Overview

The Roman emperor Augustus gave his name to the age he dominated, from the latter half of the first century BC until the second decade of the following century. Yet he shared the age with several royal women who ruled parts of the Mediterranean world, in a symbiotic relationship with Rome. This book is the first detailed portrait of these remarkable women. Previous accounts of the period have centered on Augustus or Rome's allied kings, with scant attention to the women who ruled as their partners or on their own. The most famous of these is Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of the great Cleopatra VII of Egypt and her partner, the Roman magistrate Marcus Antonius. Her very survival following Roman victory over her mother's forces is itself noteworthy but she went on to rule Mauretania (northwest Africa) with her husband for more than twenty years. She even attempted to reconstitute her mother's legacy in this remote region and, like her mother, was an ardent patron of the arts and scholarship. Other women of note included in this book are Pythodoris of Pontos, who ruled northern Asia Minor for forty years, and Salome of Judaea, the sister of Herod the Great, who, while never queen, exercised significant power for nearly half a century. These and others--Glaphyra of Cappadocia, Dynamis of Bosporos, Abe of Olbe, and Mousa of Parthia-were all part of the interrelated dynasties of the Augustan Age. Their values and attitudes toward rule directly affected the emergent Roman imperial system, and their legacy survived for centuries through their descendants and the goals of the royal women of Rome, such as Livia and Octavia, the wife and sister of Augustus. Assimilating all of the historical and archaeological evidence, Cleopatra's Daughter recovers these extraordinary women from the dim shadows of the ancient past.

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9780197604151

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Roller has succeeded in synthesizing a considerable amount of information that is not necessarily widely known or readily accessible and making it engrossing and entertaining for both specialist and non-specialist readers. He has offered a fresh perspective not only on the subject of women in antiquity, but also on the Augustan Principate and the Julio-Claudian period. * Classical World * Gillespie makes a significant contribution to the study of Boudica by placing her as complex literary construct in the geopolitical setting of Iron Age Roman Britain and its people and centering her textual sources within the cultural and historical framework of first- and third-century Imperial Rome... [An] elegantly written and closely argued monograph. * Classical World * Studies of Hellenistic queenship usually end with the death of Cleopatra VII. Overcoming the inadequacies of the sources, Duane Roller demonstrates that the tradition of strong queens continued into the Principate in this illuminating study of the careers of seven royal women, including Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania, Salome of Judaea, and Dynamis of Bosporos. * Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles * Roller's careful and learned book offers its readers engaging accounts of the hard-to-recover lives of several redoubtable queens in the realms allied to Augustus' Roman empire. Roller shows how these women, although often operating under the most perilous of circumstances, managed to stay at the top, sometimes by deploying their regal heritage or glamour, at others by exploiting their imperial connections or wealth * but always by dint of their deep political acumen. This is a detailed, impressive historical investigation. * A useful, enjoyable, deeply learned account of female dynasts of the era of Augustus. Roller introduces the period's politics, discusses terminology and precursors to late Hellenistic queens (this chapter is particularly well done), and offers excellent, concise biographical sketches of his seven subjects. He concludes with a discussion of Roman women vis-a-vis these queens. This is fine historian-as-detective work, using coins, literary references, and other evidence ... Highly recommended. * CHOICE * I think with a sound knowledge of Roman history and politics this book would fill in the gaps of these women, who are almost invisible in the records but who ruled different parts of the Roman Empire following the demise of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. * Dr. Charlotte Booth *

Roller has succeeded in synthesizing a considerable amount of information that is not necessarily widely known or readily accessible and making it engrossing and entertaining for both specialist and non-specialist readers. He has offered a fresh perspective not only on the subject of women in antiquity, but also on the Augustan Principate and the Julio-Claudian period. -- Classical World Gillespie makes a significant contribution to the study of Boudica by placing her as complex literary construct in the geopolitical setting of Iron Age Roman Britain and its people and centering her textual sources within the cultural and historical framework of first- and third-century Imperial Rome... [An] elegantly written and closely argued monograph. -- Classical World Studies of Hellenistic queenship usually end with the death of Cleopatra VII. Overcoming the inadequacies of the sources, Duane Roller demonstrates that the tradition of strong queens continued into the Principate in this illuminating study of the careers of seven royal women, including Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania, Salome of Judaea, and Dynamis of Bosporos. --Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles Roller's careful and learned book offers its readers engaging accounts of the hard-to-recover lives of several redoubtable queens in the realms allied to Augustus' Roman empire. Roller shows how these women, although often operating under the most perilous of circumstances, managed to stay at the top, sometimes by deploying their regal heritage or glamour, at others by exploiting their imperial connections or wealth--but always by dint of their deep political acumen. This is a detailed, impressive historical investigation. --W. Jeffrey Tatum, Victoria University of Wellington A useful, enjoyable, deeply learned account of female dynasts of the era of Augustus. Roller introduces the period's politics, discusses terminology and precursors to late Hellenistic queens (this chapter is particularly well done), and offers excellent, concise biographical sketches of his seven subjects. He concludes with a discussion of Roman women vis-a-vis these queens. This is fine historian-as-detective work, using coins, literary references, and other evidence ... Highly recommended. -- CHOICE I think with a sound knowledge of Roman history and politics this book would fill in the gaps of these women, who are almost invisible in the records but who ruled different parts of the Roman Empire following the demise of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. -- Dr. Charlotte Booth

Author Information

Duane W. Roller, Professor Emeritus of Classics at The Ohio State University, is an ancient historian, archaeologists, and classicist. He is a four-time Fulbright scholar, and the author of numerous scholarly articles and over a a dozen books, including Cleopatra: A Biogragphy (Oxford 2010), Eratosthenes' Geography, and Ancient Geography (London 2015).

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