[203] There was not wanting of course a certain joint action, similar to that which is exercised by the regiones and the vici of self-administering urban communities; to this category belongs what we meet with of agoranomy and gymnasiarchy in the nomes, as also the erection of honorary memorials and the like, all of which, we may add, make their appearance only to a small extent and for the most part but late. According to the edict of Alexander (C. I. Gr. 4957, l. 34) the strategoi do not seem to have been, properly speaking, nominated by the governor, but only to have been confirmed after an examination; we do not know who had the proposing of them.
[204] The position of matters is clearly apparent in the inscription set up at the beginning of the reign of Pius to the well-known orator Aristides by the Egyptian Greeks (C. I. Gr. 4679); as dedicants are named ἡ πόλις τῶν Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ Ἑρμούπολις ἡ μεγάλη καὶ ἡ βουλὴ ἡ Ἀντινοέων νέων Ἑλλήνων καὶ οἱ ἐν τῷ Δέλτᾳ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ οἱ τὸν Θηβαϊκὸν νομὸν οἰκοῦντες Ἕλληνες. Thus only Antinoopolis, the city of the “new Hellenes,” has a Boule; Alexandria appears without this, but as a Greek city in the aggregate. Moreover there take part in this dedication the Greeks living in the Delta and those living in Thebes, but of the Egyptian towns Great-Hermopolis alone, on which probably the immediate vicinity of Antinoopolis has exercised an influence. To Ptolemais Strabo (xvii. 1, 42, p. 813) attributes a σύστημα πολιτικὸν ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ τρόπῳ; but in this we may hardly think of more than what belonged to the capital according to its constitution more exactly known to us—and so specially of the division of the burgesses into phylae. That the pre-Ptolemaic Greek city Naucratis retained in the Ptolemaic time the Boule, which it doubtless had, is possible, but cannot be decisive for the Ptolemaic arrangements.—Dio’s statement (ii. 17) that Augustus left the other Egyptian towns with their existing organisation, but took the common council from the Alexandrians on account of their untrustworthiness, rests doubtless on misunderstanding, the more especially as, according to it, Alexandria appears slighted in comparison with the other Egyptian communities, which is not at all in keeping with probability.
[205] The Egyptian coining of gold naturally ceased with the annexation of the land, for there was in the Roman empire only imperial gold. With the silver also Augustus dealt in like manner, and as ruler of Egypt caused simply copper to be struck, and even this only in moderate quantities. At first Tiberius coined, after 27–28 A.D., silver money for Egyptian circulation, apparently as token-money, as the pieces correspond nearly in point of weight to four, in point of silver value to one, of the Roman denarius (Feuardent, Numismatique, Égypte ancienne, ii. p. xi.). But as in legal currency the Alexandrian drachma was estimated as obolus (consequently as a sixth, not as a fourth; comp. Röm. Münzwesen, p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius (Hermes, v. p. 136), and the provincial silver always lost as compared with the imperial silver, the Alexandrian tetradrachmon of the silver value of a denarius has rather been estimated at the current value of two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly down to Commodus, from whose time the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is essentially a copper coin, the same has been quite as much a coin of value as the Syrian tetradrachmon and the Cappadocian drachma; they only left to the former the old name and the old weight.
[206] That the emperor Hadrian, among other Egyptising caprices, gave to the nomes as well as to his Antinoopolis for once the right of coining, which was thereupon done subsequently on a couple of occasions, makes no alteration in the rule.
[207] This figure is given by the so-called Epitome of Victor, c. 1, for the time of Augustus. After this payment was transferred to Constantinople there went thither under Justinian (Ed. xiii. c. 8) annually 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to be understood, according to c. 6, as meant), or 26–2/3 millions of Roman bushels (Hultsch, Metrol. p. 628), to which falls further to be added the similar payment to the town of Alexandria, introduced by Diocletian. To the shipmasters for the freight to Constantinople 8000 solidi = £5000 were annually paid from the state-chest.
[208] At least Cleopatra on a distribution of grain in Alexandria excluded the Jews (Josephus, contra Ap. ii. 5), and all the more, consequently, the Egyptians.
[209] The edict of Alexander (C. I. Gr. 4957), l. 33 ff., exempts the ἐνγενεῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς dwelling ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (not ἐν τῇ πόλει) on account of their business from the λειτουργίαι χωρικαί.
[210] “There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (in Flacc. 10), “as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps bacillarius). He afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις μάστιξιν).
[211] Josephus, contra Ap. ii. 4, μόνοις Αἰγυπτίοις οἱ κύριοι νῦν Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταλαμβάνειν ἡστινοσοῦν πολιτείας ἀπειρήκασιν. 6, Aegyptiis neque regum quisquam videtur ius civitatis fuisse largitus neque nunc quilibet imperatorum (comp. Eph. epigr. v. p. 13). The same upbraids his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a native Egyptian, had denied his home and given himself out as an Alexandrian.—Individual exceptions are not thereby excluded.
[212] Alexandrian science, too, protested in the sense of the king against this proposition (Plutarch, de fort. Alex. i. 6); Eratosthenes designated civilisation as not peculiar to the Hellenes alone, and not to be denied to all barbarians, e.g. not to the Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the Carthaginians; men were rather to be divided into “good” and “bad” (Strabo, i. fin. p. 66). But of this theory no practical application was made to the Egyptian race even under the Lagids.