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Egypt's Loss of Sea-Power: a Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

By the courtesy of Professor Ferguson and of the Editors of this Journal I have had the opportunity of reading Mr. Ferguson's article in proof, and the editors have kindly offered me space for a short reply.

While I agree with much in Mr. Ferguson's valuable paper, and am delighted to see that he ascribes Andros to Gonatas, I find myself unable to accept his dating of the two battles. To go fully into the questions involved is, of course, impossible here; and I confine myself simply to the objections which Mr. Ferguson has raised to my view.

If Sophron could not have commanded for Egypt in 246 (on which I express no opinion), it proves that Sophrona is not an admissible conjecture for Trogus' prona; nothing else.—That Trogus mentions Andros alone is a real difficulty. But we have to choose between him and the contemporary evidence of the coins. Mr. Ferguson agrees with me that the two sets of tetradrachms refer to Lysimacheia and Cos; if Andros was the decisive victory, why no corresponding coin? In my view, too, Egypt had ruled the sea unbeaten for forty years, and this or that writer may well have treated her first defeat as the crucial point.—I know of no reason for supposing that Plutarch's reference to Antigonus at Cos is from Phylarchus.—Ephesus Miletus, and the other towns that fell to the Seleucids in the second Syrian war were presumably taken from the land side.—As to the death of Alexander of Corinth, the events recorded Plut. Arat. xv. must come before Euergetes.” expedition (as de Sanctis pointed out), and Gonatas at the time is back in Corinth; ergo, Alexander was dead by 247.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1910

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