Juba II travels with Gaius Caesar (a grandson of Augustus), as a member of his advisory staff to the troubled Eastern Mediterranean between 2 BCE and CE 2.

During this trip, the Mauretanian king meets Glaphyra, the widow of Alexander of Judea.

They fall in love, and are married prior to 6 CE.

A discovered hoard of coins of Cleopatra Selene II, dated to CE 17, supports the notion that Cleopatra had been alive to mint them.

However, this would mean that Juba had married the Cappadocian Princess, Glaphyra during Cleopatra's lifetime.

To explain this strange marital problem, historians have supposed some sort of rift between Cleopatra and Juba that was eventually mended after Juba's divorce from Glaphyra.

Modern historians dispute the idea that Juba, a thoroughly Romanized King, would have taken a second wife.

The argument goes that if Juba married Glaphyra before 4 BCE, then his first wife Cleopatra, must have already been dead.

(The counterargument can be made that even contemporary client kings with Roman citizenship, like Herod the Great, took multiple wives and that Juba's father had more than one.)

Glaphyra thus becomes Queen of Mauretania.

Her marriage to Juba II is apparently brief: there is no trace of her name in North African inscriptions.

However, an honorific inscription to her is made in Athens: “The Boule and Demos honors Queen Glaphyra daughter of King Archelaus and wife of King Juba on the account of her virtue.”