and his approaching remarriage (Graves 2006b: 391) is turned into the motto of the series. www.imdb.com/​ title/​tt0074006/​taglines?ref_​=tt_​ql_​stry_​1 (accessed June 22, 2019). 33 Graves 2006a: 28, 157. 34 Tac. Ann. 1.5. 35 For Wise preferring that technique see Harrison 2017: 278. 36 Graves 2006a: 156. 37 The ancient source for this is Cassius Dio 56.30.2, who says Livia managed to prepare some of the figs that Augustus had picked himself and offered those to him, whereas she ate the safe ones; Kunst 2008: 189 considers this implausible, as Augustus died en route and not at home, so that tampering with the figs would have been difficult for Livia. 38 Baldwin 1992: 74–​5; Mudd 2005: 390–​405 (Appendix IV: “Livia’s Medicines: The Pharmaceutical Legacy of Scribonius Largus”). 39 Quoted after Murray 1976: 1394. 40 For the gender issues and the modern political subtexts in general see Joshel 2001;Wyke 2002: 380–​90. 41 Perlstadt 1982: 176. 42 Ibid.: 168. 43 Harrison 2017: 286–​7; other examples are a blogpost from 2008: “Everything I know about Roman history I  learned from I, Claudius. As a result, my Augustus Caesar is a bit of a bumbling old man […] and my Livia deliciously evil (that last, at any rate, is likely factual).” https://​whatisthe.wordpress. com/​2008/​07/​21/​let-​all-​the-​poisons-​that-​lurk-​in-​the-​mud-​hatch-​out/​ (accessed June 22, 2019) and a drawing by Christian Tsvetanov (2015?) with the title Poison is Queen which shows Siân Philipps in her role as Livia sitting on the deathbed of Augustus. www.deviantart.com/​christiantsvetanov/​art/​ Poison-​is-​Queen-​Augustus-​and-​Livia-​562227582 (accessed June 22, 2019). 44 Wieber-​Scariot 1999: 216–​18; Kunst 2013. 45 Malamud 2008: 158–​66, 179–​81; DeMille Presley and Vieira 2014: 176–​206. 46 Goffin 2001; the only more recent monograph about Poppaea is by a non-​specialist: Graham 2016; for Poppaea’s political profile see Edelmann-​Singer 2013 and for her prestige see Somà 2016: 35–​6. 47 Malamud 2008: 165. 48 Ibid.: 157; de Mille Presley and Vieira 2014: 191–​5, 206. 49 Plin. HN. 11.238. 50 All the following quotes are based on the DVD edition of the full-​length original film version by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (2006, running time 2:05). 51 Reid 2013: 130, quoting one of his own film reviews written under the pseudonym George Addison. 52 https://​dictionary.cambridge.org/​dictionary/​english/​minx (accessed June 22, 2019). 53 For a definition of the screwball comedies emerging around 1930 in the US cinema, see Gehring 1986. 54 Cullen-​DuPont 2000: 40–​1. 55 Malamud 2008: 159–​63, 179–​81. 56 Tac. Ann. 1. 14, arte adulterae (with the artfulness of an adulteress). 57 McCormick 2007: 145–​51; Busch 2015. 58 Wieber 2005; references are made to the French Blu-​ray/​DVD edition from Elephant Films (2016, running time 1:32:08).

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Roman empresses on screen 59 Wieber-​Scariot 1998: 84–​9. 60 This quotation is my translation from the version screened on German television, running time 1:34. 61 Wieber 2010. 62 Strong 2008. 63 Busch 2015: 166–​76. 64 Wieber-​Scariot 1998: 77–​84; for the Oriental topoi see Carlà-​Uhink and Wieber 2020.

Abbreviations Abbreviations of ancient authors, works and document collections are those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (online at https://​oxfordre.com/​classics/​page/​abbreviation-​list/​).

Bibliography Baird, J. 2016. Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire. New York. Baldwin, B. 1992. “The Career and Work of Scribonius Largus.” Rheinischer Merkur 135: 74–​81. Barrett, A. 2002. Livia, First Lady of Imperial Rome. New Haven and London. Busch, A. 2015. Die Frauen der theodosianischen Dynastie. Macht und Repräsentation kaiserlicher Frauen im 5. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart. Carlà-​Uhink, F. and Wieber, A. (eds.) 2020. Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World. London, New Delhi, New York, and Sydney. Cleland, L., Davies, G., and Llewellyn-​Jones, L. 2007. Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z. London and New York. Cullen-​DuPont, K.2000. Encyclopedia of Women’s History in America. New York. DeMille Presley, C. and Vieira, M.A. 2014. Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic. Philadelphia. Edelmann-​Singer, B. 2013. “Herrscherfrauen als Leitfiguren:  Iulia Severa, Poppaea und die ‘Matronage’ der jüdischen Religion.” In Kunst, C. (ed.), Matronage. Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke antiker Herrscherfrauen. Rahden, 89–​99. Gehring, W.D. 1986. Screwball Comedy: A Genre of Madcap Romance. New York. Gibson, A.G.G. 2015. “Josef von Sternberg and the Cinematizing of I, Claudius.” In A.G.G. Gibson (ed.), Robert Graves and the Classical Tradition. Oxford, 275–​95. Goffin, B. 2001. “Poppaea Sabina [2]‌.” In Der Neue Pauly. vol. 10. Stuttgart and Weimar, 149–​50. Graham, J.P. 2016. Poppaea Sabina: The Power of Myth. Raleigh. Graves, R. 2006a [first published 1934]. I, Claudius. London and New York. Graves, R. 2006b [first published 1934]. Claudius the God. London and New York. Harrison, J. 2017. “I, Claudius and Ancient Rome as Televised Period Drama.” In A. J. Pomeroy (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen. Malden, 271–​91. Joshel, S.R. 2001. “I, Claudius: Projection and Imperial Soap Opera.” In S.R. Joshel, M. Malamud, and D.T. McGuire (eds.), Imperial Projections:  Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture. Baltimore and London, 119–​61. Kakutani, M. 1979.“Claudette Colbert Still Tells DeMille Stories.” The New York Times, November 16: C31. www.nytimes.com/​1979/​11/​16/​archives/​claudette-​colbert-​still-​tells-​demille-​stories-​walking-​across. html (accessed June 22, 2019). Korda, M. 2002 [first published 1979]. Charmed Lives: A Family Romance. New York. Kunst, C. 2008. Livia. Macht und Intrigen am Hof des Augustus. Stuttgart. Kunst, C. 2009. “Das Liviabild im Wandel.” In V. Losemann (ed.), Alte Geschichte zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik: Gedenkschrift Karl Christ. Wiesbaden, 313–​36. Kunst, C. (ed.) 2013. Matronage. Handlungsstrategien und soziale Netzwerke antiker Herrscherfrauen. Rahden. Lindner, M. 2013. “‘A Different Story Altogether’—​Kaiser Claudius als Geschichtsschreiber, Erzähler und historische Figur in I, Claudius.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 95, 2: 285–​308. Lindsay, P. 1933. “The Camera Turns on History.” Cinema Quarterly 2, 1: 10–​11. Malamud, M. 2008. “Swords-​and-​Scandals: Hollywood’s Rome during the Great Depression 1.” Arethusa 41, 1: 157–​83. McCormick, M. 2007. “Emperor and Court.” In A. Cameron, B. Ward-​Perkins, and M. Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIV: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–​600, fourth edition. Cambridge, 135–​63.

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Anja Wieber McFarlane, B. 2008. “Rome-​on-​the-​Colne:  The Aborting of I, Claudius.” In D. North (ed.), Sights Unseen: Unfinished British Films. Newcastle-​upon-​Tyne,  19–​32. Mudd, M. 2005. I, Livia: The Counterfeit Criminal. The Story of a much Maligned Woman. Bloomington, IN. Murray, O. 1976. “On the Way to the Forum.” The Times Literary Supplement, November 5: 1394. Perlstadt, H. 1982. “The Socio-​cultural Relevance of I, Claudius.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 10, 2: 167–​76. Reid, J.H. 2013. Big Screen Bible Lore. Raleigh. Richards, J. 2010 [first published 1984]. The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain. London and New York. Schmid, A. 2005. Augustus und die Macht der Sterne: Antike Astrologie und die Etablierung der Monarchie in Rom. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna. Severy, B. 2003. Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire. New York and London. Solomon, J. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema. New Haven and London. Somà, I. 2016. “Gender Studies und Geschichtswissenschaften in den Untersuchungen zu Frauen in der klassischen Antike:  der Beitrag der Epigraphik.” In V. Helfert, J. Richter, B. Semanek, A. Bumbaris, and K. Sigmund (eds.), Frauen-​und Geschlechtergeschichte un/​diszipliniert? Aktuelle Beiträge aus der jungen Forschung. Innsbruck,Vienna, and Bolzano, 23–​40. Späth, B.S. 1994. “The Goddess Ceres in the Ara Pacis Augustae and the Carthage Relief.” American Journal of Archaeology 98, 1: 65–​100. Stegmann, H. 1999. “Livia Medullina Camilla.” In Der Neue Pauly, vol. 7. Stuttgart and Weimar, 367. Strong, A.K. 2008. “Vice Is Nice:  Rome and Deviant Sexuality.” In M.S. Cyrino (ed.), Rome, Season One: History Makes Television. Malden, MA and Oxford, 219–​31. Wieber, A. 2005. “Von der Völkerwanderung zum Kalten Krieg: Sign of the Pagan zwischen antikem Topos und Mentalitäten der 50er Jahre.” In: S. Machura and R.Voigt (eds.), Krieg im Film. Münster, 59–​101. Wieber, A. 2010.“Sicher im Hafen der Ehe?—​Antike Paare im Film.” In B. Heininger (ed.), Ehe als Ernstfall der Geschlechterdifferenz. Herausforderungen für Frau und Mann in kulturellen Symbolsystemen. Münster, 175–​95. Wieber-​Scariot, A. 1998. “Herrscherin und doch ganz Frau—​Zur Darstellung antiker Herrscherinnen im Film der 50er und 60er Jahre.” Metis 7: 73–​89. Wieber-​Scariot, A. 1999. Zwischen Polemik und Panegyrik. Frauen des Kaiserhauses und Herrscherinnen des Ostens in den Res gestae des Ammianus Marcellinus. Trier. Wyke, M. 2002. The Roman Mistresses: Ancient and Modern Representations. Oxford and New York. Zanker, P. 1988. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor.

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INDEX

Notes (1) The following abbreviations have been used in this index: b. brother d. daughter f.  father m.  mother mar. married to s.  son (2)  Page numbers in italics refer to diagrams and photographs. Abu Simbel 28 Achaia 175 Achaimenes (s. of Amestris) 149, 152–​3 Achaimenid kings: diplomatic marriages 150–​1; incestuous alliances 351 Achaimenid palaces 334 Achaimenid royal and noble women 149–​58; audiences 155; dress and appearance 156–​7; hierarchy 150; landownership, labor and business 157; power 158 Achaios the Elder 175, 199–​200, 201 Achaios the Younger 175, 201–​2, 350 Achilleus (Iliad) 273, 278 Adad-​guppi (m. of Nabonidus) 145 Adad-​narari III (s. of Shamshi-​Adad V and Sammu-​ramat)  143 Ada (d. of Hekatomnos; mar. Idrieus) 161, 165, 166, 167, 170 Ada (d. of Pixodaros) 169 Adea Eurydike (d. of Amyntas; mar. Philip Arrhidaios) 189, 297, 300, 325–​6 Adeimantos of Lampsakos 327 adelphic couples see brother–​sister marriages Admetos (Eur. Alc) 288 Adranadorus (Syracusan general) 492 Ādur-​Anāhīd (d. of Šābuhr I) 248

Aegyptiaka (Manetho) 11, 23, 24, 25 L. Aelius Caesar (formerly L. Ceionius Commodus) 440 Aeneid (Vergil) 499 Agamemnon 271, 273, 275, 277, 278, 285 Agamemnon (Aischylos) 284–​5, 495 Agathokleia (concubine and sister of Agathokles) 340 Agathokleia (m. of Strato) 364 Agathokles of Syracuse 312 Ager, Sheila L. 492 Agrippa, Marcus Vispanius (mar. Julia the Elder) 382, 399 Agrippa Postumus, Marcus Vipsanius 400 Agrippina the Elder/​Maior (d. of Agrippa and Julia the Elder) 401–​2, 403, 445 Agrippina the Younger/​Minor (d. of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder) 367, 393, 403, 404, 406–​8, 444 Ahmes-​Nefertari (wife/​sister of Ahmose, m. of Amenhotep I) 26, 47 Ahmose (mar. to Ahmose-​Nefertari) 26, 47 Ahmose (m. of Hatshepsut, mar. of Tuthmose I) 12 Aias (Sophokles) 290 Aigai, Argead capital 294 Aigisthos (Aischylos’ Agamemnon) 495

517

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Index Aigisthos (Cho.) 285 Aigisthos (Eur. El.) 290 Aigisthos (Odyssey) 283 Aigisthos (Soph. El.) 290 Aischylos 275; Agamemnon 284, 291, 495; Eumenides 496; Libation Bearers 496 Aitia (Kallimachos) 87, 89, 110, 111, 112, 113 Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) 27–​8, 35, 36–​41, 38 Akkad Empire 142–​3 Akkadian (language) 137–​8 Akkadian royal titles 192 Alcestis (Euripides) 288 Alexander and Olympias cameos 366 Alexander Balas (s. of Antiochos IV and Antiochos; mar. Kleopatra Thea) 178–​179, 222, 348, 363 Alexander (b. of Laodike) 175 Alexander Helios (s. of Kleopatra VII and Antony) 127 Alexander II Zabinas 179 Alexander III the Great (s. of Philip II and Olympias) 77–​8, 98, 170, 190, 295–​6, 298, 300, 322 Alexander IV (s. of Alexander III and Roxane) 296, 321, 324, 325 Alexander Jannaios 222–​3, 225, 226, 227, 229 Alexander, Marcus Aurelius (formerly Gessius Alexianus) see Severus Alexander, Emperor Alexander of Lynkestis 190 Alexander (s. of Aristoboulos) 227–​8 Alexander Zabinas 178 Alexandra (d. of Hyrkanos) 227–​8 Alexandria 108, 334–​5 Alexandria cast 362 Alexandrian War  123 Alexandros I (mar. Kleopatra; s. Neoptolemos) 297, 299, 322 Alexandros I (s. of Neoptolemos) 296 Alexandros (Paris) 274 Alkaios, Ganymede 188 Alkestis (Eur. Alc) 287, 288 Alkinoos (Odyssey) 275 Alyattes of Sardeis 150 Amanirenase (qore, queen of Kush) 68 Amanishakheto pyramid chapel 67 Amanishakheto (qore, queen of Kush) 65, 68 Amanitore (Meroitic royal woman) 65 Amarna Period 35, 42 Amasis of Egypt 150 Amastris (city) 192, 194 Amastris, regnant basilissa 192–​3, 194 Ambrose 466 Amenemhat I 16 Amenemhat II 16 Amenemhat III 18, 26 Amenemhat IV 18, 36 Amenhotep I (m. Ahmes-​Nefertari) 26, 27 Amenhotep III 12, 27, 36

Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton) 27–​8, 35, 36–​41, 38 Amenirdis I/​Khanefererumut (sister of Piye) 49–​50, 52, 52, 54 Amestris/​Amastris (niece of Dareios III; mar. Krateros) 155 Amestris (d. of Artaxerxes II; mar. Tiribazos) 155 Amestris (d. of Dareios II) 155 Amestris (d. of Otanes; mar. Xerxes I) 149, 151, 152–​3, 155, 157 Amestris (m. of Artaxerxes I) 157 amicitiae muliebris (“feminine friendships”) 393 Amisiri (mar. to Artaremu/​Artarios) 157 Ammianus Marcellinus 463, 470; 14.2 469; 14.6.16–​17 484–​5; 28.4.9 485 Amon cult 40 amphimetric strife 297, 349 Amyntas I 299 Amyntas III 299 Amyntas (s. Perdikkas III) 325 Amytis (d. of Alyattes of Sardeis) 150 Amytis (mar. Megabyxos) 154 Anastasia (d. of Constantius I and Theodora) 464 Anatolian familial networks 202 Andrade, N.J. 262 Andromache (Iliad) 278 Angiò, F. 301 Anicetus, freedman 407 Ankhenespepy I (mar. Pepy I; m. of Merenra) 13 Ankhenespepy II (mar. Pepy I; m. of Pepy II) 13, 14–​16 Ankhesenpaaten (d. of Nefertiti; mar. Tutankhaten) 37, 38, 39, 41–​2 Ankh-​kheperu-​re Neferneferuaten  41 Ankh-​kheperu-​re Semenkhkare  41 Ankhnesneferibre Adoption Stele 53–​4 Ankhnesneferibre/​Heqatneferoumut (d. of Psametik II) 53–​4, 54 Annales (Tacitus) 399 Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla 411–​13 Annia Galeria Faustina see Faustina Maior (the Elder) (d. Marcus Verus; mar. Antoninus Pius) Anonymous Valesianus  464 Anōšag (m. of Rōdduxt) 248 Antigone (d. of Berenike and Philippos) 339 Antigone (Sophokles) 286–​7, 291 Antigonid monarchy 307–​15; and Argead monarchy 310; courts 334; cults and royal women 314; marriage alliances 312–​13; polygamy 309, 311, 311–​12; wedding festivals 313; women’s euergetism 314 Antigonid palaces 334 Antigonid women 308, 314 Antigonos I Monophthalmos 192, 307, 308, 309, 310, 324–​5, 339 Antigonos II Gonatas 85; control of Korinthos 311; Halkyoneus (son by Demo) 313; king of Macedonia 307, 310; and Phila II 174, 313,

518

519

Index 314, 347, 349; ruler cults 314; s of Demetrios Poliorketes and Phila 309, 327 Antigonos III Doson 310 Antigonos (s. of Aristoboulos) 228 Antigonos (b. of Aristoboulos) 226 Antikleia (Odyssey) 273 Antiochianus, Flavius 457 Antiochis (concubine of Antiochos IV and m. of Alexander Balas) 178 Antiochis (d. of Achaios the Elder; m. of Attalos I) 175, 211 Antiochis (d. of Antiochos III; m. Ariarathes IV of Kappadokia) 177 Antiochis (m. Xerxes of Western Armenia) 176 Antiochos I Soter (s. of Seleukos and Apama) 173–​5, 186, 187, 198–​200, 203–​4, 336–​7 Antiochos II (s. of Antiochos I and Stratonike) 87–​8, 175, 199–​202, 203, 204, 338, 350 Antiochos III (s. of Seleukos II and Laodice) 74, 174–​5, 176–​8, 202–​4, 215, 348 Antiochos III Philokaisar 349 Antiochos IV Epiphanes (s. of Antiochos III and Laodike) 176, 177, 178, 222, 348 Antiochos V Eupator (s. of Antiochos IV and Laodike) 178 Antiochos VI Dionysos (s. of Alexander Balas and Kleopatra Thea)  178–​9 Antiochos VIII Grypos (s. of Demetrios II and Kleopatra Thea) 178, 179, 180, 348, 363, 492 Antiochos IX Kyzikenos (s Antiochus VII and Kleopatra Thea) 179–​80, 348 Antiochos X Eusebes (s. of Antiochos IX Kyzikenos and Kleopatra III) 180 Antiochos XI (s. of Antiochos VIII Grypos and Kleopatra Tryphaina)  180 Antiochos XIII Asiatikos (s. of Antiochos X Eusebes and Kleopatra Selene) 180 Antiochos Cylinder 187, 336 Antiochos Eupator (s. of Seleukos IV and Laodike) 178 Antiochos Hierax (s. of Antiochos II and Laodike I) 175, 176, 201–​2 Antipater/​Antipatros (f. of Phila I and Kassandros) 190, 308, 323–​5, 327 Antipater (f. of Herod the Great) 227, 228 Antonia the Younger (mar. Drusus; m. of Claudius and Livia Julia) 402, 403, 404 Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius see Elagabalus, Emperor Antoninus Pius, Emperor (mar. Faustina Major; d. Faustina Minor) 414, 439–​43 Antoninus, T. Fulvus Aurelius (s. of M. Aurelius and Faustina Minor) 444 Antony (Marcus Antonius) 126–​9, 366–​8, 378–​80 Antyllus Marcus Antonius (s. of Antony and Fulvia) 128 Apama (d. of Antiochos I and Stratonike I) 174, 186, 193, 199

Apama (d. of Demetrios and Stratonike III) 311 Apama (d. of Seleukos and Apama) 173 Apama (d. of Spitamenes; mar. Seleukos I) 173–​4, 186–​94; basilissai 189–​90, 193; eponymous cities 194; marriage to Seleukos I 175, 186, 1901; Miletos 194; political interventions 191–​2; social capital 190; Susa pairings 187–​8, 190 Apama (m. of Antiochos) 336 Apama of Kyrene 193–​4 Apame (Abbamuš) 154–​5 Apame (d. Artaxerxes II; mar. Pharnabazos) 155 Apame (d. Spitamenes of Baktria; mar. Seleukos I) 155 Apame (mar. Magas; m. of Berenike II) 84, 85, 86 ‘Apammu’ (s. of Antiochos II) 175 Aphrodite 353 Apicata (mar. Seianus) 402 Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautika 89 Apollonis of Kyzikos (m. of Eumenes II and Attalos II) 211–​15 Appian: Syr. 65 176; Syr. 68 179 Aquilia Severa (mar. Elagabalus) 457 Ara Concordiae (porticus Liviae) 391 Ara Pacis Augustae 381, 390–​1, 392, 427, 505, 506 Aratos of Soli 313 Aratos the Younger of Sikyon 312 Archelaos (mar. Kleopatra) 301 Archelaos of Kappadokia 181 Archelaos of Priene 114 Ardašīr I 248 Ardašīr III 251 Ardys (s. of Antiochos III and Laodike) 177 Aretas III of Nabataea 180 Arete (Odyssey) 272, 275 Argead dynasty: Alexander III succession 321; basilissai 296; brother–​sister marriages 354; coins 295; courts 334; polygamy 297–​8; succession 297–​8; throne names 295, 297; women’s formal authority 338 Argead women 294–​302; female titles 296–​7; strategic marriage policy 299; succession advocacy 297–​8; titles 296–​7; and war 300–​1; widows 301 Argonautika (Apollonios Rhodios) 89 Ariamnes/​Ariaramnes of Kappadokia 176, 201 Ariarathes III of Kappadokia (m. Seleukos II) 175, 201 Ariarathes IV of Kappadokia (m. Antiochis d. of Antiochos III) 177, 215 Aristides, Aelius 439 Aristoboulos (s. of John Hyrkanos and Salina Alexandra) 225–​6, 229 Aristoboulos II (s. of Salome Alexander) 227 Aristoboulos III (b. of Mariamme) 228 Aristotle 188 Armenia 127 Arnold, D. 17

519

520

Index Arrhidaios/​Philip (mar. Adea/​Eurydike)  297 Arrian 324; Ind. 5.7 482 Arsakid–​Roman hostage submission 240–​1 Arsakid royal women 234–​42; Augustan political staging 241; co-​rulership 237–​8; marriage policy 240–​1; political influence 237–​40; “secondary women” 240; titles and ranks 235–​7 Arsane (Sassanid) 249 Arsinoë I (d. of Lysimachos; mar. Ptolemy II) 187 Arsinoë II Philadelphos (sister-​wife of Ptolemy II) 29, 96–​101, 346–​7; amphimetric strife 349–​50; d. of Magas and Berenike I 84; as a domineering woman 354; Philadelphos cult title 338; poetry 110–​13; posthumous cults 78–​80, 97–​8; relationship with husband 109; royal conjugal couple 73–​4; Theoi Adelphoi 77–​8, 86, 96–​7; Theon Adelphon coins 360–​2 Arsinoë III Philopator (sister-​wife of Ptolemy IV) 74, 75–​6, 78–​80, 113–​14, 347 Arsinoeia festival 78, 97 Artabanos II 238 Artaxerxes I (Ochos; s. of Xerxes I and Amestris) 149, 151, 153 Artaxerxes II (Arsaces; s. of Dareios and Parysatis) 149, 153, 154, 351 Artaxerxes III (Umasu; s. of Artaxerxes II and Stateira) 154, 166, 169 Artaÿnte (mistress and niece of Xerxes I 151, 152 Artazostre (sister of Xerxes I) 151 Artemis 291–​2 Artemisia I of Karia (d. of Lygdamis) 161, 162–​3 Artemisia II of Karia (d. of Hekatomnos; mar. Maussollos) 161, 164–​9 Artyphios (s. of Megabyxos) 153 Artystone/​Irtašduna (mar. to Dareios I) 150, 157 Aryazate (Automa) (d. of Tigranes; mar. Mithridates II) 236 Asi’abaṭar (mar. Gotarzes I) 236 Assurbanipal (grandson of Naqi `a 144, 145 Assyrian Empire 482 Astronomical Diaries 192 Astyanax/​Skamandrios (Iliad) 278 Aten (god) 37, 40 Athenaios 189 Athenodoros (Stoic philosopher) 379 Atossa (d. of Artaxerxes II) 155 Atossa (d. of Kyros the Great; mar. to Dareios I) 149, 150, 152, 153, 155 atrox (“fierce”) 408 Attalids 210–​17; marriages 211–​12; motherhood 216; mothers 210–​11, 212–​13; religious spaces for dynastic memory 216; and the Seleukid Empire 211 Attalos (f. of Philetairos) 210 Attalos I (s. of Attalos of Pergamon and Antiochis) 175, 210–​12, 215

Attalos II (s. of Attalos I) 211, 215–​16 Attalos III Philometor (s. of Eumenes II and Stratonike) 210, 216 Atte, Claudia (concubine of Nero) 407 Attila (Attila, il Flagello di Dio) 513 Attila the Hun 512 auctoritas/​axioma (“prestige/​dignity”) 389, 394 auctoritas materna 389 auctoritas parentis 389 Augustae 415, 426, 428, 441, 465, 468 Augustus 238, 241, 388–​94, 408, 415, 499 see also Octavian Augustus Augustus (I, Claudius) 507–​8 Aurelian, Emperor 256, 258–​9, 261 Aurelius Victor 452, 463 Automa (Aryazate) (d. of Tigranes; mar. Mithridates II) 236 Avidius Cassius 418, 445–​6 Avitus Bassianus see Elagabalus, Emperor Avrōmān: I, ll. 2–​5 236; ll. 1. 2 236 Ay (pharaoh; f. of Nefertiti) 36, 40 Ayrenis (d. of Alyattes of Sardeis; mar. Ištumegu/​ Astyages) 150 Āzarmīgduxt (d. of Xusrō II Parwēz) 246–​7, 250, 251, 252 Azate (half-​sister and wife of Mithridates II) 236 Babylonian divine triad 336–​7 Babylonian Talmud  250 “bad” Roman women 377 Balakros (mar. Phila) 190, 327 bāmbišn (“queen”) 248, 252 Bardiya (mar. Phaidyme) 151 Barrett, Wilson  509 Barsine (Stateira) (mar. Dareios III) 155 basileia (Iliad and Odyssey) 271–​2 basileis 188, 271–​2, 307 “basilissa Arsinoë Aphrodite” temple 97 basilissai (“queens”) 4; Antigonid 311–​12; Apama 190–​1; Berenike II 89–​90; classical Athenian literature 188–​9; as diplomats 337; “doubling” of the court 338; duties 191–​3; first queen/​queen mother 336; Hasmonean 225; Hellenistic monarchies 203, 212; honorific title 189–​90; Iliad and Odyssey 272; Laodike III 203; Macedonian royal woman 296; Parthian language 235–​6; Phila I 188–​91, 296, 308, 336; Ptolemies 89–​90, 96–​101, 339, 353, 361; Seleukids 194, 339, 353; Stratonike 190–​1; terminology 23–​4, 235; Zoroastrian law 236 Bassianus, senator (mar. Anastasia d. of Constantius I) 464 “bastardizing” 297 Bathzabbai (d. of Antiochus) see Zenobia of Palmyra (mar. Odainath) battle of Actium 128 battle of Chaironeia 337

520

521

Index battle of Euia 300 battle of Gaugamela 300 battle of Ipsos 307, 308 battle of Issos 158 battle of Raphia 74, 75 Battle of Salamis 162 Baumann, Richard 499 Bayer, Christian 27 BBC: The Epic That Never Was 505, 506; I, Claudius 505, 506, 507; Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses 509 Beckerath, Jürgen von, Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen 24 “benefactor gods” (Theoi Euergetai) 79, 86, 98, 359 Berenike I (mar. Ptolemy I; m. of Ptolemy II) 73–​4, 77, 80, 84–​5, 89, 110, 187 Berenike II Euergetes (d. of Magas; mar. Ptolemy III) 29, 80, 84–​90, 108; basilissa 361; children 87; cults 86, 98–​9; death 87; early years 84–​6; female pharaohs 75, 98–​9, 100; and Kallimachos 113; and “Lock of Berenike” 74; marriage to Ptolemy III 85–​6, 347; military deeds 109; poetry 87–​9, 110–​13; Ptolemaic coins 86–​7; regent of Kyrenaika 89–​90; relationship with husbands 109; Thea Philadelphos 86; Theoi Euergetai 78, 86, 98; Theoi Soteres 78 Berenikeia nomismata 98 Berenike (“Mistress of Virgins”) 87 Berenike “Phernophoros” (d. of Ptolemy II; mar. Antiochus II) 175 Berenike “Syra” (d. of Ptolemy II) 200, 338, 350 Berossos the Babylonian 480 best man (optimus) 413 Binothris (Biophis) (king of Dynasty 2) 24 Bion of Soloi 64 “black pharaohs” of Kush 61 Boa (m. of Philetairos and Eumenes) 210–​11, 216, 217 Boeotia 114 Bona Dea temple 390 Book of Daniel: 11.17 177 Bōrān (d. of Xusrō II Parwēz) 246–​7, 250, 251, 252 Borchardt, Ludwig 35 Boubares (s. of Megabazos; mar. Gygaia) 299 Boundary Stelai 37, 39, 40 Bremen, Riet van 263 Briseïs (Iliad) 271 Britannicus (s. of Claudius and Messalina) 405–​6, 407 Brittane (d. of Mithridates II; mar. Antiochos X Eusebes) 180 Brose, Marc 25 Brosius, Maria 351 brother–​sister marriages: Achaimenid 351; Argeads 354; Epiros 355; Halikarnassos

167–​8; Hekatomnids 167, 169; incest and consanguinity 346; Kommagene 349, 355; Lygdamids 163; Pharaonic dynasties 16, 352; Pontos 349, 355; Ptolemies 99, 335, 346–​54; securing succession 336; Seleukids 335, 348–​9, 353, 355 see also incestuous marriages; marriages; polygamy Brunton, G. 17 building activities 481 Burros, Sextus Afranius 407 Burton, J.B. 112 Caesarion (Ptolemy XV Caesar; s. of Kleopatra VII) 123, 124–​5, 127, 128, 336 Caesar, Julius 122–​4, 376, 377 Caesonia, Milonia (mar. Caligula) 403, 416n44 Cailleux, Fanny 492 Caligula, Emperor 366, 401, 402, 403–​4, 428 Callender,Vivienne G. 25; In Hathor’s Image I 24 Calpurnia (mar. Caesar) 124 Calpurnius Piso 393 Cameo Gonzaga 366 Cameo of the Ptolemies 366 Campus Martius 381 Canopic jars 17 Cape Zephyrion 88, 97 Caracalla, Emperor 240, 260, 453–​6 Caraway, Hattie Wyatt  511 Carney, Elizabeth D. 85, 112, 294, 295, 296, 299, 300, 301, 349 Čašmag (consort of Ardašīr) 248 Cassia Longina 424 Cassius Dio, Roman History 128–​9, 399, 405, 452, 484; 55.10.15 400; 57.12.2 392; 57.5, 6–​7 401; 60.18 404; 65.3.4 416; 67.15.2 417; 71.1.3 412; 72.22.3 445; 72.22.3–​23.1 418; 72.36.4 439; 73[72].14.1 453; 76[75].15.6 453; 76[75].15.7 453–​4; 77[76].3.1 454; 77[76].4.4 454; 78[77].2.1–​4 454; 78[77].2.5–​6 454; 78[77].6.1 455; 78[77].10.2 455; 78[77].18.1 455; 78[77].18.2 455; 78[77].18.3 455; 78.1.1 240; 79[78].31.2–​4 456; 79[78].38 456; 79.23 484; 80[79].17.2–​3 457; 80[79].20.1–​2  457 Ceionia Fabia (d. of L. Ceionius Commodus) 440, 446 Ceres (goddess) 427 Černý, Jaroslav 351 Chapelle Rouge (Karnak) 50 Chaqan of the Hephthalites 250, 251, 252 chastity (modestia) 485 Chief Royal Wives see God’s Wife of Amun “chief wife” 298 Chremonides Decree 75, 109, 353–​4 Christian literature 481–​2 Chronicle of Prince Osorkon 48 “Chronicle of the Esagila” 142

521

522

Index Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt (Tyldesley) 24 Chryseïs (Iliad) 271, 275 Chryseis (mar. Demetrios II; and of Antigonos III Doson; m. of Philip V) 310, 311, 312, 314 Cicero, Marcus Tullius  124 Claudius II “Parthicus Maximus” 261 Claudius (mar. Agrippina the Younger) 367, 388, 404–​7 Claudius (narrator I, Claudius) 507 Claudius the God (Graves) 504–​5 Clayman, D.L. 88, 89 clay seal-​impressions 364, 365 Clodius Albinus 453 coemeterium S. Agnetis 468 coinage: Argead 295; Parthian Empire 239–​40; Sassanid period 249; Zenobia of Palmyra 257, 258 see also Roman coinage Colbert, Claudette (Émilie Claudette Chauchoin) 509, 510–​11, 511 “collective memory” 4 Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippensium 416 Colonia Marciana Traiana Thamugadi  416 Coma Berenices 88 Commodus, Emperor (s. of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina Minor) 413–​14, 418, 444 Concordia Augusta temple 391 concubines 6, 235, 237, 339–​40 consanguinity 346–​7 consolatio Liviae 389 Constans (s. of Constantine and Fausta) 465, 468 Constantina (d. of Constantine I and Fausta) 464, 465, 468–​70, 471 Constantine Dynasty 463–​71, 471 Constantine I the Great (s. of Constantius I and Helena) 463–​9, 470, 471 Constantius II (s. of Constantine I and Fausta) 464, 465, 468, 469, 470, 471 conventus matronarum 390 Cooney, Kara: When Women Ruled the World 24; The Woman Who Would Be King 24 Corbulo, Cnaeus Domitius (f. of Domitia Longina) 416, 417, 424 Cornelia (d. of Scipio Africanus; m. of the Gracchi) 382 cornelian intaglio 367–​8, 367 Cornelia Orestilla (mar. Caligula) 403 Cornelia Paula, Julia (mar. Elagabalus) 457 Cornelia Solonina (mar. Gallienus), 460 court studies 5–​6, 333–​4 creation myths 347 Crispus, Flavius Julius (s. of Constantine) 464, 466–​7 cult of Alexander the Great 77–​8, 98 cult of Arsinoë II Philadelphos 78 see also ruler cults “cultural memory” 4

cuneiform scripts 137–​8 Curtius Rufus, Quintus 190, 481, 483; 5.1.24 482 Dąbrowa, E. 240 Dahshur pyramid of Senusret III 17 Damarata (d. of Hiero; mar. Adranadorus) 492 Damaspia (mar. Artaxerxes I) 151 Dareios I the Great (mar. Atossa, Artystone and Parmys) 149, 150, 151, 152 Dareios II Ochus (mar. Parysatis) 149, 151, 153, 154, 351 Dareios III (mar. Stateira I) 158, 169 Dayr Abu Hinnis quarries 41 Decree of Alexandria 99 Decree of Chremonides 75, 109, 353–​4 Decree of Raphia 75 Decurions of Ostia decree 441 De Dea Syria 187 Deianeira (Women of Trachis) 287–​8 Deidameia (d. of Aiakides king of Molossia) 309 deification 404, 408, 415, 428–​9 deified Augustus (sacerdos divi Augusti) 391–​2 Delos 188, 193 Delphi 166 Demetrias, Thessaly  314 Demetrios I Poliorketes (Antigonid) (s. of Antigonos and Stratonike) 84, 174, 186, 296, 307–​13, 327–​8, 336 Demetrios II (Antigonid) (s. of Antigonos II Gonatas and Phila) 200, 311–​12, 314, 347–​9, 348 Demetrios I Soter (Seleukid) (s. of Seleukid IV and Laodice) 178, 309–​10, 313, 348 Demetrios II Nikator (Seleukid) (s. of Demetrios; mar. Kleopatra Thea) 178, 179, 363 Demetrios III (Seleukid) (s. of Antiochos VIII Grypos and Kleopatra Tryphaina) 180 Demetrios Kalos (s. of Demetrios I Poliorketes and Ptolemais) 85–​6, 88 Demetrios (s. of Euthydemos) 177 DeMille, Cecil Blount 509, 511 Demo (concubine of Antigonos II Gonatas) 313 Demodamas of Miletos 174, 192, 193, 336 De Morgan, J. 17 Demosthenes 188, 189 Dēnag (mar.Yazdegerd II; m. of Hormezd III and Pērōz) 250 Dēnag (m. of Pābag) 248, 249 Dēnag (sister of Ardašīr I) 248, 250 Den (s. of Meretneith) 11 destructive rivalry 335 Diadochoi (Successors) 199, 307, 323, 347 Didius Julianus 456 Dido (Aeneid) 492, 499 Didyma 193 Didymeia (possible sister of Seleukos) 173

522

523

Index dignitas (prestige) 389 Dio see Cassius Dio Diodoros Siculus: 1.27.1 351; 2.4–​2.20 480; 2.6.5–​9 482; 18.18.7 327; 19.16 339; 20.53.2 328 Diodotos Tryphon 178, 223 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities 498; 3.47.4–​5 498; 4.25.3–​4  483 Dionysios (tyrant of Herakleia Pontika) 192 diplomatic marriages 240–​1 Diva Domitilla see Domitilla, Flavia (mar. Vespasian) “Divine Adorer” (title) 47 divine assimilation 352 divine births 12 divinization 5, 79, 415–​16 Djedefra (b. of Khafra) 14 Dodson, A. 41 Dokimos (supporter of Eumenes/​Perdikkas) 308, 339 Dolabella, P. Cornelius 125 Domitia Longina (mar. Domitian) 416–​17, 424, 424–​5, 428, 429, 433 Domitian (s. of Vespasian and Flavia Domitilla) 413, 415, 416–​17, 427, 428, 430, 432 Domitilla, Flavia (mar. to Vespasian) 415, 424, 425, 427, 428, 430 Domitilla Minor 415 Domitius Ahenobarbus, Gnaeus 403 Domna, Julia (mar. Septimius Severus; m, of Geta and Caracalla) 452–​6, 484 domus Augusta 404 domus Faustae 465 Doq, Judea 223–​4 Doric Sparta 274 dowries 273, 338 “Driving the Four Calves” ritual 51, 52 Drusilla, Julia (d. of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder) 403 Drusus Julius Caesar (the Younger; s. of Tiberius) 390, 401–​2 dual kingship 336 Duindam, Jeroen 333, 335 dynastic cults 77–​80, 225 dynastic epithets 337 dynastic marriages 337–​8 dynastic succession 335–​7 see also succession politics and processes dynastic women 335 Edfu Hoard 364, 365–​6, 365 Edinburgh, Duke of 347 Edwards, Catherine 509 Egypt: First Dynasty 11, 24–​5; Second Dynasty 11; Fourth Dynasty 14, 16, 25; 5 Fifth Dynasty 13, 14, 25; Sixth Dynasty 11, 25; Eleventh Dynasty 16; Twelfth Dynasty 16, 17–​18, 25–​6;

Seventeenth Dynasty 26; Eighteenth Dynasty 12, 26–​8, 29, 35, 47; Nineteenth Dynasty 28, 29, 35, 40, 47; Twenty First Dynasty 29, 48; Twenty Second Dynasty 48; Twenty Third Dynasty 29, 48, 54; Twenty Fourth Dynasty 48, 54; Twenty Fifth Dynasty 29, 54; Twenty Sixth Dynasty 54; king’s mothers 11–​18; Middle Kingdom 11–​13, 16, 18; New Kingdom 12, 23, 47, 61; Old Kingdom 11, 12–​13, 18; regent women 22–​39; ruler cult 101; rural exodus 125 see also Ptolemaic monarchy Elagabal (sun god) 456 Elagabalus, Emperor 453, 456–​8 Elamite art 156 Elamite royal women 155 Elder Nefertiti statue 40 Elektra (Aischylos) 284 Elektra (Euripides) 284, 286, 290, 291 Elektra (Sophokles) 284, 285–​6, 291 Elias, Norbert 333 Elizabeth II of England 347 Emesene aristocracy 453 encomiastic strategies 112 endogamous marriages 347, 352 Engels, David 337 Enheduanna (d. of Sargon of Akkad) 142–​3 Enkidu (Epic of Gilgamesh) 139, 140 Ephesos 412 Epic of Gilgamesh 139–​40 The Epic That Never Was (BBC) 505, 506 Epigenes 169 epigrams 110 Epiros 355 Epitome de Caesaribus, 23.1 453 Eratosthenes 108 Erechtheus (Ion) 288 Esarhaddon (s. of Naqi `a) 144 Eteokles (Sophokles) 286 “Ethiopia” 63–​4 Euboia (d. of Kleoptolemos; mar. Antiochos) 177 Euergetes Gate (Karnak) 78 Eukratides I of Baktria (s. of Heliokles and Laodike) 364 Eumaios (Odyssey) 273 Eumenes I (s. of Eumenes and Satyra) 211 Eumenes II (s. of Attalos I and Apollonis) 177, 210, 215–​16, 337 Eumenides (Aischylos) 496 Euripides: Alcestis 288 288; 467–​70 288; Elektra 286, 291; 54–​63 291; 112–​212 291; Hekabe 289, 290; Helen 289; Iphigenia in Aulis 90–​2 291; 1581–​83 291; Ion 288, 290; Iphigenia among the Taurians 15–​19 291; 27–​29 291; 220–​4 289; Medea 287; 1061–​2 290; Orestes 289; Trojan Women 290 Eurydike (Adea; d. Kynnane and Amyntas; mar. Arrhidaios) 297, 300

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Index Eurydike (mar. Amyntas III; m. of Alexander II, Perdikkas III, and Philip II) 295, 299, 300, 310 Eurydike (mar. Demetrios) 309 Eurydike (mar. Ptolemy of Aloros) 301 Eurydike of Athens (mar. Poliorketes) 312 Eurykleia (Odyssey) 273, 277 Eusebia (mar. Constantius II) 469, 470 Eusebius of Caesarea, Vita Constantini 3.44 467 Euthydemos, king of Baktria 177 Eutropius 464 Eutychianus (freedman of Maesa) 456 exalted monarchy tradition 352 exardesco (“to burn”) 405 excessive luxury 427–​8 exogamous political intermarriages 347 family unity 213 Farroxān Šahrwarāz 251 Fausta, Flavia Maxima (mar. Constantine) 464–​7, 471 Faustina Maior (the Elder) (d. of Marcus Verus; mar. Antoninus Pius) 418, 439, 440, 441, 442–​3 Faustina Minor (the Younger) (d. of Antoninus Pius and Faustina Maior) 414–​15, 418, 439, 440–​1, 442–​6, 453 Faustina, Rupilia (mar. M. Annius Verus; m. of Faustina Maior) 440 Faustinopolis, Kappadokia 416, 446 female monarchic power 492 female pharaohs 98–​9 see also Egypt; Ptolemaic queens female power 483 female sphinxes 50 female virtues 426 femina princeps 388 fertility goddesses 416 Festus: 188 L 381; 276 L 498 first-​cousin marriages  346 First Syrian War  199 “First Triumvirate”  375 Flavia Julia (d. of Titus) 424, 425 Flavian dynasty: Augustae 426; coinage 424, 426–​7; divinization after death 415–​16; succession 413–​14; “transitional period” 429 Flavian portraiture 423–​33; and divinity 428–​9; and exemplary womanhood 426–​7; female portraits for “monarchs” 424–​5; illustrations 430–​3; Julio-​Claudian model 425–​6 “fleet bronzes” 367 forced hostageship 241 Fourth Eclogue (Vergil) 377 Fraternal War  176 Fulvia (mar. M. Antony) 377 Fulvia Plautilla (d. of Plautianus; mar. Caracalla) 454 Funerary Chapel of Amenirdis I (Medinet Habu) 51, 52

Gabinius, Aulus 227–​8 Gaetulicus (governor of Upper Germania) 403–​4 Gaius Julius Caesar see Caligula, Emperor Gaius Marcellus (mar. Octavia Minor) 376 Galatians 200, 201 Galeria Valeria (d. of Diocletian and Prisca) 463 Galerius Arch, Thessaloniki  250 Galerius, Emperor 249–​50, 252 Gallia Narbonensis 391 Gallienus 256 Gallus, Constantius (Caesar; mar. Constantina) 468–​9 Ganymede (Alkaios) 188 GAŠAN (“princess,” “lady” or “queen”) 235, 236 Gauthier, Henri, Le livre des rois d’Egypte (1907–​1917)  24 Gellius (Aulus Gellius) 169 Geminus, Fufius 393 gendered pairing of monarchic power 329 gens Claudia 406 gens Flavia 425 gens Iulia 406 Germanicus Caesar (s. of Drusus the Elder and Antonia the Younger) 401, 406 Gessius Alexianus see Severus Alexander, Emperor Geta, Septimius 453–​4 Gibbon, Edward 439 Gigantomachy, Great Altar of Pergamon 213 Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (Epic of Gilgamesh) 139–​40 Glaphyra (d. of Archelaos of Kappadokia) 180–​1 “Glorious Revolution” 368 Gobryas the Patichoraean 151 goddesses and female virtues 426 gods 291–​2 God’s Wife of Amun 29, 47–​54 “good”/​“bad” Roman women 377 Gordian III 260 Gotarzes I 236 “grand cameos” 366 Graves, Robert 504–​5, 507 Grayson, A.K. 143 Great Altar of Pergamon 213, 216 Greco-​Egyptian goddesses  101 Greek tragedy 283–​92; lamenting the dead 290–​1; monarchial heroines 284–​7; motherhood 289–​90; relations with the gods 291–​2; royal heroines 287; and ruling authorities 283, 287–​9 Gundlach, Rolf 28 Gutzwiller, K.J. 89 Gygaia (d. of Amyntas I; mar. Boubares) 299 Gygaia (mar. Amyntas III) 299 Hadrian, Emperor 241, 414, 417, 440–​1, 443 half-​sibling Achaimenid unions  351 half-​sibling rivalry 348, 349

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Index Halikarnassos 161–​2, 164, 165–​6, 167–​8 Halkyoneus (s. of Antigonos II Gonatas and Demo) 313 Hall, John 492 Ḥamza al-​Iṣfahānī (m. of Hormezd I) 249 Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen (Beckerath) 24 hand-​over-​wrist gesture  156 Hannibalianus (mar. Constantina) 468 harems 235, 237 Harpalos of Babylon (Alexander III’s treasurer) 189, 296, 300 Harrison, Juliette 509 Harris, Rivkah 140 Hartmann, Udo 260 Hasmonean dynasty 222–​30; basilissai 225–​6, 229; epigraphic habit 225; high priesthoods 224–​5, 226–​7; Maccabean revolt 222; power and identity 224; succession 229–​30; visual representations 225; women 222–​3, 228–​9 Hatshepsut (mar. Thutmose II; m. of Neferure) 12, 26–​7, 47, 50 Hawass, Z. 14 Hebrew Bible 229; Daniel 11.17 177; 1 Maccabees 222; 1 Maccabees 13.27–​8  223 Hekabe (Euripides) 289, 290 Hekabe (Iliad) 278 Hekatomnids 164–​70 Hekatomnos of Mylasa (Karian dynast) 164–​5, 167–​8 Hektor (Iliad) 273, 278 Helena the Younger (d. of Constantine I and Fausta) 464–​70, 471 Helen (d. of Zeus and Leda) 273–​4, 288–​9, 291 Helen (Euripides) 289 Heliokles and Laodike jugate-​busts 364 Hellenism 225; courts 333–​5; culture 376; dynasties 229; ruler cults 314 Hellenistic royal women 84; basileiai 201, 203; basilissai 189–​90; dynastic marriages 337–​8; dynastic succession 335–​7; power 428; power brokers 338–​40; sexualization 187; wedding festivals 322 Hephthalites 250, 251, 252 Herakleia Pontika 192 Herakleides of Kyme 156 Herakles (s. of Alexander III) 321, 324 Herakles (Women of Trachis) 287–​8 Herihor (High Priest of Amun) 47–​8 Hermaeus (mar. Kalliope) 364 Hermione (Odyssey) 273 Herodian/​Hairan (s. of Odainath) 260–​1 Herodian, History of the Empire 452; 4.3.8–​9 454; 4.9.3 455; 5.3.10–​12 456; 5.5.1 456; 5.5.5 456; 5.7.1–​2 457; 6.1.1–​2 458; 6.1.9–​10 458; 6.5.8 459; 6.8.3 459

Herodotos 152, 154, 163, 351; 1.107.1 150; 1.184 480; 2.100 25; 2.98.1 157; 3.1–​2 150; 3.134.1 149; 3.155 480; 5.18.1–​2 299; 5.18–​20 299; 5.21.2 299; 6.61 274; 7.1.1–​3 163; 7.3.43 149; 7.99 162; 8.68 162; 8.87–​8 162; 9.114–​119  149 Herod the Great (s. of Antipater; mar. Mariamme) 227, 228, 230 hetairai 237 Hierapolitan decree 215 hierarchizing royal wives 335 Hieronymos of Cardia 328 High Priests of Amun (HPA) 47, 48, 53 Hippika 110 hirtu (“wife of equal status with the husband”) 174, 187 Historia Augusta (SHA) 256, 260, 452; Alex. Sev. 59.8 459; 63.5 458, 459; Aurel. 9.4–​5 411; 20.6 418; 27,3 259, 459; 28,4 259, 459; Clod. 3.5 453; Heliogab. 2.1 456; 4.1–​4 456; Marc. 19. 1–​7 444; 19. 8–​9 443; TT 30, 1–​3 257–​8; Verus 7.7 412 Historiae adversum paganism (Orosius) 481–​2 Historiae Philippicae (Trogus) 481, 482 historical soaps 507 Homeric epics 271–​8 Homeros 271n1 homonoia (perfect harmony) 109 Honoria, Justa Grata (d. of Constantius III and Galla Placidia) 513 honorific “titles” 426 Horace: Odes 1.37 496; 12 496 Horemheb (pharaoh) 40 Hormezd I 249 Hormezd III (s. of Dēnag) 250 Hormezd IV 251 hostage policies 240–​1 Hyginus, astron. 2.24 88 hypogamous marriages 337 Hyrkania (mar. Parysatis) 151 John Hyrkanos 226 Hyrkanos II 226–​8 Hyssaldomos (Karian dynast) 164 Hystaspes (f. of Dareios) 151 Ibanollis of Mylasa and Karia 164 Ibi, Chief Steward of Nitocris 53 I, Claudius (BBC 1976) 507–​9 I, Claudius (Graves) 504–​5 Idrieus (s. of Hekatomnos; mar. Ada) 165, 166, 167, 168 Ifra Hormizd (m. of Šābuhr II) 250 I’h (m. of Mentuhotep II and Neferu) 16 Iliad (Homer) 271–​2, 273 I, Livia (Mudd) 509 “illegitimate” children 298 Imi (m. of Mentuhotep IV) 16 imperial family (domus Augusta) 439

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Index imperial women 411–​18, 426, 427, 429 Inanna/​Ishtar (goddess of love and war) 139, 140, 144 incest 346–​7, 351, 353 incestuous marriages 347–​53 see also brother–​sister marriages India 482 infulae (knotted woolen ribbons) 427 Ingres, Jean-​Auguste-​Dominique, La Maladie d’Antiochos 186–​7 In Hathor’s Image I (Callender) 24 Intaphernes 154 Intef III 12 international diplomatic marriages 150–​1 Iokaste (Oedipus Tyrannos) 492, 493 Ion (Euripides) 288 Ionian Revolt (499—​494) 161 Iphigeneia (Agamemnon’s daughter) 273, 291–​2 Iphigenia (Agamemnon) 285 Iphigenia (Iphigenia among the Taurians) 289 Irdabama (Abbamuš/​Apame) 154–​5, 157–​8 Irtašduna/​Artystone (mar. Dareios I) 150, 157 Ishtar see Inanna/​Ishtar (goddess of love and war) Isis (d. of Ramses VI) 47 Isis (goddess) 100–​1, 352–​3, 362–​3, 364 Ismene (sister of Antigone) 286 Ištumegu/​Astyages (s. of Kyaxares of Media) 150 Iullus Antonius 400 ius trium liberorum 390

Julian (the Apostate) 464–​5, 469–​70 Julia the Elder (d. of Augustus; m. of Tiberius) 399–​400 Julia the Younger (d. of Marcus Vispanius Agrippa and Julia the Elder) 399, 400–​1 Julia Titi (Flavia Julia) (d. of Titus) 424, 425, 427, 431, 432, 433 Julio-​Claudian portraiture 423–​33; and divinity 428–​9; and exemplary womanhood 426–​7; female portraits for “monarchs 424–​5; jugate-​bust schemes 366–​7; and pomp 427–​8; portraits and dynasty 425–​6 Julio-​Claudians: Augustae 426; naming cities 416 Julius Alexander 453 Julius Avitus Alexianus (mar. Julia Maesa) 453 Julius Bassianus (f. of Julia Maesa and Julia Domna) 453 Julius Flavianus 458 Junia Claudilla (mar. Caligula) 403 Justin (historian/​epitomizer), Epitome historiarum Philippicarum 481, 492; 1.2.1 481; 1.2.6 481; 1.2.10 485; 1.2.11 485; 1.4.7 482; 13.6.4 324; 27.3.6 176; 28.1.1–​4 311; 36.4 216; 38.5.3 201; 41.3.2 235; Juvenal (satirist), 6.116–​32 404

Jewish high priesthood 230 Jewish identity 224, 225 Jewish models for queenship 229 Jewish Temple  222 Jewish traditions 225, 229 John Hyrkanos (s. of Simon) 223–​5, 226, 229 joint kingship 336 joint rule 80 Joliton, V.  80 Jonathan Apphus (Maccabean brother) 223, 224 Josephus, Flavius 125, 222, 223–​4, 225–​6, 228, 230; Jewish Antiquities (AJ) 227, 339; 13.398—​404 227; 15.222—​30 228; 15.251 228; 18.353–​66 238; 18.39–​43 234, 238; Jewish War (BJ) 1.364 238; 1.443—​4  228 Joshel, Sandra 507 Joyce, J. 273n23, 278n50 Judas Maccabaeus 222 Judea 222–​8 jugate busts 359–​68; Antony and Octavian 380; Antony and the Julio-​Claudians 366–​8; political symbolisms 368; Ptolemies 360–​5; Sarapis-​and-​ Isis 362–​3, 364 Julia Domna (mar. Septimius Severus; m, of Geta and Caracalla) 452–​6, 484 Julia Drusilla (d. of Caligula and Milonia Caesonia) 403

ka-​chapels (soul chapels) 13 Kadmeia (d. of Kleopatra of Macedonia) 297 Kallikrates (Admiral) 97 Kallimachos of Kyrene 87, 353; Aitia 89, 110, 111, 112, 113; and Berenike II 109, 112, 113; Lock of Berenike 74, 87–​8; Victory of Berenike 336 Kalliope (mar. Hermaeus) 364 Kallixeinos of Rhodes, Ptolemaia 77 Kambyses I 150 Kambyses II 150, 151, 351 kandake (Meroitic period royal women) 63–​4 Kappadokia 176, 201 Karia: adelphic marriages 163; fourth and fifth centuries 164–​5; royal women 161–​70 Karian League 168 Karnak 37 Karnak Hypostyle Hall 51 Kašša (d. of Nebuchadnezzar II) 150 Kassandane (d. of Pharnaspes; mar. Kyros the Great) 150, 151 Kassandra (Agamemnon) 285 Kassandra (Odyssey) 278 Kassandros (s. of Antipatros) 324, 325 Kawād I Nēwānduxt (d. of Chaqan of Hephthalites; m. of Xusrō) 251 Kawād II Šīrōy 251 Kemp, Barry 27 Keraunos (mar. Arsinoë II) 350 Khafra (Fourth Dynasty king) 12, 14 Khamerernebty I (mar. Khafra; m. of Menkaura) 12–​13

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Index “khenmet-​nefer-​hedjet” title 17 Khentkaues I (Khentkaus) 14, 25 Khentkaues II (m. of King Raneferef and King Nyuserra) 13–​14 Khrysothemis (sister of Elektra) 286, 290 Kingdom of Kush 61–​9 King-​Lists (Egypt)  23 king-​lists (Mesopotamia)  138 “King of Kings” title 260, 261 King’s Mothers 11–​18, 150, 151, 152–​3, 158 King’s Wives 150, 151, 158 Kish, Iraq 141 Kiya (mar. Amenhotep IV/​Akhenaten) 39 Kleino (concubine of Ptolemy II) 339–​40 Kleopatra I (d. of Antiochos III; mar. Ptolemy V) 74, 76, 79, 80, 99–​100, 177, 364 Kleopatra II (sister-​wife of Ptolemy VI) 29, 74–​5, 76–​7, 79, 100, 350, 354, 364 Kleopatra III (mar. Ptolemy VIII) 29, 75, 77, 100, 350, 354, 364 Kleopatra IV (d. of Kleopatra III; mar. Antiochos IX Kyzikenos) 179–​80 Kleopatra VI Tryphaina (d. of Ptolemy VIII; mar. Antiochos VIII) 121, 179, 180 Kleopatra VII Philopator (d. of Ptolemy XII) 121–​9, 354; and Antony 126–​7, 336, 378–​9; and Caesar 122–​4, 336; characterizations in literature 121, 492, 496; conflict with Octavian 127–​8; jugate-​busts 364; marriage to Ptolemy XIV 123; and Octavia Minor 378–​9; political power 100; preservation of Maat (world order) 125; as “Queen of Kings” 127, 336; suicide 128–​9; and Zenobia of Palmyra 263 Kleopatra (d. of Olympias and Philip II) 296–​7, 300, 322–​5, 335–​6 Kleopatra (m. Phraates IV) 238 Kleopatra Selene (d. of Kleopatra III; mar. Ptolemy IX; Antiochos IX; Antiochos X) 180 Kleopatra Selene (d. of Kleopatra VII and Antony) 127 Kleopatra Thea (d. Ptolemy VI) 178–​9, 339, 348, 363 Kleopatra (throne name) 337 Klytaimnestra (Agamemnon) 284–​5, 291, 495–​6 Klytaimnestra (d. of Leda and Tyndareos; mar. Agamemnon) 273, 274–​5, 278, 288, 291, 492 Klytaimnestra (Odyssey) 283 Klytaimnestra (Soph. El.) 289 Kombabos, courtier (De Dea Syria) 187 Kommagenian dynasties 349, 355 Königsmütter des alten Ägypten (Roth) 24 Korda, Alexander 505 Koromama (mar. High Priests of Amun) 48 Kosmartidene (f. of Ochos/ Dareios II) 151 Krateros (mar. Amestris/Amastris, mar. Phila) 155, 190, 192, 327 Krateros (s. of Krateros and Phila) 190, 327

Kratesipolis (mar. Alexander s. of Polyperchon) 309, 312 Kreon (Antigone) 286–​7 Kreon (Oedipus Tyrannos) 493 Kreusa (Ion) 288, 290 Ktesias of Knidos 152, 153, 480, 482 Ktimene (Odyssey) 273 Ku-​Baba of Kish 141–​2 Kurdzād (m. of Hormezd I) 249 Kushite kingdom 61–​9 Kyniska (d. of Archidamos II of Sparta) 110 Kynnane (d. of Philip II and Audata) 300, 325 Kypris (Aphrodite) Zephyritis see Berenike II Euergetes (d. of Magas; mar. Ptolemy III) Kyrene/​Kyrenaika 85–​6, 300 Kyros (II) the Great 149, 150, 151 Kyros the Younger (s. of Darius II and Parysatis) 153 Kyzikos (Mysia, Propontis) 212 Lactantius 463 “lady” (bānūg) title 248, 252 Lady of Arbela see Inanna/​Ishtar (goddess of love and war) Laertes (Odyssey) 273, 276 lamenting the dead 290–​1 Lamia (courtesan of Poliorketes) 313 Lamia (L. Aelius Lamia Plautius) 416 Lanassa (d. of Agathokles; mar. Pyrrhos and Demetrios) 309, 312, 313 “land grants” 127 Laodikean War (Third Syrian War) 87–​8, 176, 200, 350 Laodike (d. of Achaios; mar. Antiochos II) 175, 199, 200–​2 Laodike (d. of Achaios the Elder; mar. Seleukos II) 176 Laodike (d. of Antiochos II and Laodike; mar. Mithridates II) 175, 201 Laodike (d. of Antiochos III; mar. (1) Antiochos IV; (2) Seleukos IV; (3) Mithridates) 176, 178, 348 Laodike (d. of Antiochos I Theos; mar. Orodes II) 238 Laodike (d. of Antiochos IV and Antiochis; mar Mithridates V)  178 Laodike (d. of Demetrios II and Kleopatra Thea; mar. Phraates II) 179, 238 Laodike (d. of Mithridates II and Laodike; mar. Antiochos III) 176, 177, 202–​3, 338, 348, 353, 379 Laodike (d. of Seleukos and Apama) 173 Laodike (d. of Seleukos IV and Laodike; mar. Perseus) 178, 312, 313, 338 Laodike (mar. Antiochos; m. of Seleukos I) 173 Laodike (mar. Demetrios I) 348 Laodike (mar. Mithridates IV of Pontos) 349 Laodike (m. of Eukratides I) 364

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Index Laodike (sister of Mithridates II; mar. Orodes) 238 Laodike Thea (d. of Antiochos VIII Grypos and Kleopatra Tryphaina)  180 Largus, Scribonius 508 Laughton, Charles 505 Leda 273, 274, 275 legitimacy 298, 424 Lehner, M. 14 Leichty, E. 144 Leonnatos, diadochi 324 Lepidus, M. Aemilius (mar. Julia Drusilla) 403–​4 levirate marriages 226, 301 Libation Bearers (Aischylos) 285, 496 Library of Alexandria 108 Libyan chapel 49 Libyan dynasts 48 Licinius (Valerius Licinianus Licinius; mar. Constantia) 464, 465, 467 Lindner, Martin 507 Lindsay Philip 506 Livia Julia, Claudia (mar. (1) Gaius Caesar and (2) Drusus Julius Caesar) 401, 402–​4 Livia (mar. (1) Tiberius Claudius Nero; (2) Octavian Augustus) 388–​94, 423; auctoritas 394; as a broker 393; coins 389; death of Augustus 499, 507–​8; deification 388, 404; femina princeps 388–​9; honors 390–​2; as Iulia Augusta 391; morning receptions (salutationes) 392; portrayal in films 504–​9; public representation 389–​90; pudicitia 389, 390; sacrosanctitas 379, 380, 390; secular games 390; services and benefactions 393; supporting female deities 390; virtues 389; vota publica 392 Livia Soprano (The Sopranos) 509 Le livre des rois d’Egypte (1907–​1917, Gauthier) 24 Livy 497, 498–​9; 1 499; 1.34.4–​7 493; 1.34–​47 492; 1.39.2 492; 1.41.2–​4 493; 1.45.4–​5 495; 1.46.5–​9 495; 1.46.6 496; 1.47.7 496; 1.59.13 495–​6; 24.22.1 492; Ab Urbe Condita 491, 499; female pudicitia and male virtus 389; Per . 50 348 Llewellyn-​Jones, Lloyd  351 Lock of Berenike (Kallimachos) 74, 87–​8 Lollia Paulina (mar. Caligula) 403, 406 Longinus, Lucius Cassius (mar. Julia Drusilla) 403 Lorber, C.C. 85, 89 Luagal-​Ane (Akkad rebel) 142–​3 Lucan: 8.397–​401 235; 8.410–​411 235; 10.56–​103  122 Lucilla (Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla; mar. Lucius Verus) 411–​13 Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus see Nero, Emperor Lucius Verus (s. of L. Aelius Caesar; mar. Lucilla) 411–​13, 440 Lucretia (d. of Spurius Lucretius; mar. Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus) 495–​6 Ludi Saeculares 47 CE 405 Lugalbanda (mar. Ninsun) 139

lugal (“king”) 138, 141, 236 lunettes 63, 66, 68, 69 Luxor Temple  12 Lygdamids 161–​70, 163 Lygdamis I tyrant of Halikarnassos 161, 162–​3 Lygdamis II tyrant of Halikarnassos 163–​4 Lysimachos (diadochi; mar. (1) Amastris and (2) Arsinoë II) 192, 199, 349–​50 Maat (ideal state of the cosmos) 22 Maatkare (wife of High Priests of Amun) 48 Maccabean brothers 223 Maccabean revolt 222–​4 1 Maccabees 222; 13.27–​8  223 Macedonian dynasties: basilissa 296; polygamy 297–​8; succession 297, 335–​7 Macrinus, Opellius 455–​6 Macurdy, G.H. 187, 299 Maesa, Julia (d. of Julius Bassianus; sister, Julia Domna; mar. Julius Avitus; m. of Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea) 453, 455–​6, 457, 458 Magas of Kyrene (s. of Berenike I; mar. Apame) 84, 85, 89, 193, 199, 200 Māh-​Ādur-​Gušnasp (“Master of the Royal Table”) 251 La Maladie d’Antiochos (Ingres) 186–​7 Malalas, John 249 Mamaea, Julia Avita (d. of Julius Avitus Alexianus and Julia Maesa) 453, 455, 457–​9 Mandane (d. of Astyages; mar. Kambyses I) 150 Manetho, Aegyptiaka 11, 23, 24, 25 Mania (widow of Zenis) 163 Manichaean Homilies 249 Manichaean Turfan text M3 250 Marcellus, Gaius (mar. Octavia) 379 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius (s. Gaius Marcellus and Octavia) 382 Marcellus, Sextus Varius (s. of Julia Soaemias Bassiana) see Elagabalus, Emperor Marciana, Ulpia (sister of Trajan) 414, 415 Marcianopolis, Danubia 416 Marcus Aurelius, Emperor 412–​13, 414, 418, 440, 442, 443; Meditations 439, 446 Marcus Superbus (The Sign of the Cross) 509 Mardonios (s. of Gobryas) 151 Marduk (god) 142 Mariamme (d. of Alexandra and Alexander of Judaea) 228, 230 Mark Antony see Antony (Marcus Antonius) “market value” of sons 298 marriage alliances 150–​1, 191, 337–​8 marriages: among blood relatives 248; dynastic 337–​8; Iliad and Odyssey 273; hypogamous 337; incestuous 347–​53; levirate 226, 301 see also brother–​sister marriages; polygamy Martial 428 Martinez, K. 99–​100

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Index Maryanski, Alexandra 351 mater castrorum title 415, 443–​4, 453, 457, 460, 463 Matić, Uroš 28 Matidia, Mindia (Trajan’s second great-​niece; sister of Vibia Sabina)  418 Mattathias (f. of Maccabee brothers) 222 Maussollos (s. of Hekatomnos; mar. sister Artemisia) 163, 165–​9 Maxentius (s. of Maximianus and Eutropia) 464, 465, 466 Maximinus Daia (nephew of Galerius) 463 Maximinus I (Maximinus Thrax) 459 McAuley, Alex 198, 235, 337 Medea (Euripides) 287, 290, 291 Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) 439, 446 Megabyxos (Parysatis son-​in-​law)  154 Meketaten (d. of Akhenaten and Nefertiti) 38, 39 Mela, Pomponius, De chorographia libri tres 481 Melville, S. 144 Memnon (Greek commander) 169 Memnon (historian) 192 Menander 188–​9 Mendes Stele 78 Menelaion, Sparta 274 Menelaos (Iliad and Odyssey) 273–​4 Menkaura (s. of Khentkaues) 14 Mentuhotep II (s. of Intef III; mar. Neferu) 12, 16, 18 Mentuhotep III (s. of Mentuhotep II and Tem) 16 Mentuhotep IV (s. of Imi) 16 Mercia (The Sign of the Cross) 509 Merenra (mar. (1) Neith and (2) Ankhenespepy II) 14 Meretneith (m. of Den; mar. Djet) 11, 24–​5 Meritaten (d. of Nefertiti) 38–​9, 38, 41 Meroitic Period (Kingdom of Kush) 62–​6, 68 Meryre II 39 Mesopotamian royal women 137–​46; caring mothers/​loving wives 139, 141; mythological women 139; textual evidence for kingship 138 Messalina (I, Claudius) 505 Messalina,Valeria (mar. Claudius; m. of Britannicus) 404–​7, 444 Middle Kingdom 11–​13, 16, 18 see also Egypt Middleton, Russell 351 Miletos 193, 194, 336 military training 300 Milvian Bridge 465 Mimallones (“imitators of men”) 301 Minervina (mar. Constantine) 464 Mithridates I Kallinikos of Kommagene 180 Mithridates II of Kommagene (b. of Laodike) 238 Mithridates I of Parthia 179 Mithridates II of Parthia (mar. Aryazate) 236 Mithridates II of Pontos (mar. Laodike) 175, 176, 201, 202, 203 Mithridates IV of Pontos 349, 363–​4

Mithridates V of Pontos (mar. Laodike) 178 Mithridates VI Eupator (s. of Mithridates V of Pontos) 178 Mithridates (s. of Antiochos III and Laodike) see Antiochos IV Epiphanes Mithridates (murderer of Kyros) 153 Mithridates, Parthian noble 238 Mithridates of Pergamon 123 MLKTA (bāmbišn, “queen”) 236 MLKTE (basilissa) 236 Modein, Judea 223 monarchic power 326, 329 “monarchy” (monarchia) 3 monogamy 298, 310 Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar (USA) 368 motherhood 216, 289–​90 “Mother” (mād) 252 “mother of the camps” see mater castrorum title Mother of the Gods, Mamurt-​Kaleh 216 “Mother of the King” 66–​7 Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses (BBC) 509 Mousa (mar. Phraates IV; m. of and mar. Phraates V Phraatakes) 234, 237, 238–​40, 239, 241 Mudd, Mary, I, Livia 509 Müller, Sabine 353 multiple wives 6 see also polygamy mundus muliebris 484 Murrōd (mar. Ardašīr I; m. of Šābuhr I) 248, 249 Museia at Thespiai (Boeotian festival) 113–​14 Muses 108–​9, 114 Museum of Alexandria 108, 114 Mut embracing Amun (Karnak Hypostyle Hall) 51 Mutilia Prisca (mar. Geminus) 393 Mylasa 164–​5 Mysta (concubine of Seleukos II) 176, 201 Myth of the Divine Birth 22, 29 Nabonidus (s. of Adad-​guppi) 145 Napatan Period (Kingdom of Kush) 61–​5, 68 Naqi `a (mar. Sennacherib; m. Esarhaddon) 144–​5 Narbo (colony) 391 Narcissus, Tiberius Claudius 406, 408 Narsehduxt (mar. Narseh) 249 Narseh (s. of Šābuhr) 248, 249–​50 Nausikaa (Odyssey) 272, 273 Nebuchadnezzar II (Nabu-​kudurri-​usur)  150 Neferirkara, pharaoh 14 Neferneferuaten Tasherit (d. of Nefertiti) 37 Neferneferure (d. of Nefertiti) 37 Nefertari (mar. Ramesses II) 28 Nefertiti (Neferneferuaten Nefertiti; d. of Ay; mar. Amenhotep IV/​Akhenaten) 27–​8, 35–​42 Neferu (d. of I’h; sister-​wife of Mentuhotep II) 16 Neferure (d. of Thutmose II and Hatshepsut) 26

529

530

Index Neferu (sister-​wife of Senusret I) 16 Neferusobek (d. of Amenemhat III) 25–​6 Neithhotep (royal wife Dynasty 1) 24 Neo-​Assyrian Empire 138–​9, 141, 144, 146 Neo-​Elamite seals  155 Neoptolemos (Odyssey) 273 nephew–​aunt marriages  349 Nergal-​šur-​usur/​Neriglissar (s. of Nabu-​epir-​la)  150 Nero, Emperor 367, 393, 405, 406–​8, 417 Nero Julius Caesar (s. of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder) 402 Nerva-​Antonine dynasty 413–​14, 416 Nestor (Odyssey) 271, 272 Netjerikare Siptah 25 New Kingdom 12, 23, 47, 61 see also Egypt Nietzsche, Friedrich 140 Nikaea (d. of Antipatros) 324 Nikaia (mar. Demetrios II) 311, 312, 313 Nile flood 125 Ninos (mar. Semiramis) 480, 482, 485 Ninsun (m. of Gilgamesh) 139–​40, 141 “Nitocris Adoption Stele” 53 Nitocris (d. of Psametik) 53 Nitokris (Dynasty 6 female king of Egypt) 25 Nubia 49, 61 Nubian chapel 49 Nymaathap (mar. Khasekhemwy) 12 Nysa (mar. Antiochos I Soter) 174 Nysa (mistress of Seleukos II) 176 Nyuserra (s. of Khentkaues) 13, 14 Ochos (b. of Dareios) see Artaxerxes I Octavia (d. of Claudius and Messalina; mar. Nero) 406, 407 Octavia Minor/​the Younger (sister of Octavian) 375–​83; and Antony 376, 377, 378; children 379; coins 366–​7, 379–​80; diplomatic negotiator 377; and Julius Caesar 376; and Kleopatra VII 378–​9; mar. Gaius Marcellus 376; patronage 379; and Pompey 377–​8; portrait busts 381; sacrosanctitas 379, 380, 390 Octavian Augustus 126, 127–​8, 128, 375, 381–​2, 390 see also Augustus Octavius, Gnaius 381 Odainath (mar. Zenobia of Palmyra) 258, 260–​1 Odysseus 276–​7 Odyssey (Homer) 271–​2, 273, 275–​8 Oedipus/​Oidipous (s. of and mar. Iokaste) 301, 351, 492, 493 Oedipus Tyrannos (Sophokles) 493 Ogden, Daniel 75, 198, 349; Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death 335 Ohrmezd(d)uxtag (d. of Narseh) 249 Old Kingdom 11, 12–​13, 18 see also Egypt Olennieire (mar. Phraates IV) 236, 239 Olympia 166

Olympias (mar. Philip II; m. of Alexander III and Kleopatra) 295–​300, 310, 322–​4, 338, 491, 494 Olympias II of Epirus (d. of Pyrrhus and Antigone; mar. Alexander II) 311 Orbiana, Gnaea Seia Herennia Sallustia Barbia (d. of Lucius Seius Sallustius) 458 Oresteia (Aischylos) 284 Orestes 284, 286, 291, 496 Orestes (Agamemnon) 495 Orestes (Eumenides) 496 Orestes (Euripides) 289 Orestes (Libation Bearers) 496 “Oriental harem” 241 Orodes I (mar. sister Ispubarzā) 236 Orodes II (mar. Laodike, d. of Antiochos I) 238 Orontobates satrap of Karia (mar. Ada) 169–​70 Orosius, Paulus, Historiae adversum paganism 481–​2; 1.4.5–​6 482; 1.4.7 485 Osirian chapels, Karnak 49–​50, 53 Osorkon III (f. of Shepenwepet I) 48 Osroes, Parthian king 241 Otanes (f. of Amestris) 149, 151, 155 Otto, E. 12 Ovid 388, 389, 400–​1; Ars am. 1.69–​70 382; Fast. 6.625–​36  497 Oxford English Dictionary 347 Pābag (f. of Ardašīr I) 248 Pahlavi, Farah 246 palatium Sessorianum 465, 466 Palermo Stone 11, 25 palliola (monumental cloak) 505 Palmyra (Tadmor) 257, 259–​62 Paris 289 Parmys (d. of Bardiya; niece of Kambyses II) 150 Parthian Empire 234, 239–​40 Parthian “harems” 235 Parthian war 126, 378 Parthian women 234 “Parthicus Maximus” title 261 Parthyene, Iran 234 Parysatis (d. of Artaxerxes I; mar. Dareios II) 149, 151–​2, 153–​4, 157 Parysatis (d. of Artaxerxes III) 155 Parysatis (mar. Alexander III) 301 patronage 379, 389 Patterns of Queenship (Troy) 24 Paullus, Lucius Aemilius (mar. Julia the Younger) 400–​1 Pausanias: 1.7.1 351; 8.7.5 494; 9.31.1 111 Pausanias (pretender of Macedonia) 300 Peisistratos (Odyssey) 272 Penelope (Odyssey) 272, 273, 274–​8, 470 pēnelops 275 Pepy I (s. of Iput; f. of Pepy II) 13, 14 Pepy II (s. of Pepy I and Ankhenespepy II) 11, 13, 14, 15

530

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Index Perdikkas (Diadochi) 301, 324, 325 Perdikkas II 299, 301 Pergamon: Great Altar 213, 216; sanctuary of Demeter 216 periphron (“clever, intelligent”) 277 periphrōn Pēnelopeia 277–​8 Pērōz (s. of Dēnag) 250 Pērōzduxt (d. of Pērōz) 250 Perseus (s. of Philip V and Polykratia of Argos) 178, 312, 313, 338, 347 Persian kings: dynastic marriages 151; incestuous unions 153; polygamy 297; throne names 154 Persian royal women: on campaigns 158; exercising local power 163; hierarchy 150; influence over kings 152, 154; king’s banquets 156; names 154–​5; palace intrigues 153; power of 149; travelling 156 Persis 157 Petrie, F. 17 Phaidyme (sister of Otanes) 151 pharaohs 98–​9 Pharisees 227 Pharnabazos (satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia) 163 Pharnakes I (mar. Nysa) 176 Phasael (Herod’s brother) 228 “Phila Aphrodite” 187 “Phila” (city) 314 Phila I (d. of Antipatros; mar. Demetrios Poliorketes) 174, 186, 188, 189–​91, 296, 308–​9, 312, 314, 315, 327–​8, 336, 347 Phila II (d. of Seleukos I and Stratonike; mar. Antigonos II Gonatas 174, 186, 312, 313, 314 Philemon 296 Philetairos of Pergamon 210, 212 Philinna (mar. Philip II) 298 Philip I (s. of Antiochos VIII Grypos and Kleopatra Tryphaina) 180 Philip II of Makedon (s. of Amyntas III and Eurydike) 169, 295, 296–​7, 298–​9, 300, 309, 310, 313, 322, 337, 494 Philip Arrhidaios III (s. of Philip II and Philinna) 169, 321, 325 Philip V (s. of Demetrios II and Chryseis; mar. Polykratia) 310, 311, 312 Philippeion monument, Olympia 310, 337 Philippos (s. of Amyntas) 339 Phillips, Siân 507 philoi (“friends”) 199–​200, 327 Philostorgus (historian) 468 Philostratos (philosopher) 124 Phraates II (s. of Mithridates I; mar. Laodike) 179, 236, 238 Phraates III (mar. Piriwuštanā) 236 Phraates IV (mar. (1) Kleopatra; (2) Mousa) 234, 236, 238–​9, 241 Phraates V Phraatakes (s. of Phraates IV and Mousa; mar. Mousa) 238, 239, 239

Phrygia 201 Phthia (d. of Alexander II of Epirus; mar. Demetrios) 311 pietas (“loyalty”) 427, 452 Pithom Stelai 69 Pixodaros of Kindya (s. of Hekatomnos; mar. Aphneis) 165, 169 Piye (f. of Shepenwepet II) 49 Plancina (Munatia Plancina) 393 plant poisons 129 Plato, Alk. I 121c–​123c-d 157 Plautianus (C. Fulvius Plautianus) 453–​4 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historiae 481; 8.194 497; 8.64, 155 484 Plotina, Pompeia (mar. Trajan) 414, 415, 417, 443 Plotinopolis, Danubia 416 Plutarch (Plutarchos) 129, 152, 191, 491, 492; Aem. 8.1–​4 310; Alex. 2.1 494; 2.2 494; 2.4 494; 3.3 494; 10.4 494; 39.5 494; 68.3 323; 77.5 296; Ant. 27.4–​5 121; Art. 5.3 156; 23.3 153; Caes. 49.1–​2 122; Demetr. 3.1–​4 309–​10; 9.3 309; 10.5 309; 14.2 309, 327; 14.2—​4 309, 310, 327; 17.2–​6 328; 22.1 327; 29.7–​8 328; 31.3–​32.2 309; 31.5 327, 328; 35.5 309; 36.1–​37.2 328; 37.4 327; 38.1 309; 41.4 309; 45.1 328; 50.5–​52.4 309; 53.1–​3 309; 53.8 327; Eum. 3.5 323–​4; Mor. 271e 497–​8; 480C 212; 818b–​c  296 poisons/​poisoning 129, 508 political agency 394 political alliances 414 political isolationism 350 Polyainos: Strat. 4.1 300–​1; Strat. 8.50 175 Polybios 201, 314; 5.43.1–​4 203; 5.74.4–​6 202; 5.74.4–​6; 8.21.7–​23.9 202; 8.20.11 176; 8.21.7–​23.9 202; 14.11.2–​5 339–​40; 22.20.1–​3  212 Polydoros (s. of Priam and Hekabe) 290 polygamy 6; Antigonids 310; Argeads 297, 309–​10; as “barbaric” 298; Demetrios II 310–​11; Hellenistic courts 121; mother’s status 298; polygyny 335; succession 297–​8 see also brother–​sister marriages; marriages Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death (Ogden) 335 Polykaste (d. of Nestor Odyssey) 272 Polykratia of Argos (mar. Philip V; m. of Perseus) 312 polymētis Odysseus 277–​8 Polyneikes (b. of Antigone) 286 Polyperchon 325 Polyxena-​Myrtale see Olympias (mar. Philip II; m. of Alexander III and Kleopatra) Pompey (G. Pompeius Magnus) 122, 227, 376, 377 Pontic dynasties 349 Pontos 201, 355 Poppaea Sabina (mar. Nero) 367, 407, 426 Poppaea (The Sign of the Cross) 509–​11

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Index Porphyry 201 Portico of Metellus 382 Portico of Octavia(Porticus Octaviae) 381–​3 Porticus Liviae 391 portrait busts 381 see also Flavian portraiture; jugate-​busts Poseidippos of Pella 89, 109; Ep. 37 113; Ep. 8788 110; Ep. 114 111 Poseidonios (f. of Satyra) 211 praetexta Octavia 404 prestige (dignitas) 389 Priam/​Priamos: Iliad 271, 273, 278; Trojan Women 289 priestesses of the imperial cult 393–​4 primogeniture 335 princeps 389, 415 “princess” (duxš/​wisduxt) 4, 248, 252 “principal queen” 236 The Prophecy of Neferti 16 Prusias II of Bithynia (mar. Apama) 311, 313 Psametik (f. of Nitocris) 53 Psametik II (f. of Ankhnesneferibre) 53 Psusennes (Dynasty 21) 48 Ptolemaia (festival) 86 Ptolemaia (Kallixeinos of Rhodes) 77 Ptolemaic monarchy: as basileis and pharaohs 100, 359; brother–​sister marriages 335, 347–​8; coinage 86–​7, 89–​90, 360; divinization 79–​80; dynastic cults 77–​80; harmony (homonoia) 109; ideals of kingship 359; incestuous marriages 348–​9; jugate images 359–​66; legitimation 101; military and artistic activities 108; royal conjugal couples 73–​5; ruler cults 86, 96–​101 Ptolemaic queens: associated with Aphrodite 353; divinized 109; dynastic and biological continuity 109; participation in political affairs 75–​7; patronage of the arts 108–​14; power brokers 338–​40; sister-​queens  354 “Ptolemaios” throne name 337 Ptolemais (d. of Ptolemy) 309 Ptolemy I Soter (mar. (1) Eurydike; (2) Berenike I) 73–​4, 77–​8, 80, 191, 308, 339, 349, 362 Ptolemy II Philadelphos (s. of Ptolemy I and Berenice I) 75; and Arsinoë I 84; and Arsinoë II 73–​4, 77, 96–​7, 109, 110–​11, 199, 347, 349, 352, 353–​4, 359, 366; and Berenike I 199; concubine Kleino 339–​40; dynastic cults 77–​8; hetaira Bilistiche 187; jugate busts 359–​62, 360, 361; Library and Museum 108; Theoi Adelphoi 77, 86, 346; Theon Adelphon series 361–​2 Ptolemy III Euergetes (s. of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë I) 74; and Berenike II 78, 80, 84, 85, 85–​6, 108, 347; children 87; death 87; Theoi Euergetai 86, 98; Third Syrian War 87–​8, 176, 350 Ptolemy IV Philopator (s. of Ptolemy III and Berenike II) 108, 359; cult of Berenike II 89;

silver tetradrachms 362; sister-​wife Arsinoë III 74, 75, 113–​14, 347; Theoi Euergetai 359 Ptolemy V Epiphanes (s. of Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III) 74, 76, 79, 177, 347, 364 Ptolemy VI Philometor (s. of Ptolemy V and Kleopatra I) 75, 76–​7, 79, 177 Ptolemy VIII (s. of Ptolemy V and Kleopatra I) 75–​7, 79, 350 Ptolemy IX (s. of Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra III) 77, 180 Ptolemy XII Auletes (s. of Ptolemy IX) 121, 122, 123 Ptolemy XIII (s. of Ptolemy XII) 123 Ptolemy XIV (s. of Ptolemy XII) 123, 125 Ptolemy XV Caesar (Caesarion) (s. of Kleopatra VII) 123, 124–​5, 127, 128, 336 Ptolemy (s. of Aboubos) 223–​4 Ptolemy of Aloros 301 public space 483 pudicitia (“chastity,” “demureness”) 389, 452 Pulcheria Augusta (s. of Theodosius II) 512 Puzur-​Sîn (s. of Ku-​Baba) 142 Pyramid of King Unas 15–​16 pyramid of Senusret II 17 Pyramid Texts  15–​16 Pyrrhos the Molossian 339 Qandīdā (mar. Wahrām II) 249 qore (Meroitic period monarchs) 64 “queen” (bāmbišn) 248, 252 “queen of the empire” (šahr bāmbišn), 248 “queen of the queens” (bāmbišnān bāmbišn) 236, 248, 252 Queen of the Sacae 252 “queen” (šarratu) 138, 236 see also basilissai (“queens”) queens regnant 229 Ramses I 40 Ramses II 40 Ramses (Ramesses)  29 Ramsey, G. 379 Raneferef (s. of Khentkaues; b. of Nyuserra) 13, 14 Raphia Decree 74, 79 Redford, D.B. 48 Reeves, N. 41 regencies 11, 192, 297 regent women 22–​30 regina 499 regnant basilissa 192 Regulus, P. Memmius 403 Reid, John Howard 511 remarriages 301 Res Gestae Divi Augusti 381 “Res Gestae Divi Saporis” 248 “Restorer of the East” title 260, 261

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Index restriction of privilege 350 Revenge of the Barbarians (film) 513 Rhodes 314 Rhodogune (d. of Mithridates I) 179 Robson, Flora McKenzie (Flora Robson) 505, 506 Rōdag (m. of Ardašīr I) 248, 249 Rōdduxt (d. of Anōšag) 249 Roller, M. 375 Roman coinage: Antoninus 456; Antony 380; assimilation of a goddess 428; diva Faustina 441; domestic and public relevance 426–​7; Domitian 427; early imperial coinage 366; Fausta and Helena 465–​6; Faustinae 439, 442–​4; Flavian iconography 427–​8; Flavian women 426–​7, 430–​3; late republic/​early imperial 366; legends 442–​3, 444, 453; Livia 389; Nerva-​Antonine dynasty 416; Octavia Minor 375, 379–​80; representing women 442–​3, 442; Severus and Caracalla’s reign 453–​4, 455 Roman empresses: on films 504–​13; supporters of Christianity 463–​4 Rome: and Arsakid marriage policy 240; “good” and “bad” women 377; and Hellenistic culture 375; and Odainath 260; patronage 375–​6, 379, 389; rule over Judea 227; Tanaquil first female “ruler” 492; and USA 509 Root, Margaret Cool 156 Roth, Ann Macy 25, 27 Roth, Silke 23; Königsmütter des alten Ägypten 24 “Rough” Cilicia 127 Roxane (mar. Alexander III; m. of Alexander IV) 296, 298, 324, 325 “Royal Canon of Turin” 23 royal concubines 339–​40 royal conjugal couples 73–​5 Royal Tomb (nr. 26) 39 royalty 347, 352 royal women: in ancient monarchy 4–​5; Arsakid court 235; dynasty 18 27; Homeric Epics 271–​8; legitimating dynasties 5; literary representation of husbands 444–​5; owning property 5; power brokers 338–​40; religious role 5; succession 6, 335–​7; terminology 23–​4, 235; unaccountable political control 495; warfare 6 ruler cults 96, 99, 100, 101, 174, 177, 213, 314 Rustam (s. of Farrox-​Ohrmezd) 251 Ryholt, Kim 25 Sabina,Vibia (d. of Matidia Maior; mar. Hadrian) 414, 417, 441 Sabine women 377 Šābuhr, King of Mēšān 249 Šābuhrduxtag (d. of Šābuhr) 249 Šābuhrduxtag (“Queen” (bāmbišn) of the Sacae; mar. Narseh) 249 Šābuhr I (s. of Murrōd) 248

Šābuhr II (s. of Ifra Hormizd) 250 Šābuhr III 250 sacerdos divi Augusti (deified Augustus) 391–​2 sacrosanctitas (public statues) 379, 380, 390 Saepta Julia 382 Sahura, pharaoh 14 Sais Stele 78 Salina Alexandra 226, 229 Sallustia Orbiana, Gnaea Seia Herennia Barbia (d. of Lucius Seius Sallustius) 458 Sallustius, Lucius Seius (f. of Sallustia Orbiana) 458 Salmakis 164 Salome Alexandra (mar. Alexander Jannaios) 222–​3, 226–​7, 229–​30 Salonia Matidia (Hadrian’s mother-​in-​law) 415, 417 Salus-​Augusta-​coin  389 Sammu-​ramat (mar. Shamshi-​Adad V; s. Adad-​narari III)  143 Sancisi-​Weerdenburg, Heleen  234 sanctuary of Demeter, Pergamon 216 Sandrokottos (Indian king) 174 Sarapis-​and-​Isis jugate busts 362–​3, 364 Sargon of Akkad (f. of Enheduanna) 142 šarratu (“queen”) 138, 236 see also basilissai (“queens”) šarru (“king”) 138 Sassanid dynasty 246–​53; coinage 249; “itinerant court” 252; legal sources 247; literature 247 Sataspes (s. of Teaspes) 154 Sat-​re (mar. Ramses I) 47 Satyra (m. of Eumenes I) 211 “savior gods” (Theoi Soteres) 78, 96, 359, 362 Schatt er-​Rigal rock-​cut 12, 16, 18 Scheria (Ionian islands) 275 Schiff, Stacy 24 “secondary women” 235, 238 Second Syrian War 175, 350 “second wives” 298 sēgallu (“woman of the palace”) 139 Seianus (Lucius Aelius Sejanus) 392–​3, 402–​3 Seipel, Wilfried  24 Seleukid Empire: and the Attalids 211; basilissai 194; brother–​sister marriages 347–​8, 355; dual kingship 336; genealogy 198; half-​sibling rivalry 348; hypogamous marriages 337; itinerant courts 334; marriage alliances 198–​204, 312, 337–​8; reigning triad 336–​7; royal women as power brokers 338–​40; succession 335–​7; women 173–​81 Seleukos (s. of Antiochos VII Sidetes and Kleopatra Thea) 179 Seleukos I Nikator (s. of Antiochus): and Apama 173–​4, 175, 186, 187–​8, 190; Miletos and Didyma 193; and Mysta 176; royal cult 177; and Stratonike II 174, 186, 191, 198–​9, 309, 312, 313; Susa pairings 188, 190

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Index Seleukos II (s. of Antiochos II and Laodike I) 175, 176, 201–​2 Seleukos III (s. of Seleukos II and Laodike II) 175, 176 Seleukos IV Philopator (s. of Antiochus III and Laodike) 76, 176, 178, 348 Seleukos V Philometor (s. of Demetrios II and Kleopatra Thea)  179 Seleukos VI (s. of Antiochos VIII Grypos and Kleopatra Tryphaina)  180 Semiramis (mar. Ninos) 479–​86; Assyrian queen 480; Babylon 480–​1; female power in “male action” 486; military campaigns 482; model for Alexander III 483; moral judgment 484–​5; public space 483; role in Assyrian government 481; sexual practices 482, 484, 485 “senate of women” (senatus mulierum) 456 Seneca, Brev. vitae 4.6 400 Sennacherib (m. of Esarhaddon) 144, 187 Senusret I (mar. Amenemhat I) 16 Senusret II (s. of Senusret I and Amenemhat I) 16–​17 Senusret III (s. of Weret I) 16–​18 Septimia Zenobia see Zenobia of Palmyra (mar. Odainath) Septimius Bassianus see Caracalla, Emperor Septimius Severus, Emperor (mar. Julia Domna) 452–​4 Šeraš (d. of Hubanahpi) 155 Servilla (mistress of Julius Caesar) 377 Servius Tullius 483, 494–​8 Setepenre (d. of Nefertiti) 37 Sety II (s. of Merenptah) 28 Seuthes (nephew of Sitalkes; mar. Stratonike) 299 Severan Dynasty 452–​60 Severa, Otacilia (mar. Philip the Arab) 459 Severina (Ulpia Severina) (mar. Aurelian) 460 Severus Alexander, Emperor 457, 458–​9 shame (pudicitia) 485 Shamhat (Epic of Gilgamesh) 140 Shamshi-​Adad V (mar. Sammu-​ramat; s. Adad-​narari)  143 Shapur I 235–​6, 260 Shepenwepet I/​Khenemetamun (d. of Osorkon III) 29, 48–​9 Shepenwepet II (d. of Piye) 49–​50, 51, 52, 52, 53 Shepseskaf (m. Khentkaues I) 14 Shiduri (Epic of Gilgamesh) 140 Siake (half-​sister and mar. Mithridates II) 236 “sibling gods” (Theoi Adelphoi) 74, 77–​8, 86, 96, 346, 359 sibling marriages 14, 350–​3 signet rings 363, 364 The Sign of the Cross (film) 509 Sign of the Pagan (film) 512 Silius, Gaius 405–​6

Simon (Maccabean brother) 223–​4 “sister-​wife” title  174 Sit-​Hathor-​Iunut (twelfth dynasty princess) 17 Skamandrios/​Astyanax (Iliad) 278 snake bites 129 Soaemias Bassiana, Julia (d. of Julius Avitus Alexianus and Julia Maesa) 453, 455, 456, 457 Sobekneferu (Skemiophris) see Neferusobek (d. of Amenemhat III) Solon 290–​1 Sophokles: Aias 290; Antigone 290, 291; Elektra 290, 291; Elektra 285–​6, 289; Klytaimnestra 289; Oedipus Rex 491; Oedipus Tyrannos 492; Women of Trachis 287 The Sopranos 509 Sosianus, Gaius 382 Sotades (poet) 346 sources 3–​4 Sozomen 467 Sparta 274 Spartacus (film) 510 Spartacus (TV show) 510 Spitamenes of Baktria (f. of Apame) 155, 173, 190 Stabrobates 482 Stateira (Barsine) (mar. Dareios III) 155 Stateira (d. of Hydarnes) 155 Stateira (mar. Artaxerxes II) 153, 155, 156 Stateira (mar. Perdikkas) 301 statue of Cornelia 382 statues 425 Staxryād (mar. of Šābuhr I 249 Stephanos of Byzantion 174 stepmother marriages (levirate) 226, 301 Sternberg, Josef von (Jonas Sternberg) 505 Strabo (Strabon) 64, 129; 5.3 391; 14.5.3 127; 15.1.5–​6 482; 16.1.2 480–​1 Stratonike I (d. of Ariarathes IV and Antiochis) 215–​17 Stratonike I (Seleukid) and II (Antigonid) (d. of Demetrios I Poliorketes and Phila) 186–​94; Akkadian royal titles 192; and Antiochos I 174, 186–​7, 198–​200, 308–​9; associated with Aphrodite 353; basilissai 189–​90, 193; cults 187; dedications at Delos 188, 193; and Dokimos 339; and Kombabos 187; marriage of children 199; marriages and legitimacy 191; military campaigns 327; and Seleukos I 186, 199; sexualization 187–​8, 193 Stratonike II (d. of Demetrios I and Phila I) 308, 309, 311, 312, 313 Stratonike III (d. of Antiochos I and Stratonike II) 311, 312 Stratonike (d. of Alexandros I) 296 Stratonike (d. of Antiochos I and Stratonike I) 174, 186, 199 Stratonike (d. of Antiochos II and Laodike) 175

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Index Stratonike (sister of Perdikkas II; mar. Seuthes) 299 Strato (s. of Agathokleia) 364 Strong, Anise K. 512 succession politics and processes 6, 193, 297–​8, 413–​14 see also dynastic succession Successors (Diadochoi) 199, 307, 323, 347 Suetonius, Lives of the 12 Caesars 123, 381, 399; Aug. 43.3–​4 241; Cal. 24.1 403; Cal. 24.3 403; Cal. 25.4 403; Cl. 45.1 407; Dom. 10.2 416; Iul. 22.2 481, 483; Titus 10.2 417 suitors (Odyssey) 276–​7 Sumerian language 137–​8 Surenas (Parthian noble) 237 Susa pairings 190 Svärd, S. 145 syllogos of Halikarnassians and Salmakitai 164 Syme, R. 376 sympoliteia 164 symposia 299 Synnaoi Theoi (“temple-​sharing gods”) 79, 80, 99, 359 Taa I (mar. Tetisheri) 26 Ṭabarī: 2, 879 250; 2, 994 250 taboo 347 Tacitus, Annales 399, 402, 499; 1.40.1–​4 401; 4.11.2 402–​3; 4.3 402; 11.12.2 405; 11.26 406; 11.37.2 406; 12.1–​2 406; 12.25 406; 12.44.2 237; 12.65 408; 12.68 407; 12.7.3 406; 13.45 407; 14.2 407; 14.2.2 401, 404; atrox (“fierce”) 408; exardesco (“to burn”) 405 Tadmor see Palmyra (Tadmor) Taharqa, king 50 Takeloth III 48 talatat blocks 36 Tanaquil (mar. Tarquinius Priscus) 491–​5, 497–​500 Tarentum 378, 380 Tarquinius Priscus (mar. Tanaquil) 491, 494 Tarquinius, Sextus (s. of Tarquinius Superbus) 494, 495 Tarquinius Superbus 491, 495 Tarquin the Proud 495 Tarsos 126 Tausert (mar. Siptah) 47 Tawosret (mar. of Sety II) 28 Teaspes 154 Tegea 166 “Teilreich” (part-​kingdom)  259 Tekmessa (Aias) 290 Telemachos (Odyssey) 272, 276, 277 Tem (m. of Mentuhotep III) 16 temple Esagila 142 temple for Amun, Kawa 62 temple for Mut, Jebel Barkal 62 temple of Apollo Medicus Sosianus 382 temple of Apollonis, Kyzikos 216

temple of Bona Dea 390 temple of Concordia 391 temple of Fortuna Muliebris 390 temple of Hathor, Dendera 125 temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-​Bahari 12 temple of Hermonthis, Armant 125 temple of Homer 114 temple of Kom Ombo 125 temple of Mut, Karnak 52 “temple-​sharing gods” (Synnaoi Theoi) 79, 80, 99, 359 temple to Dionysos Pseudanor 301 Teos 213, 214 Teritouchmes (s. of Hydarnes) 153 Tertullian: Ad nat. 1.16 301; Apol. 9.16–​17  301 Tetisheri (mar. Taa I) 26 tetradrachms (pentekontadrachmon) 362 tetrarchy 468 Teye (mar. Ay) 36 Thea Apollonis Apobateria 213 Thea Philadelphos (“Brother-​Loving Goddess”) 86, 97 Theater of Marcellus 382 Theban Tomb  36 Theodosius II 512 Theoi Adelphoi (“sibling gods”) 74, 77–​8, 86, 96, 346, 359 Theoi Epiphanes (“appearing/​manifest gods”) 79 Theoi Euergetai (“benefactor gods”) 79, 86, 98, 359 Theoi Neoi Philadelphoi (“new sibling-​loving gods”) 122 Theoi Philometores (“gods who love their mother”) 79 Theoi Philopatores (“gods who love their father”) 79 Theoi Soteres (“savior gods”) 78, 96, 359, 362 Theoi Synnaoi (“temple-​sharing gods”) 359 Theokritos 346, 353; Idyll 15 112; Idyll 17 352; “Praise of Ptolemy (II)” 74 Theon Adelphon octodrachms 360–​2, 364 Theopompos 296 Thermae Helenae 465 The Sopranos (TV show) 509 Thessalonike (d. of Philip II) 296 Third Syrian War (Laodikean War) 87–​8, 176, 200, 350 throne names 297, 337 Thucydides 299 Thutmose I (f. of Hatshepsut) 27 Thutmose II (mar. (1) Hatshepsut; (2) Iset) 26 Thutmose III (s. of Thutmose II and Iset) 26, 27 Thutmosid family 36–​7 Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar see Nero, Emperor Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus 413 Tiberius (s. of Nero and Livia) 388–​94, 403 Tigellius (M. Tigellius Hermogenes) 124

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Index Tigranes (mar. Azate) 236 Tigranes II of Armenia 180, 236 Tirrazziš (Shiraz) 157–​8 Titius, Marcus (governor of Roman Syria) 241 Titus (s. of Vespasian and Flavia Domitilla) 413, 415, 424, 426, 431 Tiye (Tiy) (mar. Amenhotep III) 27–​8, 36 Tjuloy, priest 23 Tobiad family of Jerusalem 339 tragic monarchial women 287 Trajan (mar. Pompeia Plotina) 241, 414 Treaty of Apamea 215 treaty of Zakutu 145 Trogus, Pompeius (Trogus-​Justin) 86, 296, 492; Historiae Philippicae 481, 482 Trojan “royal” women 278 Trojan Women (Euripides) 289, 290, 291 Troy, Lana, Patterns of Queenship 24 Tryphaina (mar. Antiochos VIII Grypos) 492 Turin King-​List 25 Turner, Jonathan 351 Tutankhaten (Tutankhamun) (mar. Ankhesenpaaten) 41–​2 Tuy (mar. Seti I) 47 Tyldesley, Joyce, Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt 24 Tyndareos 274 Ulpia Marciana (sister of Trajan) 414, 415 Ulpian (jurist) 458 Ulpia Severina (mar. Aurelian) 460 Ulysses (Joyce) 273n23, 278n50 uncle–​niece marriages  349 Urgulania (Etruscan matriarch) 492 USA 368, 509 Userkaf, pharaoh 14 Valerius Maximus: 9.3, ext. 4 483–​4; 10.7 498 Varius Avitus Bassianus (Elagabalus) 453, 456–​8 Varro 497 Velleius Paterculus 392 Ventidius Bassus 126 Venus 426, 428–​9, 431 Vergil: Aeneid 492, 499; Fourth Eclogue 377 Vergina-​Aigai  300 Verner, M. 14 Verus, M. Annius (mar. Rupilia Faustina; f. of Marcus Aurelius) 440 Vespasian 413, 424 Vesta 390, 426 Vestal Virgins 390, 392 Vetranio, co-​Emperor  468 “Vice is nice” (Strong) 512 Victoria Berenikes (Kallimachos) 89, 113, 336 Vinicius, Marcus (mar. Julia Livilla) 403 virtues 389 visual representations 423, 424

Vita Constantini (Eusebius), 3.44 467 Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) 379 Vologeses I (m.Vonones II) 237 von Recklinghausen, D. 99–​100 vulture headdresses 12–​13 Wahballath (s. of Odainath and Zenobia) 258, 261 Wahrām Cōbīn 250 Wahrām I 249 Wahrām II 249 Wahrām V Gōr (mar. Kawād I Nēwānduxt) 251 Warāzduxt (d. of Xwar(r)ānzēm) 248, 249 warfare 6 Warsaw relief 455 weaving 274, 275, 276, 277–​8, 498 Wenghofer, Richard 337 Weret I (m. of Senusret III) 16–​18 Westcar Papyrus 14 When Women Ruled the World (Cooney) 24 Widmer, M. 199, 348 widows 262, 301 wife of Simon 223–​4 William of Orange and Mary II 368 Wise, Herbert 507 “woman of the palace” (Bab. ša ekalli) 150 woman’s libido 405 The Woman Who Would Be King (Cooney) 24 Women of Trachis (Sophokles) 287 wreaths 427 Wright, Nicholas 335 Wyke, Maria 505 Xenophon: An. 1.4.9 152, 157; basilissa 188–​9; Hell. 3.1.10–​15 163; Kyr. 7.4.1–​7  165 Xerxes I (s. of Atossa; mar. Amestris) 149, 151, 154, 162 Xerxes II (m. Damaspia) 151 Xerxes of Western Armenia (mar. Antiochis) 176 Xusrō II Parwēz 250, 251 “Xusrō ud rēdag” 247 Xuthus (Ion) 288 Xwar(r)ānzēm (m. of Warāzduxt]) 248, 249 xwēdōdah (marriage among blood relatives) 248 Yazdān-​Friy-​Šābuhr (mar Šābuhr III) 250 Yazdegerd II (m. of Hormezd III and Pērōz) 250 Yon, Jean-​Baptiste  261–​2 Younger Lady mummy 40 Zenobia of Palmyra (mar. Odainath) 256–​63; Arab queen 263; Augusta/​Sebaste 259; basilissa/​mlkt’ 258, 262; coins 257; guardian of Wahballath 261; and Kleopatra VII 263; regina orientis 259; rise to power 259, 260; and the Roman Empire 259; as a widow 262–​3

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Index Zenobia (Sign of the Gladiator) 512 Zeus 273 Zeus and Hera (sibling-​spouses) 352 Zeus Dodoneus (consort Dione) 363 Zeus Labraundos 168–​9

Zeus Sabazios (Pergamon) 216 Ziaelas, King of Bithynia 176, 202 Zonaras (12.5), 12.5 458 Zopyros (grandson of Amestris) 153 Zosimus 466, 470; New History 458

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