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Are you able to explain Cleopatra Selene/Shimuka and your feels for them? and the possibilities? screwing over octavian sounds /amazing/

YES, I CAN, AND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING.

Before I get started on this whole thing, I’m going to set up the premise, mostly because a lot of people don’t actually know who I’m talking about.

[Standard disclaimer: these people have been dead for millennia, and this means that a lot of dates have been fudged/guesstimated. Actual events/deaths are also shaky, which leaves us with this.]

Also, under a cut because this got long.

So, who were these two people?

Cleopatra Selene II was the only daughter of Cleopatra VII, last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt (before Rome took over), and Marc Antony. She married Juba II of Numidia and later became Queen of Mauritania.

Shimuka was the founder of the Satavahana dynasty- according to the Puranas, he was a servant to the then-ruler of the Kanva dynasty, but he overthrew the king, established his own rule, and went on to found a dynasty named, literally, “a hundred horses.”*

Now, we can start setting up the background:

Cleopatra had four children: one by Julius Caesar (Caesarion) and three by Marc Antony (twins, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios; and another son, Ptolemy Philadelphius). Caesarion was her co-ruler.

Cleopatra Selene was born in 40 BCE.

In late 31 BCE, Cleopatra and Marc Antony lose the battle of Actium to Octavian. When it becomes clear that they cannot win against the might of Rome, Cleopatra sends Caesarion- her co-ruler- to India through Ethiopia.

In August of 30 BCE, Cleopatra and Marc Antony commit suicide.

The generals that Cleopatra sent with Caesarion betray him to Octavian; Caesarion never reaches India, and is killed.**

Cleopatra Selene and her two brothers are taken to Rome, clapped in chains, and forced to walk through the streets.

Between 26 and 20 BCE, her brothers die. The cause of death is unknown.

So what we know thus far is that Cleopatra Selene was ten years old when her parents died, ten years old when she was humiliated and forced to walk through the streets of Rome in chains. Sometime between ages fourteen and twenty, she saw the last of her family die.

The rest of her life, historically, goes roughly like this:

Octavian gives Cleopatra Selene a large dowry, and “ever after she was an ally of Rome.”

She marries Juba II of Numidia, and they settle in Mauritania.

Cleopatra Selene wields great influence over her husband, and under their leadership, Mauritania prospers.

She dies in early CE, in relative happiness.

We can now turn our attentions to Shimuka***:

Around 20-40 BCE, Shimuka overthrows the Kanva King and assumes the role of king.

The Puranas clearly state that he ruled for 23 years.

Shimuka also appears to be “a very shrewd politician”.

According to the same source, Shimuka married his son off to a maharathi’s (a very skilled warrior) daughter to get more support for overthrowing the Kanvas

Later in his reign, he went on to adopt/normalize Jainism

In the last years of his reign, Shimuka became a tyrant, and was deposed by his own brother.

(Here, I’m eliminating Satakarni- Shimuka’s son- from the narrative, because I like to imagine Shimuka as about 20-25 in this, and that means he can’t have a son of marriageable age. Just imagine that Satakarni is born a couple years later, to Cleopatra Selene.)

So, to sum up: Cleopatra Selene is a teenage girl who’s going to be given a huge-ass dowry, Shimuka is a newly-formed king who wants some form of legitimacy, and they live in ~roughly~ the same time period.

Is this not shipping material???

Now, okay, lbr, there need to be things exchanged for any such alliance to take place. Here comes the interesting part: the Satavahanas are sitting right on top of the Deccan Plateau, a place that is incredibly rich in minerals and crops.

They also have access to numerous ports.

Note that in the Geography of Strabo, Pliny the Elder asserts that “[he] learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.” We can therefore assume that under Octavian’s rule, the Indo-Roman trade grew exponentially.

So let’s say that the Satavahanas were easier on tariffs than the Kanvas and eager for international trade. Let’s say that Shimuka realized that overthrowing a king and setting up your own rule is all well and good, but nobody really takes you seriously if you don’t get yourself some credibility. Let’s say that Shimuka wants gold, to finance an army that’s only growing in size, and he also wants legitimacy, to better-establish his dynasty.

Let’s say the Romans want better trade partners.

If, around 30 BCE, Shimuka overthrows the Kanvas and assumes kingship, this sets the stage for his eventual marriage. After negotiations and trade treaties- which can take years, not to mention that Octavian needs to legitimize his own rule first- Octavian’s persuaded to arrange an alliance between Rome and India, and what better way to do that than marriage?

Also, Octavian was a bastard. He deeply disliked both Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Though there is no evidence either way, it’s quite likely that he ordered the killing of Cleopatra Selene’s two brothers; he did order the death of Caesarion.**

The thought of sending Cleopatra’s only surviving child to the land where her heir was supposed to go but couldn’t… it’s deliciously ironic, and you can’t tell me that the man who decided to declare war on Cleopatra instead of Antony as a measure of revenge wouldn’t want that.

And now we get to the good stuff:

Cleopatra Selene, only living descendant of the Ptolemies, a dynasty that has been around for centuries, is asked to go to India, to marry a man who was, not less than a decade previous, a servant. She’s lost, in short order, her father, mother, and brothers, all within ten years. She’s alone.

And then she meets Shimuka, the man who overthrew his king in favor of his own kingdom, led by a revolution of servants- I mean, can you just imagine the debates on right and wrong these two would have, on monarchies and revolutions and military states and theocracies- because Shimuka follows Jainism, and Cleopatra Selene was born into a society where her mother was hailed as a goddess (Nea Isis).

In the beginning, of course, there are problems. Cleopatra Selene is haughty, dismissive, condescending; Shimuka is vulgar, violent, frightening. They don’t even speak the same language. But they have to find common ground, and Shimuka would likely be the one to take that step: Cleopatra Selene has the gold, after all, that’s financing his army, that he needs.

So they learn each other’s edges. Cleopatra Selene learns Prakrit, slowly, painstakingly; Shimuka finds her with a tutor and decides he’ll learn to read and write, too.

(Shimuka was a servant. He likely didn’t know how to read/write before this.)

(imo, in later years he asks her to do all the paperwork anyways, because she’s so much better at it. they’ve given each other that much trust, by then.)

They aren’t so different, these two; you see, Cleopatra Selene knows what it’s like to be nothing more than a glorified prisoner, because that’s what she was in Rome. Shimuka knows, intimately, what it feels like to be a servant.

Cleopatra Selene tells Shimuka how to defame his rivals and enemies without being ham-fisted about it, because she’s watched Rome reduce her mother (the woman who had the love of all of Egypt, who was called nea Isis, new Isis, who led armies and conquered kingdoms and loved, irrevocably) to the title of whore for eight years; Shimuka introduces Selene to Jainism, and she finds peace for the first time in her life.

He teaches her how to sing the old hymns, and, one day, she offers to sing some of the songs she remembers from Egypt. She tells him of the giant pyramids that were built ages ago; he shows her Jain monasteries, all pale-stone and delicate carvings. She talks about hippos, fat and lumbering and sharp-toothed, and Shimuka takes her to one of his favorite lakes to show her a peacock’s dance.

When Shimuka rages and starts to become a tyrant (note, there’s no evidence as to why he was considered a tyrant), Cleopatra Selene can guide him away from it. She’s her mother’s daughter; she knows how to manipulate. But she’s also her father’s: she loves, deeply, immediately, and knows no way to love other than with all her heart.

And now that Cleopatra Selene’s away from Octavian? She finally has the power to address the abuse she suffered under him. And if she’s smart- and she is, she’s just as brilliant and vivid and savvy as her mother ever was- then Cleopatra Selene would slowly, quietly, increase the trade benefits of other empires. Not by increasing taxes for Rome imports/exports; by lowering taxes for Chinese silks, or North Indian stones. She would foster a seething hatred of Rome via art. She would be very careful, and by the time the Guptas rise, there would be a lasting imprint of anti-Roman sentiment in South India.

It takes them both some time, this deposed Egyptian princess and this ambitious Indian warrior-king. It takes them some disagreements, some fears, some compromises- but Cleopatra Selene knows strategy and Shimuka is shrewd, and they meet, somehow, somewhere, in the middle.

It’s a love story in the making.

Notes:

*Satavahana: sata means hundred; vahana is properly translated as “that which carries,” and refers to pretty much any mount. There are other translations to this, but I’m going by the direct roots.

**There are other ideas of how Caesarion died, but in this text we’re going by Plutarch’s Selected Lives.

***Dates for Shimuka are even more controversial than dates for Cleopatra Selene. I have chosen to go with a version in which he lives during her lifetime, not three centuries before. However, I do acknowledge that there are schools of thought that disagree.

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