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Keeping it in the (Ptolemaic) Family: When Incest is Best
There are a whole slew of fantastically good reasons why incest is illegal and taboo, including the lasting psychological damage it does, and the dysfunctional family dynamics it creates. That said, there’s a good chance that the Ptolemaic Dynasty would have been filled with fratricidal thugs and harpies even if they hadn’t made it a practice to marry their siblings.
Today, we would rightly question the ethics of these love affairs, but given the way women were treated in the ancient world–and even until recently–her relationships with these men seems positively enlightened. Especially when you contrast them with the sexual relationships she was supposed to have as the Queen of Egypt.
To wit, she was not only expected to marry her brother, but to have children by him.
So, how did this come to pass? The Ptolemies considered themselves to be the successors to Alexander the Great–that Macedonian King who conquered the known world. Ptolemy was his general, and some said his half-brother. After Alexander the Great died and his empire was broken up, Egypt fell into the hands of Ptolemy and a dynasty was born.
His daughter, Arsinoe II, would start the tradition of incest. Married off to an old King of Thrace when she was still a teenager, she was the ultimate survivor. Her life was frequently in danger and she made many narrow escapes, including one from the Seleucid Army marching on her kingdom. At some point, Arsinoe seems to have decided that if she wanted to be safe, she couldn’t trust anyone outside her immediate family. So, she returned to Egypt and married her full brother, Ptolemy II.
Now, the Greeks didn’t have a tradition of incest in their ruling families…but the pharaohs of Egypt did. By marrying her brother, Arsinoe was able to help create a link between the new Ptolemaic dynasty and the very old traditions of the native Egyptians. It served her extremely well as she became the first female pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty, ruling not just as the wife of the king, but as a king in her own right.
After that, the tradition took hold and not simply because all the cool kids were doing it. The Ptolemies discovered that incest served some important political purposes.
For one, it kept out the riff-raff. Incestuous marriages virtually ensured that the Macedonian ruling family would never have to dilute its blood with native Egyptians, for whom they seemed to hold some disdain. Moreover, it put the kibosh on social mobility. No ambitious little Macedonian or Egyptian boys would grow up with the dream that they, too, could be pharaoh as long as they worked hard, sucked up, and poisoned the right people.
The best an ambitious man could hope for was to make his daughter a concubine to the king, which might, if the queen was infertile, allow him to one day become grandfather and vizier to the next king. Consequently, a tradition of Ptolemaic incest kept the threat of being poisoned by outsiders to a minimum.
Another advantage to keeping it in the family was that foreign powers couldn’t get a foothold in Egypt. The usual way by which empires encroached upon one another was by marriage. If I’m the king of the nearby Seleucid empire, for example, it might be a good idea to marry my daughter off to the King of Egypt. Then, when the pharaoh is old and feeble, I could claim the throne in the name of my grandson with my own army to back me. But if Ptolemaic kings only marry their sisters or daughters or nieces, I don’t have a prayer.
So, the potential for foreign invasion and manipulation was reduced by incest. But what of internal conflicts? Well, when you marry your own sisters you can maintain control over your nephews–all of whom would have a claim to your throne. It’s an easy solution to turn them into sons!
You might assume that the Ptolemaic gene pool would produce a lot of inbred drooling abominations, but aside from a tendency towards weight-gain and buggy eyes, the Ptolemies don’t appear to have suffered any genetic abnormalities. Unless you count the unflinching resolve to murder your siblings as a matter of nature rather than nurture.
Apparently, familiarity breeds contempt and the Ptolemies became a fratricidal lot. The family infighting was ruthless and deadly; there was no defense against those family dynamics.
So was it worth it?
Well, the evidence tells us that it was. The Ptolemies ruled Egypt for almost three hundred years. And if the Battle of Actium had gone the other way, Egyptian culture would have dominated western civilization.
Snake Charming, Serpent Symbolism & Slithery Politics in the Ancient World
The heroine of my novels, Cleopatra Selene, is the daughter of the much more famous Cleopatra VII of Egypt, the notorious Queen of the Nile who is best known for having committed suicide by way of clutching a venomous serpent to her breast. There is some debate over whether or not the story is true, but the legendary iconography remains.
The idea that Cleopatra was a seductress, a wicked woman who lured good Roman soldiers to their deaths, fits in with the Judeo-Christian idea of both women and serpents. The bible presents the snake to us as an object of wicked temptation, luring us to offend the divine order of the universe. But this Judaic view of the serpent is only one of the perspectives in the ancient world.
To the Egyptians, the cobra was a sacred animal that represented the ancient cobra-goddess Meretseger, who guarded the tombs of pharaohs. Another cobra-goddess was Wadjet, who was a guardian and protectress. The symbol of the cobra was so closely associated with the idea of royalty and the right to rule that it would become part of the official crown in the form of the uraeus, an icon of royalty that Cleopatra adopted herself. In fact, she chose three–one serpent to represent herself, her son Ptolemy Caesarion and the Roman man she claimed was her husband, Julius Caesar.
If Cleopatra did choose to die by the bite of a cobra, it would have been a highly symbolic political act–one that declared her the rightful ruler of Egypt, at one with the old gods of Egypt, and immortal. (The shedding of skin helped to perpetuate the image of the snake as an immortal animal.)
Despite her mother’s association with snakes–or perhaps because of it–Cleopatra’s daughter seems to have eschewed their symbolism in favor of crocodiles. However, she was likely to have encountered snakes in the Kingdom of Mauretania, where she was sent to rule. Snake charming was a popular entertainment in the ancient world and ancient magicians were said to be able to turn staves into snakes.
Snake charming, then as now, was accomplished by way of training a serpent, then pretending as if the music has hypnotized the dangerous animal. In reality, most of these performing snakes had their mouths sewn loosely shut or their fangs removed. However, the reputation of the charmers was often strong enough that they were called upon to rid villages of dangerous snakes.
But even if the Hellenized Queen Cleopatra Selene hadn’t been impressed by the reverence of Egypt for the snake, or by the snake charmers of North Africa, she would still have had to contend with the Greek idea of serpents.
In Greek mythology, the serpentine caduceus is a staff held by Hermes, who was a messenger god, a guardian of commerce, a protector and a guide to the dead. This symbol of the caduceus is often mistaken as a symbol of healing because it is confused with the single serpent and rod of Asclepius, the Greek God of medicine and healing. The shedding of snake skin represented for the Greeks a rejuvenation of the body or spirit. The serpent itself is also a representation of the dual nature of a physician who deals with both life and death. Because of this, the serpent was a highly respected animal in ancient Greece and figured prominently in mystery cults. Even the mother of Alexander the Great was said to keep serpents as pets and was rumored to have been seduced by Zeus in the form of a snake.
With the image of the serpent so prevalent throughout culture and mythology, it’s no surprise Cleopatra Selene was depicted wearing a snake armband on the cover of Song of the Nile!
When the Isle of Samos was the Center of the World
If it’s good to be the king, it’s even better to be the emperor. At least in ancient Rome. Unless your guards are waiting for you with daggers, or an angry wife feeds you poisoned mushrooms, you get to be the center of the world…wherever you go.
Now, when we think of the Roman empire–particularly the early Roman empire when there was still a pretense of a Republic–we quite naturally think of Rome as the center of the civilized world. Certainly, Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, would have wanted us to think of it that way.
However, the fact remains that once he’d wrested control away from the Senate and other quasi-democratic institutions, the government was always wherever he went. And in the aftermath of his victory over Cleopatra VII and Marcus Antonius (aka Mark Antony), the emperor spent quite some time on the Isle of Samos in Greece.
What was so special about this island? Well, for one, it had to be salt in the wound for those who had supported Cleopatra and Antony–because the Isle of Samos is where those two famous lovers made their doomed preparations for war. But it also had a lovely climate, and in spite of his stern Roman values, the emperor liked his creature comforts. (When fighting in the mountains in Spain, for example, he let his soldiers endure the cold while he vacationed down in Tarragona.)
Between the years of 22 BC – 19 BC, however, Augustus had another reason to move his court to the Greek island. Namely, he was preparing for war with Parthia to the East. He needed a relatively secure staging area from which to reorganize the Eastern part of the empire so as to make a stable foothold from which to advance. He had kings to appoint, taxes to levy, people to punish, and territorial boundaries to redraw.
In my new novel, Song of the Nile, my heroine believes that this is the perfect time to convince Augustus to restore her to the throne of Egypt. Like Cleopatra before her, she hopes to convince the Romans that she can provide them with grain in their long-sought war with the Parthians. It’s her experiences there, in Greece, engaged in a high stakes cat and mouse game with the emperor that change her forever.
So how much of that is true? Historically speaking, we have no idea where Cleopatra Selene was during those years before 19BC when she finally appears on the coins of Mauretania, but there are only three options. She may have been in Mauretania with Juba, though some scholars do question this idea and think she married Juba later. She may have been in Rome under the care of the emperor’s sister, Octavia. Or, as a ward of the emperor’s and a member of his court, she may have been on the Isle of Samos.
I chose the latter because it made for a wonderful showdown in my book–a titanic clash between a ruthless, complex, depraved emperor and the girl upon whose shoulders rested the legacy of Cleopatra. I think it made for a wonderful choice, and I hope my readers will agree!
How Rain, Grain & Cleopatra’s Daughter fed the Roman Empire
For much of its history, Rome depended upon Egypt for grain. While the Romans considered themselves an agricultural nation, and paid great homage to farming in literature, poetry, and art, the simple truth was that they couldn’t feed themselves.
By the time Cleopatra rolled herself out of a carpet at Julius Caesar’s feet, Egyptian exports accounted for fully a third of the 16.8 million bushels of grain brought to Rome. In short, whoever controlled Egypt could starve the world, which is why it was so important to warring Roman Generals.
However, by the time Augustus Caesar conquered Egypt, the needs of the Roman empire had far outstripped even the grain that Egypt could produce. (And some might argue that with a conquered Queen Cleopatra having committed suicide, there wasn’t anyone competent enough at the helm to turn Egypt into the bigger bread-basket it needed to be.)
That meant that Rome’s first emperor had to find a new way to feed his people, and he had to find it fast. He found a partial solution in Cleopatra’s daughter.
Though she’d been captured as a prisoner of war at the age of nine and marched through the streets in chains, the orphaned Cleopatra Selene was taken in by the emperor’s sister, Octavia, and became one of the favorites in the emperor’s household. At the age of fourteen, she was too dangerous to be married off to a fellow Roman who might take up the mantle of the Antonians. She was also far too dangerous to send back to Egypt where she might be immediately hailed as queen the moment her foot touched the shore.
The wily emperor had other plans for her.
He married her off to Juba II, an orphaned Numidian princeling and sent the couple to North Africa to rule over the Kingdom of Mauretania (modern day Morocco, Tunisia & Algeria).
It made good sense to send Cleopatra Selene to the western frontier of the empire. For one, it got her out of Rome, where her father’s old partisans might use her to stir up trouble. Mauretania was also far away from Selene’s native Egypt, where she might be tempted by her mother’s old allies into rebellion against the emperor.
But beyond political reasons, it made good sense to send Cleopatra Selene to Mauretania because the country was thought to be an untapped resource. Though the kingdom was considered still wild and barbarous, the emperor believed it could be turned into a sea of grain-fields that would help sustain his empire–if only the right people were put in charge of it.
This is where Cleopatra Selene was instrumental. As the last Ptolemaic queen anywhere in the world, her name carried with it a certain prestige. Though Hellenistic rulers were monarchs, they aimed to rule through a concept of harmonia–an idea adopted by Alexander the Great that the conquered and the conquering peoples should mingle and show respect for one another’s ways.
It may have been believed that Selene would soften the blow to the natives in having to be ruled by a thoroughly Romanized king like Juba II.
Moreover, Cleopatra Selene was closely linked with the goddess Isis and appears to have been a proponent of her faith even when it wasn’t politically expedient to do so. Isis was the great mother goddess, linked inextricably with the production of grain. Selene adopted Isis as her patron goddess, promoted her on the coins of the realm, and built a giant Iseum in Mauretania.
Pastures were divided up, distributed to Roman veterans and other land owners, and put to the plow. But the task of turning her new kingdom into a grain factory wasn’t easy. Unlike the Egypt of her birth, Mauretania had no central river like the Nile to flood the farm lands with fertile black soil. Farming in ancient Mauretania, then as now, depended on the rain.
First, the autumn rains were necessary to soften the soil for farming. Crops weren’t harvested in the autumn but sown then. Next, a spectacular springtime rainy season was necessary to help the sprouted plants grow big and verdant in time for a summer harvest. (Of course, the climate of this area was probably a little different in the ancient world then than it is now, and the Julian calendar was relatively recently adopted in ancient Mauretania, so it’s impossible to say exactly when the growing seasons were. However, in modern times, wheat is harvested there from May to August.)
Once the summer harvest was in, it was a race to get the grain loaded onto ships to Rome. The winter seas were a perilous crossing to attempt, so the bulk of grain transport ships would want to set sail before November. (See: The Grain Market in the Roman Empire, by Paul Erdkamp.) This was problematic for Cleopatra Selene and her husband Juba, because the harbor they inherited needed to be improved.
In addition to logistical difficulties were the human conflicts. Rome was a colonial power and the new order Cleopatra Selene and Juba II were sent to impose disrupted the normal way of life for the native Berbers who lived in their kingdom. Roman landowners insisted on fencing in their plantations, refusing summer grazing rights to the Berbers who had used the plateaus of Africa to feed their flocks. This loss drove shepherds and other nomadic Berbers farther to the south, towards the desert, and impoverished their lives.
While Selene was alive, the tensions seemed to be balanced and under control. Perhaps she fostered that sense of Hellenized harmonia, because though the Romans in Africa Nova provoked a war with the native Garamante tribes, the Berbers in Mauretania seem to have been largely pacified.
All of this changed, of course, after Selene’s death. Facing ever more encroachment from farmers, Berber tribesmen eventually banded together in rebellion against both Rome and against the King of Mauretania. Their leader was Tacfarinas, and the war would go on for ten years.
Ultimately, the need for grain won out. And in conjunction with the province of Africa Nova, Mauretania would help provide enough food to feed Rome for eight months of the year–Egypt accounting for the other four.
Why Historical Fiction & Fantasy Go Together (You Got Your Chocolate in my Peanut Butter!)
Written in the tradition of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon series, my novels about Cleopatra’s daughter envision a young messianic queen whose goddess communicates with her in bloody hieroglyphic messages that scroll down her arms. The books have been blessed with great reviews and strong sales. (Here’s where I knock on wood that the trend continues.) However, a few readers have reacted with horror to the appearance of magical realism in a story based on the true life of a historical queen like Cleopatra Selene. One reviewer even said that my publisher ought to be ashamed for allowing me to mix fantasy with historical women’s fiction.
I suppose the argument is that I’ve allowed fantasy to corrupt the pureness and sanctity of history.
Now, perhaps it’s just my background as a student of law and government that informs my beliefs, but history has never seemed all that pure or sanctified to me. We know that history is written by the victors, for example. That is true whether the victory has been on the battlefield, in an election, or in the court of public opinion. The picture that comes down to us through history–especially ancient history–is largely incomplete. Documents have been lost. Motives are murky. (Heck, even with the benefit of a 24-hour news cycle, few Americans can agree on the history that we’re making right now!)
Consequently, I’ve always viewed history as an exercise and art in perspective. It’s always a story shaped by both the beliefs of the people who lived it and the beliefs of those reading about it now. A historical world, in my opinion, has a great deal in common with a fantasy world. It is just as foreign to us, and just as mystical, even with the aid of scholars.
I chose to include a touch of fantasy in my historical fiction for a few reasons. The first is that Cleopatra Selene’s story of survival and triumph is so unlikely, that it almost seemed to require magic as an explanation. Moreover, when writing about a deeply religious ancient queen, it seemed like a natural choice to adopt the world view of the people she came from.
In the ancient world, there were certainly cynics, but by and large, the people believed deeply in supernatural phenomenon. This is especially so for the Romans, who believed they could read the will of the gods in the flight of birds or from the entrails of dead animals. Magic was a real part of their lives. It played a big part in their politics. (Just a few years after my heroine’s death, the imperial family would fall into a kind of civil war after accusations that Germanicus was killed by witchcraft.)
Magical realism was a way of lending authenticity to the novel.
In most respects, the story of Song of the Nile, which follows Cleopatra Selene’s life as a young queen, striving to make a place for herself in a Roman world, stays very close to actual historical events. There is also, however, a stronger surge of magical power in this book–magic that derives from the divine feminine and Selene’s goddess worship–power that she uses to survive and thrive.
Of course, I’m not going to say that including magical realism in historical fiction was an easy task. Trying to weave together all the intricacies of actual history with the magic that I invented made me pull my hair out more than once. But I think the result has been a story that engages the spirit and the mind.
I’m certainly not the only author to do it, but sometimes historical fantasy seems to be the white elephant in the room that nobody talks about. Philippa Gregory toys with it in The White Queen & The Red Queen as well as her first novel, Wideacre. Judith Tarr uses it to great effect in the Throne of Isis. Margaret George certainly seems to “go there” in Mary, Called Magdalene. More interesting, perhaps, is the trend in the fantasy genre to start incorporating history. I was very impressed by Maria Davahna Headley’s Queen of Kings, which is a story that envisions Cleopatra as a kind of ancient monster.
So what are your thoughts on the matter? Does historical fiction and fantasy mix or should these streams never be crossed? Are there shades of magical realism in historical fiction that you enjoy?
