Suda On Line
Search
|
Search results for pi,3041 in Adler number:
Headword:
*ptolemai=os
Adler number: pi,3041
Translated headword: Ptolemaios, Ptolemy
Vetting Status: high
Translation: A general in
Cyprus;[1] he was not at all Egyptian-like,[2] but sensible and practical; for he took the island over when the King was still an infant and devoted his attention to the collection of money, but he used to give absolutely none of it to anyone, although he was often asked to by the royal finance ministers, and although he was bitterly criticised for not making any payment. And when the King came of age, he put together a substantial amount of money and sent it, so that both
Ptolemy and the people in the [royal court] ... thought well of him for ... his earlier economical measures and his not making any payment.[3]
*ptolemai=os, strathgo\s kata\ *ku/pron: o(\s ou)damw=s *ai)guptiako\s ge/gonen, a)lla\ nounexh\s kai\ praktiko/s: paralabw\n ga\r th\n nh=son e)/ti nhpi/ou tou= basile/ws o)/ntos e)gi/neto me\n e)pimelh\s peri\ sunagwgh\n xrhma/twn, e)di/dou d' a(plw=s ou)de\n ou)deni/, kai/per ai)tou/menos polla/kis u(po\ tw=n basilikw=n dioikhtw=n kai\ katalalou/menos pikrw=s e)n tw=| mhde\n proi/+esqai. tou= de\ basile/ws ei)s h(liki/an paragegono/tos, sunqei\s plh=qos i(kano\n xrhma/twn e)cape/steilen, w(/ste kai\ to\n *ptolemai=on kai\ tou\s peri\ th\n ... eu)dokh=sai ... th=| pro/teron au)tou= sustolh=| kai\ tw=| mhde\n proi/+esqai.
Notes:
[1] Ptolemaios Makron, strategos (i.e. governor) of
Cyprus for King
Ptolemy VI Philometor from 180 to 169/8 BCE. On this official see Bagnall (below) 45-7 and 256-7. On the House of
Ptolemy, see generally web address 1.
[2] This entry is a fragment of
Polybius, assigned as
Polybius 27.13 by modern editors. On
Polybius' views about racially-caused differences in character between Greeks and Egyptians, see most famously
Polybius 34.14. There
Polybius describes the Egyptian race as
o)cu\ kai\ politiko/n, if the text is correct: a puzzling phrase, the accuracy and import of which is discussed by Fraser (below) vol.II 144 n.184). Here, anyway, the characteristic of being-like-an-Egyptian which
Ptolemy Makron does not have is apparently a deficiency in shrewdness.
[3] The advantage
Ptolemy Makron gained from this move seems to have been short-lived. He afterwards left
Cyprus, defecting in 168 to
Antiochus Epiphanes and the Seleucids, and then committing suicide in 163 because Seleucid courtiers thought him a traitor: cf. 2
Maccabees 10.12-13, and Bar-Kochva (below) 533-42.
Roger S. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions outside Egypt (Leiden 1976)
P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972)
F.W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, iii (Oxford 1979) 311-12 and index s.v.
Bezalel Bar-Kochva, Judas Maccabaeus: the Jewish Struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge 1989)
Associated internet address:
Web address 1
Keywords: biography; children; economics; ethics; geography; history; military affairs
Translated by: Paul McKechnie on 4 June 1999@01:49:05.
Vetted by:
No. of records found: 1
Page 1
End of search