This chapter presents new, annotated translations of the extensive summaries and paraphrases of books 1 and 5 of Agatharchides’ lost work On the Erythraian Sea (written c.145 BC) that were made by Diodoros (book 3), Strabo (book 16), and especially Photios (Bibliotheke, codices 213 and 250). Additional testimonia and fragments are arranged as five extracts. The chapter introduction reviews Agatharchides’ career, his writings, and his scholarly milieux in Alexandria and later (probably) Athens, and upholds the view that On the Erythraian Sea was a self-contained work, not part of a larger whole. The geographical and ethnographic material in this work–a historical work–is distinctive for being based on information from Ptolemaic commanders and explorers, and remarkable for its sympathy with some of the Ptolemies’ oppressed subjects. Agatharchides’ depiction of these peoples implies an evolutionary scheme of development–from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers–such as Dikaiarchos (Chapter 9 of this volume) had suggested in his philosophical works. The surviving summaries include remarkable passages on elephant-hunting and the sufferings of gold-miners; but Agatharchides’ work was more often accessed through its reworking by Artemidoros (Chapter 18) than read in its own right. A new map highlights the principal places and peoples mentioned by Agatharchides in East Africa and Arabia.

This chapter presents new, annotated translations of the testimonia and fragments of Timosthenes of Rhodes (active 282–246 BC), arranged as 37 extracts. An appendix contains a new translation of Aristotle’s discussion of the winds at Meteorologika, 2. 6. The chapter introduction addresses the difficulty of linking references to Timosthenes to the various book titles of which we have reports, but argues that we should not automatically divorce him from the Timosthenes who wrote about the Pythian Melody of Delphi. His distinctive contribution to geography was in assembling detailed navigational data, particularly specific local topography useful to ship-captains. Typically of literary writers, however, he enlivened his technical material with information about local cultures. His legacy was considerable, probably visible, for example, in the Roman-period Stadiasmos (Chapter 31 of this volume).

This chapter discusses the economic developments occurring within the Ptolemaic empire (323–30 BCE), of which Egypt was the core province. It explores how state formation affected economic development and how Ptolemaic imperialism, demography, and the interaction between Egyptian and Greek social networks were factors of economic change and economic exploitation. After an overview of past and current approaches to the economy of the Ptolemaic empire and of the geography of the empire, it assesses the cost and benefits of military conquests and the management of migrations patterns and new settlements by the Ptolemies, who increased their revenues and reduced the cost of their army through land allotments to cleruchs. The political economy of the Ptolemies relied on a complex tax system, with some documents pointing to a centralized taxation of the provinces, and innovative but also unusual monetary policies, such as closed-currency system based on a lower weight standard than the Attic standard in Egypt, Cyprus, and Syria-Phoenicia. The chapter concludes with examples of the synergistic relationship between empire, warfare, and trade and between the public and private spheres of the economy, and sketches the purchasing power of different economic groups in Egypt.

In the Hellenistic period, cities were the cornerstones of imperial rule. Cities were the loci for the acquisition of capital and manpower, and imperial agents (philoi) were recruited for a large part among Greek civic elites. This chapter departs from the dual premise that premodern empires are negotiated enterprises and that they are often networks of interaction rather than territorial states. The relentless competition between three rival superpowers in the Hellenistic Aegean – the Seleukid, Ptolemaic and Antigonid Empires – gave cities a good bargaining position vis-à-vis these empires. The fact that the imperial courts were dominated by philoi from the Aegean poleis moreover meant that these cities held a central and privileged place in Hellenistic imperialism, and benefited greatly from it. Royal benefactions structured imperial-local interactions. They were instrumental in a complex of reciprocal gift-exchange between empires and cities. Empires most of all needed capital, loyalty and military support. As kings were usually short of funds, the gifts by which they hoped to win the support of cities against their rivals often came in the form of immaterial benefactions like the granting of privileges and the protection of civic autonomy.

This chapter considers the ‘vase festivals’ recorded on Hellenistic Delos as benefactions, and then considers the implications of this approach on our chronology for the period. It argues that the vase festival was a socially constrained form of competitive display, one open only to Delians and others who successfully sought and negotiated this privilege. Through the endowment and the associated display, these individuals claimed and performed a distinct superior status: as patrons of the sanctuary. But this was not an exclusive claim. It coexisted with and competed with other claims, both when they were founded and in subsequent years. As such, the dates and periods during which royal (and non-royal) individuals founded these vase festivals (Third Ptolemaea, 246/5 BC, Soteria/Antigonia, 245/4 BC, etc.) can be understood as periods of engagement by those individuals on Delos and the region. But this competitive context indicates that they should not be understood as dates for changes of control. Quite the reverse: if the vase festivals have any implication for our understanding of the broader geopolitical terrain – and they may not – they indicate that these were times when interest in the sanctuary and the region were higher, and when any specific patronage or hegemonic relationships in the sanctuary and the region were particularly contested.

This chapter looks to one of the oldest Jewish writings outside of the Hebrew Bible, the Enochic Astronomical Book, and argues for its overlooked importance for the development of Jewish angelology. It considers the intertwining of angelology and astronomy in a Jewish scribal context that resonates with cross-cultural concerns with knowledge in the early Hellenistic age.