economic and industrial centre, and generous patronage by the Ptolemies, who set
up its famous museum and library, made it a cultural capital as well. A cosmopolitan
city of Egyptians, Greeks and Jews, by 200 it was the largest city in the world.
The Greek writer Strabo reports an unflattering reaction to the multi-faceted city
from the Greek historian Polybius when he visited in about 140 at a time when the
city may have started to decline.
Polybius, at least, who visited the city, was disgusted with its condition at the time.
He says it is inhabited by three classes of people, first the native Egyptians, an
acute and civilized race; secondly by mercenaries, a numerous, rough and
uncultivated set, it being an ancient practice there to maintain a foreign armed
force which owing to the weakness of the kings had learnt rather to rule than to
obey; thirdly there were the Alexandrians themselves, a people not genuinely
civilized for the same reason, but still superior to the mercenaries, for though they
are mongrels they came from Greek stock and had not forgotten Greek customs.
(Strabo, 17, 1. 12)The kings’ employment of large numbers of mercenaries to fight their many wars, in
marked contrast to the widespread deployment of citizen soldiers in the classical
poleis, clearly had an effect on the population of the great capitals and major cities.
Literary sources do not tell us how the rest of Egypt was governed but there is
evidence from inscriptions and from considerable quantities of papyrus fragments
that have been preserved by the dry climate, which makes it clear that there was a
large bureaucracy devoted to the gathering of state taxes from the administration of
state monopolies in textiles, oil, and papyrus. Some of these are written in the
Egyptian demotic by native scribes, who often took Greek names. Revenues went to
the kings who took an active interest in their gathering. A letter from Ptolemy II
survives in which he instructs lawyers not to act on behalf of clients in fiscal disputes
on pain of severe financial penalties on the grounds that they were inferring with the
collection of revenues.
The Seleucid Empire and Pergamum
The Seleucids, with the largest territory, took over the old Persian empire. Seleucus
I founded Seleucea on Tigris c. 305, Seleucea in Pieria c. 300,and Antioch c. 300
(in modern Syria). These three new cities were settled initially by Greeks and
Macedonians migrating eastwards in large numbers. Following Alexander’s practice,
the Seleucids established many more new cities in the first decades of the third
century. Alexander had replaced the local rulers (satraps) with his own men, a
practice followed by the Seleucids who took over estates to support their royal family,
88 THE GREEKS