IV · Purge and Fire · 145 BCE
Ptolemy VIII drives out the scholars
Known · Attested
Taking Alexandria, Ptolemy VIII drives out the grammarians, philosophers, physicians and artists who had backed his rivals. Aristarchus dies in exile in Cyprus, and a soldier, Cydas "of the spearmen", is put in charge. The exiles become the teachers of the Greek world.
The evidence: Scholarship goes on in the city: Aristonicus, Didymus and Tryphon work there in the next century. The purge ends the age of great royal investment.
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Sources (5)
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.184b–c
- P.Oxy. X 1241 (ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri X, London 1914) col. ii (opens in a new tab)
- Suda α 3892
- P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
- R. S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146.4 (2002) 348–362 354