2022/137: Cleopatra's Daughter — Jane Draycott

2022/137: Cleopatra's Daughter — Jane Draycott

Cleopatra Selene is an historical figure who should be much better known, particularly by young women of colour who look for someone they can personally identify and engage with in the historical record. [loc. 125]

I was only vaguely aware of the existence of Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony: I hadn't appreciated the arc of her life, from Egyptian princess to Roman prisoner to African queen. Draycott's biography, whilst admittedly a 'qualified reconstruction' rather than a rigorous examination of historical evidence, is an eminently readable account of the known facts, and the probable truths, of Cleopatra Selene's life. While there is little information about her childhood, there is ample information about aristocratic children in Rome around that time; though there are no records of her life in Alexandria, archaeological and historical evidence allows Draycott to describe city life in the first century BCE.

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