school 2
The first
full-sibling marriage of the dynasty ultimately gave
both Arsino II and her younger brother Ptolemy II
the epithet 'Philadelphos'.21 The
full-sibling
20 See Ogden (1999) 73-116 for a fuller discussion of
the detailed evidence for the individual marriages.
21 Paus. 1.7.1 and 3; Plut. Mor. 736e-f. On the epi-
thet, see Criscuolo
(1990, 1994). INCEST AND THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY 5
marriage was a much greater departure
from tradition than the half-sibling one. We have no real
way of knowing what the Egyptians thought of
it, but we do have some neatly juxtaposed com-
ments from the Greek side. Theokritos'
Idyll 17, an unabashedly sycophantic poem
that likens
the marriage of Ptolemy and Arsinoe to that of Zeus and Hera, represents
the official response:
From Zeus let us begin, and with Zeus in our poems, Muses, let us make end, for of immortals he is
best; but of men let Ptolemy be named, first, last, and in the midst, for of men he is most excellent ...
he and his noble wife, than whom none better clasps
in her arms a husband in his halls, loving with all
her heart her brother and her
spouse. After this fashion was accomplished
the sacred bridal also of the
immortals whom Queen Rhea bore to rule Olympus; and single
is the couch that Iris, virgin still, her
hands made pure with perfumes, strews for the
sleep of Zeus and Hera.22
Perhaps Theokritos' emphasis on the chastity of the virgin
Iris and the purity of the hands with
which she arranges
the bridal couch was an effort to cleanse an
image
that was bound to stick in
the throats of a Greek audience. Probably more reflective of the unofficial popular view was
Sotades' sardonic one-liner:
'you're shoving your prick
into an unholy hole'.23 Unfortunately
for
Sotades, this was not a very profitable view to hold: Ptolemy's admiral Patroklos sealed the poet
into a lead
jar and dropped him into the sea.24
The marriage of Arsinoe and Ptolemy Philadelphos had no issue.25 Ptolemy
II's heir, and his
other children, were from his previous marriage, although Ptolemy did take care to adopt
these
children to his sister. Ptolemy
III did not follow his father's example
in marrying a sister, though
he did marry a half-cousin, Berenike II, daughter of Magas of Cyrene.
It is therefore not until
the next generation
that we find another 'first': the marriage of the full brother and sister,
Ptolemy
IV and Arsino III, and their production of a son. Ptolemy V, then,
is the first product
of a Ptolemaic
sibling-marriage.
As an only child who was orphaned young, Ptolemy V had no opportunity
to emulate the
example
set by his parents. Since he and his Seleukid bride Kleopatra
I were third cousins, the
marriage can
scarcely be described as incestuous. Nevertheless,
it is
significant
in other ways.
For one
thing,
the marriage brought
the dynastic name
'Kleopatra'
into the Ptolemaic house for
the first time. Far more
important, however, was the issue of this marriage. The two sons and
the
single daughter of Ptolemy V and Kleopatra
I were to dominate affairs
through most of the
second century BC, and their marital entanglements ultimately went far beyond anything as
simple as mere
sibling-marriage.
These three were also orphaned young. The elder of the two boys, Ptolemy VI, was subse-
quently married to his sister, Kleopatra II, who bore him at least three, and probably
four
children. Ptolemy VI died prematurely
in 145. His elder son, Ptolemy Eupator, had already died
several years earlier, and the younger
son was perhaps
too young
to consider as his father's heir.26
The widow's other brother, Ptolemy VIII, was accordingly brought back from Cyrene and
married to his sister.27 Justin claims that Ptolemy crowned his nuptials by slaughtering his
22
Idyll 17.1-4, 128-34
(Gow
translation 1952); cf
Kallimachos, SH 254.
23 Athen. 621a.
24 Athen. 621a; cf Plut. Mor. 1 la. See Fraser 1
(1972) 117-18; Carney (1987) 428-9; Weber
(1998/9).
25
Paus. 1.7.3; schol. Theoc. Id. 17.128.
26
Eupator, who was born in the mid-160s, was
named co-regent with his father in 152, but died in that
same year; Ogden (1999) 86
suggests
that
'genetic
com-
promise' carried him off, though
it is hard to believe that
he would have been designated as heir and co-regent by
his father if he had suffered from any obvious or crippling
physical/mental defect
(cf.
the
speculations of Chauveau
(1990) 166; and Whitehorne
(1994) 149).
27 This paper adheres to the conventional numbering
of the Ptolemaic dynasty which designates
the two sons
of Ptolemy V as Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII, and which
had allowed for a brief reign of a son of Ptolemy VI as
Ptolemy VII in 145 before his murder by Ptolemy VIII.
Recent discussions have called into question
the exist-
ence of such a son, but the most recent evidence seems to
suggest
that while he might not ever have sat on the 6 SHEILA L. AGER
surviving nephew, and 'entered his sister's bed still dripping with the gore of her son'.28 While
the melodrama might be a trifle
suspect,
if on no other grounds
than that Justin had already
employed
it in his account of the marriage of Arsino II and Ptolemy Keraunos,
it is quite cred-
ible that Ptolemy VIII would have seen fit to remove his brother's son and his own potential
rival. So
long as Kleopatra II had a
living
son who was not a child of Ptolemy VIII, she might
be able to anticipate
the example of Kleopatra VII, and choose to divest herself of an unwanted
brother-husband in favour of a filial co-ruler.
If Kleopatra II did not already hate her younger brother, the murder of her young
son would
surely have provoked
such a sentiment. She cannot have been much more endeared to her new
mate by his next actions. Shortly after Kleopatra bore her new brother-spouse
their first child
(Ptolemy 'Memphites'), Ptolemy VIII either raped or seduced his bride's daughter (his own
niece, twice over), and fathered a son on her. In a major departure
from Ptolemaic monogamous
tradition, he
subsequently married her, a marriage
that might have been his plan all along.29
Kleopatra II still continues to be accorded the title of queen and to be named with her brother in
all the protocols;
the difference is that her daughter Kleopatra
III has now
joined her.
Ptolemy VIII, 'Queen Kleopatra,
the sister', and
'Queen Kleopatra,
the wife'
thereupon ruled
together
in what has been called 'a ghastly menage a trois' until 116, when Ptolemy died.30
This is not to
say
that
they ruled
together happily or that their reign was uninterrupted by
political and familial turmoil. One incident alone is sufficient to indicate the nature of
family
life. In the late 130s, Kleopatra II succeeded in
temporarily ousting her brother and her daughter
from Alexandria, and reigned
there alone for a time.31 On this occasion, Ptolemy VIII murdered
Kleopatra's
last remaining son, the
twelve-year-old Memphites, dismembered the body, put
it in
a box and despatched
it to the boy's mother as a birthday present.32 Diodoros remarks that he
did so because it was the best way
to punish and wound her for her hostility
towards him, but
the political and cold-bloodedly practical rationale for this act must have been Ptolemy's
fear that
Kleopatra would take advantage of his absence to crown their son as her co-ruler. As he had
done in 145, he removed this fear
through
the
simple expedient of murdering his potential rival.
The fact that Memphites was also his own child was
immaterial; he had already
two more sons
from Kleopatra III, while Kleopatra II was now deprived of all her progeny.
After the
triple reign of Kleopatra II, Ptolemy VIII and Kleopatra III, the rest of the Ptolemies,
and their marital antics, seem almost colourless in comparison. Ptolemy VIII died in June 116,
Kleopatra II a few months later. By
the terms of his will, Ptolemy
left the throne to his niece-
wife Kleopatra
III and whichever of their sons she should prefer.33 Naturally, both sons consid-
ered themselves
legitimate candidates, and further
spice was added to the mix by
the fact that
Kleopatra herself is said to have cherished a real hatred for her older son, Ptolemy
IX
throne, and while he perhaps
should not be identified
with 'Neos Philopator',
there nevertheless was a surviv-
ing
son of Ptolemy VI and Kleopatra II in 145. See van't
Dack
(1983); Chauveau
(1990, 1991, 2000); HuB
(1994a,
2001, 2002); Heinen
(1997).
28 Justin 38.8.4
(Yardley
translation 1994).
29 Diod. 33.13; Livy, Per. 59; Justin 38.8; Val. Max.
9.1
(ext.) 5. The son of Kleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII
was given
the
sobriquet Memphites because of his birth
at Memphis,
in 144/3
(Mooren (1988); Hu3 (2001) 604;
Hilbl (2001) 195). The marriage
to Kleopatra
III seems
to have taken place sometime between 8 May 141 and 14
January 140
(HuB (2001) 606; Hilbl (2001) 195, 217),
but since Kleopatra gave birth to her uncle's child
(the
future Ptolemy IX)
in 142,
it is clear that the relationship
could not have postdated
the birth of Memphites by any
considerable time. Whitehorne
(1994) 110 thinks that
marriage
to the niece rather than the sister had always
been Ptolemy VIII's plan;
in 145, however, Kleopatra II
was no doubt too powerful and influential to allow him to
bypass her. Mooren
(1988)
thinks that the birth of
Ptolemy
IX prompted Ptolemy VIII to marry
the child's
mother. Although Ogden (1999) considers that the
Hellenistic dynasties indulged
in polygamy, he does
acknowledge
that Ptolemaic
sibling-marriage was 'usual-
ly associated with monogyny on the male side'
(143).
30 Whitehorne (1994) 123.
31 On the period of sole rule and the civil war, see
HuB
(2001) 608-15; H61bl
(2001) 197-201.
32 Diod. 34/35.14; Livy, Per. 59; Justin 38.8; Val.
Max. 9.2, (ext.) 5.
33 Justin 39.3; cf Paus. 1.9.1-2. INCEST AND THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY 7
('Lathyros').34 Her autocratic attitude
(which,
to be fair, was not limited to her animus towards
her eldest
son)
found expression
in her insistence that Ptolemy
IX divorce his beloved sister-
wife, Kleopatra IV, and marry another sister, Kleopatra Selene. Kleopatra
III's preference
for her
younger boy, Ptolemy X Alexander, seems a trifle misplaced, given
that he ultimately murdered
her after putting up with her domineering behaviour for several years.35 Ptolemy X then married
his niece, Kleopatra Berenike III, the daughter of his brother Lathyros and
(probably)
their
sister Kleopatra IV. When Ptolemy X died, the Alexandrians brought his brother Lathyros back,
and he reigned
in association with his popular daughter Kleopatra Berenike, his brother's widow.
Some have tried to argue
that Lathyros actually married his daughter, but a marriage
in the direct
line of descent would have been completely without precedent among
the Ptolemies, and there
is no firm evidence for this marriage
in any case.36 When Lathyros died in 80 BC, Kleopatra
Berenike briefly ruled alone, but sole female rule was too abnormal to be sustained for
long, and
Kleopatra's cousin and
stepson, Ptolemy XI, was brought
in and married to her.
As incestuous marriages go,
the degree of kinship
involved in this one was
fairly innocuous,
provided we refrain from the wilder
speculation
that Kleopatra Berenike was actually
Ptolemy XI's mother, and not merely his
stepmother.37 The alternative genealogy offered by
Bennett
(see FIG. 2) suggests a closer relationship, making Kleopatra Berenike and Ptolemy XI
half-siblings
in addition to being cousins - not to mention the
step-parent, step-child relationship.38
Nevertheless, even if we accept
this conjectural stemma, the incestuous character of this
marriage has little
significance, as it did not last
long enough
to have any dynastic impact.
Ptolemy XI - who seems to have been
singularly injudicious
- murdered his new wife during
the
honeymoon. The Alexandrian populace, who adored Kleopatra Berenike, dragged
their witless
king off to the gymnasium and tore him into many
small pieces.39
The throne then passed
to Ptolemy XII 'Auletes'. Ptolemy XII was certainly
the child of
Ptolemy IX, but persistent rumours of his
'illegitimacy' mean that we cannot
say certainly who
Auletes' mother was. Bennett argues
that Auletes was after all the child of a full Ptolemaic
brother-sister marriage,
that between Ptolemy
IX and his beloved Kleopatra IV, but such a recon-
struction must remain in the field of conjecture.40 Auletes himself married a certain Kleopatra V
Tryphaina, also
thought
to be a daughter of Ptolemy IX, though whether she was Auletes' half-
sister or full sister cannot be determined.
34 Paus. 1.9.1, who remarks that Ptolemy
IX bore the
official title 'Philometor' as a form of grim irony,
'no
king known to history having been so hated by his
mother'. Mooren
(1988) 443
suggests
the antipathy
felt
by Kleopatra
III to her elder son was the result of the
psychological
trauma experienced around his conception
and birth
(her unwed state at the time, possibly rape by
her uncle, certainly alienation from her mother); still,
Kleopatra
III does not strike one as being very easily
traumatized.
Cauville and Devauchelle
(1984) 47-55 argue
that
there was no natural affection between Kleopatra
III and
Ptolemy
IX for the reason that the latter's mother was in
fact Kleopatra II, not Kleopatra III (and
that the
Kleopatra who reigned alongside Ptolemy
IX from 116
until his exile in 107 was the older queen). Against
this
suggestion,
see Mooren
(1988); Thompson (1989); and
Ogden (1999) 111 n.126. All the
literary
sources assert
that Ptolemy
IX was the child of Kleopatra III.
35 Justin 39.4; Paus. 1.9.2.
36 For the assumption of a marriage between
Ptolemy
IX and his daughter Kleopatra Berenike, see
Fraser 1
(1972) 124; Whitehorne
(1994) 175; Ogden
(1999) 95
(and n.152), who cites the demotic stele pub-
lished in Mond and Myers (1934) 10-11, no. 11. The
stele is full of scribal errors
(see Mond and Myers 31) and
cannot provide telling testimony
in favour of such a mar-
riage. Against
the notion of a marriage between
Kleopatra Berenike and her father: Bevan
(1968 [1927])
334; Bennett
(1997); Chauveau
(1998); Shipley (2000)
212; HuB
(2001) 667-8; H61bl
(2001) 212.
37 Green
(1990) 554; against this, see Bennett
(1997)
and HuB (2001) 653.
38 See Bennett
(1997) 53-4.
39 Appian BC 1.102; Porphyry FGrHist 260 F2
(10-
11); Cic. Alex. frr. 9-10. See Mittag (2003) 184-6.
40 See Bennett
(1997) 46-52; against Bennett, see
HuB
(2001) 672-3. Sullivan
(1990) 88, 91 comments on
the possibility
that Auletes
(and Kleopatra V Tryphaina)
were the
legitimate children of Ptolemy
IX and Kleopatra
Selene; also Siani-Davies
(1997) 308-9. 8 SHEILA L. AGER
FIG. 2. Later Ptolemaic genealogy
I
Kleopatra IV= Ptolemy IX:
Soter II
('Lathyros')
Kleopatra
Selene
Ptolemy X
Alexander I
Kleopatra
Tryphaina
Ptolemy
of Cyprus
Ptolemy XII,
('Auletes')
Kleopatra
Berenike III
Ptolemy XI
Alexander II
Kleopatra V
Tryphaina
Berenike IV Arsinoe IV Ptolemy XIII Kleopatra VII
I
Ptolemy XIV
Ptolemy XV
(Caesarion)
Alexander
Helios
Kleopatra
Selene
Ptolemy
Philadelphos
Finally, we come to Kleopatra VII, who also poses a problem
in terms of her maternal line-
age. She was certainly
the daughter of Auletes, but the
identity of her mother has
long been the
subject of debate: was she Kleopatra V Tryphaina, was she another
(unattested) wife of Auletes,
or was she one of his concubines? Strabo asserts that only Auletes' eldest daughter, Berenike IV,
was
legitimate, but the possibility exists that he is confusing her with Kleopatra Berenike,
declared by Pausanias to be the only legitimate child of Ptolemy IX.41 The matter is complicated
by
the
enigma of the disappearance of Kleopatra V Tryphaina
from public
life sometime late in
69 or
early
in
eldest daughter, Berenike IV, a decade later during Auletes' exile.42 Werner HuB has argued
that
Auletes' daughter Kleopatra was the child of a marriage
to an Egyptian woman of the high-
ranking priestly caste, but there is little evidence to
support
this argument, and in any case
Kleopatra VII's birth-date
(69) surely suggests
that she was indeed the daughter of Tryphaina.43
Kleopatra VII herself may or may not have married each of her brothers in succession. The
first, Ptolemy XIII, died during
the Alexandrian war, presumably before he could 'submit to her
embraces with incestuous heart'. The second, Ptolemy XIV, was said to have been murdered by
his sister, who wanted a path clear for her child by Caesar.44 Certainly none of her children came
from these marriages;
if
they did take place,
it seems unlikely
that either of them was actually
consummated.45
Over the course of the centuries, then,
incest came to dominate the marriage patterns of the
Ptolemaic house, and the offspring of the royal unions became
increasingly
inbred. Such a
situation naturally
leads us to ask: how could such a dynastic strategy ever have been a success?
41 Str. 17.1.11; Paus. 1.9.3. The argumentum e silen-
tio may have some bearing on the question of Kleopatra
VII's
legitimacy:
if she had been
illegitimate, we would
certainly expect her Roman enemies to have made polit-
ical capital of it
(as capital was made of Auletes' alleged
bastardy), and there is no hint that
they did so.
42 This is not the place
to discuss the mystery of
Kleopatra V Tryphaina's disappearance and resuscitation,
an
intriguing topic, but one that
requires a
lengthy
treat-
ment and is not directly relevant to the subject of this
paper. See Quaegebeur (1989); Sullivan
(1990) 240-1;
Bennett
(1997); Holbl (2001) 223, 227, 251-2; Hull
(2001) 674-5, 679, 686.
43 Against HuB
(1990), see Chauveau
(2002) 10;
Bennett
(1997) 60 points out that 'with a birth-date of 69
Cleopatra VII was
certainly conceived before
Cleopatra V disappears
from the record'.
44 For the sources on the death of Ptolemy XIII, see
HuB
(2001) 719 n.149; the alleged murder of
Ptolemy XIV: Josephus, AJ 15.89 and Ap. 2.58;
Porphyry, FGrHist 260 F2
(16-17).
45 Dio Cass. 42.35, 42.44. Criscuolo
(1989, 1994)
doubts that Kleopatra was ever actually married to her
brothers, arguing
that the title Philadelphos was an
emblem of familial
solidarity rather than necessarily of a
sibling marriage. See also H6lbl (2001) 231, 237. INCEST AND THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY 9
BARRIERS TO SUCCESS: GENETICS AND TABOOS
The Ptolemaic dynasty
is
surely
the locus classicus for the question of royal inbreeding, and its
allegedly deleterious effects. Most recently, Daniel Ogden has
sought
to find the answer to
various Ptolemaic problems
in the excessive
inbreeding of this dynasty.46 He believes that the
viability of the male children born of these unions was undermined, and that Ptolemaic offspring
were persistently 'genetically compromised'.47 Such
'genetic compromise' would have resulted
in reduced
fertility,
increased mortality rates and genetic disorders of various kinds. The
Ptolemaic dynasty
- or at least its incestuous unions - would thus have been rendered
'virtually
infertile'. Ogden restricts his
speculation
to the physical ramifications of
inbreeding, though
others have not always been so cautious. Peter Green
implies
that moral depravity was also the
result:
If the word
'degeneration' has any meaning at all, then the later ... Ptolemies were degenerate: selfish,
greedy, murderous, weak, stupid, vicious, sensual, vengeful, and ...
suffering
from the effects of
prolonged and repeated inbreeding.48
Michael Grant takes it one
step
further in his biography of Kleopatra VII:
[C]ertain elements in her character may have been due to this persistent inbreeding
- notably her total
absence of moral sense, and a
tendency
to murder her brothers and sisters which may have been
partly an inherited
family habit.49
We are probably
safe in assuming
that Ptolemaic moral behaviour is
likely
to have been the
result of nurture
(or perhaps
the lack
thereof), rather than nature. It does not seem that we need
spend much time on the question of whether Kleopatra, a kind of Ptolemaic bad seed, actually
inherited a concentrated set of chromosomes genetically programming her to murder her
siblings. But what about the genuine physical effects of
inbreeding on the Ptolemies?
In 1996 Walter Scheidel published an exceptionally detailed
study of the potential genetic
effects of the incestuous marriages attested among
the common people of Egypt (chiefly
from
the Arsinoite nome) during
the Roman era.50 He correctly makes the point
that an assessment of
the phenomenon of historical incest
(whether royal or common) requires a cross-disciplinary
approach, a prefatory remark to his own plunge
into the gene pool.
It is not my
intent to repro-
duce here the elaborate and meticulous analysis he devotes to the question of the genetic down-
side of
inbreeding.