Comments | megalexandros: Royal Pages

kizzikat in megalexandros

Royal Pages

Feb 20, 2011 15:43

An interesting little quote from 'The House of Ptolemy' by E R Bevan 1927

"One institution of the old Macedonian kingdom, kept up the Ptolemies in Egypt, as in other Hellenistic courts of those days, must have given social prestige to a certain number of families - the practice of bringing up a picked number of boys at court in attendance on ( Read more... )

Comments 2

proskynesis February 20 2011, 20:38:10 UTC

Interesting. I'd really like to know their source for the italicised bit!

kizzikat February 20 2011, 22:15:48 UTC

Yes, the italics are mine (as are the spelling mistakes, but unfortunately it doesn't give the source. You can download the whole book here http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Africa/Egypt/_Texts/BEVHOP/home.html. It's very readable and makes you realise that the Greek-Macedonian influence in Egypt and the Near East did not cease with Alexander's death. Also, the Macedonian tradition of strong-minded women produced several Arsinoes and Berenices (and eventually Cleopatra), so it does not seem improbable that this tendency might have been encouraged by the institution of girl pages. Whether they were educated is a different matter though.