Ptolemy XII, nicknamed Auletes (“the flutist” or “the piper”), lived a life thoroughly suffused with ruthless dynastic intrigue. He grew up during the reign of his formidable grandmother, Cleopatra III (queen of Egypt since 141 or 140 BCE), who, after the death of her husband Ptolemy VIII in 116 BCE, continued to wield power through co-rule arrangements with her sons. Auletes’ father, Ptolemy IX, competed for the favor of his mother and the Alexandrian royal court against his brother, Ptolemy X “Alexander.” Ptolemy IX was dominant between 116-107 BCE, whereas Ptolemy Alexander gained supremacy between 107-88 BCE. Auletes (son of ousted Ptolemy IX) was sent to live abroad in Greece in 103. Meanwhile, Alexander murdered Cleopatra III in 101 BCE, ending the wily queen’s four decades of involvement in the Egyptian government. Following their mother’s death, the brothers—Alexander and Ptolemy IX—fought a proxy war by backing different sides of a civil war in the Seleucid Empire (where the royal family was intermarried with the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty). Distracted by foreign entanglements, Alexander was caught off guard by an Alexandrian uprising in 89 and was killed in 88 BCE. Ptolemy IX subsequently seized power, but his son, Auletes, was not able to immediately reap the rewards of his father’s good fortune. Instead, Auletes was captured by King Mithridates VI of Pontus in 88 BCE and spent the rest of the 80s living in Anatolia and Syria. Auletes finally returned to Egypt in 80 BCE after the deaths of his father, Ptolemy IX (in 81 BCE), and his cousin, Ptolemy XI (in 80 BCE). Auletes seized power immediately in Egypt and married his sister, Cleopatra Tryphaena (or “the Opulent”). Auletes was formally recognized as pharaoh in 76 BCE, and it was around that same time that his eldest daughter, Berenice IV, was born.
Due to his complicated path to power, Ptolemy XII Auletes was confronted with legitimacy issues from the beginning of his reign. His predicament was made more precarious due to the fact that his mother had been a mistress instead of a formal queen. Rome seized on the opportunity to pressure Egypt, spreading rumors of the king’s illegitimacy and insinuating that Ptolemy XI had bequeathed Egypt to Rome in his will. The issue came to a head in 65 BCE, when Rome began openly threatening annexation of Egypt. Auletes, under Roman threat, began his long and controversial policy of bribing and allying with Roman strongmen. In this early case, the Egyptian king aligned himself with Pompey the Great, and aided the Roman general’s campaigns in Palestine. Pompey, in turn, called on his supporters in the Senate to drop the annexation issue. A few years later, during the First Triumvirate in Rome, Auletes also bribed Julius Caesar with a payment of 6,000 talents in 59 BCE, which resulted in Roman recognition of Ptolemy XII Auletes as the king of Egypt. Even so, the Romans went on to seize Cyprus from Ptolemaic Dynasty control the very next year, causing great unrest in Egypt against their king.
In the year 58 BCE, an interesting coup occurred in Egypt. Ptolemy XII Auletes was ousted from power, but his family—Queen Cleopatra Tryphaena and her daughter, Berenice IV—were allowed to stay behind as the rulers of Egypt. Cleopatra Tryphaena died shortly after the coup, causing Berenice IV to be the sole ruler of Egypt by 57 BCE. Unfortunately for her, Auletes was not happy for his daughter, and he did not wish her reign well. Instead, Auletes fled to Pompey the Great and begged for the Romans to restore him to power at the expense of his daughter. Interestingly, the Roman Senate decided not to openly intervene on Auletes’ behalf. Yet, the exiled king continued to offer increasingly large bribes to individual Roman men of power. By 55 BCE, after promising a 10,000 talent payment to either Pompey the Great or Rome’s Syrian governor, Aulus Gabinius, Auletes finally received the Roman army he had wished to buy. With this Roman military support, Ptolemy XII Auletes invaded Egypt and violently removed his daughter, Berenice IV, and her husband Archelaus, from power. These events were recorded by the contemporaneous geographer, Strabo (c. 64 BCE- 24 CE), who wrote:
“[Auletes] was deposed by the Alexandrines; and of his three daughters, one, the eldest, who was legitimate, they proclaimed queen; but his two sons, who were infants, were absolutely excluded from the succession…She afterwards married Archelaus…At this time Pompey the Great entertained Auletes as his guest on his arrival at Rome, and recommended him to the senate, negotiated his return…Ptolemy (Auletes) on being restored by Gabinius, put to death both Archelaus and his daughter” (Strabo, Geography, 17.1.11).
Cassius Dio (c. 163-235), a Roman historian, directly named Berenice in his commentary on the period. He wrote, “Berenice was at this time ruling the Egyptians…and joined to herself on the same terms Archelaus…So Gabinius conquered them, and after slaying Archelaus and many others he immediately gained control of all Egypt and delivered it over to Ptolemy. Now Ptolemy killed his daughter and the foremost and richest of the other citizens…” (Cassius Dio, The Roman History, 39.57-58). Interestingly, the king’s killing of Berenice paved the way to power for Auletes’ second eldest daughter, Cleopatra VII—the famous Cleopatra who later became involved with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Ptolemy XII Auletes, after indebting his realm to Rome and executing his own daughter, ultimately did not live past the end of the decade. He died in 51 BCE, leaving Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII as joint successors to a struggling kingdom. The long-delayed Roman annexation of Ptolemaic Egypt occurred in 30 BCE, after Octavian defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Tétradrachme of Ptolemy XII, [Public Domain] via Gallica Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Sources:
- Strabo’s Geography, translated by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer (1903 edition), republished in The Complete Works of Strabo (Delphi Classics, 2016).
- Roman History, by Cassius Dio, translations by Ursel Philip Boissevain (1855-1930) and Herbert Baldwin Foster (dated 1905), republished in The Complete Works of Cassius Dio (Delphi Classics, 2014).
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy-XII-Auletes
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/ptolemy-xii-auletes/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy-IX-Soter-II
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/ptolemy-ix-soter/
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/cleopatra-iii/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy-X-Alexander-I
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/ptolemy-x-alexander/
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/cleopatra-vi-tryphaena/
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/ptolemy-xi-alexander/
- https://www.livius.org/articles/person/cleopatra-vii/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cleopatra-queen-of-Egypt
