Ptolemy biography alexander great facts

Alexandria , the port city founded by Alexander the Great , was developed as the new capital, where his palace was located. He continued to build the city following Alexander's original plan. Roman historian Tacitus says that he built the city's walls, temples and established "religious rites. He built Alexander's Temple-tomb complex.

Ptolemy biography alexander great facts

The traditional monarchs hereditary provincial governors were made subservient to a new layer of governance known as stategoi generals who were also Greek. While the priesthood was patronized and left in place, the revenue from the Temples , previously administered by the priests, were controlled by the king. Greek , not Egyptian, was the official language.

The traditional Egyptian military class was retained but mainly deployed as police and internal security and were rarely used "in actual combat. Most were dispersed among the general population rather than living in Greek colonies. However, they often maintained a distinctive life-style and were subject to a different system of civil law. On the other hand, "intermarriage was common" so that "ultimately the distinction between Greeks and Romans came to be more a matter of language and of culture than of descent.

Ptolemy I, like Alexander, was interested in promoting scholarly inquiry and was a patron of letters, founding the Great Library of Alexandria. McKenzie also thinks it likely that Ptolemy I started the Library. McKenzie, This used to be considered an objective work, distinguished by its straightforward honesty and sobriety. However, Ptolemy may have exaggerated his own role, and had propagandist aims in writing his History.

Although now lost, it was a principal source for the surviving account by Arrian of Nicomedia c. He invited the famous philosopher Strabo to Alexandria as tutor to his son. Euclid the mathematician was one of the scholars whom he patronized. Famously, when Ptolemy asked Eculid for a short-cut to understanding geometry , the sage replied "There is no royal road to geometry.

Ptolemy saw himself as a "regenerator" of Egypt and deliberately set about to achieve a synthesis of Hellenic and Egyptian culture that would also lend legitimacy to his dynasty. He "reintroduced the custom of royal brother-sister marriages" and commissioned the building of temples to Egyptian deities, five of which survive. The cult gained popularity throughout the Greek-speaking world.

He also established a cult surrounding Alexander the Great, which later developed into the "official state religion of the Ptolemaic dynasty. His son and successor had himself and his wife also his sister "proclaimed as the Theoi Adelphoi Brother and Sister-Gods during their own lifetime" after which "all the rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty in turn became gods while they were still alive.

Ptolemy I's legacy lived on in the dynasty he founded and in the tradition of cultural patronage and cultural fusion which he initiated. A flourishing center of learning and scholarship, Ptolemaic Egypt gave the world the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible , important developments in mathematics and medicine and its greatest library, sadly destroyed.

We continue to be indebted to the Ptolemies for much of what we know about Ancient Egypt , since accounts written under their patronage recorded the history of Egypt and include the lists of 30 dynasties. This society did not implode or collapse due to any type of internal weakness, although it never really enjoyed widespread popularity among the Egyptian population but fell to a superior military power.

This cultural synthesis inspired the work of the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria and produced the cultural context in which Gnosticism later flourished. Against the view of some that multiculturalism is a chimera, the Ptolemaic period of Egypt's history can be examined as an example of a flourishing, vibrant polity. An intelligent and capable ruler, Ptolemy I built the Ptolemaic Kingdom out of the fragmentation of Alexander's empire during the Wars of the Diadochi.

Easily the most capable and benevolent ruler of the Hellenistic Era , the Ptolemaic Kingdom was a beacon for learning, discovery and science and did the most to carry on the vision and dreams originally set forth by Alexander the Great during their long military campaign so many decades previously. In the efforts made by Ptolemy I to secure the body of Alexander as well as his contributions to the completion of the city of Alexandria it is to say he was the one Diadochi most concerned with continuing on with the rightful heirs plans while the others chose personal benefit and gain.

Overall the kingdom that Ptolemy left to his successors was well ordered and consolidated following the nearly four decades of the Wars of the Diadochi. He was known to allow native Egyptians and Africans as well as Macedonians into the Ptolemaic army and was a responsible and successful military commander as well as an intellectual. Alexander's Campaign Introduction.

Balkan Campaign. Persian Campaign. Indian Campaign. Wars of the Diadochi Introduction. Lamian War. First War. Second War. Third War. Fourth War. Babylonian War. Syrian Wars Introduction. Fifth War. Alexander and Ptolemy were met by an unprecedented opposition in the area and were forced to retreat to Babylon, where it is reported that Alexander fell succumbed to a fatal illness after drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

The Macedonian king died soon after in BC ; and without naming an heir, chaos ensued among his generals the Diadochi on the matter of succession. Ptolemy was not only an intelligent military general, but he was a shrewd politician. Amidst all of that, Perdiccas harbored much distrust for Ptolemy. He went on to secure the loyalty of the more sympathetic generals.

Perdiccas had arranged a royal entourage to return the body of Alexander to the city of Macedon. It was Macedonian custom that the one who buried the deceased king held a dominant right to the throne. Ptolemy went to great lengths to ensure Perdiccas was not the one to bury Alexander. Concurrently, generals in the northern European cities closer to the heart of Macedonia learnt of the rebellion of Ptolemy against Perdiccas and followed suit.

Those generals ended up siding with Ptolemy. What this meant was that Perdiccas faced rebellion on two fronts. He decided to keep moving south, with the intention of taking care of Ptolemy first, then returning to quell the uprising closer to home. Perdiccas had no remedy to the barrier. An unsavory conflict ensued between Ptolemy and Ser Lucas on one side and Antigonus on the other side.

Ptolemy and Ser Lucas came out victorious. At about the same time, another ambitious Macedonian nobleman called Cassander plotted and successfully wiped out the entire royal family in Macedonia, including the wife and the child of Alexander. Historians believe that Ptolemy I conceived several ideas to make the city of Alexandria a thriving and commercial port of the ancient world.

By this time, Ptolemy had established himself as the most dominant force across most Macedonian territories. He was named the first Soter Savior of Egypt. In order to ensure he was not answerable to the still quite influential religious leaders over at Memphis, the capital of Macedonia, Ptolemy declared Alexandria the new capital of his dynasty.

When Antigonus I , master of Asia in , showed expansionist ambitions, Ptolemy joined the coalition against him, and on the outbreak of war, evacuated Syria. In Cyprus, he fought the partisans of Antigonus, and re-conquered the island A revolt in Cyrene was crushed the same year. Again he occupied Syria, and again—after only a few months, when Demetrius had won a battle over his general, and Antigonus entered Syria in force—he evacuated it.

In , a peace was concluded between the combatants. Soon after this, the surviving year-old king, Alexander IV, was murdered in Macedonia on the orders of Cassander, leaving the satrap of Egypt absolutely his own master. The peace did not last long, early in he was informed that his ally Nicocles of Paphos was planning to defect to Antigonus; he sent some agents, who together with his brother Menelaus , who was still on Cyprus with an army, dealt with the situation, they surrounded Nicocles palace and forced him to commit suicide.

In , a great fleet under Demetrius attacked Cyprus, and Ptolemy's brother Menelaus was defeated and captured in another decisive Battle of Salamis. Ptolemy's complete loss of Cyprus followed. The satraps Antigonus and Demetrius now each assumed the title of king; Ptolemy, as well as Cassander , Lysimachus and Seleucus I Nicator , responded by doing the same.

In the winter of BC, Antigonus tried to follow up his victory in Cyprus by invading Egypt; but Ptolemy was strongest there, and successfully held the frontier against him. Ptolemy led no further overseas expeditions against Antigonus. The Rhodians granted divine honors to Ptolemy as a result of the lifting of the siege. When the coalition against Antigonus was renewed in , Ptolemy joined it, and invaded Syria a third time, while Antigonus was engaged with Lysimachus in Asia Minor.

On hearing a report that Antigonus had won a decisive victory there, he once again evacuated Syria. But when the news came that Antigonus had been defeated and slain by Lysimachus and Seleucus at the Battle of Ipsus in , he occupied Syria a fourth time. The other members of the coalition had assigned all Syria to Seleucus, after what they regarded as Ptolemy's desertion, and for the next hundred years, the question of the ownership of southern Syria i.

Cyrenaica , after a series of rebellions, was finally subjugated in about and placed under his stepson Magas. They had five children before she was repudiated: three sons— Ptolemy Ceraunus , king of Macedon from BC to BC ; his brother and successor Meleager , who ruled for two months in BC; and a 'rebel in Cyprus' who was put to death by his half-brother Ptolemy II —as well as the daughters Ptolemais, who married Demetrius I of Macedon , and Lysandra , first married to Alexander V of Macedon and after to Lysimachus' son Agathocles.

In , Ptolemy made his son Ptolemy II his co-regent. His eldest legitimate son, Ptolemy Keraunos, fled to the court of Lysimachus. Ptolemy I died in January aged 84 or His reputation for good nature and liberality attached the floating soldier-class of Macedonians and other Greeks to his service, and was not insignificant; nor did he wholly neglect conciliation of the natives.

He was a ready patron of letters, founding the Great Library of Alexandria. It was a Hellenistic kingdom known for its capital Alexandria, which became a center of Greek culture. Ptolemy himself wrote an eyewitness history of Alexander's campaigns now lost. Arrian once names Ptolemy as the author "whom I chiefly follow", [ 32 ] and in his Preface writes that Ptolemy seemed to him to be a particularly trustworthy source, "not only because he was present with Alexander on campaign, but also because he was himself a king, and hence lying would be more dishonourable for him than for anyone else".

Ptolemy's lost history was long considered an objective work, distinguished by its straightforward honesty and sobriety, [ 19 ] but more recent work has called this assessment into question. Errington argued that Ptolemy's history was characterised by persistent bias and self-aggrandisement, and by systematic blackening of the reputation of Perdiccas , one of Ptolemy's chief dynastic rivals after Alexander's death.

More recently, J. Roisman has argued that the case for Ptolemy's blackening of Perdiccas and others has been much exaggerated. Ptolemy personally sponsored the great mathematician Euclid. He found Euclid's seminal work, the Elements , too difficult to study, so he asked if there were an easier way to master it. Contents move to sidebar hide.

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