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Too soon, her feet were crossing into the great courtyard. There the banked colonnades swarmed with the half-forgotten faces of noblemen who had come late to her cause, and had returned quickly to her father’s. Pieton’s face was not among theirs. Of course it wasn’t. No amount of begging could wash away his sins.

She searched the crowd for the dearer dead: Archelaus, Leda, even Dryton. But she knew she’d never see another friendly face, just as she knew she’d never bear a child or lead men into battle or build a palace of her own. As she stepped into the atrium, her knees turned weak, and all the stories of gods reborn were as flaked as flimsy child’s tales.
Never show them you are soft.

High above the throngs sat her father, bolt straight upon the inlaid throne. His hair had receded farther from his broken nose, but otherwise his face looked exactly as it had in her childhood. His concubine lounged to his left, on full display, reclining in Tryphaena’s silks stitched with amethyst and jade. The creature’s youngest child, scarcely more than a babe, played with the pearls about her neck. The older boy, a round child of five, eyed Berenice with greedy interest. Her own gaze turned to the two daughters. Cleopatra, almost a woman now, had the decency to avert her eyes. There, beside her, perched Arsinoe, knees drawn up to her chin. Even at a distance, Berenice could make out her welling eyes. The child hadn’t forsaken her, not in the end. “Don’t cry,” she whispered to herself. “They’ll see.”

The heart of the chamber had been cleared of men. A hunk of granite reared from the ground, blotting out Dionysus’s smiling face. A lump swelled in her throat. Beside the block stood the largest man she’d ever seen. His neck strained against his breastplate’s collar, as if it had been crafted for some properly sized soldier. His fingers clenched and loosened on the handle of his ax. All eyes were fixed on her, but her toes melted into the stone. She urged them on, but her feet wouldn’t listen. No one would watch her sweat; she wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. She nearly spoke the words aloud:
Never show them you are soft.

“The traitor wishes to make a sort of speech,” her father said.

She did, she did. She’d tell them how Rome’s rise augured Egypt’s death, and how the goddess Mut held sway over their neutered deities, and how the concubine who stole her father’s bed would never match her mother. Her brave words would echo on—the daughter who died with venom on her breath.

“Father.” She found her tongue. “Father, please.”

Long years washed away, lonely years of strength and strife, and she was a child of nine once more, begging for her father’s love. She cried and wailed—every woman’s weapon that she despised—to cling to this wretched life. Her father’s eyes brimmed with disgust—the look he reserved for his grotesque and stillborn babes.

The Piper’s voice cut through her screams. “Guards, go on. Put an end to this creature’s mewling.”

Rough hands dragged Berenice forward. It was too late—she knew it was too late—and yet she pleaded on. The stone smashed up against her knees, and her words abandoned her. Tears streamed down her face, and she looked up to catch her father’s gaze. The blade glinted in the torchlight.

Soft.

Acknowledgments

So many wonderful people helped me bring Arsinoe’s and Berenice’s stories to the page. In particular, I would like to thank my dear friend Meghan Flaherty for believing in this book from the very beginning and for reading more iterations of this manuscript than I dare count. My sister, Julia, for her astute critiques and her unwavering support. My mother for inciting my love of literature and my father for kindling my interest in history. Julia Kardon and Ivan Lett for answering the questions I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else. David Goodwillie for connecting me to my amazing agent. Sam Kahn, Leah Franqui, Jenny Nissel, and Brian Denton for their kind and careful reads of early drafts of this book.

Enormous thanks to Alexis Hurley for placing this manuscript with the perfect publisher and holding my hand when I needed it. To my brilliant editor, Judy Clain, for her tireless passion for this project and her keen editorial insights. To Amanda Brower for her hard work on everything from editing to production. To Nell Beram for flagging any lingering modern idioms and correcting my rampant overuse of the subjunctive. To Karen Landry, Lisa Erickson, Heather Fain, Meghan Deans, and Miriam Parker for their outstanding production and marketing efforts. To my publicist, Morgan Moroney, for trusting me in front of an audience and a video camera. To Reagan Arthur and everyone else at Little, Brown for publishing this book.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to the many cultural institutions of New York City that made much of my research possible, especially to the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries for their exhaustive collections of history, art, and architecture books, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum for their stunning sets of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts.

Classical Citations

*   
“Can anyone be so indifferent…within a period of not quite fifty-three years?”:
Polybius,
Histories,
Book 1, line 1.

*   
“The one named mother is not the child’s true parent…woman is a stranger fostering a stranger”:
Aeschylus,
The Furies,
lines 657–660.

*   
“Now look at the two of us.…You’re so rash—I am so afraid for you”:
Sophocles,
Antigone,
lines 70–74, 80–81, 96.

*   
“Deserted so by loved ones, struck by fate”:
Ibid., line 1011.

*   
“I’m not ashamed to sail through trouble with you, to make your troubles mine”:
Ibid., lines 608–609.

*   
“I have no love for a friend who loves in words alone”:
Ibid., line 612.

*   
“You’ll soon show what you are, worth your breeding…for all your royal blood”:
Ibid., lines 44–46.

*   
“It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation…could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakeable traditions”:
Ibid., lines 499–505.

*   
“Dreams as well can come our way from Zeus”:
Homer,
The Iliad,
Book 1, line 73.

*   
“But Death overtakes even the man who runs from the battle”:
Simonides, fragments.

*   
“Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched”:
Euripides,
Medea,
lines 228–231.

*   
“It appears to me a most excellent thing for the physician to cultivate Prognosis”:
Hippocrates,
The Book of Prognostics,
Book 1, lines 1–2.

*   
“Men regard its nature and cause as divine…and a cause whence it originates”:
Hippocrates,
On the Sacred Disease,
lines 3–5.

*   
“She had terrible dreams.…She dreamed she gave birth to a snake”:
Aeschylus,
The Libation Bearers,
lines 523–524, 527.

*   
“Lurching up, he lunged out.…So we lay there groaning, waiting Dawn’s first light”:
Homer,
The Odyssey,
Book 9, lines 324–343.

*   
“You’ll never find a man on earth, if a god leads him on, who can escape his fate”:
Sophocles,
Oedipus at Colonus,
lines 266–268.

*   
“What should our prayers be saying…no mother comfort soothes our rage”:
Aeschylus,
The Libation Bearers,
lines 420–422.

Sources

Aeschylus,
The Furies
in: P. Meineck (trans.), H. Foley (intro.),
Oresteia
(Indianapolis/Cambridge, Massachusetts: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998).

Aeschylus,
The Libation Bearers
in: P. Meineck (trans.), H. Foley (intro.),
Oresteia
(Indianapolis/Cambridge, Massachusetts: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998).

Euripides,
Medea
in: P. Vellacott (trans. & intro.),
Medea and Other Plays
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963).

Euripides,
The Trojan Women,
trans. R. Lattimore, in: D. Grene & R. Lattimore (eds.),
The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides III
(Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

Hippocrates,
The Book of Prognostics,
trans. F. Adams (http://classics.mit.edu//Hippocrates/prognost.html: The Internet Classics Archive, 1994–2009).

Hippocrates,
On the Sacred Disease,
trans. F. Adams (http://classics.mit.edu//Hippocrates/sacred.html: The Internet Classics Archive, 1994–2009).

Homer,
The Iliad,
trans. R. Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).

Homer,
The Odyssey,
trans. R. Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1996).

Polybius,
Histories
in: E. Shuckburgh (trans.), A. Bernstein (intro.),
Polybius on Roman Imperialism
(South Bend: Regnery Gateway, 1980).

Simonides, Fragments in: D. Campbell (trans. & ed.),
Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Loeb Classical Library, 1991).

Sophocles,
Antigone
in: R. Fagles (trans.), B. Knox (intro. & notes),
The Three Theban Plays
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984).

Sophocles,
Oedipus at Colonus
in: R. Fagles (trans.), B. Knox (intro. & notes),
The Three Theban Plays
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984).

About the Author