Berenice II Euergetis

Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship

Branko van Oppen de Ruiter

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137494627
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Afrikanische Geschichte

Berenice II Euergetis (267/6-221 BCE), the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene (Libya) and wife of King Ptolemy III of Egypt, was queen at an important juncture in Hellenistic history. This collection of four essays focuses on aspects of chronology, genealogy and marital practices, royal ideology and queenship.

Chapter 1

Magas, Apame, and Berenice II*

It is commonly taken as a fact that Magas of Cyrene was married to Apame, the daughter of Antiochus I and Stratonice, shortly before the First Syrian War, ca. 276/5 BCE, and that their daughter, Berenice II, was still a teenager when she married Ptolemy III around the time of his accession to the throne in early 246 BCE. This chapter addresses various problems with these two assumptions and offers several possible solutions. Apart from the dates of Magas’s marriage to Apame and of the birth of Berenice II, I also discuss the dates of Magas’s death, the accession of Ashoka Maurya, Apame’s birth, the First Syrian War, the Chremonidean War, and Egypt’s alliance with Carthage, which are all to some degree a matter of scholarly debate. Additionally, I examine whether Apame was indeed Berenice’s mother. I also reexamine Pausanias’s unclear timeframe about related events, which will give occasion to reconsider Berenice’s marriage to Demetrius the Fair and her mother’s involvement in that affair, as well as Magas’s motives behind eventually betrothing his daughter to Ptolemy III. This chapter thus explores the complexities of the chronology of various important events of the early third century BCE, and attempts to reveal some of the underlying assumptions in modern scholarship.

It is odd, to say the least, that Berenice would be a mere teenager at the time of her father’s death, if her parents had been married for 30 years.¹ The notion that she was still a young girl when she married Ptolemy III derives from a reference in Catullus’s translation of Callimachus’s Coma Berenices: “Truly from young girlhood I knew you to be high-spirited. Have you forgotten the noble deed by which you gained your royal marriage, which none would dare for making you stronger?”² This “noble deed (bonum facinus)” is usually understood to refer to the death of Demetrius the Fair with whom Berenice was briefly married after Magas’s death.³ That bonum facinus is then presumed to have taken place when Berenice was still a “small maiden (parva virgo),” even though Catullus does not say that explicitly.⁴ It certainly does not follow that she was still young when she was married to Ptolemy III. This would seem to be a case of drawing more conclusions than the evidence allows—evidence moreover that takes poetic license (always assuming that Catullus translated Callimachus faithfully).

While most historians now date Magas’s death to 250/49 BCE,⁵ it is important to note that an earlier date of 259/8 BCE has also been proposed and remains current among numismatists.⁶ On this latter reckoning, Berenice would have been born sometime in the mid-270s—thus shortly after the conventional date of her parents’ marriage—and she would still have been a teenager when her father died. Porphyry (ap. Euseb. Chron. I: 237) dates the death of Demetrius the Fair to the second year of the 130th Olympiad (259/8 BCE). Athenaeus (12.550B), citing Agatharchides of Cnidus, gives 50 years for Magas’s rule in Cyrene. While it is certain that Magas did not reign as an independent king for five decades, adding the evidence of Porphyry and Agatharchides gives an accession date of 309/8 BCE. This date is seemingly confirmed by a reference in the Suda (s.v. “Δημητρίος”) that Ptolemy I subjugated Cyrene after the revolt of Ophellas in 308 BCE.⁷ However, Pausanias (1.6.8) claims that Magas captured Cyrene in the fifth year after a rebellion, which he seems to date after the death of Antigonus I at the Battle of Ipsus (301 BCE).⁸ In the same passage, Pausanias also implies that Magas’s capture of Cyrene occurred after Ptolemy regained Coele-Syria (302/1 BCE) and Cyprus (295 BCE), and restored Pyrrhus in Epirus (297 BCE). It should, moreover, be pointed out that Porphyry-Eusebius inserted his discussion of Demetrius in a passage on Macedonian kings, between Antigonus II Gonatas and Antigonus III Doson.⁹ While he correctly dates the death of Antigonus II to the first year of the 135th Olympiad (240/39 BCE) and that of Antigonus III to the fourth year of the 139th Olympiad (221/20 BCE), he mistakenly dates the death of Philip V to the second year of the 159th Olympiad (143/2 BCE), rather than the 150th (179/8 BCE). A similar scribal error might then account for attributing the death of Demetrius the Fair to the wrong Olympiad (Ol. 132, 2 = 251/50 BCE).¹⁰ This solution would place Magas’s death ca. 252/1 BCE, which would accord with the round number of 50 years for his rule in Cyrene since ca. 300 BCE—that is, he would have died in the 49th or 50th year since gaining his governorship. Porphyry-Eusebius, furthermore, claims that Demetrius conquered Libya and captured Cyrene, gained control of all of his father’s possessions, and ruled for ten years. It should be clear, then, that he confused or conflated Demetrius the Fair and Demetrius II, who died in 229 BCE (Ol. 137, 3) ten years after succeeding his father Antigonus II. Thus, if Magas gained his Cyrenean governorship after the Battle of Ipsus and died in 259/8 BCE, one would expect Agatharcides had given a rounded number of 40 years. Unless we suppose that Agatharcides’s number was misquoted by Athenaeus, or that the 50 years refers to the time Cyrene was under Ptolemaic control at Magas’s death, a later date of his death ca. 252/1 BCE would seem more likely.¹¹

The date of Magas’s death is further complicated by a reference to envoys sent to the Greek kings Antiochus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas, and Alexander on the 13th Rock Edict of the Mauryan king Ashoka.¹² This edict has often been adduced to prove that Magas was still alive in the mid-250s BCE.¹³ Apart from Magas, the identity of these Hellenistic kings depends on the time when Ashoka’s edicts were published. Mauryan chronology is difficult to relate to other secure events. There is thus an obvious danger of circular reasoning, when Magas’s death is calculated from the reference in Ashoka’s edict, while Ashoka’s accession is calculated from Magas’s death. The last-mentioned date in these inscriptions is 13 years after Ashoka’s anointment (abhishēka),¹⁴ which was said to have occurred in the fourth year after the death of his father Bindusara. According to Buddhist tradition, Bindusara reigned for 25 or 28 years—with the latter number apparently attributing the interim until Ashoka’s anointment to Bindusara’s reign. The same sources state that Bindusara’s father Chandragupta ruled for 24 years. From these traditional years of kingship, it can then be deduced that, if Chandragupta’s assumption of power took place ca. 322/1 BCE, Bindusara succeeded his father ca. 299/8 BCE and died ca. 275/4 BCE.¹⁵ Ashoka was thus anointed king ca. 272/1 BCE—a date that has been variously placed anywhere between 277 and 264 BCE.¹⁶ From the 13th Rock Edict it may be assumed that his mission to the Greek kings had returned by the time of his fourteenth regnal year ca. 259/8 BCE; elsewhere the edicts imply that missions were not sent earlier than ten years after his abhishēka (262/1 BCE).¹⁷ On this reckoning, therefore, any objections against dating the death of Magas to 259/8 BCE cannot rely on Ashoka’s Rock Edicts. Even if Chandragupta’s reign is moved by one or two years (to 321 or 320 BCE), that would not exclude the possibility that Ashoka’s mission to the Greek kings had already returned to India by the time of the edicts’ publication (whether or not news of Magas’s death had reached Ashoka). If this calculation is correct, the other Hellenistic kings can only be Antiochus II Theos (r. 262/1–246 BCE), Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 284/2–246 BCE), Antigonus II Gonatas (r. 277/6–239 BCE), and Alexander II of Epirus (r. 272–240/39 BCE¹⁸).¹⁹

Incidentally, an alternative datum to fix early Mauryan chronology is based on the Singhalese tradition that Ashoka’s consecration as king occurred 218 years after the death of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama.²⁰ This argument is put forth with great erudition by the Dutch Indologist Pierre Eggermont in his Leiden dissertation, The Chronology of the Reign of Asoka Moriya (1956), in which he dates both Ashoka’s accession and anointment to 268 BCE (reckoning the four-year interim between Bindusara and Ashoka as a Singhalese fabrication). I am in no capacity to challenge the validity of his various intricate calculations. Suffice it to say that the date of Buddha’s death is itself a matter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   Magas, Apame, and Berenice II
• 2   The Marriage of Ptolemy III and Berenice II
• 3   Berenice II in Art and Artifacts
• 4   Astronomy and Ideology in the Coma Berenices
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index