Magas, Apame, and Berenice II

Abstract

It is commonly taken as a fact that Magas of Cyrene was married to Apame, the daughter of Antiochus I and Stratonice, shortly before the First Syrian War, ca. 276/5 BCE, and that their daughter, Berenice II, was still a teenager when she married Ptolemy III around the time of his accession to the throne in early 246 BCE. This chapter addresses various problems with these two assumptions and offers several possible solutions. Apart from the dates of Magas’s marriage to Apame and of the birth of Berenice II, I also discuss the dates of Magas’s death, the accession of Ashoka Maurya, Apame’s birth, the First Syrian War, the Chremonidean War, and Egypt’s alliance with Carthage, which are all to some degree a matter of scholarly debate. Additionally, I examine whether Apame was indeed Berenice’s mother. I also reexamine Pausanias’s unclear timeframe about related events, which will give occasion to reconsider Berenice’s marriage to Demetrius the Fair and her mother’s involvement in that affair, as well as Magas’s motives behind eventually betrothing his daughter to Ptolemy III. This chapter thus explores the complexities of the chronology of various important events of the early third century BCE, and attempts to reveal some of the underlying assumptions in modern scholarship.

This first essay developed from my personal correspondence with the late Chris Bennett (1953–2014).