308–246 BCE · king of Egypt · patron of the Library
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος
In Alexandria: 285–246 BCE
Co-regent from 285/284 and sole king from 283/282 BCE. The great collecting is told of his reign: books bought in Athens and Rhodes, the library of Neleus, and (in the Letter of Aristeas) the translation of the Jewish law. Callimachus, Theocritus and Zenodotus worked under him.
Their life and work
His reign is the court at its most splendid. Callixeinus of Rhodes described the procession he staged in Alexandria, and Athenaeus kept the description (5.196a–203b). He married his full sister Arsinoe II, and in her lifetime the pair were worshipped together as the Sibling Gods (Theoi Adelphoi). She bore the name Philadelphos, 'brother-loving'; after her death he gave her a cult of her own, and later writers gave the name to him. The Pharos was finished early in his reign; Strabo names Sostratus of Cnidus as its dedicator (17.1.6).
The Letter of Aristeas, written by a Jewish author probably in the second century BCE, has him send to Jerusalem for seventy-two elders to translate the Law for his library. The Greek translation of the Pentateuch was made in Alexandria in the third century BCE. Whether the king had any part in it is debated: Rajak thinks the Jews began it and the court gave it patronage. The seventy-two elders and the royal commission are the Letter's story, told to give the translation authority. Legend: told story
Our device: Their emblem is a double horn of plenty. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
Moments
- c. 295–283 BCE · The Mouseion and the Library founded Known: probable
- c. 280s BCE · The Pharos completed Known: attested
- c. 280s–270s BCE · Manetho writes Egypt's history in Greek Known: attested
- 283/282 BCE · Ptolemy II sole king; Demetrius disgraced Known: probable
- c. 280–250 BCE · The Torah translated into Greek Known: probable
In the show
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Sources (8)
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.3a–b; 5.203e
- Letter of Aristeas 9–11
- P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 5.196a–203b
- Strabo, Geography 17.1.6 (opens in a new tab)
- Pausanias 1.7.1
- S. Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London: Routledge, 2003)
- T. Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford, 2009)