ABSTRACT

Until the end of the Republic, Roman public opinion took relatively little notice of Egypt. The Ptolemaic kingdom entered into sporadic contacts with the Roman Senate in the third century BC (such as in 273 when they exchanged trade delegations), and during Rome’s showdown with Carthage, when one would have expected the Romans to have cultivated friendly relations with the Ptolemies in order to discourage them from supporting the Carthaginians, but there is no positive evidence to show that they did. The next contact we hear about (cf. Polybius IX.11a.1) comes in 215: there is a food shortage in Rome, caused, no doubt, by Hannibal’s devastations in Italy; the Senate sent a delegation to Alexandria to ask for grain supplies. A few years later, in 210, we hear of another Roman embassy to Alexandria, headed by M. Atilius and Manlius Acilius, which brought presents “to king Ptolemy and queen Cleopatra [i.e. Arsinoe III] … to commemorate and renew their friendship” (Livy XXVII.44.10). At that time, the power of Carthage had not yet been broken, Hannibal remained as dangerous to Rome as ever, so the Romans had a strong interest in keeping the Egyptian kingdom neutral.