Cleopatra IV married her brother Ptolemy IX when he was still a prince in c. 119/118 BC. Cleopatra IV may be the mother ofPtolemy XII Auletes andPtolemy of Cyprus, although an unnamed concubine could be the mother of these two men as well.[1]
In c. 115 BC Cleopatra III forced Cleopatra IV and Ptolemy IX to divorce. She replaced Cleopatra IV with her sister Cleopatra Selene.[3]
According to Tara Sewell-Lasater, becauseCleopatra III held on to power so actively, it does seem she did not allow her daughters, Cleopatra IV andCleopatra Selene I, to be formal co-rulers like herself, and restricted them to the position of consorts.[4]
Cleopatra IV was posthumously added to the list ofdeified Ptolemies as the Thea Philadelphos (= "brother-loving goddess").[5]
After her forced divorce, Cleopatra IV fled Egypt and went toCyprus, where she marriedAntiochus IX Cyzicenus and brought him the army of his half brotherSeleucid KingAntiochus VIII Grypus of Syria, which she had convinced to follow her. Grypus fought Cyzicenus and eventually chased him to Antioch. Grypus was married to Cleopatra IV's sister Tryphaena. Tryphaena decided that Cleopatra IV should die and over the protests of her husband summoned some soldiers and had Cleopatra IV murdered in the sanctuary of Daphne in Antioch.[2][6]
In his comprehensive website about Ptolemaic genealogy, Christopher Bennett also notes the possibility that Cleopatra IV, from her brief marriage to Antiochus IX Cyzicenus, may have been the mother of the later Seleucid monarch,Antiochus X Eusebes ("the Pious").[7] Antiochus X would go on to marry Cleopatra IV's younger sister, Cleopatra Selene, thus making him the spouse of a woman who was his stepmother (Selene married both of her sisters' widowers, Grypus and Cyzicenus, before marrying Eusebes) and perhaps his maternal aunt.