Harvard Theological Review

Table of Contents - July 1961 - Volume 54, Issue 03  

Research Article

The Foundation-Date of the Alexandrian Ptolemaieia

P. M. Frasera1

a1 All Souls College, Oxford, England

The subject of this brief note is not new, but good reasons exist for reopening the topic. The evidence for the establishment of this festival in honor of Soter at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus consisted until recently of the decree passed by the Nesiotic League (The League of Islanders) agreeing to send theoroi to it, which has been regularly dated to ca. 281–279 B.C. In 1954 I published two fragments of a decree, in identical terms, from Delphi, according recognition to the festival, and agreeing to send theoroi, emanating from the Amphictyonic Council. This decree I dated on the basis of the Nesiotic decree, which, after a detailed discussion, I placed, in the usual way, in 280–279 B.C. In 1958 the situation was altered by the publication by J. Bousquet of what he claimed to be the prescript of the decree published by myself, containing the date in the form of the eponymous Delphic archon Pleiston, whom he assigned to 266–265 B.C. (or less probably to 270–269).