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Octavian after the Fall of Alexandria
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
When I received the welcome invitation to take part in this tribute to Sir Henry Stuart Jones, I realized, to my great regret, that other pressing obligations would not leave me time to prepare a paper worthy of the occasion. But, as altogether to miss this opportunity of expressing my respect and admiration would have been most distasteful, I have ventured to offer him the notes which follow, slight and modest though they are.
It had long been known that in Egypt under Augustus dates were given, in accordance with age-old custom, by his regnal years; but the papyri have revealed, as I was able to show with the help of two examples in 1895, that side by side with this system there existed another method of dating by the years τῆς Καίσαρος κρατήσεως θεοῦ υἱοῦ, both systems alike reckoning from the Egyptian New Year's day in 30 B.C. ( I Thoth = 29 August).
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1: Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart Jones , 1937 , pp. 138 - 144
- Copyright
- Copyright ©Ulrich Wilcken 1937. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
1 Hermes xxx, 151 ff.
2 Cf. W. Kubitschek in P-W i, 617.
3 Gardthausen alone (Augustus ii, 457) completely misunderstood my arguments in Hermes and consequently rejected them.
4 Hermes, xxx, 152.
5 li, 19, 6.
6 τήν τε ἡμέραν, ἐν ᾗ ἡ Ἀλεξάνδρεια ἐάλω, ἀγαθήν τε εἶναι καὶ ἐς τὰ ἔπειτα ἔτη ἀρχὴν τῆς ἀπαριθμήσεως αὐτῶν νομιζεσθαι.
7 It is notorious that the Greeks lacked the idea of divus and consequently expressed it by θεός. So for them Octavian became θ ε ο ũ υἱός.
8 There is no trace of an era beginning on 1 August: hence Mommsen, to whom the kratesis era was unknown, assumed that Dio was in error (Röm. Staatsr. ii3, 804 n. 2).
9 For this point cf. Hermes xxx, 153. In Gr. Ostraka, i, 788 I called attention to the fact that in Syria the Actian Era, which was counted from the νίκη, did not begin on 2 September, the day of the battle, but on the Syrian New Year's Day which fell soon afterwards—on 1 October.
10 Preisigke, Sammelbuch 5244.
11 Forty-first Excavation Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society, 1934.
12 Vol. ii, 12. A photograph of the stela, with a transcription, is in vol. iii, pl. xliii.
12a I am glad to say that this view of the grammatical structure is taken by Dr. A. H. Gardiner.
13 The construction in the text from Year 41 is different again; but in all cases the word for ‘power’ appears.
14 Recueil de travaux, xxxiii, 1911, 178.
15 Not printed by Fairman.
16 The Greek and Egyptian evidence for dating by this era at present known to me is the following. (i) Year 1: our Buchis-stela. (ii) Year 21: two cases in Gauthier, v, 10 (Fairman ii, 32). (iii) Year 23: Preisigke, Sammelbuch 5244 (Fayûm). (iv) Year 31: P Fröhner in Hermes xxx, 152 (Fayûm). (v) Year 33: Buchis-stela (Daressy) in Aeg. Zeitschr. xlv, 91 (Spiegelberg); Gauthier v, 14. (vi) Year 36: BGU 174: Hermes, l.c., 151 (Fayûm). (vii) Year 38: P Fay. 89. (viii) Year 39: P Grenf. ii, 40 (Fayûm). (ix) Year 41: Gauthier v, 18. (x) Also Year 41: Preisigke, Sammelbuch 5231—translation from demotic; see copy Sammelbuch 5275. (xi) Between Year 41 and Year 43: PSI i, 36a (Fayûm). (xii) Early, but lacking the year-number: P Teb. ii, 382. N. Reich's study of the demotic texts (Sphinx xiv, 1910), which is quoted by A. Stein on p. 54 of his Untersuchungen, is not accessible to me at present.
17 This destroys one of the arguments used by Hohmann (Zur Chronologie i. Papyrusurkunden, 1911, 47) in support of his mistaken assumption that this era was established under the influence of Syria.
18 Sitzungsher. Preuss. Akad. 1896, xxGoogle Scholar: cf. OGIS 654; ILS 8995. On this see my remarks in Aeg. Zeitschr. xxxv, 1897, 1 ffGoogle Scholar.
19 For this interpretation of the double date see my comments on P Würz. 5, 5 (Abhandl. Preuss. Ak. 1933, no. 6, p. 41 f.).
20 See the demotic text in Gauthier, op. cit., v, 4; cf. thereon Blumenthal, F. in Archiv für Pap. v, 317Google Scholar.
21 To the earlier evidence for the provincia, P Gnomon § 102 (ἐπαρχία) is now to be added.
22 Mon. Ancyranum v, 24. Cf. also ‘Aegypto in potestatem populi Romani redacta’ in the obelisk-inscriptions (ILS 91).
23 Above, p. 140.
24 My position on this subject is indicated in my address on the birthday of the Kaiser in 1915 (Ueber Werden und Vergehen der Universalreiche, Bonn, Fr. Cohen), p. 24.
25 Supra, p. 140, n. 16 (vi) and (vii).
26 Supra, p. 140, n. 16 (ii) and (ix).
27 Supra, p. 140, n. 16 (v).
28 Sζ Rē which comes after the first cartouche should not be taken, with Spiegelberg, to represent divi filius, which would have had to follow the second cartouche. It is rather the regular royal title, ‘Son of Rē.’
29 I do not agree with Spiegelberg that these unintelligible signs represent Καίσαρος. Moreover, the name of Caesar follows in a second cartouche.
30 This is suggested both by the regular form of the era (in years of the κράτησις), and by the quite general phraseology of Caesius Dio (li, 19, 6)—ἐς τὰ ἒπειτα ἒτη. I emphasize this point against the doubts expressed by A. Stein in Gnomon, i, 342.
31 Hermes xxx, 151.
32 Die alexandrinischen Münzen i, 1924, 12Google Scholar.
33 Thus one may agree with Vogt in referring to the regnal years the whole series of dates found on the Alexandrine coinage of Augustus, which goes up to Year 42.