this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Explanation: Amongst the royals of Ancient Egypt, there was a curious practice of sibling incest, wherein brothers and sisters were married to keep the bloodline 'pure'.
This strange practice eventually spread to some of the broader population as well. It was noted during the Roman Empire that Egyptians still sometimes married their siblings - something unacceptable to Roman norms, but was left uninterfered with because... well, provincials aren't subject to Roman norms.
In the movie The Gladiator (2000), Commodus wanted to keep the bloodline pure with Lucilla. Really weird considering in history, she was married and actually tries to have Commodus killed.
Honestly, as fun as Gladiator is, there are a lot of inaccurate moments in the movie like that.
I thought this was just the ptolemy line, since they were Hellenic and didn't want to even learn the Egyptian language, let alone have Egyptian kids
Nope, long history of it in Egypt, dating back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE. It was, notably, one of the Egyptian practices the Ptolemaic dynasty adopted despite being, as you mentioned... aggressively Hellenic.