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Ptolemaic Descendants

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    Notes

    cos. suff. = Suffect consul, i.e. consul for part of the year. Imperial consulships frequently changed every few months.

    The descent lines given in this chart cover the first century or so of imperial Roman rule in the Near East. All but one of the key transitions are arguable, but probable. They are as follows:

  1. The descent of the kings of Commagene from Antiochus VIII, son of Cleopatra Thea, is certain from the inscriptions at Nimrud Dagh.

  2. The marriage of a king of Atropatenian Media to a daughter of Antiochus I of Commagene is a hypothesis developed by Settipani, based on the view that Strabo 11.13.1 is strictly referring to marriages made by Median kings, originally listed in chronological order of their occurrence.

  3. The descent of Artabanus III and later Parthian and Armenian kings from the kings of Atropatenian Media is the morely likely one of the two major hypotheses accounting for their origin. See the discussion in Settipani.

  4. The hypothesis that the female name Iotape is diagnostic of descent from Iotape of Media, the former fiancée of Alexander Helios, was developed by Macurdy, and has been generally accepted since. It provides connections from Media to Commagene and Emesa.

  5. The hypothesis that the Mauretanian and Emesan families were connected through Drusilla, probable daughter of Ptolemy of Mauretania, is developed here for the first time, under the entry for descendants of Cleopatra Selene.

    6. The internal genealogies of the Emesan dynasts and the later Arsacids are very poorly known. For plausible conjectures that illustrate the possibilities, see the cited works of Settipani.

    Principal Sources

    G. H. Macurdy, Iotape, JRS 26 (1936) 40.

    C. Settipani, Nos ancêtres de l'antiquité: Études des possibilités de liens généalogiques entre les familles de l'Antiquité et celles du haut Moyen-Age européen (Paris, 1991)

    C. Settipani, Continuité gentilice et continuité familiale dans les familles sénatoriales romaines à l'époque impériale: mythe et realité (Oxford, 2000)

    R. D. Sullivan, Near Eastern Royalty and Rome, 100-30 BC (Toronto, 1990)

     

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