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Nauarch and Nesiarch1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The conclusion here reached, regarding the government of the Aegean under Ptolemy II, is as follows. The sea and all the Egyptian fleets were under the sole control of one nauarchos or admiral; he had, in addition, the powers that would have been exercised by the strategos or general of the Islands, had one existed; the two offices together made him almost a viceroy of the Sea, and he exercised a general control over the Islands. As the islands gradually passed from Egypt, it is possible that the office of nauarch remained attached to the strategia of those that remained: when this strategia finally vanished and Egypt retired from the Aegean, the office of nauarch became attached to another strategia, that of Cyprus. The nesiarch, on the other hand, had no military authority and very little power; he was the Ptolemaic Resident.

I will take the nesiarch first.

We know of three; (1) Bacchon son of Nicetas, a Boeotian, about 280, a contemporary of Philocles, king of the Sidonians; (2) Hermias, possibly of Halicarnassus, who founded the festival at Delos in honour of Arsinoe Philadelphos, afterwards known as the Philadelpheia, the first vase of which appears under the archon Meilichides II. (267), and who therefore was probably Bacchon's successor; and (3) Apollodorus son of Apollonius of Cyzicus, who was a private person in 279, and was nesiarch some time later, and who probably succeeded Hermias, though it is also conceivable that he may have preceded him.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1911

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