Cleopatra Selene controlled several coastal towns until Tigranes II besieged her in 69 BC in Ptolemais; the Armenian king captured the queen and later executed her.

[13] Ancient writers, such as Cicero and Appian, mention that the queen's name is Selene,[14][15] and Strabo clarified that she was surnamed "Cleopatra".

[26] Sibling marriage was known in ancient Egypt and, although it was not a general practice, it was acceptable for the Egyptians;[27] the Ptolemies practised it, perhaps to consolidate the dynasty.

[12] In 107 BC, the relationship between Ptolemy IX and his mother deteriorated;[34] Cleopatra III forced him out of Egypt, and he left his wife and children behind.

[note 4][47] The capital of Syria, Antioch, was part of Antiochus VIII's realm at the time of his assassination; Cleopatra Selene probably resided there.

[43] The manner in which Antiochus IX took control of Antioch and his new wife in 95 BC is not clear; he could have taken the city by force or it could be that Cleopatra Selene herself opened the gates for him.

[49] In the view of historian Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Cleopatra Selene had little reason to trust the five sons of her previous husband;[43] the queen needed an ally who would help her control the capital while Antiochus IX needed a wife and Cleopatra Selene's influence over the city's garrison and her late husband's officials.

Appian wrote an anecdote concerning the epithet of Antiochus X, "Eusebes" ("the pious"): the Syrians gave it to him to mock his show of loyalty to his father by bedding his widow.

She evidently took shelter with her children somewhere in the kingdom,[62] and possibly fled to Cilicia or Coele-Syria,[63] probably the city of Ptolemais, which she held until her death.

[note 7][67] Based on the evidence of the coins depicting her alongside her ruling son, it appears that Cleopatra Selene acted as the regent.

[66] Many of those coins have been found,[note 8][70] and they depict Antiochus XIII in the background and herself in the foreground, in the style of a queen regnant,[71] where Cleopatra Selene's name is written before that of the king's.

[66] Damascus' history between the death of Antiochus XII and 241 SE (72/71 BC), when the Armenian king Tigranes II took the city, is obscure.

[74] If her currency was minted in Damascus,[note 9] then it dates to the period between the death of Antiochus XII and Tigranes II's occupation of the city.

[73] Two scenarios are possible: In the north, Philip I ruled until his death, after which Cleopatra Selene claimed the rights of her children with Antiochus X to the vacant throne.

[62] The queen's claims of authority were not generally accepted by the Syrians, and the people of Antioch invited Tigranes II to rule Syria, being frustrated by the Seleucids' constant civil wars.

To impress the Senate, the queen endowed her children with sufficient assets, which included a jewelled candelabrum that was dedicated to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

[85] The regency of Cleopatra Selene probably ended in 75 BC as the journey of Antiochus XIII to Rome indicates that he had already reached his majority or was close to it.

[87] Those accounts seem to contradict each other, but in the view of the seventeenth century historian William Whiston, they do not, since Josephus does not mention that Tigranes II captured the queen in Ptolemais.

[89] Others see Cleopatra Selene as a pawn in political schemes who later evolved into a schemer in her own right, one who decided her actions effectively based on her own benefit.

[90] Cleopatra Selene's long career, as the wife of three successive Syrian monarchs, and the mother of one and a ruler in her own right, in addition to her divine status, turned her into a symbol of Seleucid continuity.

When the Romans ended the Seleucid dynasty in 64 BC, they attempted to simply replace the Syrian monarchs as an imperial authority, but the political reality of Rome as a republic meant that its legitimacy in the East was questioned.

[111] Berenice III was mentioned as a mother of Ptolemy XI in a Demotic text, but the Egyptian word used to denote a "son" can also mean a step son, which is the meaning preferred by most scholars for the word in the text mentioning Berenice III as a mother of Ptolemy XI.