p. ix Emphasis is on Cleopatra Selene of Mauretania, Glahpyra of Cappadocia, Salome of Judea, Dynamis of Bosporus and Pythodoris of Pontos. They were contemporaries, related through marriage to one another, and were closely allied with the imperial family in Rome and its own women, such as Livia and the younger Antonia, who themselves took on many of the characteristics of Hellenistic queens. The most famous was Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra VII and the triumvir Marcus Antonius, but the others were also of great importance in their own territories. .. In modern diction they are called “queens” (with the exception of Salome), an inadequate translation of the Greek words basileia and basillissa. Their role models went back to the heroic age as well as various prototypes from the late Classical and Hellensitic periods, and the concept of ‘queen’ had developed an important royal dynamic int he generations before … The women could offer greater political stability and status than their husbands, who might be subject to sudden death while on campaign, and their closeness to the imperial family provided precedents for the role of Roman aristocratic women. Cleopatra Selene was a cousion of members of the ruling Julio-Claudian family and was thus related to three Roman emperors. Others had personal contact with the imperial elite in Rome. Cleopatra Selen and Pythodoris were patronesses of intellectual culture and implemented the work of major scholars. And the descendants of the queens held royal power on the borders of the Roman Empire for generations afterwards.
p. 143 “it was Octavia who noused the queen’s children after their mother’s death; Cleopatra may have nad some hint that this could happen, or even suggested it to Octavian, knowing that Octavia had taken in another royal refugee, Juba, for a number of years. Cleopatra Selene lived in Rome for only five years, but she did so from the ahe of 10 to 15, certaimly a seminal period in any young person’s development. In 25bc Octavia implemented the marriage of the two royal refugees and they were sent to Mauretania. With Greek, Roman and probably Egyptian blood, the young princess found that yher years in Rome well prepared her for her new role as queen.”
p. 99 “The most important royal woman of the later Augustan era was Pythodoris, who, for more than half a century, ruled much of central and northern Asia Minor and the eastern Black Sea littoral. She survived well into the period of Tiberius and became the ancestor of a line of royal women that extended past the middle of the 1sy century AD. Like all women in antiquity, she remains shadowy, but due to the euologistic comments of the geographer and historian Strabo of Amaseia, her career is better documented than that of many of her ruling colleagues.
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