New publication on the topic of Ptolemaic queenship:
Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt
D.L. Clayman (Graduate Center of CUNY)
A mother of six, immensely wealthy and ambitious, Berenice II, daughter of King Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, came to embody all the key religious, political, and artistic ideals of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Through she arrived there nearly friendless, with the taint of murder around her, she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens descended from the successors of Alexander the Great. Rather exceptionally, she was at the center of a group of important poets and intellectuals associated with the Museum and Library, not the least of which was Callimachus, the most important poet of the age. These men wrote poems not just for her, but about her, and their eloquent voices projected her charisma widely across the Greek-speaking world.