ABSTRACT
The later dynastic history of the family of Juba and Kleopatra Selene is difficult to untangle. One feels acutely the lack of a Josephus or Plutarch. The few sources are baffling in obscurity and present incompatible data. Issues include the death date of Kleopatra Selene, Juba’s subsequent marriage, and even the number and names of their children. Most clear is the regnal span of Juba and his heir Ptolemaios. Juba’s reign lasted until AD 23 or 24, since his coins run only into his forty-eighth year, and Tacitus recorded that the transition from Juba to the “negligent youth” Ptolemaios was in the ninth or tenth year of Tiberius.1 Coins with both “rex Iuba” and “rex Ptolemaeus” show that they were co-rulers for a number of years, but none of these joint coins has a regnal year.2 Coins as early as Juba’s Year 30 (AD 5) have a youthful bust of Ptolemaios, perhaps when he assumed the toga virilis,3 and coins from Year 36 (AD 11) show a more mature version (Figure 26e, f ); thus a birth date of ca. 13-9 BC is possible.4 Ptolemaios’ own coins run for twenty regnal years.5 Since he was executed by the emperor Gaius Caligula,6 his death occurred between AD 37 and 41 and thus his first regnal year was
is rarely mentioned in literature without reference to the fact that Juba was his father. Strabo and Suetonius recorded that his mother was Kleopatra Selene,8 which, however, would be obvious from his name. No other sons are known, and his mother would have been about 30 when he was born, having been married for over a decade. Thus despite his dynastic name, he may not have been the first-born son – his grandmother had not used the name for either her first or second son – but he was the oldest still alive in Juba’s later years.
