Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [164]
The outlines of the biography of Selene, Cleopatra and Antony’s daughter, are depicted with significant poetic license here—but she did travel to Rome along with her two brothers after her parents’ deaths. Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus disappear without explanation from the historical record soon after, and most historians guess that they both died of childhood illness. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to imagine a sinister fate for the sons of Antony and Cleopatra in Augustus’s Rome. Cleopatra Selene, on the other hand, remained loyal to Rome, and was eventually married, with a large dowry provided by Augustus, to the young African King, Juba II. Interestingly, Juba had, as a three-year-old child, walked in Julius Caesar’s triumphal procession into Rome after Caesar’s own Alexandrian idyll—the one that put Cleopatra on the throne. Selene reigned as queen of Mauretania (today’s Algeria), loyal and subservient to Rome, and died in A.D. 6. The epitaph Augustus recites to Cleopatra in the epilogue is by Crinagoras of Mytilene, a famed Greek poet who lived in Rome as a court poet. So it’s quite possible that said epitaph was indeed commissioned by Augustus to memorialize his one loyal “daughter.”
Speaking of: A sidenote on daughters, and a storyline I couldn’t manage to squeeze much of into this book, to my great sorrow. Julia, Augustus’s only child, eventually fell in love with Mark Antony and Fulvia’s orphaned eldest son, Iullus, sustaining a long affair with him (during her marriage to Marcus Agrippa, and later to Tiberius), which led to her banishment by her father, and to Iullus’s execution. As well, there were rumors of her other activities, some of them involving illicit dancing and ritual in temples, and perhaps a plot against Augustus’s life. Augustus died without blood inheritors, having banished not only Julia, but her daughter as well. One of his final acts was to order the execution of his last grandson, Julia’s son. Personally, I suspect this might’ve had something to do with Augustus’s suspicion that the bloodlines of his grandchildren had been tainted by his daughter’s infidelity with Mark Antony’s son. Regardless, Antony’s line would eventually inherit the empire. The emperors Claudius and Nero were both descendants of Mark Antony and Fulvia’s remaining Roman daughters.
Usem, the Psylli, is drawn from classical history. He belongs to a tribe referenced both in Plutarch (brought to examine Cleopatra after her death) and in Herodotus, and his tribe is famous both for their relationship with serpents, and for going to war against the Western Wind. In classical sources, the tribe loses the war, and is buried beneath sand dunes. However, their reappearance later, in Cleopatra’s time, intrigued me, so . . .
Chrysate, the witch of Thessaly, is a creature drawn from my nightmare imagination as well as from a variety of classical sources (including Medea, who by tradition is from Thessaly, and certainly did some famous child-sacrifice. The ingredients and procedure for Chrysate’s youth spell are taken from Ovid’s Medea), as are many of her spells, though there is no historic link to Augustus. The price for drawing down the moon really is a sacrificed child, or one of the witch’s own eyes.
Auðr, the seiðkona, is based in Norse history and mythology (see stories of Freya and the Norns, as well as many tales more historically based, about the völva and seiðkona—two words for the same kind of sorceress and seer) as are her distaff, and her powers over fate and memory. I was also inspired