Ptolemy of Egypt

Walter M. Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134856411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Ptolemy was the creator of the longest lasting of the Hellenistic kingdoms. He created a state whose cultural importance was unparalleled until the coming of Rome. He encouraged the erection of the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, as well as creating a library which eventually contained the greatest collection of books until relatively recent times. Ptolemy's institution of higher learning, the Museum, gave birth to the greatest advancements in science before the seventeenth century of our own era.
In this work, the first biography of Ptolemy in any language, Professor Ellis charts Ptolemy's extraordinary achievements in and beyond Egypt in the context of the fragmentation of Alexander's enormous empire and the creation of the Hellenistic state.

1
IN THE SHADOW OF ALEXANDER

When Alexander the Great died in 323,¹ Ptolemy, one of his field marshals, was about 44 years old.² His impact upon the world at this time could hardly be described as profound. He had lived most of his life in the shadow of his great contemporary. Ptolemy could not have been expected to do otherwise. While Alexander was alive, Ptolemy and all his fellow generals could only play their supporting roles in the revolution that was changing the face, not only of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, but of western Asia as well. With Alexander’s death the rules of the game changed drastically, but no one fully understood the situation or what to do about it.

In less than twelve years Alexander conquered the Persian empire, a region that included the modern countries of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of former Soviet Turkestan and Uzbekestan. His empire also included a relatively united Greece, the work of his father, Philip II. The Greek city states had by no means willingly or knowingly relinquished their independence to the king of Macedonia, but the great age of Hellenic independence was over. The various city states would continue to pursue the illusion of freedom, but Macedonian hegemony was a fact and would remain a fact until it was superseded by Roman hegemony two centuries later.

The creation of this magnificent empire was an astonishing achievement. It had, however, a disastrous flaw. It was the personal achievement of one man: Alexander the Great. Alexander improvised as he went along. If he adopted Persian or other local customs for governing the new provinces of his vast empire, it was perhaps because it was easier than inventing new systems for control.

As long as Alexander was alive, the strength of his character was able to hold together the disparate regions and their varying administrative systems. Even this was done with great difficulty, and Alexander himself was frequently faced with rebellious satraps. So, after his death, his successors inherited Alexander’s problems as well as those of the later Persian emperors. Paramount among these problems was the centrifugal tendency of the empire, the tendency toward decentralization, toward the separation of the provinces into independent kingdoms under autonomous dynasties. Egypt had only recently been reconquered by the Persians, at the time of Alexander’s invasion, and India (that part of historic India which corresponds roughly to modern Pakistan) had long since been lost.

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, seems to have been the first of Alexander’s successors to understand that the empire would not last as an entity and could not be governed by one man. He alone of the major figures in the first years after Alexander’s death seems to have intuitively grasped the idea that this vast creation of the charismatic general would splinter into smaller kingdoms. He chose Egypt as his personal satrapy and never gave way to the temptation to risk his hold on Egypt for a larger share of the empire. It is true that he conquered regions both to the east and west —but only in the interests of a greater Egypt, not in the attempt to gain all of Alexander’s empire.

If none of the Diadochi or Successors were as remarkable as Alexander, it does not mean that they were not extraordinary men. The two generations of Macedonians who grew up under Philip II and Alexander the Great included a remarkable number of talented and ambitious men. The death of Alexander without an obvious heir created a situation where many of these men could rise to heights far beyond what they might ordinarily have expected. Had there been fewer of these men of talent and ambition, the struggle for power might have been less destructive.

Macedonia had been ruled by the same dynasty for over three hundred years. It was unthinkable that anyone not of this Argead dynasty should rule the lands of Macedonian conquest. Yet the only candidates from this family were the as yet unborn child of Alexander by the Sogdian princess Roxane and Alexander’s feeble-minded half-brother, Arrhidaeus.

Macedonia, unlike the poleis of classical Greece, was a true monarchy. The king, however, was not invariably chosen by the law of primogeniture. The Macedonians needed their king as the commander-in-chief of their army and could not afford the luxury of a lengthy minority. Philip II himself had come to the throne by a ratherindirect route. He had been the guardian of his brother’s young son, but had then assumed the kingship with the approval of the army.

PTOLEMY IN MACEDONIA

Ptolemy was often rumored to be the illegitimate son of Philip II.³ His mother Arsinoe was probably the king’s cousin, and it is entirely possible that her marriage to Lagus was a marriage of convenience, since Lagus seems to have been from a relatively obscure family.⁴ The Suda preserves the legend that Lagus, angry over the child’s paternity, exposed him. Ptolemy then, according to this story, would have died had he not been saved by an eagle.⁵

On the other hand, it is possible that Ptolemy, or one of his admirers, deliberately encouraged the rumor to enhance his reputation and his claim to the title of king by allowing people to believe that he was Alexander’s half-brother.⁶ Ptolemy (or Ptolemaios, to use the Greek form) was a common Macedonian name, one just recently held by a king, Philip’s stepfather, King Ptolemy (368–365).

Justin’s suggestion that Ptolemy’s position was obscure, and that Alexander raised him from the ranks of the common soldiers is clearly false.⁷ Ptolemy, if not his father, was part of the Macedonian court, a member of the Royal Pages, and a close companion of the young Alexander, even though he was about ten years his elder.

The Royal Pages or Grooms were the sons of Macedonian nobles whom Philip brought together for the purpose of training future leaders and generals. They were, perhaps, also hostages to prevent the nobles from rebelling. They sat with the king at dinner, handled his horses, accompanied him on the hunt, and generally performed duties for him as his servants and bodyguards.⁸

In addition to Ptolemy, the Royal Pages probably also included Hephaestion, Nearchus, Harpalus, and Philotas.⁹ Hephaestion was Alexander’s closest friend and probable lover. Alexander reacted to his death in 324 with extravagant grief, which hastened his own death a few months later. Nearchus became Alexander’s admiral and accompanied his disastrous march through the Gedrosian Desert (325– 324) by sailing the fleet on the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf from the Indus river to the Tigris.

Nearchus, a Cretan by birth, wrote an account of his voyage that is preserved, in part, in Arrian’s Indica. Harpalus became Alexander’s untrustworthy treasurer, who twice fled his king—apparently to avoid suffering the punishment for extortion. Philotas was the son of Philip’s general Parmenion, who later became the commander of the Companion cavalry, the elite, aristocratic inner core of the Macedonian army. He was later implicated in a conspiracy and was executed in 330.

These same individuals probably formed the nucleus of the group who studied with Aristotle at Mieza from c. 342.¹⁰ The studies by Aristotle and his pupils probably did not continue after the year 340, at which time Alexander became regent of Macedonia while Philip was on campaign, besieging the cities of Perinthus and Byzantium.

By this time Philip was in control of Thessaly and most of Thrace west of the Chersonese. He had secured a foothold in central Greece, and he had also secured his rear by placing his brother-in-law on the throne of Epirus. Philip II had created a powerful and unprecedented empire out of northern Greece.

By attacking Perinthus on the Sea of Marmara and Byzantium on the Bosphorus, Philip had threatened the Athenian grain route. The Athenians, spurred on by the agitations of Demosthenes, were finally roused into action. They sent aid to the besieged cities and frustrated Philip’s efforts there. The Athenians were eventually able to win Thebes over to their cause, but when the decisive battle came at Chaeronea in 338 the Macedonians were victorious.

No surviving, ancient author tells us whether Ptolemy was present at the Battle of Chaeronea, but given that he was probably 29 years of age at the time and that he had a long and distinguished military career ahead of him, it seems overwhelmingly likely. Perhaps it was in the aftermath of that battle that Ptolemy first made the acquaintance of the notorious Athenian hetaira Thais who later became his mistress and later still encouraged a drunken Alexander to burn down the palace of Xerxes in Persepolis.

Alexander had won great credit for himself at Chaeronea, but he soon found himself in a bitter domestic squabble with his father. Philip had remarried. The Macedonian kings were polygamous, but this new alliance threatened, to some extent, Alexander’s inheritance of the throne.

Alexander, perhaps in response to this threat, began to intrigue behind his father’s back. He made overtures to Pixodarus, the satrap of Caria, concerning a possible marriage between himself and the satrap’s daughter. Philip had planned to marry off his retarded son Arrhidaeus to the girl, and, according to Plutarch, he did not wish Alexander to marry “the slave of a barbarian king.”¹¹ Whatever his motive, Philip became angry about this incident and banished Ptolemy and three other of Alexander’s companions.¹² Alexander had already left Macedonia and was living in Illyria.¹³ Perhaps Ptolemy joined him there.

Philip was assassinated in 336, and Ptolemy was soon recalled by Alexander, now king of Macedonia.¹⁴ Ptolemy probably took part in Alexander’s campaign against Thebes in 335. Arrian¹⁵ cites him as his source for the events surrounding the sack of Thebes, and his circumstantial handling of the episode suggests that Ptolemy had firsthand knowledge. Perdiccas, later Ptolemy’s enemy, led the assault and was seriously wounded in the battle.

THE MACEDONIAN OCCUPATION OF EGYPT

In 334 Alexander crossed the Hellespont and began the conquest of Persia. Ptolemy does not appear to have played a major role in the early campaigns in Asia. We cannot even be certain that he accompanied Alexander in his descent into Egypt, but it is entirely possible. In 323 Ptolemy wasted no time in choosing Egypt for his province. This fact would be easier to understand if the satrap had already had firsthand knowledge of the region. In addition, Arrian cites Ptolemy for certain details which suggest his presence in Egypt.¹⁶

Except for relatively brief periods of independence, Egypt had been dominated by foreign rulers for six centuries. Libyans, Ethiopians and Assyrians had, in turn, ruled over the valley of the Nile. The Persians under Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525, but had lost control of the province by 410. The Persians made several attempts to reconquer Egypt, but did not succeed in doing so until 343, only twelve years before the country fell to the Macedonians.

Alexander had already defeated the Persians in two decisive battles, at the Granicus River in 334 and at Issus in the early fall of 333. In the latter battle the Great King of Persia, Darius III, had fled from the battlefield. Rather than pursue him into Persia itself, Alexander decided to secure Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt. The Persians depended primarily upon the Phoenicians for their navy. Alexander’s plan was that, in taking the eastern Mediterranean coast, he would not only be securing his rear, but would also be destroying Persian naval power. Alexander’s most celebrated exploit in this campaign was the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, which required most of the first half of the year 332. After he took Tyre, only the border fortress of Gaza stood between Alexander and Egypt.

Gaza, which was held by a Persian governor and Arab mercenaries, also required a siege, this one lasting two months. The siege was unusually brutal and did not end until the entire male population, mainly Persian and Arab,¹⁷ had been killed and the women and children sold into slavery.¹⁸

The Macedonians also suffered heavy losses, and Alexander himself was twice wounded. But after the fall of Gaza Alexander’s conquest of Egypt was merely a victory parade. He first marched to Pelusium at the eastern edge of the Nile delta. This is the site where invasions of Egypt were often won or lost. The army of Artaxerxes III had defeated the army of Pharaoh Nectanebos (both armies being dominated by Greek mercenaries) here in 343, thus finally winning Egypt back into the Persian empire after over sixty years of independence.¹⁹ Alexander met no opposition here. The Egyptians turned out to welcome him; many doubtless believed that the Macedonians represented a considerable improvement on the Persians.

Alexander garrisoned Pelusium, and the site remained an essential element of the Macedonian control of Egypt. He proceeded to Memphis by way of Heliopolis. Memphis, one of the oldest cities in the world, had been the capital of the earliest Pharaohs, including those Fourth Dynasty Pharaohs who had built the great Pyramids at nearby Giza. The city stood near the southern extremity of the Nile delta on the western bank of the river, somewhat to the south of present-day Cairo. It was a convenient site then to control both Upper (i.e. southern) Egypt and Lower Egypt (i.e. the delta). Under the Persians, Memphis had once more become the capital city.

The Great King of Persia was formally considered the pharaoh of Egypt, but the country was governed by a satrap. The previous satrap, Sabaces, had taken what native forces there were in Egypt and led them to aid Darius at Issus. Sabaces, who was killed in that battle, left behind him Mazaces as the last Persian satrap of Egypt. Mazaces, who was left without any forces or any hope of Persian support, had little choice but to welcome Alexander and to turn over his capital city and his treasury to him.²⁰ No reliable ancient source states that Alexander was crowned as Pharaoh while in Memphis, although it is mentioned in The Romance of Alexander.²¹ This source should not ordinarily be taken very seriously, but it is entirely possib...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES
• ANCIENT SOURCES
• 1. IN THE SHADOW OF ALEXANDER
• 2. PTOLEMY THE HISTORIAN
• 3. THE SUCCESSORS
• 4. PTOLEMY AS SATRAP
• 5. THE WAR WITH PERDICCAS
• 6. THE WAR WITH ANTIGONUS
• 7. PTOLEMY THE KING
• EPILOG
• THE FAMILY OF PTOLEMY
• CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
• GLOSSARY OF PERSONAL NAMES
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY