The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.102

c12.102

That all this belongs to a περὶ βασιλείας and must have been written in the third century, not the first, should need no demonstration; the document belongs to the period when the περὶ βασιλείας was a most active literary form. But in fact a precise demonstration of the date is given in 252—the king must judge petitions justly.⁸ The Questions then belong to a time when the reigning Ptolemy might receive petitions. In the third century petitions were sent to the strategos of the nome, and some, though probably not the majority, did reach the king himself; but by the beginning of the second century special officials had been appointed to deal with them, and none ever reached the king.¹ The Questions therefore are third century; and as they must obviously be earlier than the troubles between Ptolemy IV and the Jews, they belong to the reign of Ptolemy III, when Ptolemy II was still a great memory. The famous question in 250, πῶς ἂν ἁρμόσαι γυναικί, forms no objection to this. It does not of course mean, as it has been taken to mean, ‘How can I get on with my wife?’—the writer had presumably no desire to court the fate of Sotades by putting such a question into a king’s mouth;² it is impersonal, ‘How can a man get on with his wife?’—a commonplace aporia.³