Ptolemejski Egipat I Njegova Interpretacija U Povijesti

THE SHIFTING SANDS
OF HISTORY:
INTERPRETATIONS OF
PTOLEMAIC EGYPT
Publications of the
Association of
Ancient Historians 2
Alan E. Samuel
University of Toronto
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Samuel, Alan Edouard.

The shifting sands of history : interpretations of Ptolemaic Egypt
/ Alan E. Samuel,
p. cm.
(Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians ; 2)
Bibliography: p.
1. Ptolemaic dynasty, 305-30 B.C. 2. Egypt— History— 332 B.C.-
30 B.C. I. Title. II. Series.
DT92.S22 1989 89-5440 CIP
932'.021— dcl9
ISBN 0-8191-7396-7 (alk. paper).
ISBN 0-8191-7397-5 (pbk. :alk. paper)
All University Press of America books are produced on acid-free paper.

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Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. @
my youngest daughter, M arion
and h er dog, Zoe
I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T he present volume is the second in the series Publications of

the Association of Ancient Historians. T he publications com m ittee of
the Association, Stanley M. Burstein of California State U niver-
sity, Los Angeles, Jo h n W. Eadie o f M ichigan State University
and I, wish to express o u r thanks to Alan E. Sam uel o f the
University o f T o ro n to for con trib u tin g this essay on revisionist
interpretations of Ptolem aic Egypt.
T he m anuscript was produced by the au th o r on a M acintosh
com pu ter using M icrosoft W ord 1. T he files were u p d ated to
M icrosoft W ord 3.01 for editing and form atting on a M acintosh
II com puter, from w hich cam era-ready copy was set in New
Baskerville on an A pple LaserW riter Plus printer.
My P enn State colleague, Paul B. Harvey, Jr., once again
sh a re d e d ito ria l a n d p ro o f-re ad in g tasks w ith m e in th e
production of this series. Scott Camp of the C enter for Com puting
Assistance in Liberal Arts a t Penn State h an d led the co m p u ter
files and set up the copy, and Dawn Detwiler o f the University
Press o f A m erica p rovided p ro d u ctio n assistance an d advice
during the preparation o f this volume for publication.
Eugene N. Borza, President

Association of Ancient Historians
v
CONTENTS
A cknow ledgem ents V
Preface ix
Abbreviations and Bibliographical S upplem ent x iii
I. M odern Views of the Period After A lexander 1
II. The Successors of Alexander 13
III. Two Solitudes 35
IV . T he M acedonian A dm inistration of Egypt 51
V. The Ideology of Ptolemaic Monarchy 67
V I. Ptolem aic Egypt and Historical Interpretation 83
vii
v iii
PREFACE
My in ten tio n in this work is to delineate some significant

aspects o f Egypt u n d er the Ptolemies, and I have taken advantage
of the invitation to prepare it to offer my own views on how the
evidence on some of these issues should be interpreted, as well as
p re se n tin g c u rre n t views. T h e study o f th e p e rio d a fte r
A lexander, in particular its m anifestation in Ptolem aic Egypt, is
in the m idst o f great change. After decades o f general consensus
and great advances in the investigations of social and econom ic
phen o m en a which contributed to th at consensus, some central
them es in Ptolem aic history which have been heavily studied in
past decades are ju st beginning to be given new interpretations.
Because these areas are intrinsically o f g reat interest, n o t only
for th e u n d e rsta n d in g o f an tiq u ity b u t for c o m p re h e n d in g
hum an interactions and hum an societies, I have chosen to focus
on them in my treatm en t o f Ptolem aic Egypt, and to deal with
o th er aspects o f society which have been heavily explored in the
p ast—econom y an d relig io n — only as they im p in g e on my
chosen them es o f eth n ic relations, ad m in istratio n an d royal
ideology. Many aspects o f Ptolem aic society which have received
great attention in the past and continue to do so in the present—I
th in k o f slavery, law, th e position o f w om en in the social
structure, dem ography—are m entioned h ere only in passing or
n o t at all, because I have n o t w ritten this study as a survey of
scholarship or a survey o f knowledge. Both o f those tasks have
recently . b een d o n e by th e b est m inds in th e field, a n d I
th e re fo re can co n cen trate on topics w hich are o f p articu lar
interest to me and which, as views o f them change, will greatly
affect our understanding of Ptolemaic Egypt.
F u rth e rm o re , even th o u g h Egypt in this p e rio d is an
exceptional society, an d n o t a paradigm for th e rest o f the
M editerranean, I believe the study of Ptolem aic Egypt can n o t be
carried o u t or even understood w ithout reference to conceptions
ab o u t the wider world in the centuries after A lexander. I think
it is desirable to consider the effects o f m odern experience on the
treatm en t o f th at period, and an understanding o f the study of
Ptolem aic Egypt also calls for a survey o f the d irectio n s o f
scholarship in its tre a tm e n t o f the p erio d o f the D iadochi,
ix
p articu larly th e m a n n e r in w hich m o d e rn h isto rian s (and
an cien t evidence) deal with issues o f adm inistration, concepts of
m o n a rc h y a n d th e G reek city-states in th e years w hen
A lex a n d er’s gen erals w ere establishing them selves and th e ir
k in g d o m s.
T h ere are good reasons to ap p ro ach the subject in this
m anner. T he appearance in the last decade o f several im portant
surveys o f the period, Volume II of Le monde grec et Vorient, by
E douard Will, Claude Mosse and Paul Goukowsky, u n d er the title
Le IVe siecle et Tepoque hellenistique, then Claire P reaux’ M onde
hellenistique, and m ost recently volume VII, 1 o f the second edition
o f The Cambridge Ancient History m eans th at surveys o f virtually
everything o f significance are conveniently available. P ete r
G reen’s large Alexander to Actium: A n Essay in the Historical Evolution
of the Hellenistic Age, will be the m ost up-to-date treatm en t o f the
period. T he excellent classified bibliographies of Preaux and the
CAH also m ake it unnecessary to provide an exhaustive bibli-
ography here, and so I p resen t at the end o f this introduction
only som e o f the m ore g en eral an d re c e n t works w hich can
serve both as introduction and bibliographical guides to the field.
A ccordingly, I have felt free, in the interest o f brevity, to om it
m en tio n o f m any fund am en tal m onographs and articles which
are indispensable to anyone w orking in this field. T he read er
will find all o f these in th e b ib lio g rap h ies to th e works I
m en tio n above, an d many o f them tu rn u p in the notes and
bibliographical apparatus o f the books and articles I do cite. Those
last are chosen for th e ir p artic u lar relevance to a p o in t or
a r g u m e n t I m ake h e re , o r b ecau se they p ro v id e som e
in fo rm atio n o f p articu lar use for explorations in the directions
w hich I p o in t out, and in some cases because they have appeared
a fte r th e p u b licatio n o f th e bibliographies in the new m ajor
syntheses. For these latter I give full citations in the notes, and a
few frequently cited works for w hich I use abbreviations in the
text are listed below.
I also m ake no atte m p t to provide full docum entation o f
an c ien t source m aterials. Again, th at is provided by the works I
m ention above, as well as in the m odern treatm ents I cite. I am
x
n o t concerned to prove positions or to convince, and I therefore
cite only enough to dem onstrate th at there is some validity to an
approach o r a suggestion I make. I hope, however, th at I give
enough citation of ancient and m odern m aterial both to make it
clear why I th in k in te rp re ta tio n s sh o u ld c h a n g e or are
changing, and to provide a guide to the study of Ptolem aic Egypt
w hich will show w hat th a t society can c o n trib u te to th e
understanding o f antiquity.
I am grateful to Professor E ugene Borza, n o t only for his
gracious invitation to follow Chester Starr in the developm ent of
the publication series o f the Association o f A ncient H istorians,
b u t for his continued editorial help and scholarly advice. T h ree
o th e r scholars generously read my m anuscript and p ointed the
way to im provem ents. N aphtali Lewis responded with care to my
re q u e s t for co m m en ts, S tanley B u rstein o ffe re d d e ta ile d
suggestions o f m aterial to be considered at many points, while
R ichard H azzard cau g h t a n u m b er o f slips in th e text. T he
m anuscript has been improved at many points due to the help of
these four colleagues, an d constraints o f space (and my own
perversity) have p re c lu d e d th e full e x p lo ita tio n o f th e ir
com m ents.
ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
SUPPLEMENT
Atti del XVII congresso intemazionale di Papirologia (Naples, 1984).

BASP: Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.
C AIfi VII, 1: The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. VII, p art 1,
ed . F.W. W albank, A.E. A stin, (C a m b rid g e , 1984).
B ibliography.
Egitto e Societd Antica, Atti del convegno Torino 8 /9 VI-23-24 X I
(Milan, 1985).
Egypt and the Hellenistic World, Proceedings of the International
Colloquium, Leuven - 24-26 May 1982, ed. E. V an’t Dack, P. Van
Dessel, W. Van Gucht, (Studia Hellenistica 27, Lovanii, 1983).
Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria: P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria
(Oxford, 1972).
From Athens to Alexandria: A.E. Samuel, From Athens to Alexandria:
Hellenism and Social Goals in Ptolemaic Egypt (Studia Hellenistica
26, Lovanii, 1983).
Green, Peter, Alexander to Actium: An Essay in the Historical Evolution
of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley, 1989).
JHS: fo um al of Hellenic Studies.
Preaux, Monde hellenistique. C. Preaux, Le monde hellenistique: La
Grece et VOrient (323-146 av. J.-C.), 2 vols., (Paris, 1978).
B ibliography.
O G IS : W. D itte n b erg er, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae
(Leipzig, 1903-1905).
Das ptolemaische Agypten, Akten des intemationalen Symposions 27-29
September 1976 in Berlin (Mainz, 1978).
SEG: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923 fF.).
SEH H W : M.I. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History o f the
Hellenistic World, 3 vols., (Oxford, 1941).
State and Temple Economy in The Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the
International Conference organized by the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven from the 10th to the 14th of April 1978, ed. E. Lipin ski, vol.
II (O rientalia Lovanensia Analecta 5, Leuven, 1979).
E. Will, C. Mosse, P. Goukowsky, Le monde grec et VOrient, vol. 2, Le
TVe siecle et Vepoque hellenistique (Paris, 1975). Bibliography.
x iii
I
MODERN VIEWS OF THE PERIOD AFTER
ALEXANDER
O ne h u n d red and fifty years ago, Jo h a n n Gustav D roysen’s

ideas of H ellenism us w ere ju s t becom ing c u rre n t in E u ro p e.
Quickly, th e n o tio n o f a b len d in g o f eastern a n d w estern
traditions creating a new culture becam e p o p u lar in a E urope
w hich was still profiting enorm ously from its exploitation o f the
east and south, Asia and Africa. Droysen’s Hellenismus yielded to
a d iffe re n t term , o n e w hich gave its n am e to a new
p erio d isatio n , H ellenistic, Hellenistische, Hellenistique, an d the
concepts attached to this term and the new period were similar
to th o se w hich h ad em erg ed as p a rt o f th e ideology o f
colonialism and im perialism : the carrying o f the rationalism o f
advanced civilization to the m ore primitive; the spread of m ore
progressive governm ental forms; the gift o f technology to those
unfam iliar with it; the quickening o f econom ic activity in areas
long sluggish or dorm ant; the enjoym ent and adaptation o f the
exotic art forms o f the easterners by the west. Only in the area of
religion were the ideas o f the spread o f oriental cults into Greek
lands envisioned differently from the evangelism o f Christianity
to the benighted heathen.
By the end o f the century the concepts of “H ellenistic” culture
and civilization were being dissem inated in all the languages of
E u ro p e , an d scholars in N o rth A m erica, w ho h ad n ev er
conceived o f themselves as imperialists, shared and adopted those
n o tio n s as enthusiastically as th e ir com p atrio ts in th e o ld er
academ ies o f E urope. P erhaps A m erican ideas o f “m anifest
destiny” m ade the idea o f the spread o f Greek culture as welcome
in the U nited States as K ipling’s “white m a n ’s b u rd e n ” m ade it
u n d erstan d ab le in Britain. F urth erm o re, the final triu m p h on
the c o n tin e n t o f E urope o f the idea o f th e nation-state as
hum anity’s highest political creation prom oted the view th a t the
m ore-or-less organized kingdom s o f the Ptolem ies, Seleucids,
A ntigonids and others m arked a great advance over the G reek
p attern of quarrelsom e and self-destructive social organization
based on small city-states. At the same tim e, these kingdom s
seem ed to be m ore am enable to analysis from the p oint o f view of
Staatsrecht, w hich T h e o d o r M om m sen h ad so im pressively
1
M O D E R N VIEWS O F T H E PER IO D A FTER A LEX A N D ER
ex p lo red for Rom an institutions. Even for Am ericans, the new

m o n arch ies in Egypt, Syria, B actria an d elsew here w ere an
advance over eastern absolutism , and for all the in d u strial
cu ltu res o f E urope and the Americas, the clear advance o f
scientific know ledge in A lexandria an d o th e r capitals m ade
royal pow er a n d p a tro n a g e th e m o re a c ce p tab le fo r its
fruitfulness. T he historical sense th a t an earlier century had
m ade o f P h ilip ’s triu m p h a t C h aero n ea the en d o f liberal
classical culture shifted to credit A lexander’s conquests with the
start o f som ething new.
At th e same tim e as ideology en co u rag ed academ ics to
re d e fin e a n c ie n t h isto ry a n d ex p a n d th e focus o f G reek
civilization to a p e rio d h ith e rto n eg lected , arch aeo lo g ical
investigation an d the em ergence o f docum ents on stone and
papyrus created n o t only new evidence, b u t sub-disciplines to
prom ote and exploit it. As the study o f history in general moved
to take a c c o u n t o f social an d eco n o m ic p h e n o m e n a , the
ap p earan ce o f docum ents o f private life from antiquity, wills,
g o v ern m en t orders, leases, loans, agreem ents o f m arriage and
divorce an d the many different kinds o f private letters, accounts
a n d m e m o ra n d a m e a n t th a t classicists co u ld jo in th e ir
co lleag u es in o th e r disciplines w hich disposed o f so m uch
quantitative data. And, particularly in papyrology, the eagerness
to transcribe an d in te rp re t the handw ritings flowing across torn
a n d w orm -eaten sheets o f papyrus lead to an u n p re c e d e n te d
co operation am ong scholars in France, Italy, Belgium, H olland,
Russia, P oland, G erm any, Britain and the U nited States. T he
co n c ern s o f a discipline w hich Max W eber was fo u n d in g as
Sociology w ere a t th e h e a rt o f the investigations w hich were
b e in g c a rrie d o n by p ap y ro lo g ists a n d e p ig ra p h e rs; the
assu m p tio n s o f eco n o m ic h isto rian s w ere b ein g ad a p ted to
antiquity. A lthough the analysis o f Marx was n o t m uch in vogue
am ong classicists—who were, in those days, mostly gentlem en—
th e fu n d am e n tal assum ption th a t econom ic interests strongly
influenced political and military action came m ore and m ore to
affect historical in te rp re ta tio n , an d the new inform ation from
do cu m en ts an d the new ideas ab o u t history m olded the whole
ap p ro ach to th e study o f the centuries after A lexander, a study
w hich was, after all, only a couple o f generations old a t the time.
2
M O D E R N VIEWS O F T H E PE R IO D A FTER A LEX A N D ER
By the tim e W orld War I broke u p o n E urope, th e first

generation o f synthetic treatm ents of the H ellenic dynasties of
the East h ad already appeared . Students o f th e an cien t world
could read L ’histoire des Lagides and des Seleucides in the pages of
B ouche-L eclercq, could exam ine The History of Egypt under the
Ptolemaic Dynasty with the irascible Mahaffy, could investigate The
House of Seleucus with Edwyn Bevan, trace the Geschichte der
griechischen und makedonischen Staaten with B enedict Niese, follow
the life o f Antigonus Gonatas with W.W. T arn, exam ine th e a rt
and n atu re o f II Regno di Pergamo with G. Cardinali, or see the
later developm ent o f the g reatest fifth-century G reek city into
Hellenistic Athens as Ferguson described it. By this tim e also, what
historians knew o f the individual dynasts or cities was appearing
in th e pages o f g en e ra l h istories, C avaignac’s Histoire de
VAntiquite, G ercke-N orden’s E inleitung, or de Sanctis* Storia dei
Romani, and many others. All these works shared a focus on the
spread o f H ellenism in to the old kingdom s o f th e eastern
M ed iterran ean and eastw ard as far as B actria. T hey saw as
characteristic the fo undations o f cities o f G reek type alm ost
everyw here b u t E gypt, w ith th e se citie s c a rry in g th e
characteristic institutions o f G reek culture. They po in ted to the
developm ent o f a com m on H ellenic culture which stretched west
to east in the M e d iterran ea n , a cu ltu re p arallele d by the
linguistic koine o r “C om m on G reek ” w hich was spoken and
u n d ersto o d th ro u g h o u t the area. H istorians interested in tracing
th e b ro ad lines o f significance investigated th e im p act o f
H ellenism on specific cultures, looking, for exam ple, a t th e
m an n er in which the Jews, or some o f them , becam e H ellenized
and thus created the atm osphere for turm oil in Palestine, or, in
a com pletely d ifferen t area, how Greek-like a rt in N orth-W est
India influenced the developm ent o f Buddhist iconography.
At the same tim e, th e new ly-appearing d o cu m en tatio n o f
econom ic and social organization, in p artic u lar from Egypt,
im p ressed m o st observers in to d escrib in g th e p e rio d as
characterized by increasing w ealth and a b u rg eo n in g m iddle
class, by tight econom ic organization and by pervasive central
g o v e rn m e n ta l c o n tro l o f re lig io n , o f ta x a tio n , o f civic
adm inistration and even o f culture. Admittedly, this description
applied better to Ptolemaic Egypt than it did to the m ore loosely-
3
organized Seleucid or M acedonian m onarchies, b u t it could serve

there to some extent, as it did also for Pergam um o f the Attalids.
Finally, while the com m on opinion saw a degen eratio n in the
originality o f H ellenic literature and culture during this period,
the evidence o f royal patronage and o f the appearance of Greek
literary texts throughout the countryside o f Egypt led historians to
a concept o f a broadening o f Hellenism and a wider readership
and appreciation for G reek literature.
Many o f these them es were m ore fully explored w hen the
G reat W ar was over, in the twenties an d thirties of this century.
T hese w ere the decades o f the giants o f papyrology, m en like
W ilcken, H u n t, V itelli, J o u g u e t, a n d th e h isto ria n s an d
in te rp re te rs o f texts who so influenced th eir co n tem p o raries’
concepts o f w hat the period had m ean t in term s of the overall
history o f antiquity. In religion, C um ont’s interest in the im pact
o f eastern cults on G reek practice was a do m in an t them e, while
in econom ic m atters RostovtzefF stood above all o thers in his
know ledge an d his authority for u n d erstan d in g the perio d as
o n e o f q u ic k en in g activity an d an a p p ro a c h to capitalistic
progress. T he n um ber, variety and quality of special studies of
d iffe re n t aspects o f the econom y, politics, law, adm inistration,
m ilitary organization, religion, literatu re, science, family life,
com m erce and agriculture to ap p ear in the twenties and thirties
are truly astounding, and even m ore so is the ex ten t to which
th e se stu d ies are still th e fu n d a m e n ta l g ro u n d in g o f o u r
knowledge. In papyrology, the rush of publication provided many
im p o rtan t docum ents from the collections into which excavation
a n d p u rch ase w ere p o u rin g new texts, an d the p ractice of
pu b lish in g texts o f lesser im p o rtan ce along w ith those which
m ad e significant individual co n trib u tio n s to know ledge m eant
th a t quantitative analysis o f certain aspects o f society in Egypt
becam e possible. I th in k in this co nnection o f H eich elh eim ’s
p ric e -ra n g e study, w h ich , a lth o u g h a d m itte d ly n o t very
sophisticated in its use o f statistics, tried to assemble quantitative
evidence to trace price advances and the relationships between
goods an d currency. However, the years which, sad to say, are
now often called the period “between the wars” produced m uch
m o re th a n th e fram ew ork o f data, inform ation an d technical
sc h o larsh ip o n w hich m o d e rn stu d e n ts h an g m o re refin ed
notio n s o f the developm ent o f these m onarchical societies. T he
4
M O D ER N VIEWS O F T H E PE R IO D A FTER A LEX A N D ER
effects o f the G reat W ar and its h eroes com bined with the
stunning im pact of depression and econom ic collapse to create an
idea o f the period which has dom inated o u r concepts u n til very
recently.
Many of us who were children d u ring the n in e tee n forties
rem e m b er a tim e w hen g en erals w ere h ero es an d soldiers
adm irab le. Even som e o f the enem y co m m an d ers could be
respected as p a rt of a war which was exciting and had som e of
the elem ents o f a gam e. It was the aw akening o f the years
im m ediately follow ing p eace— th e rev elatio n s o f th e d e a th
camps, the sour recollections of many retu rn in g veterans who
shared college days with us, and then, finally, awareness o f the
doom sday quality o f th e w eapons used a t H iro sh im a an d
N agasaki, the sustained tensions o f the fifties an d n u clear
testing, that turned so many people to doubt the sanity o f war and
to reject it as an instrum ent o f policy, and convinced many th at
the m ilitary were no better, no m ore com petent, and no m ore
h o n est than any o th e r batch o f bureaucrats. All this was very
different from the afterm ath o f W orld War I. As a gen eratio n ,
th e A m ericans who re tu rn e d from th e tre n c h e s o f France
carried with them some rem aining shreds o f rom antic notions
about w hat they had done; Black Jack Pershing rem ained a hero,
S ergeant York stayed in the m inds o f his countrym en as an
ideal, while the Am erican Legion burgeoned in to an im p o rtan t
political role to supplem ent cultural activities like beer, bingo
and stags. N orth America was n o t alone in its respect for warlike
m ilitary leadership. T h ro u g h o u t the com m onw ealth Earl H aig
schools were nam ed to com m em orate the general who had done
so m uch to assure th at there would be few students in them . In
Germany, H indenberg was a nam e to be conjured with, and the
F rench idealized th eir generals en o u g h so that, twenty years
later, many would follow old Petain into disgrace.
I th in k th at the attitu d es prev alen t in th e decades after
W orld War I influenced both the popularity o f the history of the
period after A lexander, and the views taken of the m en and
events from 336 to 30 B.C. War (in a good cause) was justifiable,
its victorious conduct adm irable, and successful leaders tended to
have their success in that arena read as success in others as well.
Men like Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus, A ntigonus, D em etrius
were evaluated in term s o f their ability to defeat their enem ies
5
M O D E R N VIEWS O F T H E PER IO D AFTER A LEX A N D ER
m ilitarily and establish themselves with som e p erm an en ce in

territo ries th ro u g h which A lexander h ad m arched. A ntigonus
was eventually a failure, D em etrius always so, w hile Seleucus
clearly had done b e tte r and Ptolem y best o f all in parlaying
g en eralsh ip an d satrapy in to kingdom . Few asked why troops
follow ed o r cities w elcom ed th e brillian ce and charism a of
Demetrius, who at the very least, offered the opposite of stability.
T he same attitudes showed in the approaches to the heirs of
the successors. Ptolemy II and III were sage kings who b en t their
efforts to the successful m anaging o f a m alleable and prom ising
land, while at the same time were effective in military activities
e ith e r by engaging in adventures w hich successful or, if not,
faced little real th re a t in defeat. B ickerm an’s Institutions des
Seleucides saw the structure o f Seleucid governm ent in term s of
n ee d for qualities like m ilitary com petence and adm inistrative
organ izatio n . T he history o f th e p erio d was in te rp re te d as a
struggle for im perial suprem acy, first am ong th e dynasts who
succeeded A lexander and then those who followed them in the
th ird cen tu ry B.C., la ter shifting to a resistance to Rom an
e n c ro a ch m e n t by Philip V, A ntiochus III, and others. W hile I
d o n o t suggest th a t th e clash o f dynasts a n d Rom e were
c o m p re h e n d e d as p a ra lle l to th e clash o f em p ires w hich
culm inated in the G reat War, I believe th a t the com prehension
o f causes, motivations and purposes which influenced events after
th e d e a th o f A le x a n d e r was lim ite d by th e h isto ric a l
im agination inspired by the war o f 1914-1918.
If th e re w ere lim itations o f im agination, th ere were also
expansions, an d these showed in the kinds o f studies carried on
in the years after 1918. The m ost notable o f the expansions came
with th e w eight given to econom ic and social considerations as
p a rt o f history. It may be th at the im pact o f Marxist thought and
its political ap p licatio n as p a rt o f th e Bolshevik revolution
in ten sified a tte n tio n to econom ic m atters as determ inative o f
politics. C ertainly Rostovtzeff, n o frie n d to th e com m unist
theorists, w rote his Economic and Social History of the Hellenistic
World with the view th at econom ic aspects o f hum an activity were
as h isto ric a lly sig n ific a n t— o r m o re so— as p o litic a l an d
m ilitary. T h a t massive w ork capped two decades o f intensive
investigation o f the econom ic activity o f the dynasts o f the third
century an d after. RostovtzefFs own A Large Estate in Egypt in the
6
third century B.C., S ch n eb el’s Landwirtschaft im hellenistischen

Aegypten, Preaux* L ’Economie royale des Lagides, are exam ples, for
Egypt, of large studies to which the now-plentiful papyrological
evidence could be turned. These, and a large num ber o f smaller
and m ore specialized studies were influenced by the acceptance of
econom ic considerations as influential o r determ inative in the
creation o f institutions; as the Egyptian economy, like all an cien t
e c o n o m ie s, was p rim a rily a g ric u ltu ra l, th e in s titu tio n s
g enerated by the desire to maximise production would naturally
relate prim arily to the land, and so the Ptolem ies developed a
com plex agricultural bureaucracy which was quite successful in
c o n tro llin g farm in g activity a n d g e n e ra tin g rev en u e . T he
h isto rian s sh ared w ith J o h n M aynard Keynes th e id ea th a t
governm ents could play a role in d eterm in in g the econom ic
well-being o f states, and like Keynes they tacitly assum ed that,
with econom ics so influential on politics, governm ents would
w ant as m uch co n tro l as possible over the progress o f th e
economy. T here were m ore broadly based studies, like Mickwitz’
in f lu e n t ia l “E c o n o m ic R a tio n a lis m in G re c o -R o m a n
A g ricu ltu re” (Economic History Review, 1937), studies o f slavery,
banking, piracy, trad e, m onetary policy and m etrology and
many o th e r areas, some of which extended to many parts o f the
M editerranean world in the period, others lim ited to individual
“k in g d o m s .”
Beyond economics, social relations o f all sorts were subjected
to scrutiny, and the growing dem ocratization o f society in Europe
and N orth America undoubtedly contributed to this. Slavery and
legal in stitu tio n s w ere e x p lo re d intensively, a n d relig io n
received a m ore sym pathetic scrutiny than h ad been the case
earlier. But again, as the society o f the twenties and thirties
m ad e acad em ics m o re fam ilia r w ith a n d a c c e p tin g o f
governm ental involvem ent in private life, scholars in te rp re te d
th e ir evidence in accordance with th e ir u n d e rsta n d in g th a t
d elib erate governm ent policy an d p lan n in g often lay b eh in d
social institutions and activities. Thus, for exam ple, the growth of
cults like th at o f Isis and Sarapis were seen as p art o f Ptolem aic
political policy, and the om nipresent dynastic cults of the period
w ere given en tirely political ex p lan atio n . F u rth e rm o re , th e
increasing awareness o f the effects on society o f the im perialism
o f th e n in e te e n th ce n tu ry p ro m p te d a sensitivity to th e
7
M O D E R N VIEWS O F T H E PER IO D AFTER A LEX A N D ER
in teractio n s betw een the governing G reeks an d th e teem ing

m asses w ho p o p u la te d th e co u ntryside o f P alestine, Syria,
M esopotam ia and Egypt. Scholars ten d ed to m ake distinctions
along cultural, n o t eth n ic lines, ren d erin g w hat was seen as a
favorable ju d g m e n t on the “racial” policies o f th e kings. In
Egypt, for exam ple, language was understood as the avenue to
power, along which H ellenized Egyptians could leave the lower
classes and jo in the ranks of the dom inant society so long as they
w ere able to fu n ctio n in th e language o f the rulers. W ith a
process like th a t in m ind, it was easy to u n d e rsta n d th e
in terch an g e o f cultures w hich had b een m ade the hallm ark of
the period.
Many o f these attitudes persisted or becam e even m ore deep
seated after the Second W orld War, particularly insofar as social
stru c tu re s b e c a m e — fo r a w hile a t least— som ew hat m ore
egalitarian in th e w estern industrial nations, and governm ent,
econom ic activity and social institutions were m ore an d m ore
integrated. T here were, o f course, also the holdover attitudes of
ea rlier tim es; g en e ra tio n s do n o t pass away uniform ly, th eir
m em b ers cooperatively dying in co n g ru en ce w ith the g reat
events w hich create changes in ideas. T a rn ’s attitudes toward
A lexander th e G reat, for exam ple, were still th ere to be dealt
with in his publication o f 1948. In general, however, judgm ents
o f the postwar period tended to be less and less charitable toward
th e in te n tio n s o r abilities o f the rulers o f antiquity. Even the
g re a t A lexander has recently been seen as sacrificing a whole
g eneration o f M acedonians to his am bition, dealing his people a
blow from w hich they never recovered. Eventually this decline
in esteem would d ro p to the level o f Sir Eric T u rn e r’s ju d g m en t
in the 2nd edition o f Vol. VII o f The Cambridge Ancient History on
th e policies o f Ptolem y II and the effects they had on Egyptian
econom ics and society. W hat an earlier generation had seen as a
p la n n e d econom y w hich b ro u g h t th e b rillian t originality of
G re ek s to p r o m o te p ro s p e rity a n d e x p a n s io n , T u rn e r
re in te rp re te d to reveal progressively increasing exploitation and
pressure on the population which brought about a “bankruptcy” of
Egypt an d p ro d u ced a g reat deal o f in tern al turm oil, and lay at
th e d o o r o f “com petitive dynastic w ars” responsibility for the
n ee d to squeeze all available resources o u t o f the country. T he
a rg u m e n t is as persuasive to readers o f the nineteen-eighties as
8
were RostovtzefFs and Preaux’ approving assesments to scholars of

the thirties and forties. But one is entitled to w onder w h eth er
we middle-class academ ics o f the seventies an d eighties, feeling
the constraints of a p o o rer econom ic clim ate and less friendly
governm ents, m ight have been pushed by experience to view the
same evidence a little differently, ju st as we have com e to regard
war as a non-productive expense o f g o v ern m en t w hich puts
serious pressures on m uch of the population.
T here has also been a m ajor change in our assessment o f the
p h en o m en o n of the period w hich had long been seen as its
g reatest characteristic, w hat has been called syncretism . T he
jurists, at least, never had to contend with the concept, for it was
clear th a t am ong G reeks, H ellen ic concepts an d ru les o f
ju risp ru d en ce applied, while “native” law rem ained vital to serve
th e n eed s o f th e non-hellenized. This was clearest in Egypt,
w here papyrus texts gave explicit docum entation for the separate
adm inistration of the two types of law. Indeed, this “co-existence”
in legal affairs was seen as p art o f the evidence for a G reek and
M a c e d o n ia n a d m in is tr a tio n w h ic h was n o t ra c ia lly
discrim inatory. In the last decade, however, th a t “co-existence”
has been discerned in many aspects of life beside the legal. In
Egypt, w here evidence is plentiful, we now u n d e rsta n d th a t
native culture and literature flourished alongside the Greek, and
th a t the two h ad very little in flu en ce over each o th e r. In
religious practice, natives co n tin u ed a close association with
Egyptian tem ples and practices and few involved themselves in
G reek religion, while G reeks were rarely to be fo u n d in any
involvem ent in traditional Egyptian religion. W hile it was not,
apparently, difficult for a “hellenized” Egyptian to operate freely
in th e G reek m ilieu, th a t h ellen izatio n m e a n t a w holesale
adoption o f Greek culture, n o t merely facility in language, for we
find very little evidence of people with their feet in both worlds,
so to speak. And decolonization in th e m o d e rn w orld has
prom pted Edouard Will to reflect on the colonial natu re o f the
d o m in a n ce o f H ellen ism in th e areas c o n tro lle d by the
M acedonian m onarchies. In the b ro ad er scope o f the w hole
M editerreanean, the spreading cults which had form erly been
reg ard ed as “o rie n ta liz e d ” have com e to be seen m o re as
hellenized cults of oriental deities, quite a different m atter, and
analogous to an old Greek tradition o f accepting eastern gods and
9
M O D E R N VIEWS O F T H E PER IO D AFTER ALEXANDER
goddesses in to religious observation. T h e new view o f the

separation between G reek and native societies at this tim e was
p ro p o u n d e d m ost fully and in its m ost general application in
1978 by Claire Preaux in Le monde hellenistique; it may be no
accident that a rein terp retatio n of the evidence to argue against
ad ap tatio n and for th e co n tin u in g existence o f two separate
cultures cam e from a Belgian scholar w riting at a tim e when
th a t co u n try was ex p e rien cin g a stro n g revival o f Flem ish
cultural nationalism and attem pting to provide for the survival of
th e F lam an d s in th e h ith e rto d o m in a n t F ren ch -sp eak in g
m ilieu. And it may also be n o accident that my own perceptions
o f cultural co-existence may have been strongly influenced by my
experience o f two decades o f resurgent Francophones in Canada.
R ecent work shows that the consensus which gave the period
after A lexander coherence and m eaning for the flow o f history
in antiquity has thoroughly broken up. No longer can we assert
co n fid en tly th a t th e w orld w hich A lex an d er o p e n e d to the
G reeks provided an o p p o rtu n ity for H ellenism to blen d with
m any local cultures to create a new and universal culture for the
M e d iterran ea n . T h e id ea th a t the am algam ation o f religious
ideas fertilized th e g ro u n d to m ake p eo p le ready fo r the
C hristian message, a n otion which could be adopted happily by
evangelical C hristians and rationalist atheists alike, no longer
seems to have so m uch validity. In o th er areas, the evidence now
suggests a g reater diversity o f culture and cultures am ong the
p e o p le s o f th e M e d ite rra n e a n , a diversity w hich can be
u n d ersto o d as leading in to th e m ulticultural com m unity which
was th e R om an E m pire. T he survival o f the many languages,
religious trad itio n s, cu ltu ral com m unities a n d even political
separatism which seems to have co ntinued despite the Augustan
u n ific a tio n o f th e M e d iterran ea n has a ttra c te d a tte n tio n in
re c e n t years, again, p erh ap s d ue to a g re a te r to le ra tio n o f
g e n u in e diversity in th e m o d e rn w orld. In th e sam e way,
w riters ab o u t the period before Rome gained political supremacy
have been willing to approach different areas w ithout attem pting
to fit them into a unified picture o f the history o f the period.
This does m ean, however, th at know ledge o f the period in
lig h t o f m o s t r e c e n t w ritin g seem s fra g m e n te d ; th e
establishm ent o f an Isis cult center in Spain or on the Balearics
10
is n o t necessarily seen as the same p h en o m en o n w hich b ro u g h t

it to Athens or Cyrene; the dynastic cult of the Seleucids may not
have been organized along Ptolem aic lines, or even have served
the same social purposes it fulfilled in Egypt; even m onarchy as
an institution may have varied strikingly from place to place and
tim e to tim e; we can n o t presum e from Egyptian parallels the
developm ent o f Judaism in Palestine, or vice-versa. All these are
exam ples o f th e kinds o f issues w ith w hich scholars have
struggled, and all the caveats are now observed. An illustration of
the result, as I have rem arked in my review o f C A H 2 VII, 1
(Phoenix, 40, 1986), is a change from the coherence and consensus
aspect o f the first edition o f the volume of the Cambridge Ancient
History which dealt with the period, to a second-edition volum e
with little in te rn a l cohesion an d g re a t diversity, n o t only in
appraisals o f the period and in the m anner o f looking at it, but
even in the estimate of what is worth discussion.
Interestingly enough, this state o f affairs does n o t seem to
distress contem porary historians. I suppose we are all accustom ed
to a w orld in w hich influential forces seem to work at cross
purposes. An ancient experience affected by chance as m uch as or
m ore than cooperation, in w hich governm ents may do sim ilar
things for very different purposes, or try to achieve similar results
by strikingly different m eans, m erely seems to us the no rm o f
life. M ore and m ore we disbelieve the experts, and consider that
decisions are m ade in ig n o rance, d ecep tio n , stupidity o r by
accident, an d we are co n ten t to accept the same situation in
antiquity as we live with in the present.
I do n o t suggest th at the lines of research today are strikingly
different from w hat they have been for m ost o f the century. Even
the increasing num bers o f female scholars and greater attention
to the situation of women have n o t radically affected the subjects
stu d ied or the g en e ra l p a tte rn o f in v estig atio n —yet. T he
papyrologists an d ep ig rap h ers co n tin u e to ed it an d in te rp re t
texts. C hronology rem ains a m ajor concern. Religious m atters
are still the subject of a great deal o f discussion. Each o f the areas
aro u n d th e M editerranean receives its share o f special studies,
and various aspects of policy, adm inistration and even ideology of
individual m onarchs com e in for atten tio n . But less and less is
the M editerranean world in this period seen as a unit, an d still
11
less has th ere developed a new interpretation of the significance

o f the period for hum an history, to replace the old view that it
was a tran sitio n from an d tran sfo rm atio n o f H ellenism by
w hich early trad itio n s received new d irectio n s from eastern
influences, an d w ent on to create the new world o f Christian
Rom e.
12
II
THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER
T he m ajor political events in the decades after A lexander’s

d eath are well known. N ot only from D iodorus’ history, ex tan t
down to th e B attle o f Issus in 301, b u t in o th e r sources,
biographical like Plutarch, annalistic like Porphyry, we can p u t
together a narrative account of events, often very detailed,1 which
shows the m an n er in which the generals interacted and fought
to establish them selves in the regions won by th e ir erstw hile
leader. M odern historians have no trouble u n d ersta n d in g the
conflict w hich arose alm ost imm ediately, which moved th ro u g h
the m achinations o f Perdiccas’ failed attem p t to m aintain the
unity o f th e em pire u n d e r his own leadership, th ro u g h th e
conflicts o f the successor generals, their attem pts a t agreem ent,
first at Triparadeisus settling the basic divisions o f the realm in
321, repeated in 311, emphasized by the adoption of royal titles in
306 - 305, and settled with A ntigonus’ death in the Battle o f Ipsus
in 301.
T he account o f this period, in w hatever length it is told,
becom es for the m ost p art a narrative o f political m achinations
an d military com petition, with recen t com m ent, perhaps due to
changing views of military heroes, on the m an n er in which the
m anpower losses of A lexander’s campaign affected the subsequent
h isto ry o f M a c e d o n ia .2 A lth o u g h m any o f th e successors,
A ntigonus, Seleucus, Ptolem y an d Lysim achus a t least, w ere
attem pting to establish some stable form o f adm inistration and
governm ent over the territories they controlled, in addition to
trying to p ro te c t or ex ten d th e ir dom ains an d m e et th e
challenges of one an o th er, the an cien t literary sources tell us
practically noth ing about how these problem s were handled, and
there are n o t many docum ents from the earlier period to fill in
the gap. In Egypt, w here papyri are plentiful in the generation
See, for example, R.M. Errington’s very close examination o f the sources for
and the period between the conqueror’s death and the conference at Triparadeisus,
“From Babylon to Triparadeisus, 323-320 B.C.,”JH S90 (1970), pp. 49-77.
W.L. Adams, “Andpater and Cassander: Generalship on Restricted Resources
in the Fourth Century,” Ancient World 10 (1984), pp. 79-99; A.B. Bosworth,
“Alexander the Great and the Decline o f Macedon,”/ / / S 105 (1986), pp. 1-12.
13
T H E SUCCESSORS O F ALEXANDER
after Ptolemy I, there are practically no Greek papyri for the first
reign. We see ju s t a little o f a chancery, influencing Egyptian
scribes to date docum ents by a reign b eg in n in g in the year
3 0 5 /4 , while G reek scribes at the end of the reign dated as if it
had started on the death of A lexander the Great.
T he docum ents do give us a few hints about the m anner of
a d m in istra tio n . O ne o f the A lexander-priests nam ed in the
docum ents, P. Elephantine 2 and P. H ibeh 84(a), both o f the 40th
year, is M enelaos son o f Lagos, Ptolemy’s brother. T he king used
him n o t only in honorific positions, b u t for serious work as well,
for M enelaos governed Cyprus after th e d eath o f N ikokreon in
310, an d probably in the capacity of king. Bagnall’s arg u m en t
th at D iodorus’ designation o f N ikokreon and M enelaos is n o n -
technical an d refers to activity ra th e r than office is probably
c o r r e c t,3 an d would fit with o th er evidence o f Ptolem y’s scanty
bureaucratic service. Ptolemy also had a phrourarchos on Cyprus at
th e en d o f th e fo u rth cen tu ry ,4 b u t this again is a m ilitary
com m and ra th e r than civilian adm inistration. T he shakiness of
th e adm inistrative service is well illustrated by the difficulties
P tolem y e n c o u n te re d in C yrene, w ith his agen t-in -ch arg e
O p h elias behaving with a good deal o f in d e p e n d e n c e , with
revolts th ere, an d then, after Ipsus, using a family m em ber, his
step so n M agas. T h e m ajor d o c u m e n t illu stratin g P tolem y’s
activity in Cyrene, the “C onstitution o f C yrene,”5 makes it quite
clear th at a t the early state o f Ptolem y’s establishing control over
the area, th e re were no Ptolem aic officials and no indication of
any b u re a u c ra tic o r ad m in istrativ e stru c tu re answ erable to
P tolem y.
*R.S. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions Outside Egypt (Leiden,
1976), pp. 40-42.
4OG/S 20.
5SEG IX, 7. The text provides for a Ptolemaic garrison and appeal to Ptolemy for
a three-year period, while Ptolemy him self is permanendy on e o f the six-
member board o f strategoi and makes the inidal appointment o f the 101 elders, but
the relationship between the satrap and this very nearby city is not significantly
different from the kinds o f arrangments which the successors made with Greek
cities elsewhere. Cf. also the comments on the text by P.M. Fraser, Berytus 12
(1958), pp. 120-127.
14
For the m ost part, all we have o f Ptolem y’s adm inistration is
military, figures like the adm iral Callicrates,6 Seleucus him self
w hen he com m anded the fleet an d served a t Gaza in 312,
nesiarchs an d o th e r military com m anders o f lesser im portance.
T he indefiniteness o f adm inistration at the time is illustrated by
th e c a re e r o f th e king o f S idon, Philocles, who h e ld an
extrao rd in ary com m and b u t whose title is in fact unknow n.
T h ere are a few civilians o f whom we learn, like the nam es of
the ambassadors to Sinope sent to obtain the statue o f Sarapis, the
A ristoboulos who u n d ertook a diplom atic mission to A ntigonus
in 311, T heodorus, the Cyrenaic philosopher m en tio n ed as an
am bassador to Lysim achus,8 or some notables in the cultural
field—D em etrius of P halerum and the philosopher Straton, for
exam ple—b u t th ere is n o th in g adm inistrative ab o u t this. Even
the accom plishm ents an d acts reco rd ed by the Satrap Stele are
military or religious, and the praises applied to the satrap are
rem iniscent o f the expressions o f praise customary for Egyptian
m onarchs. In th e non-political sphere, th a t o f the A lexandrian
m useum and library for which Ptolem y is so famous, we have
surprisingly little evidence as well. N oted figures like Zenodotus,
librarian from about 290 to 2*75 are known, of course, and we have
reference to a figure like the A etolian A lexander, gram m arian
and poet, who supervised the departm ent of tragic poetry in the
library from a b o u t 285 on, b u t the m a n n e r in w hich th e
in stitu tio n was ru n is virtually unknow n. We fall back on
generalities, like the observation o f the great enco u rag em en t of
culture for which Ptolemy was responsible. T rue as the generality
m ight be, we do n o t know how the king did it.9 All in all, if we
were forced to lim it our statem ents to what the evidence actually
nVho has been studied in detail, by H. Hauben, Callicrates of Samos: A Contribution

to the Study of the Ptolemaic Admiralty ( Studia Hellenistica 18, Lovanii, 1970).
^H. Hauben, “Philocles King o f the Sidonians and General o f the Ptolemies,”
Studia Phoenicia V, Phoenicia and the East Mediterranean in the First Millennium B. C.
(Leuven, 1987), pp. 413-427.
sDiogenes Laertius II. 102-3.
^Virtually all o f the detail about the mouseion and library in pp. 305-335 o f
Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria I relates to Philadelphus’ reign and later, apart from
the mention o f a few cultural figures like Demetrius o f Phalerum, Philistias and
Straton associated with Soter, and Fraser emphasizes how little we know o f the
functioning o f either institution.
15
tells us, we w ould describe g overnm ent u n d e r Ptolem y I as

inform al, w ith little adm inistrative stru ctu re, staffed by some
M acedonians and Greeks b u t d e p e n d e n t also on relatives and
friends o f the ruler.
We are no b etter off for adm instration u n d er Antigonus and
Seleucus. O f A ntigonus’ finances, the organization o f his realm
an d o f his officers we have a few hints, as also for his “p h ilo i,”
the natu re o f his m onarchy and the royal cults dedicated to him,
b u t extensive discussion begins with his city-foundations and his
relations with the G reek cities in the territories he controlled.10
Such scribal bureaucracy as there was u n d er Seleucus showed the
sam e in te re st in dating p ro ced u re as existed in Egypt.11 As in
Egypt, two systems co-existed, and the Babylonian persisted into
astronom ical records, w hich can only be u n d ersto o d in these
terms. T he confusion suggests a chancery which did n o t succeed
in unifying scribal practice. And the texts o f inscriptions which
record the dealings o f the successors with one a n o th er and with
th e G reek cities d o n o t suggest th e ex isten ce o f m uch
ad m in istratio n at all, with letters addressed directly from the
k in g s ,12 trea tin g m atters w hich seem to have been h an d led
directly by the king, and w ithout reference to any officials in the
k in g s’ service, save fo r essentially m ilitary com m anders from
tim e to time.
Even the m odern studies o f the successors, for the m ost part,
co n cen trate on the political, military o r chronological aspects of
the period, even though it was in those times th at some o f the
fu n d a m e n ta l lines w ere laid down alo n g w hich society, th e
econom y an d culture developed for the n ex t two centuries. T he
political n atu re o f “successor” history is ap p aren t in an excellent
re c e n t m o n o g rap h on the p e rio d ,13 and a survey o f scholarship
10Claude Wehrli, Antigone et Dcmetrios (Geneva, 1968), pp. 79-129.

11The scribes began dating documents and established an era with an epoch
that began with the Babylonian year starting in 311, but later also used an epoch
beginning with an accession year starting in 312.
12For the texts, C.B. Welles, Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period (New
Haven, 1934).
ls Herm ann Bengtson, Die Diadochen, Die Nachfolger Alexanders des Grossen
(Munich, 1987), in nearly 200 pages devotes about 35 to non-political matters, and
this is mostly cultural, art and religion, with nothing treated o f administration
or econom ic matters.
16
done in 1983 finds m aterial on econom ic m atters to fill n o m ore

than two pages, and m ost of th at general and dealing with the
period after the first successors, while in its catalogue o f “C entral
P ro b lem s,” econom ic or adm inistrative issues do n o t a p p e a r
a lo n g sid e m o n a rc h ic a l a n d p o litic a l th e o ry o r re lig io u s
m a tte rs.14 This characteristic o f investigation shows in the focus
of m ost of the special studies which have becom e basic to ou r
u n d erstan d in g o f the period, works like H erm an n B engtson’s
Die Strategic in der Hellenistichen Zeit}^ and Edouard Will’s Histoire
Politique du monde hellenistique, of which the first volume, carrying
its account o f events down through the first three quarters o f the
third century, appeared in 1966.16 Often the focus on this aspect of
history b ro u g h t together as if unchanging the political and social
in stitu tio n s o f m o st o f th e eastern reg io n s th ro u g h th re e
centuries, as if the situation rem ained m ore or less static once
the structures o f m onarchy had been set up in 306-305.17 For the
m ost p a rt,18 however, special studies w hich range beyond the
treatm en t o f political events and conflict am ong the im m ediate
successors deal with the institutions of the various realm s once
they had becom e established and were settled down u n d e r later
m onarchs. T he only recent study o f Seleucid econom ic structure
is entirely d iach ro n ic, and it is im possible to discern any
adm inistrative or econom ic patterns which can be ascribed to the
early stages o f organization.19
T here is an exception to w hat I have been saying, the area of
religion. H ere little has gone unnoticed, and th e re even have
been special studies o f the religious con cern s o f im m ediate
14Jakob Seibert, Das Zeitalter der Diadochen (Ertrage der Forschung 185,
Darmstadt, 1983).
15Which appeared in three volumes (Munich) in the years 1937, 1944, 1952, 2nd
edition, 1964-67.
16Vol. II, Nancy, 1967; 2nd edition, 1979-1982.
17As in V. Ehrenberg’s examination o f T h e Hellenistic State,” Part II o f The
Greek State [transladon o f Der Griechische Staat, II, Die hellenistische Stoat, Leipzig,
1958] (London, 1960, 2nd ed. 1979).
18An exception is H. Seyrig’s study o f the commercial and economic potential of
the siting o f the foundations o f Seleucus Nicator, “Seleucus I et la fondation de la
monarchic syrienne,” Syria 47 (1970), pp. 290-311.
19Heinz Kreissig, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Seleukidenreich: Die Eigentums- und
die Abhdngigskeitsverhalnisse (Berlin [GDR], 1978).
17
successors, such as Sw innen’s article o f 1971 for Ptolem y,20 or

B ernd F unck’s investigation o f the n atu re and purposes o f the
“stadtkult” and “Staatkult” established by Seleucus I.21 A good part
o f th e reason for this is the interest in tracing, o r arguing over,
the origins o f institutions b etter known in later times, like the
worship o f Sarapis or the establishm ent o f dynastic cult. But there
is also working the fact th at we have some epigraphical evidence
o f royal activities in this area, and even m ore, th a t we learn
from literary sources as divergent as P lutarch an d Tacitus o f
specific acts in this area—Ptolem y’s procurem ent o f the statue of
Sarapis from Sinope, an d his construction o f an ap p ro p riate
tem ple in which to house it.22
T he voting of royal cults by the cities and the establishm ent of
th e dynastic cults is generally seen by m o d e rn w riters as
p o litica l, even p r o p a g a n d is ts in n a tu re , a lth o u g h h o n e s t
evaluations adm it the difficulty o f understanding quite how these
acts achieve these goals.23 The forms o f texts honoring later kings
adm ittedly becam e m ore form ulaic than those com posed earlier
to h o n o r the first rulers, and this change in style may m ean that
th e establishm ents o f cu lt were m ore a m atter o f form than
gen u in e appreciation o f royal benefit, as has been asserted. On
the o th e r h and, it may equally suggest that, as the kings becam e
a m ore fam iliar set o f figures, the great role th at they played as
individuals b ro u g h t th e cities to h o n o r them as fixtures o f the
system, so to speak, r a th e r th a n for specific actions. T h e
significance o f th e kings to the cities may be revealed by the
well-known hymn to D em etrius son o f A ntigonus, in w hich the
*°W. Swinnen, “Sur la politique religieuse de Ptolemee le r ,” Les Syncretismes

dans les Religions Grecque et Romaine (Colloque de Strasbourg, 9-11 June, 1971),
Travaux du Centre d ’Etudes Superieures Specialise d ’Histoire des Religions de
Strasbourg (Paris, 1973), pp. 115-133.
21“Wurzeln der hellenistischen Euergetes-Religion im Reich Seleukos I," in
E.C. Welskopf, ed., Hellenische Poleis, Krise-Wandlung-Wirkung, vol. Ill (Berlin,
1974), pp. 1290-1335.
^Tac., Hist. 4.83-84; P lut, De Is. et Osir. 28 and Mor. 984A.
25In treating this material, most writers cite Arthur Darby Nock’s “SUNNAOS
THEOS,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41 (1930), but, it seems to me, more in
reference than in reflection, passing by Nock’s profound observation (p. 61) which
saw the em ergence o f the cults in terms o f “the contemporary tendency to
recognize som ething divine in human beings who were clearly out o f the
ord in ary.”
18
A thenians rem ark th a t “o th e r gods ho ld them selves a g reat

distance off, or have no ears, or do n o t exist or pay no attention to
us, n o t even one, but you we see at hand, n o t wood, n o r stone, but
genuine, so we pray to you.”24 T he contem porary D em ochares,
A thenaeus tells us, q u o tin g the hym n, called this flattery o f
Demetrius, b u t the hymn em erged out of the treatm ent of the city
by the king, who had ju s t restored the dem ocracy. T he hymn
does not, however, specify w hat benefits D em etrius had brought,
b u t it prays that he will bring peace, and th at he will overthrow
the Aetolian League which n o t only was holding Delphi, b u t was
plu n d erin g territories far away.
It was plausible to call D em etrius a god, and to ask th at he
look after the needs o f the A thenians and o th e r Greeks. It is a
com m onplace, again, to rem ark on th e G reek view o f the
placem ent of hum ans along the continuum which stretches from
the m ost com pletely divine th ro u g h titans, heroes, hum ans of
divine-hum an parentage, and allows for the re-location on th e
scale of hu m an s whose divine n atu re has b een discovered or
revealed. P eople m ig h t arg u e a b o u t w h eth e r A lexander, or
Dem etrius, was in fact a god; many would at least n o t challenge
th e possibility.25 Frank W albank has recently em phasized the
genuine quality o f the veneration accorded the new kings, that it
fitted in to religious as well as political needs, an d in a rapid
survey has cited th e texts w hich show ru le r cu lt em erg in g
broadly for the successors, for Ptolem y I, for Lysimachus, for
S eleucus I,26 in m any cities in th e G reek w orld. W albank’s
treatm en t also illustrates the m ajor shift which has taken place
in o u r u n d erstan d in g o f the origins o f this ruler-w orship, away
from earlier ideas which saw it as an oriental p h en o m en o n and
now seem ingly universally accepting it as fundam entally G reek
in n atu re and basis.
24Quoted in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae VI.255 d-f.

25Modern writers still struggle with the ancient mentality. J.R. Hamilton, for
example, dealing with the call for divine honors o f Alexander, in T h e Origins
o f Ruler Cult,” Prudentia 16 (1984), pp. 3-15), wonders whether “at this time
Alexander’s state o f mind was abnormal.” (p. 14).
26F.W.Walbank, “Konige als Cotter: Uberlegungen zum Herrscherkult von
Alexander bis Augustus,” Chiron 17 (1987), pp. 365-382.
19
T he dynastic cult had some differences from this reaction to

pow er place by place and from tim e to tim e. It was a form al
structure, prom oted and supported by the crown. The evidence of
th e deification of deceased (and th en living) sovereigns first
appears in Egypt as a cult of A lexander, with an eponym ous
priest, later ex panded to include Ptolem y I and his wife, and
later, successive m em bers o f the dynasty, a developm ent shown by
various priests and priestesses often nam ed in docum ents as part
o f th e d atin g form ula. T h e cu lt was entirely G reek, having
n o th in g to do w ith th e long-standing Egyptian p ractice o f
accepting the king as god, although the Ptolem ies responded to
th e E gyptian m ilieu by c o n tin u in g e a rlie r p ractice in th e
Egyptian tem ples, an d even ex tending some o f the G reek cult
form ulary to Egyptian practice. A lthough in Syria th ere is later
evidence o f the prom ulgation o f a dynastic cult, it n eith er was so
centralized n o r so pervasive as in Egypt, perhaps because the ruler
cults o f the cities seem ed to satisfy whatever need the dynastic cult
was created to m eet. In its full expression it was prim arily a
Ptolem aic institution, and its spread into o th e r areas may have
been d ue to influence or im itation of Ptolemaic practice. Its utility
to th e sovereign has b ee n very d ifficu lt for m o d e rn s to
u n d erstan d . Bickerm an has suggested th at the Seleucid dynastic
cult was arranged to provide an expression o f religious activity for
G reeks settled in new lands,27 b u t in Egypt, w here the dynastic
cult was strongest, the crown-prom oted cults o f Isis and Sarapis in
th eir H ellenized form offered an easy access to deity w ithout the
creation o f an o th e r com plex (and costly) priestly structure. It is
very difficult to provide an explanation a p a rt from the m ost
m odernizing and secularist conceptions o f propaganda. It is n o t
a t all difficult to u n d erstan d how a cult o f the god A lexander
m ight have been instituted in th e first place, an d it may ju st be
th e opacity o f an cien t religious attitudes th at precludes us from
u n d e rsta n d in g how th a t was ex ten d ed to the Ptolem ies as a
g e n u in e expression o f religious act. If, on th e o th e r h an d ,
dynastic cult (and ru ler cult) are to be regarded as some form of
propaganda, as is so often said, the universal acceptance o f th at
thesis will wait until we have reviewed thoroughly th e n atu re of
Înstitutions des Seleucid.es (Paris, 1938), pp. 250-256.
20
T H E SUCCESSORS O F A LEXANDER
propaganda in the period28—and seen dem onstrations th at some

o f th e term s, tem ples, coins an d cults identified as propaganda
were n o t only launched b u t actually h it som ething.
T h ere has also been a continuing in terest in defining the
n atu re o f the m onarchy exercised by the successors, alth o u g h
with quite a difference in style between those who look a t the
la ter m onarchy in term s o f political theory, an d those who
describe it in term s o f specific events and considerations which
shaped it.29 T he conceptions o f the m onarchy exercised by the
kings after A lexander d ep en d to a significant ex ten t on ideas
ab o u t the n atu re o f kingship of Philip II an d A lexander th e
G reat, and th ere is a great deal o f debate over ju s t w hat the
n atu re of th a t m onarchy was, w hether the kings “rep rese n ted
th e state,” w h eth er th ere was a co n stitu tio n al quality to th e
m onarchy by which the power and the options available to the
king w ere subject to known or ag reed lim its,30 w h eth er th e
power o f the m onarchy was balanced or restricted by an “army
assem bly” w hich was fo rm al an d h eld sovereign pow er, a
concept which has had g reat influence over the past decades,31
w hether th ere m ight have been a significant difference between
m ost o f the m onarchies an d th at o f a “n atio n al” m onarchy in
M acedonia itself.32 A wholly different approach has argued that
28This has been an identified desideratum for fifty years, called for by W. Otto
and H. Bengtson in 1938 in Zur Geschichte d a Niederganga d a Ptolemaerreich.es (Abh.
Bay. Akad. Wiss., Phil-.hist. Abt., Neue Folge 17).
^Compare, for example, Horst Braunert’s “Staatstheorie und Staatsrecht im
Hellenismus,” Speculum 19 (1969), pp. 47-66, with R.M. Errington’s T h e Nature of
the Macedonian State under the Monarchy,” Chiron 8 (1978), pp. 77-133.
S0This is essentially the position o f N.G.L. Hammond, expressed in A History of
Macedonian (Oxford, 1979).
slThe theory o f Friedrich Granier, Die makedonische Heeraversammbing, (Munich,
1931), which argued as well that the function o f the army condnued into later
dmes, a theory successfully opposed by Elias Bickerman, Institutions d a Seleucida
(Paris, 1938), pp. 8-11. Granier’s thesis, although rejected by Pietro de Francesci,
Arcana Imperii (Milan, 1948), p. 343 ff., was in the main lines accepted by Aymard
and Briant (next note).
T h is was a concept propounded to reconcile Granier’s thesis with the evidence
of other monarchies after Alexander, by Andre Aymard, Etuda d'histoire ancienne
(Paris, 1967) 73-99; 100-122; 123-135; 143-163; and elsewhere; followed, with a
disdnction between an army assembly and a people’s assembly, by Pierre Briant,
Antigone le Borgne. L a debuts de sa carriere et la problema de I’Assemblee macedonienne
(Paris, 1973).
21
th e re is a m in im u m o f co n stitu tio n alism in M acedonian

m onarchy, th at this characteristic applied n o t only to a m ore or
less absolute m onarchy of Philip and Alexander, b u t pertained as
well to the later m onarchies as well, am ong which th ere are no
essential differences o f “n a tio n a l” o r “p e rso n a l” quality.53 A
re c e n t attem p t by M ooren to m ediate the positions recently has
re tu rn e d to the view th a t th ere was a difference betw een the
S eleucid-P tolem aic p a tte rn and th a t o f o th e r states with a
M acedonian m onarchy, urging th at the king was n o t the only
source o f law, a view which is n o t exactly com prom ise “between
th e ‘m axim alist’ an d the ‘m inim alist’ views.”34
T he tendency to trea t the m onarchies o f Philip, A lexander,
th e im m ed iate successors an d th e n th e ir follow ers as one
p h e n o m e n o n , alb eit evolving in tim e, has led to attem pts to
reconcile items o f evidence which relate in fact to quite different
kings or institutions. W hile th ere has been some discussion of
early views th a t the successors tried to find legitim ization in ties
w ith A lexander an d th e A rgead h o u se,35 I do n o t think it has
cast m uch light on actual conceptions o f m onarchy or the process
o f m onarchic rule, beyond a general recognition th at a n um ber
o f th e successors, n o tab ly th e S eleucids a n d P tolem ies,
em phasized the dynastic quality o f the reign as the generations
wore on. T he treatm en t o f these m onarchies as aspects o f a single
in stitution is only partly justified by the fact th a t the different
m onarchies h ad some characteristics in com m on: the courts and
c o u rt circles, initially m ade u p o f the trusted associates o f the
king an d assem bled on an ad hoc basis, b u t later an d only in
some kingdom s evincing m ore characteristics o f bureaucracy and
stability; dynastic cults and religious respect accorded to the king
in m ost instances; conspicuous displays of wealth and patronage
ssRobert Lock, T h e Macedonian Army Assembly in the Time o f Alexander the

Great,” Classical Philology 72 (1977), pp. 92-107, arguing that Alexander’s troops
exercised no constitutional authority; this line o f approach takes its stand now on
the discussion o f R.M. Errington, note 29 above, examining all the sources in
detail.
S4Leon M ooren, T h e Nature o f the Hellenistic Monarchy," Egypt and the
Hellenistic World, p. 213
S5Most recently, and against this view, R.M. Errington, “Alexander in the
Hellenistic World,” Alexandre Le Grand (Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 22, Geneva,
1975), pp. 137-179.
22
in th e royal cen ters, p articu larly n o tew orthy in P to lem y ’s

Alexandria; and perhaps m ost im portant of all, an attem pt by the
kings to accom m odate themselves to prevailing ideas o f kingship
an d to rep rese n t themselves as fulfilling expectations o f b oth
high philosophy and low followers. O n the basis o f the earlier
concern with the theory o f kingship and the existence o f later
tracts w hich are taken to trace th e ir origins to lost works
com posed at the time o f the successors or in the third century,
scholars re c o n stru c t an active industry com posing tracts on
kingship to guide or flatter the kings. Many productions o f this
sort there may well have been,36 b u t there is, in fact, very little
evidence o f specific compositions or the names of putative authors
working in our period.3'
We may p resu m e th a t k in g sh ip , in th e p e rio d a fte r
A lexander, m ust have been conceived as justified in som e way
different from th at which created A lexander king, although, no
d o u b t, A le x a n d e r as e x e m p la r p ro b a b ly c o n tro lle d th e
conceptualizations of his successors to a considerable degree. They
m ight be kings “like” Alexander, b u t they did n o t becom e kings
as A lexander had, in h eritin g th e ir thro n es o r o b tain in g it in
som e p a r a lle l to th e M a c e d o n ia n arm y p r a c tic e o f
acknowledging an accession. In a strict sense, there had been no
predecessor at all for m ost o f them , unless Philip A rrhidaeus and
A lexander IV could have been considered such in som e way.
Only for Ptolemy could th a t have really w orked in a clear-cut
S6There is a literary portrait o f Ptolemy I claimed to have been composed in his

court by Hecataeus o f Abdera, its contents and its nature deduced from the contents
o f Book I o f Diodorus. A second century text, the Letter of ‘Aristeas' to Philocrates
actually survives, but its date is uncertain—it is most likely, in my view, to be
toward the end o f the century, and its ideas o f kingship may be Jewish, to some
extent, rather than based on Greek theory. Cf. D. Mendels, “‘On Kingship’ in
the ‘Temple Scroll’ and the Ideological Vorlage of the Seven Banquets in the ‘Letter
o f Aristeas to Philocrates’,” Aegyptus 59 (1979), pp. 127-36.
87 Related unattributed texts in Pack2 do not add much: 2594, a text on kingship,
could come from our period; 2597, so-called moral lessons from the careers o f the
Diadochi may not be a treatment o f kingship; 2603, the advice to high-ranking
men, the papyrus dating to III B.C., is not monarchic theory; the same applies to
the similar 2591, a III text; 2573 (III) does deal with kingly virtues, but the
composition may go back to the 4th century B.C., as also may the dialogue on
government, 2562; a text on various political constitutions, 2570, I B.C., may not
even be philosophical in nature.
m anner, an d then, only for the Egyptians. T he successors were

kings, in th e first instance, because they said they were, and
although they m ight try to behave like A lexander to show that
they w ere kinglike, they h ad to function am ong G reeks and
M acedonians in ways th at would assure the recognition o f their
power and the acceptance o f their kingly status.
M any have o b serv ed th a t they w ere n o t kings “o f”
a n y t h i n g ,88 an d for th e m ost p a rt they w ere simply called
“king.” Even the n otion th a t for M acedonia and the A ntigonid
m o n a rc h y th e re was an official royal style “king o f the
M acedonians” has been effectively called into question with an
arg u m e n t th a t th ere was, in fact “no single ‘official’ style,”89 a
view w hich, if g e n e ra lly a c c e p te d , will have sig n ific an t
im plications for formalistic interpretations of the activities o f the
successors. I have suggested elsewhere th at A lexander’s kingship
may be b e tte r u n d ersto o d in term s o f the behavior of a tribal
c h ieftain a n d w ar-leader, ra th e r th a n a ru le r w ith form al
powers, m ore like a Viking than an adm inistrator, and th a t the
categories o f constitutionalism , royal an d subject rights and
authority, really d o n o t apply.40 I think the evidence for this is
quite good,41 and I believe that we could understand the successors
an d later m onarchy b etter if we did n o t try to fit ou r evidence
into the categories we have generally used.42
W hile th e g en e ra ls w ere c o n te n d in g , th e kings, P hilip
A rrhidaeus an d A lexander IV, played at least a theoretical and
58Recendy by Erich Gruen, "The Coronation o f the Diadochi,” The Craft of the
Ancient Historian, Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr (Lanham, Maryland, 1985), pp.
253-263, arguing that the meaning o f "king” as taken by the diadochi was, in fact,
undefined.
59R.M. Errington, "Macedonian ‘Royal Style’ and Its Historical Significance,”
Journal of Hellenic Studies 94 (1974) 37.
40The American Historical Review 93: 5 (1988) 1270-86.
41For example, E. Carney’s “Regicide in Macedonia,” Parola del Passato 38(1983),
pp. 260-272, also finds the M acedonian monarchy m ore personal than
institutionalized, when she considers the examples o f regicide, and finds that the
attempts show personal motivations, homosexual involvements, insults and the
like, rather than intentions to make polidcal impact.
42The importance attributed to the army, for example, may be due to an
instability in the relationship between generals and troops primarily in the first
decade after Alexander’s death, and it may be only the circumstances o f that
particular period which made it possible for the army to exercise such influence.
24
p ro p ag an d a role, tro tted o u t to justify actions and to sum m on

s u p p o rt.48 To the Greek cities, perhaps, the M acedonian kings
were less effective as inducem ents or rallying points,44 but am ong
the M acedonians, the utility of the kings, later the lone king, as
a screen for activity, may partially explain the long delay in
formalizing a royal claim on the p art o f any o f the generals. O r
A lexander IV may n o t have been dead as early as 311 or 310, as
the m odern consensus has it.45 T he idea o f kingship for the
satraps was certainly n o t completely absent during the period. In
Persia, in 316, Antigonus was “considered worthy o f the h o n o r o f
kingship by the natives as if he were the agreed lord o f Asia,
and h e him self, sitting down with the friends m ade his plans
a b o u t th e s a tra p ie s .”46 T h e “royal m a n n e r” o f C assander
rem ark ed by D iodorus m ust also be considered, unless th at,
unlike the attitude o f the eastern natives, is a reflection of the
attitude o f the historian—a possibility o f significance which m ust
be co n sid ered seriously w hen assessing D io d o ru s’ evidence.
P erhaps also D iodorus’ writing ra th e r than the attitude o f the
troops is the rem ark th a t in 312 D em etrius had a “gentleness
about him fitting to a young king,”47 but the rem ark that he wore
royal arm o r and raised g reat expectations as a resu lt is m ore
significant. Indicative also th at the idea was n o t out o f p eo p le’s
4SThis application o f the royals began quite early, as we read in Diodorus

XVIII.57 ff. o f the generals calling on one another for support in aid o f the kings,
and Olympias herself asking for aid on her own behalf and that o f the kings.
44Quite early, we read, for example, that in SI 8, after Polyperchon’s failure to
take Megalopolis, “most o f the Greek cities, despising Polyperchon because o f his
worsting in the siege of Megalopolis, revolting from the kings, inclined toward
Cassander.” (Diod. XVIII.74.1.)
4 Ben Zion W acholder, ‘T h e Beginning o f the Seleucid Era and the
Chronology o f the Diadochi,” in Nourished with Peace, Studies in Hellenistic Judaism in
Memory of Samuel Sandmel (Chico, Calif., 1984), pp. 183-211, argues on the basis of
contemporary texts which accept 3 0 5 /4 as the end o f Alexander IV and the
beginning o f new regnal calculation, and claims that the Diodorus passage on
which the conventional date is based has been misunderstood. Wacholder makes
a good, if not ironclad case, and his work is likely to provoke a spate o f discussion.
^Diod. XIX.48.1.
47Diod. XIX.81.4; and, according to Diodorus, XIX.92.5, Seleucus wrote to
Ptolemy in a manner “having kingly majesty worthy o f rule,” a remark which
may just reflect the attitude o f Diodorus or his source, or may in fact be revelatory
o f Seleucus’ behavior at the time.
25
m inds is th e oracle Seleucus received from the B ranchidae,

w hich h e re p o rte d to his troops in 312 on his re tu rn to
Babylonia; he claim ed th a t the oracle h ad called him “King
Seleucus.” Later, D em etrius was addressed by the N abataeans as
“King D em etriu s.”48
W hatever the extent o f the tentative explorations of the idea
o f kingship, it is clear th at down to Triparadeisus, the arm ies by
no m eans treated th eir generals as royal in any way, n o r did the
g en erals a rro g ate th e n o tio n o f au th o rity or sovereignty to
them selves. O ccasionally, D io d o ru s’ favorable tre a tm e n t o f
Ptolem y alm ost seem s like a transposition o f an A lexander-
description, as he portrays Ptolemy in batde against Perdiccas in
th e m a n n e r we are accustom ed to th in k o f for th e g reat
c o n q u e ro r,49 and asserting, in connection with Ptolem y’s honors
for A lexander th at “because of his grace o f spirit and greatness of
soul m en collected from everywhere to A lexandria and eagerly
furnished themselves for the cam paign.”50 Nevertheless, he does
n o t actually call him “kinglike” in these connections. It is clear
th a t w hatever ideas o f kingship for the generals m ight have
b een in the air—an d m ost in non-G reek areas— the n o tio n o f
m o n arch y , w hatever th a t m ig h t im ply, was n o t y et b ein g
extended to the generals in the H ellenic sphere.
T he text o f D iodorus suggests that in the times that the royal
titles were being assum ed in 306-304, th e re was developing a
g reater au ra aro u n d the leaders. It is o f course in 307, on the
occasion o f the “liberatio n ” o f A thens and the restoration o f the
dem ocracy th a t A ntigonus and D em etrius are given th eir tribes,
statues, crowns, altar as Saviors, an d games with procession and
sacrifice a t A th e n s.51 R hodes, in 305, afte r th e successful
resistance o f D em etrius’ siege, acknow ledged help by setting up
sta tu es o f (now Kings) C assan d er a n d L ysim achus,52 and
in d icated the g re a te r su p p o rt o f Ptolem y by en q u irin g o f the
oracle o f A m m on a t Siwah if they should h o n o r him as a god.
^D iod. XIX.96.S.
49Diod. XVIII.34
^D iod. XVIII.28.5
51Diod. XX.46.2.
52Diod. XX.100.2.
26
U pon the affirmative answer, they built the Ptolem aion.58

This occurred, of course, very shortly after all the leading
gen erals began calling them selves kings. T h at event, w hich
looks very large in our own account o f events and strongly affects
our conceptualization o f the developm ent of the m onarchies, is
dealt with in a surprisingly cursory m an n er by th e sources in
whom the trea tm en t can be ju d g e d . In D iodorus, only a few
lines are devoted to w hat we sometimes think o f as a m om entous
event, and I may quote, to make clear ju st what was said:
“And A ntigonus, learning o f the victory w hich had
b een achieved an d quite raised up by the size o f the
advantage he had gained, p u t on a diadem and for the
future used the official desigation of king, conceding also
to D em etrius to obtain the same form o f address and
honor. But Ptolemy, in no way cast down because o f his
defeat, took on th e diadem for h im self also, an d in
everything h e d esig n ated h im self as king. A nd like
them , the rest o f the the dynasts in im itation referred to
themselves as king, Seleucus, ju s t having acquired the
u p p e r satrapies and Lysimachus an d C assander, w ho
h e ld th e divisions w hich had originally b een given
th e m .”54
T he event is treated a t a little m ore length and given a good
deal m o re historical significance by P lu tarch in his life o f
D e m e triu s.55 T he biographer tells us o f the friends putting the
diadem on A ntigonus’ head, th at the new king sent one to his
son with a letter addressed to “King D em etrius,” th a t Ptolem y
took the title, and so too Lysimachus and Seleucus—who had
already been called such by the barbarians—w hile C assander,
who did n o t him self use the title, was accorded it in w riting and
speaking by o th ers. T h e significance P lu tarch finds in this
relates to the behavior of the new kings. It was n o t ju s t a style;
the new m onarchs were exalted by the title, and they assum ed a
c o n co m itan t behavior. They even trea ted p eo p le with m ore
5SDiod. X X .l00.3-4. Interestingly enough, Diodorus does not use the epithet
“king” for Ptolemy here, although he does apply it to Lysimachus and Cassander.
MDiod. XX.53.2-4.
5Erich Gruen, note 38 above, sees the actions reported by Plutarch as a carefully
staged “event.”
27
violence. “So m uch strength was th ere in one flattering word,

a n d it effected so m uch change for the w orld.”56 P lu ta rc h ’s
estim ation is often our own as well, and it may be right, b u t the
a n c ie n t tre a tm e n t o f events seems to suggest a m ore gradual
developm ent o f the autocracy condem ned by the philosopher-
biographer o f Rom an times.
In som e ways, I thin k we are still significantly affected by
P lu tarch ’s evaluation o f this change in governm ental style. For a
lo n g tim e, P lu ta rc h ’s tex t w ould have b een th e only one
com m only available to w estern historians, an d his observations
would have been effective in form ing the com m on view o f these
kingships. D iodorus, who would surely n o t have been read m uch
by any b u t specialists, would n o t have countered a prevailing view,
an d it is only th e n in e te e n th and tw entieth-century obsession
with fragm ents and docum ents th at can have had any significant
w eight against P lu tarch ’s ideology. P lu tarch ’s in terp retatio n has
a post-Dom itianic flavor, an d the evidence suggests th at the new
kings did n o t im m ediately lau n ch them selves in to a rro g a n t
superiority as h e claim ed, b u t that they proceeded, tentatively in
some directions, to define for themselves and for their followers
ju s t w hat they were.
We will u n d ersta n d th a t w orld b e tte r if we recognize th at
th e re w ere a n u m b er o f audiences before which the new kings
h ad to p u t on th eir perform ance. T here were the M acedonians
an d T hracians, accustom ed to kingship, some with a m em ory of
A lex an d er, an d all, in any case, p a rt o f a trad itio n w hich
expected o f a m an who would be king th at he would dem onstrate
m ilitary prowess, win battles, provide loot and be generous with
it, for whom kingship was perhaps hereditary to some extent, b u t
for whom it also m ust be asserted and preserved with force and
courage to be retain ed . T he G reek cities h ad no such set o f
categories in to w hich the new kings could fit themselves, and
m odern historians face an im p o rtan t issue in understanding the
ideological problem s w hich the kings presented to the cities.57 If
^Plut. Dem. 18.2.

57As , for example, G.J.P. Aalders, “City State and World Power in Hellenisdc
Political Thought," Actes de la VII Congres de la federation Internationale des associations
d ’etudes classiques I (Budapest, 1984), pp. 293-301, sees not only that the kingship
needed “explanation and justification for Greek subjects” (p. 296), but that the
28
th e re was any royal behavior w hich they m ig h t use for the

Greeks, it would best lie in the direction o f the p h ilo so p h ers’
kings, concepts which the leaders o f the cities would recognize.
So there were two images they had to p resent—m ore than two
outside Greece and M acedonia, for there were the native peoples
to consider. Insofar as the kings had any desire to be accepted by
the natives, and it would certainly be practical to avoid native
opposition, they would want to present themselves in a m an n er
acceptable to, if n o t positively enticing of, a population they did
n o t know very well, could n o t address in its own language or
languages, and was scattered over a considerable area.
This was a very com plex situation. For the new m onarchs in
eastern reg io n s, th e tra d itio n a l native m o n arch ies did n o t
present m uch of a problem , for they could let existing institutions
stand, natives follow th e ir earlier custom s, an d w h eth er th e
G reek-speaking m o n arch s o r th e ir officials u n d e rsto o d the
traditions or not, so long as the king him self was incorporated
in to local practice it did n o t m atter very m uch w hat those
traditions actually were. So too, traditional M acedonian attitudes
req u ired no new arrangem ents. As generals and satraps, the
leaders had already been m eeting the expectations of the troops,
and as kings, they needed only to continue being as successful
militarily as they could, som ething they would certainly w ant to
do anyway. In the th ird area, touching on the concepts and
expectations of the Greeks, they could apply what they knew o f the
ideology o f m onarchy w hich would be c u rre n t in the G reek
world. T heir youthful training in the cultured M acedonian court
w ould stand them in good stead h e re , as they p re se n te d
themselves to the Greek cities as patrons o f H ellenism and Greek
culture. They also had A lexander’s behavior as an exam ple, in
his relation to the religions o f the natives and the Greeks, in the
m anner in which he related to Greek cities receiving cults there
an d rep rese n tin g him self as a lib e rato r from Persian co n trol,
an d they also had the p attern o f his traveling circus which they
m ight follow, to settle historians, poets, scientists an d o th e r
G reek practitioners o f the literary arts in th eir various capitals.
So the successors had some exam ples to guide them in th eir
enormous difference between the nature of the king's rule and that o f polis
government was not very clearly perceived.
29
one an o th er and to successors, we know practically nothing of the

individual citizens, th eir activities and th eir m ovem ents. While
the wealth o f A thenian inscriptions has now m ade it possible for
us to engage in prosopographical studies of A thenians, little has
b een d o n e in this reg ard for texts fo u n d elsew here. It is a
com m onplace to rem ark o f the developm ent o f isopolity am ong
G reek cities as th e centuries after A lexander progress, and to
assert the m ovem ent o f individuals from Old Greece to the loci of
activity an d pow er in the East; th e re has been no significant
effort to elucidate th at social mobility in term s of people actually
nam ed in o u r texts. Admittedly, the scanty representation from
th e p erio d o f the successors makes th at difficult for the earliest
period, b u t later texts m ight perm it us to see som ething of that
period from the effects evident later. T he assembly o f texts which
in d icate th e p resen ce o f foreigners in cities, as, for exam ple,
d ed icatio n s a t P ergam um by an A eginetan an d a B oeotian,59
would be very useful. Tracing the movements o f careerists in the
service o f th e kings is som etim es possible, as in the case o f the
T im archos son o f M enedem os who in mid-second century, after
serving as treasu rer a t Pergam um , was ap p o in ted as neokoros of
A rtem is a t Sardis.60 F unerary in scrip tio n s also are prom ising
in d icato rs o r resettlem en t.61 In Seleucid areas in particular this
close analysis w ould be instructive, in view o f the difficulty of
tracin g Seleucid colonization an d settlem en t policies and the
m a n n e r in w hich they ch an g ed from the tim e o f Seleucus
h im self dow n to the ru lers o f th e m id-second century. T h e
recognition th at there was a significant m ovem ent o f population,
p a rtic u la rly in c o n n e c tio n w ith th e crea tio n o f arm ies o f
M acedonians, T hracians and others o f Balkan origin in the East,
a lo n g w ith th e c o m p la in t th a t we c a n n o t q u an tify this
m ovem ent, suggests th a t we m ight try to squeeze m ore o u t o f our
ep ig rap h ical m aterial than we have h ereto fo re attem p ted . For
the earliest period, and in Egypt, Bagnall has dem onstrated the
p o ten tial o f th e m aterial, assem bling the evidence which argues
very persuasively th at the influx o f d eru ch s from the G reek world
M/mcr. Perg. 48, 49.

Înscr. Sardis 4; cf. also his dedication to Artemis, Inscr. Sardis. 89.
61See a review o f the evidence for substantial percentages o f gravestones of
foreigners in Davies, Cambridge Ancient History* VII (1), p. 267, with citations.
32
into Egypt came at the very beginning of the period o f Ptolem aic
rule, u n d e r Ptolem y I,6^ a view th at would have a significant
im pact on the prevailing im pression th at the whole p eriod was
one o f m igration and m ovem ent o f Greeks to the e a st
Q uantitative studies are, o f course, the vogue today. A n ear-
century o f com piling statistics from the ever-growing corpus of
papyri and inscriptions has been capped by the use o f the analytic
capability o f the com puter. T he availability o f this tool makes it
m uch easier for us to follow th e p ro g ram o f the cu ltu ral
materialists, attem pting to build a picture of econom ic and social
life from an aggregate o f the evidence o f th e activities o f
individuals. In a p e rio d like th a t follow ing A lexander, for
which the docum entary m aterials dom inate in quantity over the
literary, it is easy to take this ap proach as the p ath o f least
resistance. But in narrow ing the chronological scope to th e
decades o f th e successors, we red u ce th e p o te n tia l o f the
quantitative approach. As a result, evidence for the whole period,
n o t ju s t its first four decades o f which I have been writing h ere is
taken into the account in order to make it possible to present any
kind o f p ictu re a t all. And evidence from all parts o f the
H ellenic M editerranean is accepted as indicators o f an overall
situ a tio n , this d e sp ite aw areness a n d w arnings o f local
differences. These local differences are, I think, m uch m ore than
m inor; Egypt, for all we m ig h t ljke to apply its w ealth of
papyrological evidence as paradigm , was, I think, very different
from th e rest o f th e H ellenic world, an d the evidence o f the
distribution of im m igration from different parts o f the H ellenic
world which can be traced there cannot be assumed to be m ore
th an local.63 Certainly, after the successors had finished th eir
ru n a t a d m in istra tio n s a n d th e d iffe re n t reg io n s o f th e
M editerranean had settled into the patterns first laid down, the
developm ent of each region m ust be traced independendy o f the
others, and it is only after th at is done th a t we will be in a
position to rethink what we understand to be a general situation.
We need, in o th er words, new Stracks, Bouche-Leclerqs, Bevans
and Bickermans before we can hope for a new Rostovtzeff.
62R.S. Bagnall, T h e Origins o f Ptolemaic Cleruchs,” BASP 21 (1984), pp. 7-20.

65For the distribution, see Bagnall, preceding note.
33
Most o f all, we need to pay m ore attention to the successors

them selves than we have d o n e h eretofore. W hether we believe
they w ere m otivated by ideas or w h eth er we insist th a t th eir
actions were d eterm ined by im personal forces, the period o f the
successors is precisely that tim e o f change in which the patterns
o f governm ent, religion, social life and econom ic activity were
established for succeeding generations. It is my own view th at
this p eriod was a tim e of such rapid and extensive change th at
th e re w ere options op en to leaders an d individuals alike in
m eetin g political, econom ic and p ersonal problem s, an d th at
decisions taken consciously had effects at the time an d for the
future. Texts, therefore, are useful, I think, n o t only for evidence
o f act b u t o f concept. A retu rn to closer analysis o f literary texts
an d an attem p t to discern concepts behind docum ents may offer
as m uch prom ise as quantitative analysis for the elucidation o f the
significant trends o f the three centuries after Alexander.
34
I ll
TWO SOLITUDES
For the h u n d red years o r so since the papyri began giving

insights into the private and public lives o f the Greek settlers into
Egypt and the natives who thereafter had to deal with them , a
fundam ental topic o f interest has been the relationship between
the two cultures and two populations. O ur understanding o f those
re la tio n sh ip s has evolved w ith o u r u n d e rs ta n d in g o f th e
developm ents all thro u g h the M editerranean d u rin g the th ree
centuries after Alexander, and has gone through th at same shift
from conceptions o f fusion to those o f separateness an d co-
existence. At the same time, we have been particularly interested
in trying to discern w h eth er the G reek settlers exploited the
native elem ent in Egypt, or w hether there was an openness and
freedom available to Egyptians who w anted or had the ability to
move in the H ellenic m ilieu. For this question, like th a t o f
fusion or separation, the wealth o f docum entation o f public and
private activity which the papyri make available for Egypt has
given us the potential o f answering these questions n o t for the
intellectual class represented by literature b u t for m ore ordinary
people who m ade up part of the population o f Greek Egypt
O rd in a ry p e o p le , yes, w hen co m p a re d to kings a n d
politicians like Philip and Pericles, writers like T heocritus and
Thucydides, b u t n o t so ordinary against the background o f the
illiterate masses of Egypt. It is im portant to recognize that alm ost
all o u r evidence ab o u t the activities o f G reeks an d Egyptians
derives from the docum ents o f the literate business class: the
genuinely literate m ade up no m ore than 20% of the population,
a t th e m ost g en ero u s estim ate; th e p ro p e rtie d class w hich
engaged in the private and official transactions recorded in our
texts was probably m uch smaller than that. I would guess th at we
are looking at the society o f the top 10% o f the Greek-speaking
population, at the most, when we treat the G reek papyrus texts,
an d it would be an im p o rta n t advance in o u r know ledge o f
Ptolem aic Egypt if we could do m ore th an guess a b o u t the
dem ographics o f the elem ent of the population which produced
o u r texts. A nother o f Jean B ingen’s perceptive an d revealing
discussions o f the social situation has recently shown how the
royal control o f agriculture left an inadequate access to land,
35
T W O SO LITU D ES
particularly w heat-producing land, to the G reek im m igrants. As

a result, B ingen co ncluded, the G reek did n o t becom e an
integral p art o f the main econom ic thrust o f Egypt, agriculture:
“H e will be a royal official, a c le ru c h , an a g ric u ltu ra l
e n tre p re n e u r who acts as a m iddlem an betw een cleruch and
peasant, a business agent who, like Zenon, is a parasite on rural
society.”1 B ingen’s discussion makes one o f the m ost significant
d ep a rtu re s from earlier treatm ents o f the evidence because its
conclusions suggest th at the wealth of Greek papyrus texts may be
due less to great prosperity on the p art o f the Greeks than to their
b e in g fo rc e d in to m an ifo ld com m ercial activities on th e
perip h ery o f the m ain gam e, and it makes for a very different
view o f th e role o f the Greeks than th a t w hich has held the
ground u p to now.
T he m ovem ent o f Greeks to Egypt was a great phenom enon
in th e history o f H ellenism . It a ttra c te d th e a tte n tio n o f
c o n te m p o ra ry p o ets like T h e o c ritu s a n d H ero n d as, an d it
p rovided th e o p p o rtu n ity for a radical transform ation in the
fortunes o f individuals and families. It elevated, in the courts of
kings and in the governm ents o f cities th ro u g h o u t the east, m en
whose positions had earlier been eith er negligible or volatile in
m ercenary arm ies, and in Egypt, always a place o f fascination to
G reeks, it p la n ted individuals and institutions over a vast and
u n citified lan d scap e. T h e H ellen ic im m igrants b ro u g h t with
them n o t only th eir military power, b u t also civic institutions on
w hich they m o d eled even relatively small villages in rem o te
places. T h a t th e im m ig ran t G reeks could be described as a
“p riv ile g e d ” class was early reco g n ized . N o t only in th e ir
assignm ents o f billets an d land in am ounts w hich varied from
vast estates h eld by high officials down to quite m odest plots
g ran ted to ordinary soldiers who took service in Egypt, b u t in the
w hole o rie n ta tio n o f g o v ern m en t an d cu ltu re H ellenism was
d o m in an t. T h e questions were n o t problem s o f identifying the
tokens o f G reek privilege, b u t rather were related to the extent to
w h ich th e ru lin g class was a c c e p tin g o f E gyptians w ho
“h ellen ized ,” and the ex ten t to w hich the natives even w anted to
cross over in to the ruling culture. And, as was characteristic of
1"Tensions structurelles de la societe ptolem aique,” AtH del XVII congresso III,
p. 936.
T W O SO LITU D ES
our analysis of so much of Ptolemaic Egypt until very recently, the

evidence was read in term s of policy, as indicators o f w hat the
kings, or at least the first two Ptolem ies, in te n d ed an d m ade
h ap p e n in the land w hich they were organizing. R ostovteff
would find “nothing to show th at he [Ptolemy] discrim inated in
principle betw een M acedonians, Greeks, and natives,”2 and he
saw the evolution o f the relationship bew een the peoples as
affected by a royal policy which shifted from one o f “benevolent
dom ination” to one o f “association.”8
Royal policy, insofar as there was any, was only p art o f the story,
and the attitudes o f the Greeks outside o f A lexandria who came
into daily contact with the Egyptians m ade for a m uch m ore
pow erful influence on the ex ten t to w hich the two cultures
actually mixed. Bevan, who as one o f the earlier generation saw
a process o f fusion at work, tried to po in t out how different was
the situation in Egypt, w here Greeks had come to stay in a land
o f venerable culture, from th a t o f South Africa, w here a tiny
w hite m inority im posed itself on a “prim itive p e o p le ,” o r o f
In d ia , w here th e E u ro p e an s m ade u p “only a tra n s ie n t
c o m m u n ity .”4 Bevan stressed th at the Greeks, however superior
they m ight have thought their culture, were n o t prone to w hat he
called “race prejudice,” and he em phasized the im portance o f a
process o f interm arriage which p ro d u ced a situation in w hich
“T he distinction betw een th e h ig h e r stratum o f G reeks and
lower stratum o f natives did n o t cease, b u t it becam e m ore a
m atter o f culture and tradition than of physical race.”5
It is this relationship between G reek and Egyptian th at most
re c e n t analysis has struggled with, an d in social, ra th e r than
political, terms. In his recen t survey o f Egypt in Ptolem aic and
Rom an times, Alan Bowman devoted two chapters, an d ra th e r
m ore than a third o f the book, to “Poverty and Prosperity”, and
“G reeks an d Egyptians.”6 N aphtali Lewis has devoted a special
study to an analysis o f families of largely im m igrant or largely
*SEHHW I, p. 263.
*SEHHW II, pp. 706-707.
4Edwyn Bevan, A History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (London, 1927),
p. 86.
5Ibid., p. 87.
®Alan K. Bowman, Egypt After the Pharaohs (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 89-164.
37
T W O SOLITUD ES
native background to dem onstrate the m an n er in which, with

tim e, the native elem ent in the population m anaged to assert a
th ru st to upw ard mobility.7 And Edouard Will has called on us to
recognize the colonial nature o f the relationship between Greeks
an d natives, an d has arg u ed th a t m o d e rn parallels o f such
societies may help us to fill the gaps left by the ancient sources.8
T he question o f the mobility o f the native population and the
position o f the im m igrants to Egypt is one o f g reat intrinsic
in terest to the analysis o f hum an institutions. For the m ost part,
o u r investigation o f the m aterial has proceeded in an anecdotal
way th ro u g h th e analysis o f specific in cidents o r cases. This
m eth o d produces conclusions from which, one hopes, we may
generalize. Lewis’ review o f the ex p erien ce o f several families
over the w hole stretch o f Ptolem aic history is unusual in this
regard, in th at it attem pts to identify trends on a larger body of
evidence, b u t even here, the base is restricted to a small num ber
o f families. I suspect, however, th at the future will bring m ore
a n d m o re analyses in w hich evidence can be assessed
quantitatively rath e r than anecdotally. This will occur because the
decades since the Second W orld W ar have seen many excellent
topical collections o f evidence or them atic republications of texts.
Lewis’ analysis o f the family o f Dionysius, son o f Kephalas, for
exam ple, was greatly facilitated by the new assembly an d re-
e d itio n o f all th e relevant texts,9 and his trea tm en t o f the
activities o f M enkhes, village scribe o f Kerkeosiris in the Fayum,
w ould hardly have been possible w ithout the p rio r assembly of
the evidence relating to the town and its taxes by Jo h n Shelton10
a n d D o ro th y C raw ford.11 Now th a t the dem otic texts o f the
Z enon archive have been m ade available and the whole archive
7Naphtali Lewis, Greeks in Egypt (Oxford, 1986).

8“Pour une ‘Anthropologie Coloniale’ du monde hellenistique,” The Craft of the
Ancient Historian, Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr (Lanham, Maryland, 1985),
pp. 273-301.
®By E. Boswinkel and P.W. Pestman in Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava XXII
(Leiden, 1982).
l0Tebtunis Papyri IV, ed. J.G. Keenan and J.C. Shelton (London, 1976).
n D.J. Crawford, Kerkeosiris, an Egyptian Village in the Ptolemaic Penod (Cambridge,
1971).
38
T W O SO LITU D ES
m ade accessible by a new guide,** that vast body o f m aterial is

m uch m ore am enable to analysis as well.
Some prom ise is yet to be fulfilled. A lthough Fritz U ebel’s
m agnificent study o f the cleruchs is repeatedly consulted and
cited for many purposes in studies of Ptolemaic Egypt through the
reign o f Ptolemy VI,18 it has n o t yet been m ade the base o f a full
analysis o f the activities of all these m ilitary settlers who were
the foundation of the H ellenic settlem ent of Egypt. With all the
texts relatin g to these individuals now collected, it w ould be
possible to draw some conclusions ab o u t their m arriage m atters,
their business and agricultural activities, th eir relative prosperity
an d the like, treatin g the w hole class ra th e r than individual
m em b ers w ho are p ro m in e n t for o n e o r a n o th e r reaso n .
F urtherm ore, an extension of U eb el’s work to the end o f the
dynasty w ould m ake possible m o re analysis o f th e land-
assignm ents an d the land-receivers as Egyptians began th e ir
m ovem ent into the ranks o f army and cleruchs.
O n the question of cultural influence, recen t years have seen
quite a significant shift o f opinion away from th a t o f earlier
times. W hile it has always b een clearly u n d ersto o d th a t in the
first few generations, the settlers from H ellenic areas vigorously
p u rsu ed an d preserved th e ir G reek trad itio n s, n o t only in
language b u t in o th er areas o f culture as well, the evidence for
the second and first centuries has been read to produce a story of
g rad u al in te rp e n e tra tio n o f G reek an d Egyptian ideas. M ost
visible to m o d ern readers of papyri was the evidence o f nam e
change: Egyptians who took G reek nam es, a b a n d o n in g the
n o m en clatu re o f th eir ch ildhood, or, alternatively, o p eratin g
with dual nam es, the Greek nam e in the Greek milieu, Egyptian
for the native environm ent. We now know, however, th a t the
people who followed this practice were very few in num ber, and
that the ethnic nature of a nam e indicated, n o t a predilection for
cross-cultural transfer, b u t the ethnic m ilieu o f the individual.14
**P. W. Pestman, Greek and Demotic Texts from the Zenon Archive, Papyrologica
Lugduno-Ba.ta.va XX (Leiden, 1980); A Guide to the Zenon Archive, Papyrologica Lugduno-
Batava XXI (Leiden, 1981).
1 F. Uebel, Die Kleruchen Agyptens unter den ersten sechs Ptolemdem, Abhandlungen
der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin, 1968).
14J. Meleze-Modrzejewski, “Le statut des hellenes dans 1’Egypte lagide: Bilan et
39
T W O SOLITU D ES
We are also aware th at there was little familiarity on the p a rt of

Greeks with Egyptian language, and we can see in our texts that
it is, in g e n e ra l, Egyptians w ho knew G reek ra th e r than
bilingual G reeks who provided adm inistrative acccess to the
native p o p u la tio n — a n d in any case th e p h e n o m e n o n o f
bilingualism was a lim ited o n e.15
W hile th e re is now a consensus w hich agrees th a t the
Greeks in Egypt m aintained th eir H ellenism in separation from
a vastly m ore num erous native population and in the face of a
visually overw helm ing a rch itec tu ra l an d artistic en v iro n m en t,
th e re is n o t m uch ag ree m en t ab o u t how to u n d ersta n d th at
p h en o m en o n —or, for th a t m atter, even on the questions to be
posed in light o f this new perception o f the Greeks in Egypt. I
have d ealt with it as a m atter o f ideology, taking the view th at
th e conservatism o f th e G reeks in Egypt was p a rt o f a
fundam ental H ellenic assum ption that stability was preferable to
c h a n g e .16 O thers have ten d ed to see the situation in political
term s, regard in g the cultural am biance o f Egypt as serving the
needs o f th e sovereigns, with the Ptolem ies prom oting for th eir
adm inistrative or governm ental needs the various m anifestations
o f H ellen ism — literary, civic, linguistic, artistic, scientific o r
re lig io u s.
H ere again, it w ould be productive to review the evidence
with very careful attention to chronology against the background
o f the well-known political events which affected the relations of
G reeks an d Egyptians with o ne a n o th e r an d with the crow n—
events like the enlisting o f Egyptians into the forces fighting at
R aphia in 217 B.C., like th e recu rrin g native revolts an d re-
assertion o f Egyptian rulers. At the end o f the third century, and
m o re fre q u en tly in th e second, Egyptians coalesced aro u n d
perspectives de recherches,” Revue des Etudes Orecques 96 (1985), p. 248. For a review
o f the problems and issues in onomastics, see J. Bingen, “Critique et exploitation
de 1’onomastique: le cas de l’Egypte greco-rom aine,” Actes VII Congres de la
federation international des associations de Vetudes classiques II (Budapest, 1984), pp. 557-
565, esp. 562-565.
15Recendy observed by Willy Peremans, “Sur la bilinguisme dans l’Egypte des
Lagides,” Studia Paulo Naster Oblata II, Orientalia Antiqua (Leuven, 1981), pp.145-154;
“Le bilinguisme dans les relations greco-egyptiennes sous les Lagides,” Egypt and
the Hellenistic World, pp. 254-280.
i6Prom Athens to Alexandria.
40
TW O SO LITU D ES
leaders o f their own in a series of what have been called “native

revolts,” w hich have been in te rp reted as arising in significant
m easure from a generalized opposition to the foreign rulers.
Claire Preaux argued m ore than 50 years ago th at the dom estic
turm oil was due m ore to the exploitation of the regim e as well as
court politics in Alexandria and local feeling in the Thebaid, b u t
h er view has n o t been universally accepted, perhaps because o f a
reluctance to follow h er in dismissing w hat has been seen as the
m ost im portant item of evidence for native hostility. T he Oracle of
the Potter, a text appearing in papyri o f the second and third
centuries of our era, is often alleged to be a reflection o f anti-
Greek feeling by Egyptians,17 perhaps specifically in 130 B.C., but
Preaux in h er m ost recen t survey o f the subject argued th at it is
n o t even sure th at th e text was originally w ritten in Egyptian.18
As Ja n e t Johnson points out, “Egyptian texts do n o t contain many
exam ples o f anti-G reek feeling based on the foreignness o f the
G re e k s .”19 Preaux suggests, stressing the econom ic causes o f
discontent, that there is a good deal o f analysis yet to be m ade in
understanding the causes o f native unrest. For example, study of
the role o f the native p riesth o o d shows th a t it was generally
favorable to the Ptolem ies and th at Egyptian tem ples themselves
were on occasion targets o f attack. In general, P erem ans has
argued, tapping the prosopographical know ledge to w hich he
him self contributed so m uch, friendly relations am ong different
groups in Egypt were m ore the rule, and insofar as troubles arose
from n a tio n a list a ttitu d e s, th ese causes w ere seco n d ary to
rese n tm en t o f the econom ic and social position in w hich the
Egyptians found themselves.20
T he attitudes of the crown and the governing Greeks are also
significant. L ater developm ents whereby native Egyptians were
assigned lan d h o ld in g s for service in the army, alb eit sm aller
1 Argued by Ludwig Koenen, in, inter alia, “Prophezeihungen des ‘Topfers,’”

Zeitschrift fu r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 2 (1968), pp. 178-209; “Adaptation der
agyptischen K onigsideologie am Ptolem aerhof," Egypt and the Hellenistic
World,pp.\45-190.
^Monde hellenistique I, pp. 389-398, esp. 395-396,
19“Is the Dem otic Chronicle an Anti-Greek Tract?”, Festschrift fu r Erich
Luddeckens zum 15Juni 1983 (Wurzburg, 1984), p. 120.
*°W. Peremans, “Les revolutions egyptiennes sous les Lagides,” Das Ptolemdische
Agypten, pp. 39-50.
41
T W O SOLITUD ES
plots for service in less-prestigious infantry units, show some

ten d en cy to tru st native loyalty, a t least in th e instance o f
privileged Egyptians. B ut in the course o f th e cen tu ries over
w hich these developm ents took place, how m uch conscious
“conciliation” can we ascribe to the crown? How m uch m ore did
the Ptolem ies placate the native priesthood after the troubles of
the second century than they had done in the palmy days o f the
th ird ? W ere th e p o litical overtones o f c u ltu ra l policy th e
d o m in a n t m otives fo r action? T hese questions can only be
addressed by reviewing, subject by subject, reign by reign, and
p erh ap s even place by place, the evidence for different kinds of
activity. It is now possible to survey Ptolem aic tem ple building
an d rep air to trace increase and contraction. We can test the
ex ten t o f the incorporation o f Egyptians into the hellenized elite
o f the civilian adm inistration o f military forces in Egypt, to see
w h e th e r th e “tim e o f tro u b le s” did in fact b rin g a b o u t a
prom in en ce o f loyal natives which we m ight suppose it did. We
know en o u g h officials to d eterm in e with some safety w hether
Egyptians ever p en etrated in any significant num bers at all into
th e co u rt circle in A lexandria. And we may be able to tell from
th e papyri, th e in scrip tio n s an d th e arch aeo lo g ical rem ains
w hether th ere was any sustained royal policy o f prom oting Greek
institutions or religious activities in the villages, towns an d cities
o f the countryside.
T h ere are others whose influence and activities should be
evaluated in reaching an u n d erstan d in g o f social an d cultural
dev elo p m en ts in P tolem aic Egypt, p eo p le who w ere n e ith e r
native E gyptians n o r from G reek se ttle m e n ts a ro u n d the
M editerranean . Most num erous, and m ost studied, o f these are
the Jews, b u t there are others whose im pact may be m easurable—
Syrians an d p erh ap s even Iranians. T h e long in te re st in th e
Jews m eans th a t o u r know ledge o f th e ir place in th e life o f
P tolem aic Egypt is quite extensive. Investigation o f the texts
w hich relate to them has gone beyond collection to com m entary
a n d synthesis,21 an d we can see in som etim es intim ate detail
how “o rd in a ry ” th e ir life was. T hey n o t only form ed a near-
21 Corpus Papyrorum Juiaicarum , ed. V.A. Tcherikover and A. Fuks, 3 vols.

(Cambridge, Mass., 1957, 1960, 1964); and now A. Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic
and Roman Egyptr The Struggle forEgual Rights (Tubingen, 1985).
42
T W O SO LITU D ES
auto n o m o u s com m unity in A lexandria, b u t Jews lived in the

countryside and Jews farmed. Allowing for the random n atu re of
preservation, we can find Jews involved in all th e activities
associated with the H ellenic im m igrants. A lthough they can n o t
be shown to have been in the ranks o f the k ing’s “Friends,” they
took p a rt fully in the life o f the countryside from the th ird
century on. They knew and wrote in Greek, an d in the contracts
w hich em erged from th eir com m ercial activities, alth o u g h they
can often be identified by the appearance of particularly Jewish
nam es, m any o f them carry com pletely G reek nam es an d
patronymics an d can only be identified by the ethnic “Ioudaios. ”
As early as the last quarter o f the third century Jews tu rn up as
cleruchs, they often settled in organized com m unities, and some
held posts in adm inistration. In the second century, som e o f
them came to be o f m uch greater political im portance, as Jewish
military officers served Ptolemy VI and his queen, C leopatra II.
An im m ig ran t, O nias, co m m an d ed a m ilitary d e ta c h m e n t,
obtained land upriver on which he could settle his troops, and
built a tem ple there. The generals Dositheos and O nias were the
h ig h e st com m anders for C leo p atra II d u rin g som e o f h e r
conflicts with h er brother, Ptolemy VIII, Euergetes II, an d came
to h er rescue militarily on one occasion, while the sons o f Onias
later served Cleopatra III. It is the “pro-Philom etor” policy o f the
Jews (and the “p h ilojew ish” policy o f Ptolemy VI) th at is seen to
have generated a b rief flash o f official anti-Semitism and a short
and unsuccessful pogrom on the part of Euergetes II.
All this has been given a great deal o f attention, particularly
in light o f the “L etter o f Aristeas to P hilocrates,” which is now
d ated to th e la te r seco n d cen tu ry B.C., w hen the Jew ish
optimism about assimilation could look back on the im portance of
Jews to Ptolem y VI, and even the recently-hostile E uergetes II
was friendly enough to be receiving dedications on synagogues.
We are, however, less inform ed ab o u t the critical period from
the end o f the second century B.C. to the tim e o f Philo, when
m em bers o f the Jewish com m unity ex ten d ed th e ir H ellenism
and its attem pts to involve themselves in the life o f the Greeks in
the gymnasium and even in politics. T he events o f the riots in
A lexandria in 38 A.D treated three years later in the le tte r of
Claudius to the A lexandrians capped the developm ent o f the
relationship betw een the G reek and Jewish A lexandrians from
43
T W O SOLITU D ES
the third century B.C. on, and we need evidence ab o u t the last
century o f th at developm ent in ord er to com prehend the events
w hich Philo and Josephus chronicle so vividly.
It would also cast light on the m aintenance o f distinctions
betw een G reeks an d Egyptians if we knew b e tte r how Syrians
an d Iran ian s fitted in to th e social m atrix o f Egypt. For the
problem s involved, the ethnic “Perses” or “Perses tes epigones,” is a
case in point. Can anything Iranian be m ade o f that? T here is
no d o u b t th a t a t the end o f its evolution, the term “Perses tes
epigones” was a legal fiction assum ed by a d eb to r because it
allow ed his c re d ito r faster legal process. S cholars arg u e
vigorously, however, over th e m eaning o f the term in early
Ptolem aic Egypt, and som e believe it was assum ed to indicate
d escen t in th e m ilitary class,22 while o th e r take it as a fictional
eth n ic assum ed by H ellenizing Egyptians.28 As to its origin, did
I guess rightly w hen I speculated th a t the ethnic may have been
used by g en u in e Greeks whose families had been in Egypt in
Persian tim es and who thus had no claim to a “g en u in e” G reek
e t h n i c ? 24 D eterm in atio n o f th e m ean in g o f th e term m ust
certainly have som e effect on o u r u n d erstan d in g o f the sim ple
“Perses,” o f w hom th e re are m any attestatio n s—w ith G reek
nam es—as soldiers and cleruchs. In general, papyrologists have
n o expectations th at these “Persians” o r “Persians o f the descent”
have anything a t all to do with g en u in e derivation from the
Iranian area, b u t the use o f the term may have som ething to do
w ith a ttitu d e s tow ards th e earlier Persian overlords, an d any
w ho m ight have rem ain ed in Egypt. At any rate, the problem
rem ains unsolved.
Non-Jewish Sem ites were also known in Egypt. At the time
o f Ptolem y I, P hilodes, the Sidonian king, held very high rank
d u rin g th e p e r io d ’s m ilitary an d p o litica l m a n o eu v erin g .
Doubtless, h e was com pletely hellenized, b u t he was a Sidonian,
nevertheless. T here are also the group o f Idum aeans attested at
M em phis a t th e en d o f the second century.25 T hen th ere are
^P.W. Pestman, Aegyptus 23 (1963), pp. 15-53.

*^J.F. Oates, Yale Classical Studies 18 (1963), pp. 5-129.
84A.E. Samuel, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology (Toronto,
1970), p. 448, n. 12.
25Dorothy J. Thom pson Crawford, “The Idumaeans o f Memphis and the
44
TW O SO LITU D ES
d ubious ch aracters like th e Syrian lady E laphion, who was

carrying on som e kind o f activity in the garriso n town o f
E lep h an tin e in the third century, and Syrians like the slaves
w hich Z enon papyri tell us were im p o rted to Egypt. Some
Semitic-named people found their way into positions o f at least
m in o r im portance. Such was the B ithelm inis o f P. Yale 33 =
P.Hib. 44 who held the rank of hegem on of machimoi— n a tiv e
soldiers. T here is some difficulty in distinguishing between Jews
and non-Jews with Levantine nam es, and the references to the
Syrian villages in our papyri may n o t be discrim inating between
Jews a n d non-Jew s. All in all, o u r know ledge o f th e se
im m igrants from the Levant, and any others from points east is
rudim entary, and we have very little idea o f the ex tent o f such a
m igration, and w hether the im m igrants had any im pact on the
social o r status situation of Egypt. Nevertheless, the Levantines,
an d particularly the Jews, are especially in terestin g , for they
provide a rare exam ple o f the im pact of H ellenism on non-
Greeks. As they turn up in our papyri, either cleruchs or civilians
who jo in e d th e m igration to P tolem y’s Egypt in search o f
fortune, they are well H ellenized. As early as the third century,
m ost o f them use Greek names, even if they preserve a p a re n t’s
S em itic n o m e n c la tu re , a n d th e th ird -c e n tu ry S e p tu a g in t
translation of the H ebrew scriptures was clearly m ade for the
needs o f Jews who retain ed th eir religion b u t had lost th eir
language in favor o f Greek. Some Jews who th o u g h t ab o u t this
assim iliation w ere optim istic ab o u t it, for th e th ru st o f the
second-century “L etter o f Aristeas” is clearly an end o rsem en t of
Jews fitting into Ptolemaic society. As I noted above, we lose track
o f this group until we m eet Philo a century later, b u t it clearly
rem ained vigorous, an exam ple o f a g roup which retain ed the
essence o f its beliefs w hile a d o p tin g c u ltu ra l H ellen ism
extensively.
T his p h en o m en o n seems n o t to have been the Egyptian
experience, n o r did the Greeks in Egypt take m uch from th eir
cultural environm ent. As I em phasized a few years ago, the
G reeks m ain tain ed th eir cu ltu re in Egypt in alm ost com plete
separation from the surrounding m ilieu, preferring even G reek
Ptolemaic PoUteumata,” Atti del XVII congresso III, pp. 1069-1075.
45
TW O SOLITU D ES
literature o f pre-Alexandrian time to the local and contem porary

p ro d u c tio n s o f A le x a n d ria .26 M uch the same was tru e for
re lig io n . W hile th e n o tio n o f “sy n cretism ” o f G reek an d
O riental them es in religion is h ard a-dying, the evidence goes
very m uch against it, a t least in any significant sense. W hile
Greeks accepted the divinities they en co u n tered in the East (as
they had always been willing to w orship newly found deities),
th e ir co n cep tu alizatio n an d cu lt practices rem ain ed entirely
H e lle n ic .27 This conservative quality o f H ellenism is now m ore
and m ore being recognized, and the changing perspective o f the
im pulses w hich drove G reek cu ltu re in Egypt in th e th ree
centuries o f Ptolem aic rule call for reassessments o f many aspects
o f th a t culture. Egypt was the springboard for many features of
H ellenism in late Ptolem aic an d Rom an times; G reek culture
th e re did n o t rem ain static, even if it took its im pulses from
change o u t o f its own tradition ra th e r than for the “o rie n ta l”
environm ent. T hus we n eed to trace, in term s o f H ellenism and
n o t im agined “eastern " influences, the developm ent of G reek
lite ra tu re , relig io n s, science, an d philosophy, so th a t we
u n d e rsta n d w hat so rt o f H ellenism was so in flu en tial in the
critical ce n tu ries w hich saw th e rise (an d H ellenization) of
Christianity. It is tim e, for exam ple, th a t we u n d erstan d how so
im p o rta n t a tradition as Stoicism arose from G reek ground, and
stop trying to graft it o n to eastern roots with an insistance on
seeing a Semitic background for Zeno o f Citium.28
T h e sam e fidelity to its traditions shows on th e Egyptian
side. As th e a rt and architecture o f Egyptian tem ples rem ained
alm ost u n to u ch ed by H ellenic influences, so the Egyptians kept
cu lt a n d religious p ractice in su lated from G reek. It is well
know n th a t priestly service is alm ost co m plete sep arated on
eth n ic lines, G reeks serving as priests in G reek cult b u t alm ost
never in Egyptian, Egyptians in turn rarely crossing o u t of their
26From Athens to Alexandria, pp. 67-74.

27Ibid., 75-101.
28As we still find in Giovanni Reale, Storia della filosofia antica III, I sistemi dell’
eta ellenistica (Milan, 1976), p. 505, calling Zeno “un giovane di razza semitica,”
and which John R. Catan renders as “Jewish origin” (I) in the 1985 translation
o f Reale’s work, A History of Ancient Philosophy III, The Systems of The Hellenistic Age,
p. 209. I owe this reference to Joseph Bryant
46
T W O SO LITU D ES
tradition into Greek. As m ore dem otic texts becom e available, we

can see a little m ore o f the activities of the Egyptians in th eir
own environm ent, an d alth o u g h th ere are som e instances o f
cross cultural activity, is seems very sparse on the basis o f the texts
available so far,29 and unless the currently available Egyptian
m aterial is very unrepresentative o f the texts n o t yet published,
the separation in religious areas is likely to be confirm ed when
we have m ore evidence. In general, the extensive literatu re in
dem otic which persists and grows during Ptolem aic times shows
the vigor o f the native tradition, and its literary activity was n o t
in the least im peded and, so far as we can see, little affected by
the presence of Hellenism. T hat some Egyptians rose high in the
bureaucracy is also attested, and the demotic docum ents show both
prosperity an d land-ow nership on th e p art o f som e Egyptian
f a m ilie s .80 O th ers are found as early as th e th ird century
operating in Greek, en trep ren eu rs at some level like the Greeks
them selves.81 It is also clear that these w ealthier Egyptians often
chose to m aintain th e ir business activities in accordance with
Egyptian legal p ractice, a sep aratio n m ade possible by the
Ptolemies providing for the co-existence o f the two systems o f law.
T he intensive work on dem otic docum ents has been one o f the
m ost im p o rta n t developm ents o f re c e n t years. N ot only have
m ajor archives now been p u b lish ed ,82 b u t the assembly and
integration of dem otic m aterials with Greek, as in the cases of
the Z enon Archive and lists o f eponym ous priests, have helped
bridge the gulf between Greek and Egyptian evidence, although,
as Willy Clarysse has recently p ointed out, th ere are still many
The problems o f the Demotic material and citations o f some o f the texts
revealing the activities o f the Egyptians can be found in J. Quaegebeur, “Cubes
Egyptiens et Grecs en Egypte,” Egypt and the Hellenistic World, pp. 301-324, and
“Documents egyptiens et role economique du clerge en Egypte hellenistique,” State
and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East II, pp. 708-729, and discussions cited by
Quaegebeur.
50As demonstrated by W. Clarysse, “Egyptian Estate Holders in the Ptolemaic
Period,” State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East II, pp. 731-743.
51T. Reekmans, “Archives de Zenon: Situation et com portem ent des
entrepreneurs indigenes,” Egypt and the Hellenistic World, pp. 323-390.
s?For instance, the texts discussed by P.W. Pestman, “L'Ambiente indigeno
dell’ eta tolemaica,” Egitto e Societd Antica, pp. 147-161.
47
TW O SO LITU D ES
slips g enerated by the fact that parallel G reek and dem otic texts
are often ed ited at d ifferen t tim es by d ifferen t p eo p le.33 T he
appearance o f legal m aterial has given us a better understanding
o f Egyptian law and its m aintenance in Ptolem aic Egypt, and the
texts have m ade it possible for us to develop some detailed
know ledge o f specific families whose vigor and prosperity would
have been undetectable in the Greek papyri.
T h e dem otic docum ents an d Egyptian society lie before us
alm o st as a new lan d for discovery. C om parisons betw een
concepts in dem otic literature o f the Ptolem aic period with those
o f the Egyptian m ilieu o f the Nag H am m adi Coptic texts suggest
th a t such a fund am en tal change in th e u n d erstan d in g o f the
n a tu re o f m an as the shift from characteristic N ear Eastern
m onism to a H ellenic dualism took place after the en d o f the
Ptolem aic dynasty.34 With many m ore docum ents available from
recen t excavations, and a large num ber of literary texts still to be
published, th e re is every reason to expect to learn m uch m ore
than we now know ab o u t the life o f the u p p er class Egyptians in
Ptolem aic Egypt. We will be able to support with conviction o r to
re fu te w hat ap p ears to be tru e from the evidence currently
available, th a t the Egyptians— even u p p e r class Egyptians—were
n o t m uch touched by G reek culture, even though in a general
way, som e w riters in Egyptian were aware o f them es in o th e r
literatures o f the N ear East. We will be able m uch b etter to see
w heth e r in d eed the two d o m in a n t peoples o f Egypt, the Greeks
an d the natives, rem ain ed in th eir two solitudes for the long
period of Ptolem aic rule, and we may be able better to understand
ju s t how Egyptian cu ltu re evolved so th a t it could take on
C hristianity as the G reek texts which created Christianity for the
rest o f th e w orld w ere translated in to Coptic. M ore study o f
d em o tic lite ra tu re should increase o u r u n d e rsta n d in g o f the
e x te n t and th e process by w hich Egyptian C hristianity becam e
characteristically G reek ra th e r than Egyptian.
W hat we will n o t have from new texts, however, is insight
in to the situation o f the masses o f Egyptians who rem ain ed as
ss“Bilingual Texts and Collaboration Between Demoticists and Papyrologists,”

Atti del XVII congresso III, pp. 1345-1353.
34M. Lichtheim, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context: A Study
of Demotic Instructions, (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 52, Gottingen, 1983), pp.184-195.
48
TW O SOLITU D ES
they always had been, poor, peasants, illite ra te. For these
m illions, as for an unknow n n u m b er of G reeks whose families
did n o t succeed in Egypt, only the tax receipts an d the fabled
wealth o f Ptolemy attest their presence. To understand the bottom
70 or 80 p ercen t o f the population we m ust develop some creative
m eans o f using our evidence to learn som ething ab o u t them .35
We would like to know how m uch upw ard mobility existed, in
fact, for people born into the peasant life. And we would like to
know if, at this level, at least, the Greeks in Egypt m erged with
the vast mass of Egyptians, to bridge, at least at that level, the two
solitudes in which the cultured carried on their separate lives.
S5The way is pointed by a study like that of Sergio Daris, “I Villaggi dell’Egitto
nei papiri greci,” in Egitto e sodeta antica.
49
IV
THE MACEDONIAN ADMINISTRATION
OF EGYPT
W hen Ptolemy Soter, the first o f the dynasty, died in 283, he

left as h eir his son Ptolemy, later to be known as Philadelphus.
Ptolemy II had been associated on the throne with his father two
years before the old general died, and there was no difficulty in
the transfer o f power. It is to P hiladelphus’ reign, from 285 to
246, th a t we look for the m ajor activities o f organizing an d
stru c tu rin g th e G reek a d m in istra tio n o f Egypt, a n d it is
P h ilad elp h u s who has received e ith e r c red it fo r progressive
governm ent or blam e for draining the resources o f the country.
For the m ost part, the second Ptolemy has held the rep u te which
RostovtzefPs au th o rity provided for him , an d specialists an d
general historian alike rep eat the words or ideas o f the master:
We see th e new organization partly at work, partly in
the m aking, in the hands o f Ptolemy Philadelphus. . . .
In it two systems were to be blended, so as to form one
w ell-b a lan c ed a n d sm o o th ly w o rk in g w h o le: th e
im m em orial practice o f Egypt and th e m ethods o f the
Greek state and the G reek private household. . . . On the
one h an d it endeavored, th ro u g h a stricter and m ore
th o ro u g h organization to concentrate the efforts o f the
people on an increase o f production. O n the o ther, it
sought to develop the resources o f the country by the
adoption of the technical im provem ents th a t had come
into use in o th e r parts o f the civilized world. . . .* T he
eco n o m ic refo rm s a n d o th e r m easu res o f th e first
Ptolemies produced w onderful results.2
RostovtzefPs assessment o f the econom y and society o f Egypt
has stood for the nearly fifty years since it ap peared because it
rested on an assembly and control o f the evidence in scope and
dep th which had never been reached before him and has n o t
b een ap p ro ac h ed since. But now, in the last q u a rte r of th e
century, aspects o f this appraisal are com ing into question by
those familiar with the sources, the m aterial known to Rostovtzeff
lSEHHW I, p. 272.
*SEHHW I, p. 407.
51
T H E M A C ED O N IA N A D M IN IST R A T IO N O F EGYPT
an d new er texts and archaeological finds w hich have com e to

light since 1940. Claire Preaux dem onstrated in articles3 and in
h e r M onde H ellenistique o f 1978 th a t the idea o f technical
im p ro v em en t m ust be ab a n d o n ed . I arg u ed in 1983 th a t a
genuine increase in production was n o t even conceived;4 then in
1984 Eric T u rn e r denied th a t P h ilad elphus’ reform “produced
w o n d e r fu l r e s u lt s .”5 All th a t is left u n c h a lle n g e d a b o u t
P h ila d e lp h u s’ refo rm is th e id ea th a t it em erged, how ever
piecem eal, o u t o f the program o f the king and his associates in
A lexandria an d th a t it was centrally co n tro lled . T h at concept
may also n eed som e m odification.
T he thirty-five years d u rin g which Philadelphus ru led Egypt
m arked a transition for G reek setd em en t in Egypt. W hile he
co n d n u ed as long as he could his fath er’s policy of intervendon
in the A egean area, two significant defeats o f his fleet and a
c h a n g e d p o litic a l s itu a tio n a b ro a d b ro u g h t a d iffe re n t
relationship between sovereign an d subjects than th at which had
o b tain ed d u rin g A lexander’s reign and th a t o f Ptolemy I. T hat
d if f e r e n t r e la tio n s h ip d e v e lo p e d c o n c u rre n tly w ith th e
establishm ent o f a w ide-ranging G reek-speaking bureaucracy in
Egypt, an extensive series o f re g u la tio n s for affecting the
econom ic life o f the country, and an accom m odation of Egyptian
religious an d legal practice w hich allowed the natives to carry
on th e ir lives for the m ost p a rt in the m a n n er to which they
w ere accustom ed, while a t the same tim e the M acedonians and
G reeks in Egypt related themselves intim ately in many ways to
the land and its gods.
W hile som e o f the structures o f Ptolem aic Egypt may have
owed th e ir inception to th e first Ptolemy, it is the second who
was respo n sib le for the issuance o f a large n u m b e r o f texts
dealing with econom ic an d adm inistrative activity in Egypt, and
it is in th e reign o f P hiladelphus th a t we can see the way in
w hich Egypt was so ex cep tio n al in th e M ed iterran ean world
sClaire Preaux, “Epoque Hellenistique,” Third International Conference of Economic

H istory 1965 (The Hague, 1970), pp.41-74; “Sur la stagnation de la pensee
scientifique a 1’epoque hellenistique,” Essays in Honor of C. Bradford Welles (N ew
Haven, American Stdies in Papyrology I, 1971), pp. 255-250.
4Prom Athens to Alexandria.
5CAlfi VII,1, pp. 118-159.
52
T H E M A CED O N IA N A D M IN IST R A T IO N O F EGYPT
after A lexander. Royal m onopolies in essential m aterials like

salt and oil, the activity of Greeks, M acedonians an d others from
the Aegean th roughout the countryside and in com plete divorce
from the usual H ellenic city-state structures, the exploitation of
royal lands and the rents and taxes which they produced , and
the very com plex bureaucracy which dealt with many aspects of
the land and produce and the regulations issued by the crown
created a p attern o f life which for H ellenes in Egypt was very
different from th a t experienced by those in o th e r parts o f the
M editerranean and N ear East.
Ever since the publication of Papyrus Revenue Laws at the end
o f the last century, scholars have used th a t an d texts found
subsequently to explicate a conception of the economy o f Ptolemaic
Egypt as centrally controlled. However m odern scholars in te rp ret
the effects o f the organizing activity o f the first half o f the third
century, alm ost all agree th a t P hilad elp h u s (and his fa th e r
before him ) took over as m uch as they could o f pre-existing
adm inistrative structures, and m ade changes only when this was
essential to perm it their own control of the society and economy.6
This is a critical point, and a dem onstration of the extent o f any
r e la tio n s h i p b e tw e e n e a rly P to le m a ic and P e rs ia n
adm inistration would h elp a g reat deal in u n d erstan d in g ju s t
w hat it was th at the first two Ptolem ies did do in organizing
their new territory. U nfortunately, m ost classicists do n o t control
the Egyptian or Persian m aterial w hich relates to this question,
and for the m ost p art we depend upon the results of Egyptologists
and orientalists, a problem of scholarship which has often been
noted b u t little done for its solution. In any case, and even worse,
the evidence for the Persian adm inistration of Egypt seems to be
p artic u larly exiguous, an d fo r th e m o st p a rt, P to lem aic
dependence on earlier Egyptian patterns m ust be deduced from
Saite an d earlier m aterial. As a result, th e near-unanim ous
assessment o f “continuance w here possible” rem ains for the m ost
p a r t a h y p o th esis, a lth o u g h o n e so re a s o n a b le in th e
circu m stances th a t it will d o u b tless c o n tin u e un less it is
challenged by detailed new inform ation.
6This is, in essence, Rostovtzeffs dictum, SEHHW I, pp. 263, 272-3, and
elsewhere, and, although there is no evidence to confirm (or refute) it, it is the
accepted view.
53
For a long tim e the extensive d o cu m en tatio n for third-

cen tu ry Egypt led to co n cep tio n s o f com prehensiveness an d
foresight in the creation o f a centrally controlled economy. Ideas
o f “p lan n ed econom y,” “m onopolies,” an d “econom ic rational-
ism ” dom inated m odern accounts. I have no doubt that there was
som e p la n n in g , som e c e n tra l d ire c tio n a n d even som e
rationalism in the devising o f adm inistrative structures in the
th ird cen tu ry , an d th a t P h ilad elp h u s an d his staff m ade a
considerable effort to ensure the flow of agricultural products and
coin revenues to A lexandria. However, the m ost rece n t studies
reflect an approach to the evidence for this activity which sees it
m u ch m ore in term s o f ad hoc arrangem ents. Even th e m ost
d eta ile d sets o f reg u la tio n s are now th o u g h t to have been
inform al in th e ir n atu re ,7 in th at they responded to individuals
an x io u s to know th e ru les ra th e r th an to the desire o f the
adm inistration to set them out. Certainly, in term s o f ou r own
know ledge o f the adm inistration created in th e course o f the
reig n o f Ptolem y II, m ost o f w hat we know an d w rite ab o u t
p ro ced u re an d rules em erges from inform ation conveyed in an
in fo rm al way, from letters, com plaints, p etitio n s, agreem ents
an d the like, in which individuals related to one an o th er and to
officials. C ertainly my own rece n t consideration o f the m aterial
has led m e to ch a n g e my e a rlie r view, in th a t I see the
bureaucracy as more-or-less o u t o f control and self-moving even as
early as P hilad elp h u s’ reig n .8
T h a t th e b u re a u c ra c y was e la b o ra te , th a t th e re w ere
separations according to th e n atu re o f the duties involved, with
financial, scribal and supervision o f actual agricultural activities
assigned to d ifferen t divisions, is obvious from o u r texts. T he
papyri o f Z enon, estate-m anager for Apollonius, the A lexandrian
fin an ce official w ho h eld a 10,000 aro u ra dorea in the Fayum,
co n tain s a vast am o u n t o f detail on everyday agricultural and
7The Revenue Laws Papyrus, for example, by Jean Bingen, Le papyrus Revenue
Laws - Tradition grecque et adaptation hellenistique (Rhenisch-Westfalisch Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Vortrage G 231, 1978).
8I deal with this more extensively in my paper, T h e Ptolem ies and the
Ideology o f Kingship,” delivered at the Symposium on Hellenistic History and
Culture, at the University o f Texas at Austin, in October, 1988, and planned for
publication.
54
financial operations in the chora in the mid third century B.C.

B ecause th e re a re texts w hich show Z e n o n ’s p rin c ip a l,
A pollonius, in touch with the king,9 an d on occasion relaying
royal ideas or instructions,10 the correspondence as a w hole has
led to th e assum ption th a t A pollonius, as dioiketes, was “the
m an ag er in th e n am e o f the king o f th e econom ic life o f
E gypt,”11 and that the activity the Zenon correspondence reflects
is indicative o f the king’s objectives. Citing evidence th at th ere
may have been a plurality of officials with this title later in the
th ird century an d th a t later a dioiketes h ad a relatively low
honorary rank, T u rn e r has argued th a t A pollonius ran k ed no
b etter than sixth at court, and perhaps as low as ten th .12 We must,
th erefo re, no lo n g er assum e th a t the activity o f Z enon an d
A pollonius in the Fayum is representative o f Egypt as a whole, or
that it represents central royal direction.
In reality, the texts which relate to the king would seem to
arg u e against c o h e re n t royal organ izatio n . We have a large
num ber o f texts which record orders, prostagmata as the Greek puts
it, o f the kings, from Philadelphus on. A lthough the majority of
these are m in ed from d o cu m en ts w hich are collections o f
reg u latio n s o r p ro ced u res, th e re is n o t a single royal o rd e r
w hich is itself a com prehensive re g u la tio n ,13 or w hich even
refers to such a thing. Indeed, for the m ost part, the royal orders
would n o t even have been preserved, had they n o t been repeated,
rep o rted or recopied for private or individual purposes. It is n o t
uncom m on to find attached to an o rd er the nam e or nam es of
m in o r personnages who pass it on, an d in one case, to Z enon
®As in P.Cairo Zen. 59541, attending the king’s birthday celebration, P. Cairo Zen.
59075 and 59076, relaying gifts from a sheikh in the Ammonitis, Palestine,
P. Cairo Zen. 59241, showing Apollonius present as escort o f Ptolemy’s daughter
Berenice to Syria for her marriage to Antiochus, and other texts.
10In fact, in substantive agricultural matters, royal direction is rare, as in P. Cairo
Zen. 59155, which states that the king had asked Apollonius to have the land sown
twice in a growing season.
Rostovtzeff, A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C. (Madison, 1922),
p. 16.
18CA//8 VII.l, p. 143.
1T'he idea o f the comprehensive regulation may be valid for the legal system, if
there was a single, unified “diagramma judiciaire,” as argued by J. Meleze-
Modrzejewski, “Le Document grec dans l’Egypte ptolem aique,” Atti del XVII
congresso III, p. 1178.
55
who has by th e tim e o f the text becom e a com pletely private

p e r s o n .14 T h at we have a Corpus des ordonnances des Ptolemees
com piled by a m odern scholar o u t o f very disparate kinds o f texts
should n o t m islead us into thinking th a t the Greeks in Egypt
ever had such a thing. Everything, in fact, suggests the opposite:
the often unofficial and even random copying of the orders; the
fact th a t they deal in general with quite specific an d individual
m atters; th a t they em erge often in response to petitions from
below ra th e r th an o u t o f “legislative” planning. Insofar as the
king directed the bureaucracy, he did so by responding ad hoc to
events, ra th e r than by com prehensive planning an d regulation.
Finally, we have one specific and certain instance in which a
new text overturns an aspect o f the earlier belief in a centrally
directed agricultural econom y. For a long tim e it was th o u g h t
th a t th e term diagraphe tou sporou or “regulation in regard to
sowing” referred to a p ro ced u re in w hich th e crown “regulated
the cultivation according to the planned econom y o f the State.”15
O nly in th e last th re e d ecad es have texts em erg ed th a t
d e m o n stra te th e rev erse:16 a t th e local level, th e schedule of
in te n d e d sowing was co m p iled on th e basis o f th e y e a r’s
in u n d a tio n by th e N ile, an d th a t d o cu m en t, w hich reflected
ex p ectatio n s from below ra th e r than o rd ers from above, was
su b m itted to the h ig h e r bureaucracy, presum ably for use in
regard to subsequent tax collection.
All this req u ired a com plex bureaucracy an d n eed ed some
kind o f supervision, an d o u r texts show m any ways in which
su p e rv is io n was m a in ta in e d o r a tte m p te d . T h e r e are
re q u ire m e n ts th a t officials from distinct b ranches be p re se n t
w hen th e ir concerns w ere affected by specific activities, as in
reg ulations w hich deal with tax-farming; the records o f sowing
and yield are to be broadly known so that the chance o f cheating
is re d u c e d . T h e re are provisions fo r com plex a c c o u n tin g
14C.Onf. PtoL 27; see also 5 and 6 in Marie-Therese Lenger, Corpus des ordonnances
des Ptolemees (Brussels, 1964).
15Rostovtzeff, SEHHW I, p. 279.
16P. Yale 36, confirm ed, in my view, by the so-called “Karnak Ostrakon,”
discovered in 1969/70 and published in translation in 1978 (E. Bresciani, “La
Spedizione di T olem eo II in Siria in un Ostrakon Inedito da Karnak,” D as
PtoUmaische Agypten, pp. 31-37), which calls for a survey o f the state o f the
agricultural situation.
56
p ro cedures and balancing o f accounts, for registrations o f land

and for control of im plem ents to avoid illegal m anufactures. We
have a d o cum ent later in the third century which we believe to
have em anated from high authority setting fo rth advice to an
im portant official in the countryside including specific directions
for inspections an d supervision.17 But none o f these assert th a t
they are in them selves com prehensive law, a lth o u g h som e
in c lu d e royal o rd e rs fo r in fo rm a tio n . T hey are, in fact,
docum ents draw n u p by the bureaucracy for the use o f the
bureaucracy, and they may serve private needs as m uch as public
or official purposes.
These terms, “private, public, official,” may not, however, be
ap p ro p riate to the situations which we describe by them . T he
issue o f the ex ten t o f the “p riv ate” o r “sta te” quality o f the
Ptolem aic econom y has been im p o rtan t in conceptualizing the
P tolem aic m onarchy, an d it has b een equally significant in
evaluating how individuals functioned in an environm ent which
has been thought to presuppose the ownership o f all land by the
king as his “private” property. T hat we conceive o f the Egyptian
situation in term s o f m odern distinctions is at least pardy due to
an inevitable m ental act o f converting G reek term s to supposed
eq u iv alen ts in m o d e rn lan g u ag es. T erm in o lo g y fo r land-
h o ld in g illustrates the point. W hile in his discussion o f th e
organization o f Egypt u n d er Ptolemy II, setting o u t the divisions
o f land into ge basilike, ge en aphesei, ge hiera, ge en suntaxei, ge
klerouchike, ge en dorea, ktem ata and ge idioktetos 18 ( “royal land,
released land, tem ple land, land in assignm ent, cleruchic land,
g ift la n d , estates a n d p riv ate la n d ,” to give th e usual
tr a n s la tio n s ) . R o sto v tz e ff b e g in s h is survey w ith an
acknow ledgem ent th a t the term inology was n o t precise, the
whole conceptualization of land assignments and the evolution of
the Ptolem aic land-tenure system is pred icated on a distinction
betw een “priv ate” land, as ge idioktetos is translated, with the
houses, vineyards and gardens called k tem a ta also conceived as
private, an d the o th e r classes o f land which Rostovtzeff (like
others) explains by reference to the terminology.
11P. Tebt. 703.

18SEHHW I, pp. 276-291.
57
T he issue is im portant, expressed in these term s, since some

o f the categories of land were provided to Greeks, M acedonians
an d o th e r im m igrants to Egypt, in o rd er to furnish them with
resources. T he doreai, or “gift estates,” were grants o f extensive
tracts o f land to senior officials in the governm ent, an d lesser
officials also received sm aller g ran ts, w hich fell in to th e
category o f “released la n d .” In th e sam e category was the
“cleru ch ic la n d ,” set tracts w hich w ere assigned to m ilitary
settlers w hich provided the m ajor p o rtio n o f incom e to th e
soldiers in the Ptolem aic army. These grants m ade it possible to
sup p o rt the army w ithout great outlays in cash. These land grants
were scattered about the countryside, and the effect of this system
o f assignm ent o f land m ean t th at the soldiers too were scattered
o n to th e la n d , in a n d n e a r th e sm all villages a n d towns
characteristic o f th e countryside o f Egypt. T he cleruchs who
o b tain ed these allotm ents paid taxes on the land, and, so far as
we can see, w ere n o t considered “ow ners” o f the land, in th at
the cleruchies w ere n e ith e r alienable n o r inheritable. Such, at
least, we believe to have been the concept o f these grants, and of
the doreai an d o th e r grants to civil adm inistrators as well.
T h e re is ev id en ce, how ever, o f sons carry in g o n th e
cleru ch ie s o f th e ir fath ers, an d m o d e rn co m m en ts on the
evolution o f th e land-holding system usually observe th a t with
tim e, th e cleruchic gran ts te n d e d to be trea ted as “p riv ate”
property which could be passed on in inh eritan ce.19 T he issue o f
th e m a n n e r in w hich “private” property existed and increased
in the Ptolem aic system arises, I think, m ore from ou r notion of
m eaning o f the terms. Ge idioktetos is b etter translated “land held
p erso n ally ,” ra th e r th an as “priv ate” o r “privately h eld la n d ,”
a n d with the change in translation, m any m o d ern conceptions
ab o u t the natu re o f such land evaporate. T he various categories of
land do n o t classify the various land-holdings on two sides o f a
g re a t divide w hich separates “private” from “public,” o r “state,”
b u t are ra th e r m ean t to designate responsibility for working the
lan d an d paying taxes according to various regulations. Royal
la n d h a d n o d ire c t in te rm ed ia ries betw een officials an d th e
farm er; te m p le la n d , doreai a n d th e like p re se n te d som e
19Quite early, as in P.Lond.Zen. 2016 (241 B.C.), we see cleruchic land formally
bequeathed.
58
interm ediaries, while cleruchic land invested a personal h o ld er

n o t only with privileges and profit b u t responsibilities.
T h e elim ination o f the g re a t co n cep tu al divide betw een
“public” and “private” in the classification of land would go far, I
think, tow ard reo rien tin g o u r th in k in g a b o u t the P tolem aic
economy and the reaction of the population to it. Issues like the
extent to w hich Greeks m ight have been troubled by the kings
taking the territory of Egypt as their “private property” disappear,
and the tendency for individual plots o f land to fall in to the
alienable control o f individuals easy to understand. Beyond this
abstract change in our thinking about Ptolem aic Egypt, there are
areas o f a m ore practical n atu re which, if recen t argum ents are
accepted, will significantly modify o u r ideas ab o u t th at society.
W hatever term inology may be, B ingen’s observations ab o u t the
lim ited availability o f land to th e G reeks shows how his
“tensions stru c tu re lle s” p u sh ed th e G reeks to all kinds o f
activities which were contrary to the interests of the crown.20 I
have argued elsewhere th at the m oney econom y in Egypt was a
m uch smaller p art o f the life o f the working peasantry than has
hith erto been assum ed,21 and that overall, the idea that there was
a “p ro g re ssiv e” a p p lic a tio n o f new te ch n o lo g y aim ed a t
expanding production runs counter to the evidence.22 If we push
our reevaluation o f third-century B.C. Egypt even fu rth er along
th e ro ad on w hich are already m oving, an d add to these
considerations the idea that Greeks in Egypt o f that period lacked
a clear idea of “state” versus “private” interest, we will eventually
develop quite a different p ictu re o f Ptolem aic Egypt from the
conventional portrait o f a planned society using large num bers of
im m ig ran t G reeks for th e ad m in istratio n o f a new kind o f
national state.
We should pursue the developing idea th a t adm inistration
u n d er Philadelphus was n o t the rationally planned structure into
w hich we have been trying to fit what are in reality unfittable
an d disparate pieces o f an arran g em en t p u t to g eth er largely ad
hoc, created n o t ju st by the central authority b u t also developed on
20<Tensions structurelles de la societe ptolemalque,” Atti del XVII congresso III.

21<T h e Money Economy and the Ptolemaic Peasantry,” BASP 21 (1984), pp. 187-
206. See also the remarks o f E. Will (note 8, Chapter III above), pp. 291-292.
22Prom Athens to Alexandria, pp. 45-61.
59
th e land by officials who were pursuing th e ir own interests at

the same tim e as they worked to m eet the crow n’s dem and for
revenue. If a strain was im posed on th e p o p u latio n by this
structure, I suggest that it m ight have been created by the nature
o f th e b u rg e o n in g bureaucracy itself, ra th e r th an prim arily
because o f the needs o f the king him self. Thus, the political
problem s w hich becam e a p p a re n t w ithin Egypt after the first
successful campaigns o f Euergetes upon his accession in 246 were,
in essence, insoluble, because they were structural.
T he g en eral satisfaction all ro u n d evinced by the Canopus
D ecree, co n g ra tu la tin g th e king on his victory, expressing
thanks for his benefactions like recapturing the statues o f the
Egyptian gods, an d establishing a series o f cult provisions to
h o n o r th e royal family shows n o aw areness o f troubles in the
realm w hich w ere to becom e n o ticeab le in th e n e x t reign.
W hether o r n o t P hilopator’s use o f Egyptian forces to achieve his
victory over S eleucid troops a t R aphia in 217 was a d irec t
co n trib u to r to self-confidence on the p art o f the native Egyptians,
as has often been said, there is n o d o u b t th a t a t the end o f his
reig n a n d th e n on in to th a t o f th e n e x t king, Ptolem y V,
E p ip h an es, native revolts w ere serious threats. First a native
ruler, H urgonaphor, was recognized in Thebes from 206 B.C. on,
an d th en his successor, C haonnophris, ruled in T hebes until 186
B .C .28 In th e sam e p e rio d , g o v ern m e n t in A lex an d ria was
largely in the hands o f co u rt officials, like the Sosibius who was
largely responsible for th e assembly o f th e forces w hich were
successful at Raphia. For m uch o f the latter p art o f the reign of
Ptolem y IV, an d for th e early p a rt o f the reign o f the m inor,
Ptolem y V, th e c o u rt circle a t A lexandria was th e effective
g o v ern m en t there.
For over sixty years, after th e d eath o f Ptolem y V in 180,
Egypt was torn by strife. T here were regencies like th a t for the
child who succeeded as Ptolemy V, there was invasion from Syria
by A ntiochus IV in the years 170 to 168, th e re w ere in te rn a l
dynastic quarrels, expulsions an d retu rn s o f rulers, as well as
occasional coalitions am ong m em bers o f the royal house, and
**For the dates, names and bibliography on this revolt, see K. Vandorpe, T h e
Chronology o f the Reigns o f Hurgonaphor and Chaonnophris,” Chronique d ’Egypte
71 (1986), pp. 204-302.
60
th ere was even a full-scale an d sustained revolt in 131-130, in

which C leopatra II, the sister-wife of the reigning Ptolem y VIII
set herself up in Thebes, w here the docum ents indicate th at she
was recognized as ruler. Euergetes him self was briefly expelled
from A lexandria d u rin g the p erio d , an d the ferocity o f th e
conflict—o r his personality— is exem plified by the k ind o f
outrageous conduct w hich an cien t sources like to report: the
killing and dism em berm ent of the son he had had by C leopatra
II, and the despatch to h er o f the pieces of the boy’s body in a box
as a birthday present. T he reign of Ptolemy VIII en d ed in 116
with E uergetes’ death in Ju n e; C leopatra II died a few m onths
later, and a new reign, with its own personal an d dynastic
quarrels, began as C leopatra III, E uergetes’ second wife, ruled
jointly with h er son by Euergetes, known as Soter II, Ptolemy IX.
It is to this long perio d o f dynastic conflict an d supposed
d isru p tio n in ad m in istratio n th a t we c re d it an a tte m p t at
reorganization which reaches its fullest expression in the n oted
amnesty of 118 B.C., the royal decree known as P. Tebtunis 5. By
the time this forgiveness of m isdeeds, remissions o f debts to the
crown, declaration of benefits and grants appeared, the pattern of
royal philanthropa had becom e established; the jo in t declaration o f
118 B.C. by Euergetes II, Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III is taken as
a vigorous attem pt to reestablish o rd er and revivify the econom ic
and adm inistrative life o f the countryside after so long a period
of strife am ongst the rulers. We depend to a significant extent on
P. Tebt. 5 for evidence o f adm inistrative developm ents during this
long period. T here is certainly no th in g like the quantity o f texts
o f the third century on which to base o u r know ledge o f the
period, although some conclusions can be drawn from the texts of
the S erapeum recluses p u b lish ed by W ilcken,24 an d a recen t
collection o f adm inistrative texts suggests th at the bureaucracy
functioned comfortably through some of the m ost difficult periods
o f the first h alf o f the second century.25 T he relative scarcity of
adm inistrative texts from th at period may be no m ore than an
a c c id e n t o f discovery or p reserv atio n . T h e re is certain ly
indication in the T ebtunis text, however, o f a period o f conflict
and o f dam age done to buildings and land, and the provisions o f
As the collection known as Urkunden dor Ptolemaeneit.

Papyri Helsingienses I, ed. J. Frosen et al (Helsinki, 1986).
61
T H E M A CED O N IA N A D M IN IST R A TIO N O F EGYPT
th e decree also deal with official m isbehavior, prohibiting, for

exam ple, strategoi an d others from forcing the peasants to work
for th eir private benefit or to provide or feed livestock for their
own gain o r for sacrifice. T h ere are provisions for the co-
existence o f Egyptian and Greek legal procedure which are taken
as a conciliation o f native Egyptian sentim ents, and prohibitions
against arrest or personal control for private debt. Administrative
provisions like these have long been taken as evidence o f the
d e te rio ra tio n o f co n tro l over th e bureaucracy created by the
decades o f disorder. But this material does not, in fact, differ very
m uch from the attem pts to control the adm inistrators which are
attested as early as the th ird century B.C., and, had we n o t an
awareness o f th e dom estic turm oil, we would have no difficulty
in fitting P.Tebt. 5 into the long history o f efforts on the p art of
A lexandria to regulate the activities of officials in the chora.
I am n o t trying to assert th a t the dynastic troubles o f the
second century had n o th in g to do with w eakening the dynasty,
or th a t th ere was no change in adm inistrative patterns from the
m iddle o f th e th ird to the end o f the second centuries B.C.
R ather, I am trying to suggest th at the developm ents may have
b ee n m o re in d e p e n d e n t o f o n e a n o th e r, with adm inistrative
changes p ro ceed in g from th e ir own in te rn a l logic, facilitated,
perhaps, b u t n o t caused by the difficulties o f the kings and queens,
an d th a t even w ithout the dynastic troubles these changes would
have o ccu rred , alth o u g h p erh ap s a little m ore slowly. In the
sam e way, the dam age d o n e to the countryside by the dynastic
wars probably did n o t act very strongly as a cause o f weakness at
th e c e n te r. It is im p o rta n t to re m e m b e r th a t, for all the
com m ercial activity like th e len d in g o f money, m ortgaging of
p ro p erty , sale o f goods, in h e rita n c e s a n d divisions th ereo f,
m arriages an d m anipulations o f dowries, tran sp o rt an d shipping
w hich we have attested in o u r papyri an d w hich focused the
atten tio n o f scholars on the trading aspects o f Ptolem aic society,
the econom y always rem ained fundam entally agricultural. It was
also an a g ric u ltu ra l econom y th a t g e n e ra te d w ealth alm ost
exclusively from w hat farm ers today call “cash cro p s,” th a t is,
sown, reap ed an d sold within one agricultural year. Because of
th e n a tu re o f Egyptian agriculture, fu rth erm o re, prosperity was
influenced alm ost entirely by the rise o f the Nile, and even in
tim es o f turm oil little long-term dam age could be done by troops
62
or fighting. T he am ount of loss which m ight obtain from losses

o f o rc h a rd s an d vineyards was a very sm all p a r t o f the
agricultural bounty o f the land, an d the p o ten tial o f loss in
fertilization from d estruction o f anim als h ad relatively little
im pact on the soil.
At th e sam e tim e, th e fu n d a m e n ta lly n o n -c o in a g e
orientation o f the vast majority of peasant activity in Egypt m ade
c o in -o rie n te d seg m en ts o f th e a d m in is tra tio n o f lesser
im portance in the aggregate o f official activity, and significant
rath er to that very small body of Greek-speaking m em bers o f the
population who actually had to do with com m erce. It was this
group who would feel any effects o f the copper inflation o f the end
of the third century,26 and it was the need for coin, copper as well
as silver—progressively in sh o rt supply—by m em bers o f this
group th at m ade positions in the paid adm inistration attractive.
Furtherm ore, the labor excess o f Egypt, which I believe obtained
even in antiquity,27 m eant th at for the small n u m b er o f Greeks
and M acedonians in Egypt, th ere was an ad eq u ate supply o f
natives to work the land profitably as rentees or sharecroppers, so
th a t salaried p o sitions w ith th e king, an d any com m ercial
tran sactio n s w hich m ig h t be possible, becam e attractiv e as
offering opportunities o f money-making. T hat the adm inistrative
positions were seen as desirable is clear from the fact that m oney
was paid to obtain them . And certainly the attem pts of P Tebt. 5 to
prohibit abuses at the end of the second century B.C. shows that
the officials w ere still finding m eans o f taking advantage o f
th eir positions.
These considerations should warn us against the assum ption
o f a link betw een political disruption an d econom ic decline.
T here is certainly evidence that, despite the troubles o f the second
century, and even later, down into the first, Egypt was still able
26Tony Reekmans, “Economic and Social Repercussions o f the Ptolemaic Copper

Inflation,” Chronique d ’Egypte 48 (1949), pp. 324-342; “The Ptolemaic Copper
Inflation,” Ptolemaica (Studia Hellenistica 7, Lovanii, 1951), pp. 61-118.
9*7
I should point out that this view is not the conventional one o f labor shortage,
expressed by Rostovtzeff, SEHHW I, p. 287, but is based on an understanding o f the
excess manpower available in modern Egypt in a situtation which saw a good
proportion o f the land, as in antiquity, devoted to cereal crops: G.S. Saab, The
Egyptian Agrarian Reform (Oxford, 1967). For the full argument, see my “Money
Economy,” BASP21 (1984), p. 197.
63
to afford its king vast wealth, an d it is only A uletes who was

credited with dissipating it. And even this, we should note, was
d o n e n o t by disruption o f the econom y o r the adm inistrative
structure, b u t by the king’s lavish foreign expenditure in quest of
his own re-estab lish m en t in A lexandria. T h e adm inistrative
structure rem ained intact, a body o f practice and officials which
existed to be reform ed and controlled only by the force o f the
Rom an takeover, an d even the w ealth of the country had the
p otential, despite A uletes’ profligacy, to make C leopatra VII an
invaluable ally to A ntony an d a g en u in e th re a t to O ctavian’s
secure tenure of Rome and Italy.
A re-evaluation o f the relationship betw een the crown and
th e bu reau cracy m akes it possible to u n d e rsta n d how it was
possible for the econom y and the adm inistration to survive so
well afte r so long a p erio d o f weak o r n o n -ex isten t cen tral
governm ent. We must, in fact, re-exam ine the bureaucracy at all
levels to challenge the standing assum ption th a t its structure was
designed an d im plem en ted as a c o h e re n t plan on the p a rt of
P tolem y S o ter o r P h ilad elp h u s, an d th a t changes, like the
increase in authority for the strategos or the im plem entation o f
the honorary co u rt ranks in the early second century, owed their
inception to deliberate plans o r goals o f the king or his highest
officials in A lexandria. We can probably u n d erstan d the history
o f P tolem aic Egypt m uch b e tte r w hen we recognize th a t the
bureaucracy h ad a vigorous life o f its own, th at it developed,
ch an g ed an d o p erated in response to its in tern al logic ra th e r
than as an ag en t o f A lexandrian authority, and th at the success
a n d lo n g life o f th e dynasty ow ed so m e th in g to th e
in d e p e n d e n c e o f th e adm inistration. We also, th en , can m ore
easily u n d e rsta n d how the kings carried on b oth foreign and
in te rn a l conflict. T h e ex p lo itatio n o f Egypt, a p h en o m en o n
em phasized by T u rn e r, was certainly in evidence, b u t excessive
exploitation was n o t a feature o f royal in ten tio n b u t rath e r was
the effect o f the adm inistrative self-interest o f the structure which
em erged in the third century. T he direct control o f the country
by A lexandria, achieved and m aintained for the m ost p a rt by
b ru te force an d im posed by the use o f an army, m ean t th a t the
adm inistrative structure was forced to yield, overall, a good deal
o f th e agricultural surplus, b u t th at adm inistrative structure was
never very answerable, at least a t m iddle and lower levels, to the
64
will o f A lexandria. T he kings’ rep eated efforts to assert such

control, in evidence for the m ost p a rt in ad hoc situ atio n s,
illu strates this ch aracteristic o f th e g o v ern m en t. It was a
govern m en t in which, expressed m ost simply, the co n tro l o f
Egypt as a w hole rested in A lexandria, b u t adm inistration was
vested in the bureaucracy.
66
V
THE IDEOLOGY OF PTOLEMAIC MONARCHY
If th ere is validity in my arg u m en t th at the adm inistration

of Egypt did n o t em erge exclusively from the plans or objectives of
Philadelphus or his successors in the dynasty, then ou r c u rren t
conception o f royal ideology in Ptolemaic Egypt changes to some
extent. As I observed in connection with the discussion o f the
n a tu re o f m onarchy u n d e r the im m ed iate successors, th e
adjustm ent to adm inistration which faced A lexander’s generals
seems n o t to have been m et to any great extent, even by Ptolemy I
Soter, and I concluded that the developm ent of the bureaucratic
structure belonged to the period o f the next generation. In Egypt,
it is clear th a t th e highly articu lated bureaucracy w hich we
associate with the Ptolem aic regim e was in place by the m iddle
o f the third century B.C., and that quite a large num ber of Greek-
speaking and G reek-writing officials w ere carrying on duties
based on accum ulation o f rules and experience which w ent back
at least a few decades. T he existence o f regulations issued in the
nam e o f the king, some d ated by years earlier than those for
w hich we have th e b ulk o f o u r evidence, shows th a t th e
beginnings o f the developm ent o f the system can be traced back at
least to the early years o f Philadelphus. It could hardly be argued
fo r a king like P h ilad elp h u s th a t this evidence fo r royal
d ire c tio n co u ld be a ttrib u te d to a c h a n c e ry o p e ra tin g
in d ep en d en tly o f a king, such as we m ig h t find d u rin g the
m inority rule o f such Ptolem ies as E piphanes and Philom etor.
Yet even with an active king, intervening in o r at least issuing
orders to the adm inistration, the ideology of kingship at the
tim e o f P hiladelphus m ust have been very different from th at
w hich we w ould im agine from a co n c e p t w hich saw him
rem ak in g , if n o t o rig in atin g , th e extensive ad m in istrativ e
structure, and reorganizing the econom y of Egypt along rational
and purposeful lines.
If we are to seek an ideology o f P hiladelphus’ kingship, we
could ask for n o th in g m ore explicit than T h eo critu s XVIIth
idyll. In a eulogy to P hiladelphus in traditional H ellenic m ode,
the praises o f the king follow Greek patterns o f ideas in a form
w hich is essentially th a t o f H om eric hym n. T h e virtues for
which T heocritus praises Ptolem y are themselves H om eric and
67
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO L E M A IC M O N A R CH Y
P indaric—Fighting prowess, m unificence, wealth, genesis from

divinity. N othing in T heocritus’ language suggests th at Ptolemy
II was different in quality from the kings and aristocrats o f early
G reece. T h eo c ritu s also praises P h ila d e lp h u s’ g re a t fath er,
Ptolem y, associating him with divinity th ro u g h d escen t from
H eracles and by proxim ity to A lexander. H im self a god, the
g reat co n q u ero r and his relationship to Ptolemy appear in terms
evocative o f Zeus seated on Olym pus. P h ilad elp h u s’ m o th er,
B erenice, duly receives praise, and T heocritus claims apotheosis
for h e r, th a t she never w ent down in d eath to A cheron, b u t
A phrodite “snatched h e r before she en co u n tered the dark ship
an d th e grim ferrym an o f those who have com e to th eir end,
setting h e r u p in a tem ple.”1 T he poem is filled with allusions to
Zeus; “We begin with Z eus,” T h eo critu s opens his p aean o f
praise, an d th e poem ends with the Olym pian, in a traditional
form of closing such a poem:
“Rejoice, lord Ptolemy. I am m indful o f you, equal o f the
o th e r dem igods, an d I believe I speak a word which will
n o t fail to reach those to com e in the future. And for
virtue, from Zeus pray.”
T h e poem , so evocative o f early G reek poetry, applies the
them es o f earliest G reek tradition, them es established for the
city-states o f th e fifth century B.C. and in place long before the
conquests o f A lexander and the wars o f the successors, and it is
n o t unique. T he rem nants o f Callim achus’ Lock of Berenice present
a t len g th th e sam e co n cep t o f th e apotheosis o f B erenice as
T h eo critu s’ sh o rt passage.2 This ideology o f m onarchy assembles
m any o f the ideas with w hich we are fam iliar from A lexander’s
p a tte rn o f kingship: divine ancestry, ability in war, reverence
toward the gods an d display and generous use o f great wealth.
T h e A lexander-tradition stressed A lex an d er’s d em onstration o f
these traits in its co h eren t view o f the conqueror, and Theocritus
applies th em to Ptolem y as well. W hile these qualities by no
m ean s ex h a u st those w hich m ig h t have b een expected o f a
m o n a rc h , they certainly w ould have b een p ro m in e n t am ong
those re g a rd e d as flatterin g to th e king, a n d they are royal
characteristics central to any concept of the nature o f a king.
^ h e o c . XVII, 48-49.
Âitia 110; Catullus 66.
68
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO LEM A IC M O N A R CH Y
Certainly, the attitudes toward kingship held by Ptolem y I

would be im portant in developing the ideology of the Ptolem aic
m onarchy, and the stories about A lexander attributed to Ptolemy
with the consistently favorable slant they take may go back to the
king’s own history o f the great conqueror. If this were the case,
we would have in Ptolem y’s version o f A lexander a kingship o f
character an d personality, n o t a kingship o f governm ent and
accom plishm ent, a kingship closer to T h eo critu s’ P hiladelphus
than to the royal bureaucrat o f m odern scholarship.
We have too often ten d ed to separate the conceptions o f
T heocritus from an assum ed reality o f governm ent an d pow er
operated by Philadelphus. T he p o et praises as a traditional bard,
so we do n o t take his expressions as serious notions o f divinity
im pinging on the royal family. So too, the num erous uses o f the
royal oath as they appear in the papyri are n o t taken seriously—
in religious term s—o r used to determ ine the im pact the notion
o f royal divinity m ight have h ad on G reeks in Egypt, even
though the king’s significance in the oath parallels th a t o f the
gods in usage.3 T here is no doubt that this formal acceptance o f a
divine quality in h e rin g in the king is a featu re o f kingship
which em erged out of the traditions surrounding A lexander the
G reat, an d th a t concept, for the M acedonians at least, was
g ro u n d ed in attitudes w hich had p erm itted Philip to p rese n t
him self as a th irte e n th o f th e gods a t the m arriage o f his
daughter C leopatra in 336. T here was a ready acceptance of the
application o f the idea to Soter and the Ptolem ies am ong the
G reek cities in the establishm ent o f royal cults in many centers,4
and the Ptolemaic dynasty itself carried the concept to a new and
m ore complex structure.
Philadelphus—if n o t Soter— took the ideas of divinity which
had been bruited as early as the cult honors to Ptolemy I by the
R hodians and on Delos and form alized them in th e dynastic
cult. T hat cult now no longer depended on the gratitude o f cities
See my comments in *The Ptolemies and the Ideology o f Kingship,” delivered

at the Symposium on Hellenistic History and Culture, at the University o f Texas at
Austin, in October, 1988.
^ h e best treatment o f the royal—as against dynastic—cults in the Greek states,
with the M acedonian precedents rem ains that o f Christian H abicht,
Gottmenschentum tmd Griechische Stadte (Zetemata 14, Munich, 1956, 2nd ed. 1970).
69
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO LE M A IC M O N A R CH Y
or the whims o f politics, in the m anner of the royal cults of the

G reek cities elsew here, b u t ra th e r becam e a statem en t by the
king-god him self and established the concept o f the m onarch as
god for Greeks an d M acedonians who th en could serve him in
patterns fam iliar to them . T he dynastic cult itself has long been
seen as an aspect o f the ideology o f Ptolem aic m onarchy, b u t it
has n o t been studied m uch as an institution. Surveys like those of
Cerfaux and T aeger5 have sought to place the Ptolemaic cult in its
place as p art o f a long developm ent before and after the third
century, and so presented w hat is m ore or less a summary o f the
form al developm ents in th e cult. Even th e re c e n t surveys by
Preaux an d the Cambridge Ancient History have done little m ore
th an describe th e evolution o f th e cult as it was expanded to
in clude P hiladelphus and A rsinoe, the Theoi Adelphoi, the Theoi
Euergetai in the generation after that, and then reorganized to put
th e cult o f the Theoi Soteres in with the others, in th eir p ro p er
sequence from A lexander on.
A full study o f the cult, its cult places and its priests would be
rew arding; a g reat deal m ore is known ab o u t all o f these since
O tto w rote,6 an d the exam ination o f the eponym ous priests by
Ijsewijn p ro d u ced the conclusion th at they cam e from the court
c irc le , a view widely a c c e p te d a n d re p e a te d in F ra se r’s
d is c u s s io n .8 B ut we lack an analysis o f do cu m en ts with and
w ithout priestly dating form ulae to determ ine if there exists any
p a tte rn w hich m ight throw light on the role the cult played in
th e society, and we may also be able to learn som ething from a
careful review o f any activities devoted to the c u lt It would only be
such detailed studies th at would perm it us to ju d g e w hether there
is any validity in T aeg er’s denigration o f the religious character
o f th e cult, claim ing, on th e basis o f som e o f P h ilad e lp h u s’
a rra n g e m e n ts, th e “frag w u rd ig en relig io se n C h a ra k te r des
®L. Cerfaux, J. Tondriau, Le CuUe des souverains dans la civilization greco^romaine: tin
concurrent du ckristianisme (Bibliotheque de Theologie, Ser. 3, 5, Tournai, 19560; F.
Taeger, Charisma: Studien zur Geschichte des antiken Herrscherkultes (Stuttgart, 1956).
6W. Otto, Priester und Tempel in Hellenistischen Agypten (Leipzig-Berlin, 1905,
1908).
^J. Ijsewijn, De Sacerdotibus Sacerdotiisque Alexandri Magni et Lagidantm Eponymis
(Brussels, 1961); new lists now available in W. Clarysse and G. van der Weken,
The Eponymous Priests of Ptolemaic Egypt (Leiden, P. Lugduno-Batava 24, 1983).
®P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I, p. 223.
70
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO L E M A IC M O N A R C H Y
d y n a stisc h e n K u lte s,”9 o r w h eth er we m ig h t move beyond

F ra se r’s assessm ent th a t the c u lt “n ev erth eless c a n n o t be
dismissed as a fiction designed purely to give prestige to holders
o f p ap er priesthoods.”10 An understanding o f the dynastic cult as
well as th e royal cult is p a rt o f th e b ro a d e r p ro b lem o f
co m p rehending the religious an d sociological character o f the
spread o f Egyptian cults in general in the M editerranean world,
with all the difficulties and com plexities recently reviewed by
Franôise D unand, pointing out some o f the new collections o f
evidence and possibilites of using this evidence to throw light on
religious m e n talitie s.11 T he p o ten tial religious significance of
the cult is supported, it seems to me, by the o th er aspects and
attributes o f divinity which may be assembled: identification o f
the sovereigns with deities, and the m ore com m on assimilation
o f queens with female divinities such as Isis and A phrodite, the
establishm ent of tem ples to m em bers o f the dynasty, tem ples to
them eith er individually or in association with o th e r deities,
dedications connected with public cults of the sovereigns discrete
from the dynastic cult itself which show private dedications to
them e ith e r as deities them selves or as assim ilated to o th e r
deities.12
Perhaps even m ore significant are the representations o f the
Ptolemies, in the first two centuries o f the dynasty. By this I do
n o t m ean th e co in p o rtra its , in p a r tic u la r th e d u a l
represen tatio n s like those of Philadelphus-A rsinoe w hich have
b een in te rp re te d to em phasize th e dynastic, r a th e r th an
individual, aspect o f kingship. R ath er m ore significant for
private cult are th e many m arble heads, from th e tim e o f
Philadelphus on, which were m ade to be affixed to figures m ade
o f less-expensive and m ore easily obtainable m aterial like wood.
Kyrielis very reasonably sees these figures as p re se n te d for
“private p eo p le, officials, soldiers or tow nspeople. . .cu lt
9Charisma, p. 297.
10Ptolemaic Alexandria I, p. 225; the opinion challenged is that o f Ijsewijn,
Sacerdotibus, p. 158.
11F. Dunand, “Cultes egyptiens hors d ’Egypte: Nouvelles voies d ’approche et
d ’interpetation,” Egypt and the Hellenistic World, pp. 75-98.
12The evidence for these aspects o f divinity is reviewed by Fraser, Ptolemaic
Alexandria I, pp. 226-246, and notes thereto.
71
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO LE M A IC M O N A R C H Y
re p re se n ta tio n s, in p riv ate royal cu lt ch ap els o r in local

gym nasia or as dedications o f loyal servants.”13 W h eth er these
a re m erely ex p ressio n s o f loyalty o r re p re s e n t a g e n u in e
re lig io u s sen se, th e fre q u e n c y o f th e ir a p p e a ra n c e , th e
proliferation o f royal representations in terraco tta an d plaster,14
an d the faience oinochoai used as ritual vessels in some way for
cult p u rp o se,15 all dem onstrate the spread o f the royal cults and
p erh ap s th e dynastic cu lt far beyond the d irec t action o f th e
crown. T he significance o f all this for the spiritual aspect o f the
ru le r cult an d the divine aspects o f the m em bers o f the dynasty
may be pointed up by the frequency o f representations o f female
m em bers. Assimilation o f the queens to Isis m ust surely have had
an im pact on attitudes towards the living rulers on the p a rt of
Greeks; if the g reater sympathy toward the spiritual value o f the
Isis (and Sarapis) cult on the p art o f some m odern com m entators
provides a lead,16 we m ight be willing to take m ore seriously the
very plentiful evidence th at the Ptolem ies fitted in some genuine
way in to th e relatio n sh ip w ith th e divine m ain tain ed by th e
Greeks in Egypt.
If cult and divinity were an aspect o f the ideology, so too was,
on th e h u m an level, m ilitary acco m p lish m ent and adventure.
S oter p articip ated fully in th e m ilitary conflicts w hich m arked
the last two decades o f the fourth century B.C., and despite ups
and downs o f defeat and victory, he could claim to have been, on
balance, m o re successful than his peers. H e preserved Egypt
15Helm ut Kyrielis, Bildnisse der Ptolemder (Agyptische Forschungen 2, Berlin,

1975), pp. 145-146. Kyrielis, in drawing his summary conclusions about the
significance o f the marble and coin portraits, emphasizes the difference between
the Ptolemaic iconography and that o f the contemporary kings elsewhere in the
third century, follows traditional views o f the centralizing nature o f the
monarchy in seeing these figures as expressions o f the loyalty o f the subjects.
14R. A. Lunsingh Scheurleer, “Ptolemies?”, Das Ptolemaische Agypten, pp. 1-22. It
is worth noting that Scheurleer emphasized the distinction between the portraits
o f Egyptian type and those “made in the Hellenistic tradition,” while Kyrielis
sees that his portraits do not often betray Egyptian stylization, but wants to see an
Egyptian pull influencing them (p. 158).
15Dorothy B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience: Aspects of the
Ruler Cult (Oxford, 1973).
16J. Gwyn Griffiths, “The Great Egyptian Cults o f Oecum enical Spiritual
Significance,” in A.H. Armstrong, ed., Classical Mediterranean Spirituality (L ondon,
1986), pp. 66-101.
72
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO L E M A IC M O N A RCH Y
always safe from rivals, from the time of Perdiccas’ attack on; he
was on the w inning side which ended A ntigonus’ career at Ipsus
in 301; he survived everyone b u t Lysimachus an d Seleucus, and
they died in battle or by assassination, while he left his h eir
secure and with an enorm ous war m achine. P hilad elp h u s in
turn was at war or adventuring successfully at the end o f the 280s,
fought a war with A ntiochus I in the second h a lf o f the 270s,
involved him self in the C h rem onidean W ar in the 260s and
then undertook the Second Syrian War at the end o f th at decade
and carried it on for several years.17 T he th ird Ptolem y began
his reig n w ith a n o th e r Syrian W ar, o ne in w hich he was
triu m p h an t enough to justify the praises o f the C anopus D ecree
which record his retu rn of the Egyptian Gods from Syria. Even
Philopator, who is rep o rted as notably unam bitious, could claim
the success o f Raphia in 217.
I am certainly n o t trying to claim the reputation o f a great
co n q u ero r for P hilopator, or even for Euergetes I, despite his
success in Syria. The references to the third and fourth Ptolemies
m erely show th e ir co ntinuance, p erh ap s forced on them , o f
m ilitary activity. B ut for P h ilad elp h u s I th in k the fre q u e n t
military activity down to m id-century justifies, to som e extent,
T h e o c ritu s’ b o ast th a t B erenice p ro d u c e d “a sp ear-b earin g
Ptolem y for spear-bearing Ptolem y,”18 even if he were a stay-at-
hom e com m ander and suffered some notable failures, like that of
the C hrem onidean War.
D espite th e activist m ilitary stance, by th e m id 250s
P hilad elp h u s’ in tern a tio n al position h ad d eterio ra ted seriously.
Eric T u rn er insisted that the first thirty years o f the reign was a
period of warfare which led to a financial squeeze on Egypt,19 and
w h e th e r o r n o t o n e a g re e s w ith th e claim th a t th e
a d m in istra tio n was driven cen trally by th e k in g ’s need s,
T u rn e r’s assessm ent o f m ilitary expense an d strain is m uch
m ore ap p ro p riate to the evidence o f P hiladelphus’ activity in
I make this point in greater detail in “The Ptolemies and the Ideology o f
Kingship,” delivered at the Symposium on Hellenistic History and Culture, at the
University o f Texas at Austin, in October, 1988.
18Theoc. XVII, 56-57.
l9CHtf,VII, pp. 135-159.
73
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO L EM A IC M O N A R CH Y
those years than is the m ore com m on view o f th e king as a

genial an d pacific ruler.
T here has been a great deal o f discussion o f the purposes of
th e Ptolem aic policy which, T u rn e r claims, b an k ru p ted Egypt.
T h ere has been debate over w hether the first two kings o f the
dynasty fought to preserve trade advantages or were concerned
prim arily to preserve the co rdon o f overseas possessions as a
protection o f their hold on Egypt. Rostovzteff has argued th at they
w ere c o n c ern ed only w ith Egypt itself, b u t th a t th e n ee d to
provide the resources on w hich to base a fleet an d arm y drew
them into overseas adventures to obtain those resources. It will
com e as n o su rp rise th a t I see th e e x p la n a tio n o f th e
“im p e rialism ” o f P h ilad elp h u s less in term s o f econom ic or
p o litica l strategy th a n arisin g o u t o f royal self-im age an d
e x p e c ta tio n s o f a k in g ’s b eh av io r. I t seem s to m e th a t
P hiladelphus could n o t accept territorial losses or fail to exploit
opportunities for acquisition and expect to m aintain the respect of
his forces o r c o n tin u e in th e re g a rd o f th e G reeks an d
M aced o n ian s as a king in th e tra d itio n o f his fa th e r, o f
A le x a n d e r a n d P hilip . T h a t tra d itio n p re se n te d a king as
fighting to m aintain his pragm ata, w hich in clu d ed th e te rri-
tories over w hich he had control. Looking back at the n otion of
th e w ell-being o f th e king, his frien d s an d his p r a g m a t a
m e n tio n e d in re g a rd to Lysim achus, P h ila d e lp h u s w ould
naturally react to threats by fighting.
Besides th e aspects o f divinity an d lead ersh ip in war,
T h eo c ritu s em phasizes P h ilad e lp h u s’ w ealth an d m unificence.
T hose characteristics have certainly b een recognized by m odern
w riters as well as P hiladelphus’ contem poraries. T he creation of
th e scientific an d cultural centers w hich m ade u p the m useion
an d library w ere n o t only parallels to A lex an d er’s interests in
a n d en c o u ra g em e n t o f intellectual pursuits, they rep rese n ted a
g reat outlay o f money. T he king built, and paid and attracted to
A le x a n d ria a c lu tc h o f th e m o st fam o u s—A rc h im e d e s,
C allim achus, T h eo critu s an d o th ers—an d assured him self and
his co u rt o f a rep u tatio n w hich would last the ages. C alleixinus’
re p o rt o f th e g reat procession o f P hiladelphus details the floats
an d exhibits p arad e d th ro u g h A lexandria, a display o f w ealth as
74
T H E ID EO L O G Y O F PTO LE M A IC M O N A R CH Y
well as in g en u ity ,20 an d the huge arm y w hich followed th e

religious paraders supports the claims o f m ilitary stren g th and
resources we find in T heocritus and A ppian.21 In civil life and
outside Alexandria, the gifts of the great doreai, like the 10,000-
aroura estate o f A pollonius which encom passed a w hole village,
and the distribution o f cleruchies to the Greeks and M acedonians
in Egypt can be seen as generosity as well as econom ic in force,
perhaps p art of the gifts to his “good com panions.”22 His reign
also saw a burst o f tem ple construction, n o t only for G reek cults
b u t for Egyptian as well, and although m odern scholars portray
this as political in motive, aim ed at accom m odating the Greeks
a n d co n ciliatin g th e natives, T h eo c ritu s m akes it a n o th e r
dem onstration o f his wealth and generosity.23
Rich, g en ero u s, w arlike, godlike— so we m ig h t describe
P tolem y o r A lex a n d er. A nd like P h ilip a n d A lex a n d er,
P hiladelphus had his “friends.” Ptolemy, like o th e r successors,
had his circle o f advisers and aides, Greeks and M acedonians
who carried the title o f “F rien d ” an d served in high adm in-
istrative, m ilitary and diplom atic capacity. T he m em bers o f the
royal group turn up in inscriptions in the Aegean area in the
reign o f th e first Ptolem y and in P h ilad elp h u s’ tim e as well,
although there are few references to these philoi active in lesser
adm inistrative roles in the chora. T he philoi, as well as the less-
attested Bodyguards and C hief Bodyguards whose dignities seem
to have lapsed by the end of the third century B.C., were clearly
functionaries in A lexandria, p art of the im m ediate circle of the
king. Studies of royal activities in the Greek world make it clear
th at the king’s agents cam e from this group, and his interests
w ere carried on by it, an d th a t his circle never grew into a
formal bureaucracy in the way that the administrative structure of
the chora developed.24 So long as the kings had interests in the
^Recorded by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae V, 196-203.

21Theoc. XVII, 90-94; Appian, Roman History 1.5 (21-22).
22Theoc. XVII, 111.
2SXVII, 106-108.
24R-S. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Posessions Outside Egypt (Leiden,
1976), and G. Herman, "The ‘Friends’ o f the Early Hellenistic Rulers: Servants or
Officials?” Talanta 12-13 (1980-1981), pp. 103-149. Herman argues that in the early
period, the vagueness o f titling o f the officials honored by the Greek cities
demonstrates the negative attitude towards court tides among the Greeks o f the
75
A egean o r in the M editerranean outside A lexandria— th a t is,

th ro u g h the third century B.C., the king carried on his activities
th ro u g h co u rt officials o f A lexandria who w ere n o t tied in to the
r e g u la r b u r e a u c r a c y .25 It is only afte r th e co n tra ctio n o f
a d m in is tra tio n in to A le x a n d ria its e lf th a t th e in fo rm a l
go v ern m en t o f the c o u rt circle declined in im p o rtan ce, and
opened the way for the establishm ent o f a purely honorific court
titulature tied to the adm inistrative m achinery o f the chora.26 But
until this h ap p en ed , the king’s governm ent was n o t so different
from th a t o f Philip an d A lexander’s, a governm ent by m en who
h ad d irec t relations with the king and titles like “frie n d ” and
“bodyguard” w hich em phasized this closeness.
T h e ideology w hich all these characteristics o f kingship
suggest is one o f personal monarchy, as many have observed. As a
p e rso n a l m onarchy, th e crow n itself did n o t elab o rate its
connections with the bureaucracy during the third century, and
the relationship between king and population was conceived as a
d ire c t c o n n e c tio n , ra th e r th an o n e p ro cee d in g th ro u g h the
layers o f adm inistration. We can see this particularly clearly in
th e fo rm u lae o f p etitio n s. A lth o u g h a reasonably a rtic u lated
ju d ic ia l stru c tu re was in place by m id-century, the petitio n s
rep resen ted by the Enteuxeis collection and others am ong H ibeh
texts an d papyri from o th e r parts o f Egypt strongly indicate a
sense th a t the king was, for the G reeks at least, the source of
ju stice an d was to be app ro ach ed directly. From the last years of
E uergetes I an d the beginning o f the reign o f Philopator—before
the advent o f th e ru lin g m inisters— the p etitions are addressed
time; the assembly o f texts identifying the Ptolemaic officers who are honored
further shows that for the most part, and except for military ranks, their
importance in the Ptolemaic context appears in their court tides rather than
bureaucratic or administrative ranks.
25Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I (Oxford, 1972), pp. 101-105, distinguishes for the
third century “dual administrative spheres;” on e operating outside Egypt and
using the personal representatives o f the king, who were, for the most part,
Greeks, Alexandrians and Macedonians, and another dealing with the chora in
Egypt itself, which he thought was staffed for the most part by lower-class
Alexandrian citizens and non-privileged Greeks o f Alexandria.
26For this, see Leon Mooren, The Aulic Titulature in Ptolemaic Egypt, Introduction and
Prosopography (Brussels, 1975) and T h e Ptolemaic Court System,” Chronique d ’Egypte
60 (1985) 214-222.
76
directly to the king, they com plain th a t th e p e titio n e r has

personally suffered the described wrong, and they ask th a t the
king intervene directly by instructing the strategus to take the
desired action.
I am n o t interested here in the question o f the evolution o f
the im portance of the strategus in the bureaucratic system, b u t
rather in the fact th at the petitions represented by these texts do
n o t transcend his office and p roceed to th e king as they are
addressed. T h e strategus acts on th e p e titio n s him self. In
general, w hat is asked by the com plainant, after explaining the
wrong suffered, is that the king ord er the strategus to write to a
subordinate official to act on the m atter in one way or an o th er—
investigating, sending the accused for questioning, or follow
some such procedure. W hat our papyri show is that the strategus’
office takes the requested step by subscribing that instruction to
the petition itself, and that there is no p aper trail indicating that
the papyrus ever proceeded to the king. Indeed, as P.Enteuxis 22
dem onstrates, w here th e re is a p ap e r trail, it shows th a t the
d o cum ent was h an d ed in to the strategus’ office in the nom e,
rath er than being sent to Alexandria.
A lthough there are com plaints to all sorts o f officials in the
bureaucracy attested by our texts, and the enteuxeis themselves refer
to the possibility o f “settling the disputants” by m em bers of the
adm inistration or the courts, the enteuxis petitions retain and
show the sense of the king as the object of appeal for justice. And
the appeal is direct, on a bi-lateral basis. T here is no procedure
attested whereby officials are requested to transm it petitions or
com plaints to the king, no r are there papyri which ask for access
to the king. T he few texts which ask an official or personage at
court to use influence with the king all em anate from personal
c o n n e ctio n s a n d n o t from p ro c e d u ra l stru c tu re . W hat th e
petitions illustrate, I think, is a sense that although a bureaucracy
exists and does m ost o f the work, it does n o t block the direct link
between the king and the individual. T he officials act, b u t the
king moves the adm inistration, perhaps alm ost like an abstract
force, and like a god, the king may be approached directly to do
that.
T he ideology o f the m onarchy as it developed am ong the
Greeks in Egypt in the third century B.C. left th e king his
traditional quality of military leader, and reinforced the sense of
77
k in g sh ip as endow ing o r c o m p re h e n d in g divinity. It also

co n ta in e d a sense o f the king as a le a d e r o f a g ro u p o f
com panions, the hetaroi of A lexander, the philoi or “friends” of
th e king, who alo n g w ith G reeks n o te d fo r literary an d
scientific accom plishm ents cam e to Egypt d u rin g the reigns o f
Ptolem y I and II to m ake A lexandria a literary and scientific
c e n te r o f p an -M ed iterran ean class. B ut th e P tolem ies never
solved th e p ro b lem o f in c o rp o ratin g ad m in istratio n in to th e
concept o f m onarchy, o f fitting , somehow, the idea o f the divine
ad v en tu rer an d his friends into a hierarchical structure whereby
the royal pow er flowed downward th ro u g h the various ranks of
officials an d endow ed them with the authority to govern the
land. At th e en d o f the third century, at least, the relationship
betw een king an d subject was still direct, notionally, an d th at
idea o f th e bilateral relatio n sh ip betw een king an d individual
in flu en ced the developm ent o f the Ptolem aic m onarchy, as we
can see from the docum ents which em erged from the confusing
decades o f the second century.
T he philanthropa issued by the kings in the second century
B.C., an d in p articu lar the long a n d seemingly com prehensive
text o f P.Tebt. 5 have generally been understood to reflect attem pts
a t th e reorganization o f adm inistration after a long period of
dynastic conflict am ong E uergetes II, his b ro th e r an d his sister.
T he text is a typical, if full, exam ple o f the philanthropa issued by
th e Ptolem ies, texts w hich illustrate th e ideology w hich makes
th e king th e p erso n al p ro te c to r o f th e p eo p le. This n o tio n
in heres in the direct relationship exem plified by the petitions of
th e e n d o f th e th ird century, an d it is p a rt o f the ideology of
kingship w hich is taken to have been developed by philosophers
an d propagandists o f the second century, and it is in th at century
th at we see these concepts reflected in official texts. W hereas the
cautions ag ainst abuses in th e third-century P.Tebt. 703 are
related directly to pro tectio n o f the revenues, th e rem issions in
P.Tebt. 5 are stated as good-will grants; it is m odern analysts who
relate them to a desire to reconstruct the taxation base. In fact, the
d o cu m en t and its provisions are, I think, as m uch in ten d ed as
philanthropa em anating from the ideology o f kingship as they are
reflective o f u n rest in Egypt. These am nesties, first issued in the
second century B.C., becam e a feature o f later Ptolem aic history,
a n d m ay be g e n u in e a ttem p ts to settle u n re st an d signify
78
b etter tim es com ing, as is generally said. They also attest a

developm ent in the ideology o f kingship, an ideology which, as
Schubart pointed out a long tim e ago,27 em phasized the king’s
role as a h elp er and exem plar o f m oral ideals. T h ere are, after
all, alternatives to philanthropa in dealing with unrest and unruly
subjects; A ntiochus IV tried o ne in P alestine in th e sam e
general period when we first find the philanthropa appearing in
Egypt. A ntiochus did n o t succeed in his attem pt to assert control
through force and assault on the Jews o f Palestine, b u t his failure
was a failu re in a d iffe re n t place a n d u n d e r d iffe re n t
circumstances than those of Egypt, and it was an approach which
the Ptolemies m ight have used. T hat they did n o t has as m uch or
m ore to do with ideology, the concept of kingship w hich had
developed by th at tim e in Egypt, which, I suggest, d eterm in ed
th e m a n n e r in w hich P h ilo m e to r an d E uerg etes II w ould
respond to the problem s o f asserting themselves as kings.
T he Egyptian m aterials are helpful in u n d ersta n d in g the
m onarchy as it app eared to the natives. W hatever m ight be the
extent o f the desire o f Euergetes II later to “conciliate” the native
priesthood, texts like those carved between 144/3 and 142 on the
Egyptian tem ple o f Tod show the im pact o f dynastic turm oil on
iconography. T he king and queen (Euergetes II and C leopatra II)
along with th eir predecessors, are given a p ro m in en ce which
suggests a reco g n itio n o f equality for C leo p atra II.28 T he
insistence on dynastic continuity rep resen ted would fit into a
conceptualization o f “g o o d ” kings who have long reigns and are
succeeded by th eir sons, or “b ad ,” who experience the converse,
an ideology w hich ap p ears in th e D em otic C hronicle, and
w hich applies to the Ptolem ies as well as “native” ru lers.29
2,Wilhelm Schubart, “Das hellenistische Konigsideal nach Inschriften und

Papyri,” Archiv fur Papynisforschung 12 (1937), pp. 1-26.
As argued by J.-C. Grenier, “Ptolemee Evergete II et Cleopatre II d ’apres les
textes du temple de Tod,” Alessandria e il mondo ellenistico-romano, Studi in onore di
A chi lie Adriani I (Rome 1983), pp. 32-37, in this short period before Euergetes II
expelled his sister from power and married Cleopatra III, an effort was being
made to impress reconciliation on any who would com prehend the
representation on the temple.
29As definition o f legitimate kingship, based on earlier Egyptian concepts o f
kingship: J. Johnson, “The Demotic Chronicle as a Statement o f a Theory o f
Kingship,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 13, 61-72.
79
T H E ID E O L O G Y O F PTO LE M A IC M O N A R C H Y
Dynastic conflict began again after the death of Ptolemy VIII,

am ong his heirs, his wife C leopatra III and his two sons, Soter II
an d A lexander, and in the first year, with C leopatra III involved
as well. C leopatra III dom inated the scene a t first, with Soter II
ruling as Ptolem y IX, with the reign in te rru p te d briefly in 110-
109, again in the year after, and in 107 by A lexander for a long
p erio d down to 88, w hen A lexander died; Soter II then retu rn ed
an d ru led u ntil his death in 80; that was a year o f confusion in
w hich first C leopatra B erenice governed for six m onths, then
A lex an d er II, Ptolem y XI, u n til he was slau g h tered by th e
en ra g e d A lexandrians for killing B erenice 19 days after his
association w ith h e r on the th ro n e . T h at leaving th e th ro n e
em pty with no legitim ate successor, the A lexandrians chose a so-
called “b astard ” son o f Soter II to rule as Ptolem y XII, and this
king ru le d , w ith in te rru p tio n s , u n til 51. H e was en tirely
d e p e n d e n t on Roman support to m aintain him self on the throne;
betw een 58 and 55 he was in Rome, bribing and petitioning to
have h im self recognized as king an d , achieving that, installed
again in A lexandria in 55. T he last Ptolem ies, C leopatra VII
an d Ptolem y XIII were associated on the th ro n e with Auletes in
52, ru led independently after his death in 51, disputed with one
a n o th e r u n til first Ptolem y XIII was elim in ated in 47, th en
Ptolem y XIV in 44, leaving C leopatra to bring th e dynasty to a
close in the last paroxysms o f the Roman civil wars.
After, the reign o f Ptolemy IX Soter II there is little evidence
o f the Ptolem aic ru lers acting in ways th at suited the abstract
concepts o f kingship I have elu cid ated h ere. T he derogatory
rem arks o f Polybius ab o u t the A lexandrians and his descriptions
o f th e kings suggest quite strongly th a t by m id-second century,
the ru lers in A lexandria were seen as voluptuaries and failures
as rulers. Even so, some o f the basic qualities o f kingship which
are a p p a re n t in the ideology as it em erged in the third century
B.C. persisted rig h t to the end o f the dynasty, the dynastic cult
an d ru le r cults still strong en o u g h to be ad ap ted to Rom an
s u c c e s s o r s ,80 th e circle o f “frie n d s” still a ro u n d th e king,
A lexandria still a cultural cen ter with literary an d philosophical
50Even if a good deal o f the evidence comes from demotic rather than Greek
texts o f this period.
80
earlier expression o f the ru le r’s concern for the people, with

grants o f asylum, benefits to tem ples an d priests. A tex t o f
A uletes’ reig n 81 granting privileges to cleruchs an d am nesty for
crim es presents the same kind o f adm inistrative clem ency as
had the decree of Euergetes II in the previous century, and the so-
called “last decree o f the Ptolem ies,” an order o f Cleopatra VII of
41 B.C., gives the traditional image o f the m onarch as protecting
the people against the bureaucracy, the m onarch “greatly hating
the wicked an d adjudging a com m on and universal v engeance”
in forbidding officials from exacting of excessive paym ents.82
T h ere is a coherence and a consistency in the m a n n er in
which the m em bers o f the Ptolem aic dynasty p resen t themselves
to us in th eir official acts, in their decrees, their inscriptions, the
honors they give and receive, for m ost of the kings and for m ost
o f the period in which they reigned. T he coherence reflects an
ideology which served both the kings and populace, and it is an
ideology w hich was explicitly expressed for all by the words of
T heocritus alm ost as the concepts were forming* T hese were
rulers who were g reat because they were wealthy, because they
were generous, faithful to the gods, warriors—great w arriors—at
least as the dynasty began, and all this, no doubt, due in p art to
th e ir n a tu re as divinities them selves. T hese w ere ideas o f
kingship which can be traced back to earlier concepts in Greek
tradition, and they were concepts which would re-em erge as p art
of m onarchic ideology later. But the ideology did n o t include an
idea o f o rd ered governm ent, o f adm inistration, of atten tio n to
and regulation of detail, of the m onarch as the directing head of
a com plex bureaucracy. For th a t addition to the ideology o f
royalty, Egypt would wait for the Romans.
S1£GI/1185 o f 60 B.C. = C.Ord.PtoL 71.

n COrd.PtoL 76.22-23.
81
i
VI
PTOLEMAIC EGYPT AND HISTORICAL
INTERPRETATION
Ptolem aic Egypt, which long served historians as an exam ple

of the spread o f H ellenism to the “b arb arian ” east and o f the
adaptation o f Greeks to eastern culture, has m ore and m ore come
to rep resen t qualities o f cultural chauvinism am ong the Greeks.
T he p erio d o f G reek an d M acedonian co n tro l in Egypt thus
becom es a co n tin u atio n o f H ellenic p attern s, ra th e r th an a
radical break with the past. T he “in terp retatio G raeca” o f non-
G reek religion by H erodotus an d others, the near-unanim ous
rejection o f the learn in g o f foreign languages by G reeks, the
disdain for barbarians clear in the writings o f A ristotle, these
and so many features o f G reek cultural values earlier were n o t
overturned by the m igration of Greeks eastwards.
Perceptions that Greeks and M acedonians in Egypt held on to
their customary attitudes and practices in detail and in essence
has m eant th a t historians o f antiquity no longer can find th at
the three centuries o f Ptolemaic rule in Egypt “p rep ared ” the way
for religious, social, political an d cultural features w hich they
find in Roman times. Insofar as fundam ental changes overtook
the G reek world with the advent o f the Roman world state and
later the growth o f Christianity, those changes now should be
interpreted m ore in term s o f the characteristics o f Roman society
and governm ent, and o f Christianity in the hellenized form in
w hich it was ca rrie d to th e G reek East an d L atin West.
Challenges like th a t o f N aphtali Lewis to the very co n cep t of
“G re c o -R o m a n E g y p t”1 show th a t the id ea o f unity and
c o n tin u a tio n from P tolem aic tim es to R om an in Egypt is
dissolving, and the sense of a gulf between the two eras em erges
the m ore forcefully from the revision of th e old notio n s of
cultural developm ent in Egypt after the conquest by Alexander.
In a similar way, we can n o longer use Ptolem aic Egypt as a
stage in th e d ev elo p m en t o f th e ad m in istrativ e m o n arch y
characteristic o f Roman governm ent. Many historians no longer
Greco-Roman Egypt’: Fact or Fiction?” Proceedings of the Twelfth International

Congress of Papyrology (American Studies in Papyrology 7, Toronto, 1970), pp. 5-14.
83
PTOLEMAIC EGYPT AND HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION
see th e P to lem aic a d m in istra tiv e s tru c tu re as a salutary

ra tio n a liz a tio n o f a n e a r e a ste rn b u reau c ra cy , u sin g the
progressive forces o f Hellenism to create a new form o f m onarchy
responsible for a substantial advance in m aterial civilization.
Insofar as th ere was an advance in m aterial well-being, it will
be seen to owe its im petus to other, perhaps im personal forces,
and the Ptolem aic m onarchy seems to some, at least, to have been
a negative influence. T he M acedonian adm inistration itself can
n o lo n g e r be p re se n te d confidently as a p la n n e d , reaso n ed
ap p licatio n o f g o v ern m en t to th e ag ricu ltu ral and econom ic
p ro b lem s o f Egypt. M ore an d m o re we are seeking to find
parallels for Ptolem aic institutions in the scanty earlier Egyptian
sources. T h e evidence on th e G reek side suggests th a t the
adm in istratio n o f Egypt on the p a rt o f the m onarchy was less
p lanned, less co h e re n t and less successful than has h ith erto been
alleged. O n reflection, th a t should com e as n o surprise. Public
a d m in istra tio n in th e G reek w orld was n o tab ly exiguous,
M acedonian b ureaucracy down to the reign o f P hilip II was
p ractically n o n -ex isten t, a n d th e stru c tu re s estab lish ed by
A lexander the G reat were, in general, those he found in place,
an d they were staffed by natives supervised in a m ilitary way by
M acedonians an d Greeks left as guards an d garrisons.
In th e long ru n , the utility o f these new p ercep tio n s and
suggestions will d ep e n d on w h eth er th e conclusions o f re c e n t
scholarship are su pported by new evidence and convincing new
interpretations. In any case, w hether o r n o t the H egelian concept
o f ad v an ce th ro u g h thesis a n d a n tith e sis proves valid for
Ptolem aic Egypt, it is clear that o u r concept of Ptolemaic Egypt has
m oved past the initial thesis o f “fusion” eng en d ered by the first
ce n tu ry o f study o f th e m aterials o f H ellen ic Egypt in th e
centuries after A lexander.
84
Alan E. Samuel is Professor o f Greek and Rom an History at
the University o f T oronto. H e has held a G uggenheim Fellow-
ship an d research fellowships from the Social Sciences an d
H um anities R esearch Councils o f Canada. H e was a fo u nding
m em ber o f T he Am erican Society o f Papyrologists which he has
served both as Secretary-Treasurer and President. H e was the first
ed ito r o f The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrology and the
m onograph series American Studies in Papyrology.
Samuel's publications in G reek and Rom an history include:
Ptolemaic Chronology, Greek and Roman Chronology (in the Handbuch
der Altertumswissenschaft), Myceneans in History, Yale Papyri in the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library I, Death And Taxes: Ostraka
in the Royal Ontario Museum I, and From Athens to Alexandria:
Hellenism and Social Goals in Ptolemaic Egypt. His most recent book,
The Promise o f the West: The Greek World, Rome and Judaism, is a
broad study of the influential aspects o f H ellenism from H om er to
the first century.
85

Ptolemejski Egipat I Njegova Interpretacija U Povijesti

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THE SHIFTING SANDS

LANHAM • NEW YORK • LONDON

University Press of America,® Inc.

4720 Boston Way

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

British Cataloging in Publication Information Available

Co-published by arrangement with the

Samuel, Alan Edouard.

All University Press of America books are produced on acid-free paper.

T he present volume is the second in the series Publications of

Eugene N. Borza, President

A cknow ledgem ents V

Abbreviations and Bibliographical S upplem ent x iii

I. M odern Views of the Period After A lexander 1

II. The Successors of Alexander 13

III. Two Solitudes 35

IV . T he M acedonian A dm inistration of Egypt 51

V. The Ideology of Ptolemaic Monarchy 67

V I. Ptolem aic Egypt and Historical Interpretation 83

My in ten tio n in this work is to delineate some significant

Atti del XVII congresso intemazionale di Papirologia (Naples, 1984).

O ne h u n d red and fifty years ago, Jo h a n n Gustav D roysen’s

ex p lo red for Rom an institutions. Even for Am ericans, the new

By the tim e W orld War I broke u p o n E urope, th e first

organized Seleucid or M acedonian m onarchies, b u t it could serve

m ilitarily and establish themselves with som e p erm an en ce in

third century B.C., S ch n eb el’s Landwirtschaft im hellenistischen

in teractio n s betw een the governing G reeks an d th e teem ing

were RostovtzefFs and Preaux’ approving assesments to scholars of

goddesses in to religious observation. T h e new view o f the

is n o t necessarily seen as the same p h en o m en o n w hich b ro u g h t

less has th ere developed a new interpretation of the significance

T he m ajor political events in the decades after A lexander’s

nVho has been studied in detail, by H. Hauben, Callicrates of Samos: A Contribution

tells us, we w ould describe g overnm ent u n d e r Ptolem y I as

10Claude Wehrli, Antigone et Dcmetrios (Geneva, 1968), pp. 79-129.

done in 1983 finds m aterial on econom ic m atters to fill n o m ore

successors, such as Sw innen’s article o f 1971 for Ptolem y,20 or

*°W. Swinnen, “Sur la politique religieuse de Ptolemee le r ,” Les Syncretismes

A thenians rem ark th a t “o th e r gods ho ld them selves a g reat

24Quoted in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae VI.255 d-f.

T he dynastic cult had some differences from this reaction to

^Institutions des Seleucid.es (Paris, 1938), pp. 250-256.

propaganda in the period28—and seen dem onstrations th at some

th e re is a m in im u m o f co n stitu tio n alism in M acedonian

ssRobert Lock, T h e Macedonian Army Assembly in the Time o f Alexander the

in th e royal cen ters, p articu larly n o tew orthy in P to lem y ’s

S6There is a literary portrait o f Ptolemy I claimed to have been composed in his

m anner, an d then, only for the Egyptians. T he successors were

p ro p ag an d a role, tro tted o u t to justify actions and to sum m on

4SThis application o f the royals began quite early, as we read in Diodorus

m inds is th e oracle Seleucus received from the B ranchidae,

U pon the affirmative answer, they built the Ptolem aion.58

violence. “So m uch strength was th ere in one flattering word,

^Plut. Dem. 18.2.

th e re was any royal behavior w hich they m ig h t use for the

one an o th er and to successors, we know practically nothing of the

M/mcr. Perg. 48, 49.

62R.S. Bagnall, T h e Origins o f Ptolemaic Cleruchs,” BASP 21 (1984), pp. 7-20.

Most o f all, we need to pay m ore attention to the successors

For the h u n d red years o r so since the papyri began giving

particularly w heat-producing land, to the G reek im m igrants. As