school 4
A
tendency
to fleshiness ran in the
family
anyway, as we can see in many of the coin portraits. Athenaios reports
that Ptolemy VIII's great-
great-grandfather, Magas of Cyrene, who was not in any way inbred,
'abandoned himself to
luxury, and was weighted down with monstrous masses of flesh in his last days;
in fact he choked
himself to death because he was so fat, never
taking any exercise and always eating quantities of
food'.74 There is no need to view the obesity of Ptolemy VIII, or of his son Ptolemy X, as
spring-
ing
from a freak recessive gene, brought
to the fore only by inbreeding. That this was a
lifestyle
disease for both of
them, a matter of their gluttonous living,
is clear from the passage
in
Athenaios:
Through indulgence
in
luxury [Ptolemy VIII's] body had become utterly corrupted with fat and with a
belly of such size that it would have been hard to measure it with one's arms; to cover it he wore a tunic
which reached to his feet and which had sleeves reaching to his wrists; but he never went abroad on foot
except on Scipio's account. ... Ptolemy's son [Ptolemy X] Alexander also grew fatter and fatter.... The
master of Egypt, a man who was hated by the masses, though flattered by his courtiers, lived in great
69
Porphyry, FGrHist 260 F48; cf Diod. 29.29.1.
70 Whitehome (1994) 117 thinks all five children
were probably born by 135,
less than a decade after
Kleopatra's relationship with her uncle began.
71 Ogden (1999) 97-8; cf Grant
(1972) 27. For offi-
cial pudgy portraits (and discussion) of Ptolemy VIII, see
Kyrieleis (1975) 63-4, pls 52-3; Smith
(1988) 93-4, cat.
73, pl. 75.17; Plantzos
(1999) 45 and pl. 2
(8); Ashton
(2001) 55; Walker and Higgs (2001) 54-7, cat. 21-2;
Stanwick
(2002) cat. 79-104. For a possible caricature of
Ptolemy VIII
(enormously
fat and clothed in
transparent
draperies),
see Walker and Higgs (2001) 64-5, cat. 37.
See Ashrafian
(2005), and other references cited there,
for
speculation about medical conditions in the Ptolemaic
dynasty
linked to 'morbid obesity' and brought on by
consanguinity.
72 Justin 38.8.8-9
(Yardley
translation 1994).
73 Whitehorne (1994) 107.
74 Athen. 550b-c
(Gulick
translation 1955). 14 SHEILA L. AGER
luxury; but he could not even go out to urinate unless he had two men to lean upon as he walked. And
yet when it came to the rounds of dancing at a drinking-party he would
jump
from a high couch bare-
foot as he was, and perform
the
figures
in a livelier fashion than those who had practised
them.75
Once again,
the answer
surely
lies in nurture rather than nature.
It is
important
to emphasize
that the point here is not so much that the Ptolemies were not
negatively affected by
their incestuous behaviour - perhaps at times
they were - but rather that
the available evidence does not demonstrate that
they were in any clear or incontrovertible way.
If we did not already know that there was a
significant amount of
inbreeding
in the Ptolemaic
dynasty, nothing
in their other records would prompt us to posit unusual genetic problems
in this
family. Like Woolley on Tristan da Cunha in the 1940s, we approach
the Ptolemies with a pre-
conceived notion in mind, and, also like Woolley, we tend to find what we are
looking
for. In an
amusing passage on Ptolemy VIII, that
'overweight and ugly manikin', Whitehorne evinces the
not uncommon
tendency
to seek a genetic degeneracy beyond what the sources
suggest:
Had
[Ptolemy VIII's] contest
[with
the Romans] been on the grounds of his own choosing
-
feasting
or fornication - then despite his physical shortcomings (and perhaps other congenital defects of which
we know nothing)
the fat little king could have left most others
struggling
in his wake. Devoted as he
was to the lower appetites, he managed
to father seven children that we know of, a far better score than
many of his more illustrious predecessors.76
Bixler is right
to criticize Ruffer for his naivety, but in fact Ruffer's general
thesis requires
only a
slight, though crucial, modification: rather than arguing
that there is in general no evi-
dence that
inbreeding
is
likely
to cause genetic harm, we need argue only
that such evidence is
not provided by what we know of the Ptolemies. Perhaps, simplistic a
conjecture as it may be,
the
family was
just lucky
in the genetic lottery.
The genetic risks posed by inbreeding were not the only potential barrier to the success of the
incestuous
strategy of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Reference was made earlier to the near universality
of the human aversion to incest. The claim that incest avoidance is prevalent
in human
society
naturally requires
several caveats: royal
incest is an exception
to this rule, as is
socially approved
incest among non-royals
in the documented cases of Roman Egypt and ancient Iran; the defini-
tion of kin embraced by
incest regulations, and the sanctions employed, vary considerably
from
culture to culture; and of course sexual abuse within the
family can be a problem within any
society at any
level. Nevertheless,
it is undeniable that, regardless of the
stringency or laxness
of their regulations on the matter, most societies have some form of incest prohibition, and most
humans are emotionally antipathetic
to committing
incest.
This is not the place
to discuss all the various theories proposed
to account for the origin
and/or the persistence of the incest taboo(s). Whether it developed out of a need to prevent the
family disruption that would arise out of rivalries and confusion of roles (Malinowski), or the
requirement to 'trade' and interact with the larger group represented by society (Tylor, Levi-
Strauss), or the need to repress universal incestuous desires that would be destructive to family
and society if allowed to flourish (Freud), or through natural selection favouring groups with a
genetic tendency to outbreed (the view of sociobiologists), is not immediately germane to this
discussion.77 Most of the proposed theories probably have some merit, if not necessarily for the
75 Athen. 549e; 550a-b
(Gulick
translation 1955).
76 Whitehome (1994) 123; 109
(my emphasis).
77 Discussions of various theories on the incest pro-
hibition: Fox
(1967) 56-63; Bagley (1969); Bischof
(1972, 1975); Schneider
(1976); Cohen
(1978); van den
Berghe (1980, 1983); Ember and Ember
(1983) 65-108;
Shepher (1983); Willner
(1983); Arens
(1986) 25-101;
Spain (1987); Leavitt
(1989); Durham
(1991) 316-18;
Walter
(2000); Wolf and Durham
(2005). INCEST AND THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY 15
genesis of the incest prohibition,
then at least for its functional benefits, and hence its continu-
ance. The mere existence of the taboo itself is
significant when it comes to discussing royal
incest, as we shall see. But what about the
implicit complement
to the explicit
taboo: what of
the apparent
instinctual human aversion to committing
incest?
The prevailing reasons for royal
incest are unlikely
to have anything
to do with genuine
sexual desire, but most of these marriages must have entailed at least some sexual activity,
enough
to produce an heir. In the late 1800s, however, the
sociologist Edward Westermarck first
proposed
the view that incest came to be more or less universally
taboo
largely because people
raised in very close proximity
to one another in early
life are naturally
indifferent to each other
sexually once
they reach puberty:
Generally speaking,
there is a remarkable absence of erotic
feelings between persons living very closely
together
from childhood. Nay more,
in this, as in many other cases, sexual indifference is combined
with the positive feeling of aversion when the act is
thought of. This I take to be the fundamental cause
of the exogamous prohibitions.78
This notion was ridiculed by Freud and his followers, who had a stake in
claiming
that people
desired incest rather than were repelled by it, but it has gained a great deal more ground
in recent
decades, through
studies not only of certain human groups, but also of animal behaviours.79 It
does indeed seem as
though most human beings
- and a
large cross-section of the animal king-
dom when not in captivity or otherwise interfered with -
simply do not desire incestuous mat-
ing. This is so regardless of the presence of a moral prohibition, though
the explicit prohibition
may of course reinforce the aversion.
The so-called 'Westermarck effect' might
therefore seem to be one of the inhibitors to royal
incest, not so much because of any moral issues or religious concerns
springing
from the exist-
ence of a taboo, but rather because it presents a barrier in the form of potential
sexual dysfunc-
tion owing
to a
simple
lack of interest. To this problem
there are two responses. One is that
royal marriage
is not - and never has been -
primarily
sexual. Royals, kin or not, who are sex-
ually uninterested in one another have always managed,
in one way or another, for the purposes
of getting an heir. Once Ptolemy
IV
successfully
fathered a son on his sister, he was free to pur-
sue affairs more to his taste. The other response
is that the Westermarck effect arguably only
operates among children raised in
truly close proximity
to one another from a tender age, and it
is questionable just how intimate the infants of a
large royal household are with one another.80
Nevertheless, although
I would argue
that the problem of the Westermarck effect is in fact
largely
irrelevant when it comes to royal incest,
it does raise another issue of interest here. It has
been pointed out that familial incest and the patterns
that give rise to it should also be linked to
familial strife.81 The link between
sexuality and aggression
is one that has
long been recognized.
The Westermarck hypothesis is implicitly based on the notion that aversion to incest develops
among individuals who experience feelings of familial amity and security with one another.
Conversely, it may be that in families where strife, aggression and conflict are the norm, sexual
78 Westermarck 2
(1925) 192-3.
79 See Aberle et al.
(1963) (rejecting
the Westermarck
hypothesis, but presenting ethological data that tends to
support it); Bischof
(1972, 1975); Cohen
(1978); Fox
(1980) 29-48, 83-107; Murray and Smith
(1983);
Shepher (1983) 51-67; Burling (1985); Kitcher
(1985)
273-4; Arens
(1986) 61-101; Blouin and Blouin
(1988);
Pusey (1990); Durham
(1991) 309-15; Bevc and
Silverman
(1993, 2000); Wolf
(1993, 1995); Scheidel
(1996a) 39-44; Pillay (1999); Schneider and Hendrix
(2000); Griffin et al.
(2003); Lieberman et al.
(2003);
Walter and Buyske (2003); Weisfeld et al.
(2003); Wolf
and Durham
(2005). Efforts to
integrate Freud and
Westermarck: Fox
(1962, 1980); Spain (1987).
8o Fox
(1980) 48; Bixler
(1982a) 267; Shepher (1983)
61, 131; Arens
(1986) 109; Wolf
(1993) 160-1;
Mitterauer
(1994) 246.
81 Roscoe
(1994);
see also Erickson
(1989, 1993) and
Hardy (2001). 16 SHEILA L. AGER
feelings may also arise. We may recall the mythic and
symbolic
link between
incest, cannibalism
and familial murder discussed at the beginning of this article. Roscoe
interprets
these
long-
standing cultural
symbols
in a bio-psychological light:
'sexual and aggressive behaviours may be
linked at some physiological or neurophysiological level'
it may not be too
much to
suggest, at least for some of the Ptolemies and Kleopatras,
that the same psychological
mechanisms that led them to murder one another may also have allowed them to embrace one
another.
One final word on anthropological theory about the incest prohibition before we proceed
to
examine reasons why
the Ptolemies would have breached it. Reference was made earlier to the
notion that incest taboos arose because not to have them would result in an intolerable confusion
of the order on which the
family and
society are based: roles, relationships, age distinctions,
appropriate emotional affect, all would be scrambled and the result would be chaos. Oedipus'
ultimate cry of despair articulates that sense of
inappropriate role behaviours: 'born from those
who should not have borne me, living with those I should not have lived with, killing
those I
should not have killed'.83
This view, that the incest prohibition arose to combat familial confusion, has come under
attack. Fox calls it
'really
too
silly
to dwell on', and Melvin and Carol Ember express scepti-
cism that
sibling marriage
in a royal house, at any rate, should be
'disruptive of
family unity' or
create confusion.84 It is true that royal
incest has many qualities
that set it apart, and true also
that the brother-sister relationship specifically
is often seen as naturally analogous
to the hus-
band-wife relationship.
It is
important
to keep
in mind, however,
in an evaluation of Ptolemaic
incest, that
sibling
incest was not the only
form practised by
this
family, and that some of the pat-
terns of incest pursued were indeed confusing and disorderly, confounding relationships and dis-
rupting family unity hideously. The most egregious example of course is that of Ptolemy VIII
and his marriage
to mother and daughter. This
triangular relationship
in and of itself would prob-
ably have created no little trouble, even if the personalities of the individuals involved had not
been as intense as
they were.85
ROYAL INCEST: PRAGMATISM OR SYMBOLISM?
The examination of potential barriers to success in the previous
section
suggests
that despite all
the drawbacks the Ptolemies may have found incest and
inbreeding a
supportable and viable
method of dynastic propagation. Still, supportable
is not the same as desirable. Why
should
they
have adopted
this pattern
in the first place, and adhered to it so stubbornly? The short answer is
that the phenomenon of incestuous marriage
in the Ptolemaic house is
something
that is
likely
to
have had complex causation, and theories which seek explanations
in a
single cause are
likely
to
be flawed. We saw above that the reasons for the origin of the incest taboo might
'not be the
same as the reasons for its persistence'.86 Likewise, the reasons for the original adoption of
incest among the Ptolemies might not be the same as the reasons underlying their continuation
of the practice. We need to examine the marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsino6 II in order to dis-
cuss
'genesis'; but 'persistence' can only be understood by looking at the dynasty as a whole.87
82 Roscoe
(1994) 55; see also Hooper (1976); Labby
(1976); Arens
(1979) 148-9.
83
Soph. OT 1184-5.
84 Fox (1967) 57; Ember and Ember
(1983) 70. See
also Arens
(1986) 48-60 for discussion and criticism.
85 This menage would have been doubly incestuous,
not
just because of Ptolemy VIII's blood relationship
to
both his wives, but because of the women's own blood
relationship with one another
(see Heritier-Auge (1994/5)
and Heritier
(1999)
for discussion of this 'incest of the
second
type'). The Bible prescribes burning alive for all
three participants
in such a liaison
(Lev 18.17 and 20.14;
Ziskind
(1988)).
86 Fox
(1967) 56.
87
Carney (1987), who makes many good points, may
put
too much emphasis on the early days and the mar-
riage of the Philadelphoi. INCEST AND THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY 17
Some of the motivations, or rationales, might well have become apparent
to the Ptolemies them-
selves only after the fact,
if at all. While political pragmatism may have had a role to play,
it is
my view that there were
symbolic reasons underpinning
the whole practice, and these may never
have reached the point of conscious apprehension.
Enough has already been said to rule out any notion that these marriages were primarily
inspired by
love or sexual attraction. Affection may have played a part
in some of them -
possibly
the marriage between Ptolemy II and Arsino II, and perhaps also that between
Ptolemy VI and Kleopatra II,
in addition to the explicitly attested love in the match of
Ptolemy
IX and Kleopatra
IV - but that it was primarily erotic love of the sort to
inspire
the
union in the first place
is doubtful. Carney suggests
that Ptolemy II was enough of a 'sensualist'
that he might 'actually have been titillated by
the idea of an incestuous union with his sister'.88
But that he 'conceived a violent passion'
for her, that he was
'captive
to her charms',89 or that
this was primarily a love match may be dismissed, I think. Moreover, Burstein, Carney and
Hazzard have already done an adequate job of demolishing
the notion that the conniving and
strong-willed Arsinoe actually manipulated
the weak-willed Ptolemy
into marrying her.90
Motivation for that first incestuous marriage between the Philadelphoi has been found in the
'Egyptian angle':
that Ptolemy Philadelphos and his sister were
trying
to emulate the native
Pharaohs of Egypt, who were known to practise endogamous marriage.91 This notion is often
criticized on the grounds
that the early Ptolemies took little or no heed of what the Egyptians
thought of them,92 and on the further grounds
that the amount of incestuous marrying
that actu-
ally went on in the Pharaonic dynasties has been greatly exaggerated
in the popular mind.93
Nevertheless, we cannot deny
that there is
something
to this argument when we consider that the
Greeks themselves were clearly convinced that Egyptians, whether royal or common, married
their
siblings.94 The
early Ptolemies were moreover not so dismissive of the desirability of
disarming
the Egyptians as was once claimed - the marriage of the Philadelphoi
itself should be
allowed to play
its proper part
in the evidence for early Ptolemaic concern for Egyptian
opinion.95 Still, despite
its
significance,
the Egyptian angle does not provide
the only answer. In
a sense,
it only begs
the question: after all, why
should the Pharaohs have practised
incestuous
marriage (even
to the limited extent that
they did)?96
Another partial answer, and one perhaps also connected to the Ptolemaic interaction with
their Egyptian subjects,
is
suggested by
the passage of Theokritos cited above. Full
sibling mar-
riage
is the prerogative of the gods
- the Greek gods Zeus and Hera, as well as the Egyptian gods
Isis and Osiris - and to behave like the gods
is to assimilate oneself to them.97 The Zeus and
Hera association is the one made explicit by Theokritos, whose work was certainly
intended for
the Greek audience that might be
thought
to balk at the marriage.98 Yet the Isis-Osiris connection
88
Carney (1987) 425; cf Green
(1990) 145.
89 Chamoux (2003) 72.
90 Burstein
(1982); Carney (1987); Hazzard
(2000)
81-100
(for criticism see Hul
(2001) 306).
91 Macurdy (1932) 118; Hombert and Preaux
(1949);
Burstein
(1982); Turner
(1984) 137-8; Ogden (1999) 77-8.
92 E.g. Carney (1987) 432; Hazzard
(2000) 86.
93 Cern~ (1954); Middleton
(1962); Bonheme and
Forgeau (1988) 319; Robins
(1993) 26-7.
94 Diod. 1.27.1; Paus. 1.7.1; Memnon, FGrHist 434
Fl
(8);
see also Philo, De
spec. leg. 3.4.23, and Lev. 18.3,
passages which demonstrate that the Greeks were not the
only people
in antiquity
to hold this view of the
Egyptians.
95 Interaction of Greek and Egyptian cultural influence
from an early period on the construction of Ptolemaic
royal ideology: Dunand
(1973) 33-40; Thompson (1973)
120; Kyrieleis (1975) 163; Winter
(1978); Quaegebeur
(1978, 1988); Koenen
(1983, 1993); Peremans
(1987);
Samuel
(1993); Hul
(1994b) 51, 181; Reed
(2000);
Ashton
(2001); H6lbl (2001) 307-9; Stanwick
(2002);
Stephens (2003).
96 Furthermore, sibling marriage appears also in the
Seleukid dynasty, which was
certainly not
imitating
the
Pharaohs
(though
it may have been
imitating
the
Achaemenids or Hekatomnids; Ogden (1999) 125-6).
97 See Cerfaux and Tondriau
(1957) 208-13; Grant
(1972) 26-7; Thompson (1973); Griffiths
(1980) 194-
207; Hauben
(1989); H61bl (2001) 111-12.
98 See also Plut. Mor. 736e-f; Kallimachos, SH 254.
Hazzard
(2000) 89 thinks the assimilation to Zeus and Hera
was the only reason for the marriage of the Philadelphoi. 18 SHEILA L. AGER
cannot be
ignored; indeed, Stephens argues
that it is the association with Isis and Osiris that is
the more
significant.99
It is true that the
living Pharaoh was assimilated to Horus, the son of the
divine pair, rather than to Osiris himself
(who was identified with the deceased Pharaoh), but the
association with the gods, even with
specific gods, provided by
the royal
incest was not based
purely on a mechanical one-to-one correspondence.
It was achieved
through suggestion, approx-
imation, association and evocation, not merely through
identification. Moreover, there were
ways other than incestuous marriages
in which the Ptolemies definitely evoked Osiris; and
Arsino II, perhaps more than any other Ptolemaic queen until Kleopatra VII, was associated
with Isis in a variety of ways.loo The first official written documentation we have of a Ptolemaic
queen actually being
identified with Isis while still
living was Kleopatra III,
in 131 BC, during
the civil war between her husband and her mother.0ol Perhaps Ptolemy VIII, who approved
this
unprecedented honour for his niece-wife, was deliberately and openly denying
that his quondam
sister-wife had any claim to be associated or identified with Isis. It is
tempting
too to wonder
if,
in
sending his sister the murdered and dismembered body of her son, he was challenging any
such claim that she might put
forth by making a cruel mockery of the goddess' mythic role in
reconstituting her murdered and dismembered brother-spouse.
Linked to the religious rationale
just discussed, though more general
in its application,
is the
notion of the
singularity and
integrity of the dynasty.