12. The reliance on memory: The point is K. R. Bradley’s, introduction to Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars I, 14.
13. no plain, unvarnished stories: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2004), 19. See also Fergus Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 28. On the practice of extracting brilliant history from “next to nothing,” T. P. Wiseman, Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature (Bristoclass="underline" Bristol Phoenix Press, 1979), 23–53. See also Josephus, Against Apion, I.24–5. All illuminate Quintilian’s first-century AD point: “History is very near to poetry, and may be considered in some sense as poetry in prose.”
14. “the most unfortunate of fathers”: JW, I.556.
15. Hellenistic Age defined: “The Greek world with the Greeks taken out,” Daniel Ogden, The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives (London: Duckworth, 2002), x.
16. “And the endeavor”: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, XXII.4–XXIII.3.
CHAPTER II: DEAD MEN DON’T BITE
On the “strange madness” (Cicero to Tiro, 146 [XVI.12], January 27, 49) of the Roman civil wars: Appian, JC, Dio, Florus, Plutarch. Suetonius provides the portrait of CR. For a different view of C’s removal from power, Cecilia M. Peek, “The Expulsion of Cleopatra VII,” Ancient Society 38 (2008): 103–35. Peek argues that C was removed only in the spring of 48.
Among the classical sources on Alexandria, I have leaned most heavily on Achilles Tatius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Arrian, Diodorus, Pliny, Plutarch, Polybius, Strabo, Theocritus, and Philo, especially “On the Contemplative Life,” “On Dreams, Book 2,” “On the Embassy to Gaius.” Josephus provides descriptions of Herod’s temple and palace in JW, V.173–225; C’s could only have been more opulent. Athenaeus, V. 195–7 offers details on the fittings. I have taken Lucan and Aristeas’s palatial descriptions with a grain of salt. Among modern reconstructions: Inge Nielsen, Hellenistic Palaces: Tradition and Renewal (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1999); and Maria Nowicka, La maison privée dans l’Egypte ptolémaïque (Wroclaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1969).
For modern accounts of Alexandria: Pascale Ballet’s very good La vie quotidienne à Alexandrie (Paris: Hachette, 1999); Diana Delia, “The Population of Roman Alexandria,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 118 (1988): 275–292; Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria: Jewel of Egypt (New York: Abrams, 2002); E. M. Forster, Alexandria: A History and a Guide (London: André Deutsch, 2004); Franck Goddio, Alexandria: The Submerged Royal Quarters (London: Periplus, 1998); William LaRiche, Alexandria: The Sunken City (London: Weidenfeld, 1996); John Marlowe’s exquisite The Golden Age of Alexandria (London: Gollancz, 1971); Alexandria and Alexandrianism, papers delivered at J. Paul Getty, April 22–5, 1993, Symposium (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996); Justin Pollard and Howard Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind (New York: Viking, 2006); J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Paul Edmund Stanwick, Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Theodore Vrettos, Alexandria: City of the Western Mind (New York: Free Press, 2001). On the city plan itself, W. A. Daszweski, “Notes on Topography of Ptolemaic Alexandria,” Mieczysław Rodziewicz, “Ptolemaic Street Directions in Basilea (Alexandria),” and Richard Tomlinson, “The Town Plan of Hellenistic Alexandria,” in Alessandria e il Mondo Ellenistico-Romano (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995); and Barbara Tkaczow’s illuminating The Topography of Ancient Alexandria (Warsaw: Travaux du Centre d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne, 1993).
On education, to Aristotle “an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity”: Cicero, in particular Brutus and On the Orator; Seneca, Epistulae Morales, II; Suetonius, “On Grammarians” and “On Rhetoricians”; Quintilian, “Exercises”; Lucian, “Salaried Posts in Great Houses.” On the subjects for composition, Quintilian, III.8.48–70 and Seneca, Epistulae Morales, LXXXVIII.6–9. Among modern sources: Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); M. L. Clarke, who is especially good on the rhetorical assignments, Higher Education in the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 1971); Raffaella Cribiore’s excellent work, in particular Gymnastics of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Bernard Legras, “L’enseignement de l’histoire dans les écoles grecques d’Egypte,” in Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin 1995 (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1997), 586–600; H. I. Marrou’s superb A History of Education in Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956); Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Rawson, 1985.
On the Ptolemaic marriages and intermarriages: Chris Bennett, “Cleopatra V Tryphaena and the Genealogy of the Later Ptolemies,” Ancient Society 28 (1997): 39–66; Elizabeth Carney, “The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt,” La Parola del Passato XLII (1987): 420–39; Keith Hopkins’s fine “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 3 (1980): 303–354; Daniel Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties (London: Duckworth, 1999); Brent D. Shaw, “Explaining Incest: Brother-Sister Marriage in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Man 27, no. 2 (1992): 267–99.
Relatedly, on women in Ptolemaic Egypt: Roger S. Bagnall, “Women’s Petitions in Late Antique Egypt,” in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: Sources and Approaches (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006); Bagnall and Cribiore, 2006; J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women: Their History and Habits (London: Bodley Head, 1962); Joan B. Burton, Theocritus’s Urban Mimes: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 147–55. Elaine Fantham and others, Women in the Classical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome (London: Duckworth, 1992); Nori-Lyn Estelle Moffat, The Institutionalization of Power for Royal Ptolemaic Women (MA thesis, Clemson University, 2005); Kyra L. Nourse, Women and the Early Development of Royal Power in the Hellenistic East (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2002); Pomeroy, 1990; Claire Préaux, “Le statut de la femme à l’époque hellénistique, principalement en Egypte,” Receuils de la Société Jean Bodin III (1959): 127–75; Rowlandson, 1998. On marrying later, Donald Herring, “The Age of Egyptian Women at Marriage in the Ptolemaic Period,” American Philological Association Abstracts (1988): 85.