A parade? I’ll drink to that

Dionysian Procession, Marble sarcophagus, Metropolitan Museum Dionysus (Bacchus), the god of wine, was a favorite among the Hellenistic elite. Some Ptolemaic rulers claimed descent from Dionysus.  A daylong parade included: *30 Satyrs (goat-men) in purple and red body paint, crowned with gold ivy-leaves * 5 troops of asses with gold and silver harnesses carrying drunk [...]

Money Money Money Money

Ptolemy II and sister-wife Arsinoe II

The Macedonian rulers of  Egypt and Syria in the three centuries before the common era spared no expense in catering to their own comfort.

               A visitor to the royal yacht of Ptolemy IV passed through  a series of spacious banqueting rooms finished in ivory, cedar, cypress and other expensive woods and  surrounded by pillars with gold bases Each contained  circles of up to twenty couches. The columns were girdled with ‘figures of animals beautifully carved in ivory, more than a cubit high…’ There were also sleeping chambers with multiple couches, temples to Venus and Bacchus, adorned with statues of the gods and the royal relatives. A second floor had vaulted beams tented over in purple cloth. The visitor commented that ‘the workmanship was not so conspicuous as the beauty of the materials.’ (Quoted in John Marlowe, The Golden Age of Alexandria.)

Lots of money, little taste. Even more true of Hellenistic entertainment. Tune in to my next blog for a description of a Hellenistic parade.

After Alexander: The Temptations of Hellenism

Thais, hetaira of Ptolemy I, painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1781

SEX and MONEY were top priorities in Hellenistic culture, with entertainment close  behind. Fidelity was not a big deal in the Hellenistic world. Top courtesans, hetairai, were celebrities, like rock stars. While the lesser hetairai made appointments with their johns by writing with eyebrow pencil on tombstones outside the city, the top hetairai made appointments at society parties. Wives stayed home from these events.

After conquering the Mediterranean world from Greece and Egypt in the west to the Himalayas in the east, Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, before his 34th birthday. Three of his strongest generals divided the major part of his empire among themselves: Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Syria, and Antigonus One-Eye in Macedonia and Thrace. The Ptolemies and Selucids imported their own Greek-speaking elite, worshipped Greek gods (and themselves) and created a Hellenistic culture that never became part of the peoples they ruled. Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemy ruler, was the first to speak Egyptian.

Want to find out more about sex life in Hellenistic society? My source was John Marlowe, The Golden Age of Alexandria, 1971, available in university libraries. To find out more about MONEY and ENTERTAINMENT in Hellenistic society, check out my next two blogs.