Ancestors of Prusias Monodous:
an Exploration of the Inheritance of the Gemination Mutation and the Name Apama

Make selections in chart between alternate mothers separated by "OR".  Reload this page to start over.   (More info. below chart.)

Prusias Monodous (One-toothed) Prusias II Cynegus (Hunter) of Bithynia

m. (1) Apama IV of Macedonia (after the death of Philip V in 179 and the accession of Perseus);
m. (2) ________ (after the defeat of Perseus in 168?).		 Prusias I of Bithynia Ziaelas (or Zeilas) of Bithynia Nicomedes I of Bithynia Zipoetes I of Bithynia
 
Ditizele of Phrygia  
 
     
 
   
 
Apama III, dau. of Demetrius II and Stratonice II
  Select      Analyze       A
 
OR
 
 _______ (possibly Apama III), dau. of Demetrius II and Phthia
  Select      Analyze       P
Demetrius II of Macedonia Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia Demetrius I Poliorcetes of Macedonia
Phila I
Phila II Seleucus I of Syria
Stratonice I
Stratonice II of Syria
OR
 
 Phthia of Epirus
   
 
   
 
Apama IV of Macedonia   A P
  Select      Analyze
 
OR
 
 Second wife, possibly a Thracian
  Select      Analyze
       
 
   
 
     
 
   
 
       
 
   
 
     
 
   
 

Instructions/notation:
 
 
 Pyrrhus I, King of Epirus, and Prusias Monodous, a Bithynian prince (both will be shown in red in this chart), exhibited the hereditary phenomenon called gemination or teeth fusion.  
 
 Where alternate wives are shown and you can select one of them, single letters near the wife's name are codes about her ancestry:
   A means she has an ancestor or possible ancestor named Apama;
   P means she has a descent or possible descent from Pyrrhus I of Epirus, who exhibited gemination or teeth fusion.  
 
 Before making a selection you can click on the Analyze link to see some relevant commentary in a new window or in a new tab which can presumably be dragged out to become a separate window. (The use of a separate window allows you to put the analytic commentary adjacent to the portion of the chart it is commenting on.)  
 
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 Color coding of chart backgrounds:
 
    
    
    
pale yellow for relatively certain data;
white for commonly accepted but somewhat uncertain data;
pale green for situations with reasonable alternative interpretations.

Background information:
 
 
 As mentioned above, both Pyrrhus of Epirus and Prusias Monodous exhibited gemination, i.e., a single curved bone in the upper jaw rather than individual teeth, though this bone had indentations where most people have separation between adjacent teeth (see details in Gabelko and Kuzmin's 2008 article, which points out that the fusion could have been limited to the upper front teeth which are visible to other people in everyday conversation). It is likely but not certain that Prusias Monodous descended from Pyrrhus of Epirus and inherited his gemination from Pyrrhus. If we assume that Monodous was descended from Pyrrhus, perhaps that assumption will force us (or almost force us) to say, for example, that "X must be a child of Y because that is the only way that Monodous could plausibly be descended from Pyrrhus." (The Y parentage of X could be a conjecture that has been already analyzed but now could be considered more certain than before.)
 
 You can use the chart above to explore the consequences of different choices among alternatives available for a wife, mother, etc., in situations with some uncertainty. (For example, it might not be clear which of several wives is the mother of a given child.)
 
 Where alternate wives or mothers occur in the chart, there are links to analyses of the alternatives. These analyses include many quotations from email correspondence. Thus they are fairly informal and in many cases are outlining possibilities worthy of more detailed review rather than giving a final over-all judgment.
 
 The other factor which can be explored with this chart is the inheritance of the name Apama. (Some have argued that daughters named Apama are descendants of the Iranian Apama, first wife of Seleucus I.)
 
 Unfortunately, our information about the people involved is rather sketchy. I have not been able to find a logical consequence of the form "X must be a child of Y" flowing from the assumption that Monodous descended from Pyrrhus. There are just too many different plausible "routes" from Pyrrhus to Monodous. Also, we should keep in mind that the actual inheritance of the gemination mutation or the name Apama may come through one or more currently unknown wives (such as the hypothesized Apama of Bithynia, wife of Philip V).

Prepared by Don Stone, December 2012
Updated January and April 2013