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Cleopatra's Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen Hardcover – May 23, 2023
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The first modern biography of one of the most influential yet long-neglected rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra.
“A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens.” ―Emma Southon
As the only daughter of Roman Triumvir Marc Antony and Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, Cleopatra Selene was expected to uphold traditional feminine virtues; to marry well and bear sons; and to legitimize and strengthen her parents’ rule. Yet with their parents’ deaths by suicide, the princess and her brothers found themselves the inheritors of Egypt, a claim that placed them squarely in the warpath of the Roman emperor.
“Supported by a feast of visual and literary references” (Caroline Lawrence), Cleopatra’s Daughter reimagines the life of Cleopatra Selene, a woman who, although born into Egyptian royalty and raised in her mother’s court, was cruelly abandoned and held captive by Augustus Caesar. Creating a narrative from frescos and coinage, ivory dolls and bronzes, historian and archaeologist Jane Draycott shows how Cleopatra Selene navigated years of imprisonment on Palatine Hill―where Octavia, the emperor’s sister and Antony’s fourth wife, housed royal children orphaned in the wake of Roman expansion―and emerged a queen.
Despite the disrepute of her family, Cleopatra Selene in time endeared herself to her captors through her remarkable intellect and political acumen. Rather than put her to death, Augustus wed her to the Numidian prince Juba, son of the deposed regent Juba I, and installed them both as client rulers of Mauretania in Africa. There, Cleopatra Selene ruled successfully for nearly twenty years, promoting trade, fostering the arts, and reclaiming her mother’s legacy―all at a time, Draycott reminds us, when kingship was an inherently male activity.
A princess who became a prisoner and a prisoner who became a queen, Cleopatra Selene here “finally attains her rightful place in history” (Barry Strauss). A much-needed corrective, Cleopatra’s Daughter sheds new and revelatory light on Egyptian and Roman politics, society, and culture in the early days of the Roman Empire.
35 black-and-white illustrations- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLiveright
- Publication dateMay 23, 2023
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
- ISBN-101324092599
- ISBN-13978-1324092599
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Editorial Reviews
Review
― Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, New York Times Book Review
"[W]ell-informed and convincing . . . Selene is a figure for our times, as Ms. Draycott rightly points out: a woman who wielded power in a male-dominated world, a wife who crossed racial boundaries in her marriage, an exile who found success in two adoptive homelands."
― James Romm, Wall Street Journal
"[W]ell-researched and full of interesting facts and details that history buffs will find satisfying and exciting."
― San Francisco Book Review
"In Cleopatra’s Daughter, her first modern biography, the enigmatic life and rollercoaster fortunes of Cleopatra Selene ― the only daughter of Queen Cleopatra VII and Roman general and politician Marc Antony ― are lushly rendered by historian Jane Draycott . . . Filled with fascinating insights and impressive research, Cleopatra’s Daughter resurrects one of history’s forgotten women ‘who succeeded quietly rather than failed loudly."
― Peggy Kurkowski, Washington Independent Review of Books
"Archaeologist Draycott uses primary sources as well as art and historical artifacts to construct an engaging portrait of Cleopatra Selene and her turbulent times."
― Kristine Huntley, Booklist
"[A] lush biography... Among other topics, Draycott sheds intriguing light on race and ethnicity in the Roman empire and the opportunities women had to wield power and influence. This peek into the ancient past enthralls."
― Publishers Weekly
"In this deep work of historical excavation, Draycott.... re-creates with keen contextual evidence the life and turbulent times of Cleopatra’s surviving daughter… A vivid portrayal of the difficult journey of an overlooked African queen."
― Kirkus Reviews
From the Back Cover
―Barry Strauss, author of The War that Made the Roman Empire
“I heartily recommend Jane Draycott’s compelling biography of the only surviving child of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, the captive princess Cleopatra Selene. . . . Draycott brings to life the little-known story of an intelligent, powerful woman of mixed Macedonian, Roman, and Egyptian heritage making her own way in exciting historical times.”
―Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons
“Fascinating! Full of fabulous facts about ancient Rome, Egypt, and North Africa . . . supported by a feast of visual and literary references.”
―Caroline Lawrence, author of The Roman Mysteries series
“A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens. . . . [A] brilliantly different perspective on the end of the republic and beginning of the empire.”
―Emma Southon, author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
“Jane Draycott paints a compelling picture of Cleopatra Selene as a remarkable woman who overcame her traumatic past to become a powerful and influential queen in Roman Africa. . . . Draycott encourages the reader to imagine what life must have been like for a woman who, against all odds, successfully maintained the delicate balance of remaining in the good graces of the Roman imperial family while still honoring her Egyptian heritage.”
―Donna Zuckerberg, author of Not All Dead White Men
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Liveright (May 23, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1324092599
- ISBN-13 : 978-1324092599
- Item Weight : 1.36 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #392,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #159 in Ancient Rome Biographies
- #257 in Historical Middle East Biographies
- #341 in Ancient Egyptians History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jane Draycott is a Roman historian and archaeologist, and the author of Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen.
She investigates science, technology, and medicine in the ancient world, and is particularly interested in the history and archaeology of medicine; impairment, disability, and prostheses; and botany and horticulture. Recently, she has begun exploring the use (and abuse) of history and archaeology in video games, particularly those set in classical antiquity. She has also long had a special interest in Graeco-Roman Egypt and the Roman client kingdom of Mauretania.
She was awarded a BA (Hons) in Archaeology and Ancient History and an MA in Ancient History from Cardiff University, an MSc in Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology from Cranfield University, and a PhD in Classics from the University of Nottingham. Following the completion of her doctorate, she was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships: Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome and Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Research Fellow in Classics at the University of Glasgow. Over the last decade, she has worked in academic institutions in the UK and Italy, and excavated sites ranging from Bronze Age villages to First World War trenches across the UK and Europe. She is currently Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow and co-director of the University of Glasgow’s Games and Gaming Lab.
Her research has been funded by organisations including the AHRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She has written books, book chapters, and articles on a range of subjects related to ancient history and archaeology for both specialist and non-specialist readership. Her academic publications include the monographs Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome, Approaches to Healing in Roman Egypt and Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy from the Middle Republic to the Early Empire, and the edited volumes Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives Past, Present and Future, Prostheses in Antiquity, Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, and Women in Classical Video Games. She has discussed aspects of her research on television and radio, in vidcasts, and in podcasts.
When she is not reading, writing, or thinking about Roman history and archaeology, she enjoys indulging her wanderlust by travelling to interesting places, playing computer games, cooking vegan food, practising yoga and hooping. She lives in Glasgow with a tyrannical Norwegian Forest Cat named Magnus, and is currently renovating a dilapidated Victorian house. You can find her on Twitter as @JLDraycott and Instagram as jane.draycott.
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With rare exceptions, biographies of ancient and medieval women can be disappointing, mainly due to the sheer paucity of information available about them from a world run by and written about by men, and far too often the book devolves into a “life and times” with a lot about the men in the subject’s life and mainly supposition about the subject herself. I’m happy that this was not the case with Cleopatra’s Daughter. Yes, those things were present, as is to be expected, but I never forgot that she was the focus, and it seemed that Ms. Draycott was able to extract a surprising amount of information from a scanty record. This was helped by the fact that Cleopatra Selene, if not as powerful and charismatic as her mother (a well-nigh impossible task), also seems to have been a formidable woman who inspired loyalty on her own behalf, as well as having what appears to be a compatible and equal match with one of Rome’s client kings.
The book starts with a brief history of the Ptolemaic dynasty, its center in Alexandria, and the lives of the two outsized personalities who would become the parents of Cleopatra Selene. It then traces what her life would have been like, first as a princess and nominally a queen in her own right, as her parents declared her Queen of Crete and Cyrenaica when she was only six years old, then her late childhood and adolescence in Rome, and finally her marriage to Juba II of Numidia, a fellow child hostage who had also been raised in Augustus’s circle, and their rule of the kingdom of Mauretania until what seems to have been a fairly early death. Despite this, she still exerted a large influence on the culture of their court, including Egyptian symbolism in artwork and on their coinage, as well as on Juba’s scholarly writings. Finally, Ms. Draycott speculates on whether the pair, whose son was murdered by Caligula, might also have had one or more daughters whose descendants may have ended up on the imperial throne. I also found her discussion of the fraught question of Cleopatra Selene's mother's, and by extension her own, ethnicity to be both balanced and thoughtful. All in all, I enjoyed this book very much, and it truly brought Cleopatra Selene and those around her to life for me.
I received a copy of Cleopatra’s Daughter from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Cleopatra Selene was one of four children born to Cleopatra and the only one known to have survived to adulthood. Her siblings included Caesarion, the purported son of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Cleopatra Selene was the daughter of Mark Antony, who also fathered her twin, Alexander Helios and her younger brother, Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Draycott’s book is divided into twelve chapters with a forward, introduction, and afterward. The first couple of chapters focus on background information. Chapter 1 introduces the ancient city of Alexandria, Cleopatra Selene’s likely birthplace and where she would have spent her formative years. The second chapter focuses on her parents and the historical events that brought them together.
The next chapter examines Cleopatra Selene’s birth. It includes both information specifically known about her and details of what giving birth was like for a noblewoman in Alexandria during that time period.
In chapters 4 and 5, Draycott discusses the events leading to the downfalls of Antony and Cleopatra, including their defeat at the hands of Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, and their eventual suicides. Over the following three chapters, the setting shifts to Rome, where Cleopatra Selene is taken along with her twin and their younger brother to march in Octavian’s triumph. Here, Draycott invites readers to imagine what this move must have been like for the young princess and how she adjusted to Roman ways. The text also examines the influence Egyptian culture had upon Roman society and what Cleopatra Selene might have thought of this. This exploration of Cleopatra Selene’s life in Rome ends with a discussion of the various female role models who influenced her. These include her mother, the queens of Kush (Egypt’s southern neighbor), and influential Roman women such as Octavian’s sister, Octavia, and his wife, Livia Drusilla.
Chapters 9 and 10 explore Cleopatra Selene’s adulthood—her marriage to a Numidian prince and the couple’s appointment as rulers of the newly formed client kingdom of Mauretania in North Africa. Draycott invites readers to imagine how Cleopatra Selene and her husband managed to honor her Egyptian ancestry while remaining loyal to Octavian, who by now had taken on the title of Augustus.
The last two chapters delve into the aftermath of Cleopatra Selene’s life. Chapter 11 looks at her known and possible descendants, while chapter 12 examines how we should consider her today. This final chapter addresses questions of race and identity—a timely discussion in the wake of the controversy surrounding the casting in Netflix’s recent Cleopatra documentary.
While I found Cleopatra’s Daughter an enjoyable and informative read, I do have a few quibbles. The chapters dealing with her mother rely heavily on Roman sources, which are today acknowledged to be biased toward Octavian/Augustus. There are moments when the stereotype of Cleopatra as the manipulative seductress feels alive and well on these pages. For a more rounded view of Queen Cleopatra, I recommend the biographies by Michael Grant and Duane Roller as well as Barry Strauss’s recent The War that Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium.
The book would have also benefited from some color illustrations. All the artifacts presented are in grayscale. This is fine for reliefs and statuary, which have been stripped of their color over time, but jewelry, paintings, and coins lose some of their detail when presented in black-and-white. In addition to illustrations, this volume features maps, family trees, lists of ancient source material, a bibliography, a list of abbreviations, endnotes, image credits, and an index.
Despite any shortcomings, Cleopatra’s Daughter fleshes out the life of this little-known yet very successful Roman client queen. While some of the information about Cleopatra Selene is inferred, Draycott clearly denotes the difference between speculation and fact. All speculative details are supported by archaeological evidence. Hopefully, this work will encourage further study into the lives of other descendants of Cleopatra and Antony and additional lesser-known figures from the ancient world.
Everyone know who Cleopatra was…she is beyond infamous…but her daughter? …not so much. And she is equally as fascinating, I feel, as her mother. Ms. Draycott presents a biography, the first that I know of, detailing as much as she could research and find concerning this intricate and intriguing woman.
Extensively researched and beautifully presented, this biography gives us as much as insight as possible at this time of this true to life woman, that deserves so much more attention than what has been given.
I truly enjoyed this.
5/5 stars