Hi there. You're listening to The Hellenistic Age podcast.

Episode 28, Hellenistic Women Part 2, Queens and Royal Women.

I saw her once hop 40 paces through the public street, and having lost her breath,

she spoke and panted, that she did make defect perfection and breathless, pour forth breath.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy,

the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry, where most she satisfies, for vilest things become themselves in her, that the holy priests bless her when she is rigged.

In one of the most famous passages of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,

Antony's loyal comrade Anobarbus relays with a mixture of awe and revulsion towards the mystical and alluring charm of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra,

a woman of opulence and power who would bring the ruin of the Roman Republic

or her seduction of otherwise virtuous Roman men.

From the end of the Roman Civil Wars to Shakespeare's Britain and the romantic and orientalist

art movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, the trope of the exotic

Eastern Queen has fascinated both the public and popular culture, with the likes of Shiba and

Zinobi of great interest. The Hellenistic Queen also falls into this category as well,

the most obvious example being Cleopatra herself. Like the rise of the kingship, the position of a queen had radically transformed during the Hellenistic period,

where they would move from background characters of the royal household to major players in the political landscape.

My goal with this episode is to give you a general understanding of the role that Hellenistic

queens took on as royal mothers, as semi-divine patrons, and sometimes even as the head

of armies.

In order to understand Hellenistic queens, we need to follow the changes in evolution of

the role that was influenced by multiple cultures and regions

of the pre-Hellenistic world, mainly Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Macedon. In mainland Greece,

...