KLEOPATRA SELENE – A LOOK AT THE MOON AND HER BRIGHT SIDE Adrian Dumitru Metropolitan Library, Bucharest ABSTRACT Little is known about the last Seleukid queen, Kleopatra Selene: three bronze denominations (per- haps struck at Damascus, perhaps at Ptolemaïs) and some literary fragments scattered throughout the works of Cicero, Strabo, Josephus, Appian and Justin Yet this sparse evidence has enabled modern authors to reconstruct an extraordinary biography of a woman that was involved in six decades of Ptolemaic and Seleukid history, a time of turmoil and internecine wars She was the daughter of one Ptolemaic king (Ptolemy VIII), the wife of (maybe) two Ptolemies (Ptolemy IX and X) and of an- other three Seleukids (Antiochos VIII, IX, X), besides being the mother of the last generally-ac- knowledged Seleukid king, Antiochos XIII This paper examines the literary and numismatic ap- pearances of Selene until the death of her husband, since most coincide with key moments in the history of the Seleukid dynasty The hypothesis that she might have had another son called Antiochos (Philometor) will be investigated (and questioned), and it will further be argued that she possibly had several other children besides the Antiochos mentioned by Cicero, as well as an anonymous brother I INTRODUCTION When examining the complex history of the last decades of the Seleukid dynasty, there is one character who vanishes and resurfaces throughout forty years of inter- necine wars, yet remains in the background as a spectral presence: the queen called both Kleopatra and ‘Selene’ – the moon 1 While she may not have been the éminence grise of the time (our sources do not allow for such a view), she was nevertheless present when some important deci- sions were made – most of which concerned her Her story is intimately connected to the story of the Seleukid dynasty, as she was a queen and wife of three Seleukid kings in addition to her – perhaps – two Ptolemaic husbands, as well as mother to, and occasionally acting queen for, at least one of her sons In this paper, I shall 1 Grainger 1997, 45; Hölbl 2000, 206, 222, 238; Ehling 2007, 23–24, 88–89, 234, 237, 242–243, 253, 255; Lightman 2008, 80–81 (s v) Macurdy 1932, 170 counts her as Kleopatra “V” in the Ptolemaic lineage, a convention followed by most of the recent authors * The author wishes to thank the editors, Altay Coşkun and Alex McAuley for their patience. Special thanks are also due to Altay Coşkun, Carmen Panaite, Dan Sabadas, Alexandru Jinga and Florin Rotaru for making possible the author’s presence at SSD4 in Montreal in 2013 And a very special “Thank you” goes to Raluca Cristina Popescu for her patience, support and for reviewing the English of this paper The author is the only one to be held accountable for all the (possible) errors or misreadings that may remain