The city that Eumenes II founded and named after his brother later bore several other names in antiquity, including Neokaisareia and Flavia, but Philadelphia remained the best-known name for the city. After his death, he was succeeded by Eumenes II’s son Attalos III. He ruled the kingdom of Pergamon until his own death in 138 BC. The city was located roughly seventy miles east of the Greek city of Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey) on the northeast slope of Mount Tmolos.Īfter Eumenes II’s death in 159 BC, Attalos II ascended to the throne and married his brother’s widow Stratonike. While this epithet may have originally been given to Ptolemaios II to mock him surreptitiously, when people gave it to Attalos II, they definitely meant it as a good thing.Īt some point shortly after 189 BC, Eumenes II founded a city in the region of Lydia in what is now western Turkey and named it Φιλαδέλφεια ( Philadélpheia) in honor of his beloved brother. Attalos II was famously loyal to his brother, so he was given the epithet Φιλάδελφος, which had earlier been held by Ptolemaios II. Over half a century after Ptolemaios II’s death, there was a Greek king of Pergamon named Eumenes II, who had a brother named Attalos II, who acted as his general.
The founding of the ancient city of Philadephia Later Hellenistic rulers-not just of Egypt, but of other kingdoms as well-sought to imitate him.ĪBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Greek bronze bust of Ptolemaios II Philadelphos from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, now on display in the Naples National Archaeological Museum In later times, people looked back on his reign as the “Golden Age” of Ptolemaic Egypt. Over the course of his reign, Ptolemaios II provided funding and resources to countless scholars and intellectuals and he played a major role in turning Alexandria into the intellectual center it became. He was also an important patron of the Library of Alexandria and the Mouseion, the temple of the Muses associated with it that functioned as a research institution. His reign was long and extraordinarily prosperous.
“You are shoving your dick into a hole that is not holy.”īecause Ptolemaios II literally married his own sister, people applied to him the epithet Φιλάδελφος ( Philádelphos), meaning “the Sibling-Lover,” derived from the Greek epsilon-contract verb φιλέω ( philéō), meaning “to love,” and the second-declension noun ἀδελφός ( adelphós), meaning “sibling.”Īpart from marrying his sister, Ptolemaios II Philadelphos was generally known for being a very good king. Here is my own English translation of it: 120 AD) in his treatise On the Education of Children. The epigram has been preserved in the original Greek through quotation by the later Greek writer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c.
Names of ancient cities full#
The Greeks living Ptolemaios II’s kingdom, though, were absolutely shocked and scandalized because, among the Greeks, marriage between full siblings was seen as deeply morally wrong-even for kings.Īs I previously mentioned in this article I published last week, the Greek poet Sotades of Maroneia famously wrote a palindromic epigram mocking Ptolemaios II’s incestuous marriage. Marriages between siblings were normal for the Egyptian pharaohs, so Ptolemaios II’s native Egyptian subjects weren’t terribly surprised. After Alexander’s death, Ptolemaios I had claimed Egypt as his territory and Ptolemaios II had succeeded him as king of Egypt after his death.Īt some point between 279 and 274 BC, Ptolemaios II married his own full sister Arsinoë II. He was the son of Ptolemaios I Soter, who was one of Alexander the Great’s generals and a member of the Diadochoi, the group of Alexander’s companions who divided up his empire after his death. Ptolemaios II was an ancient Greek king who ruled Egypt from March 282 BC to January 246 BC. The “brotherly love” in the name originally referred to literal incest. As it turns out, the name Philadelphia ultimately comes from a nickname given to an ancient Greek ruler of Egypt who gained notoriety for marrying his own full sister. What you haven’t been taught is the long, fascinating history behind the name. You’ve all been taught the name Philadelphia comes from Greek meaning “City of Brotherly Love.” That’s mostly true.