The Activity of Ptolemy II’s Fleet in the Aegean Sea

Ptolemy I, the founder of the Lagid dynasty, heavily invested in the navy and thus established the Ptolemies as a formidable sea power, his work continued by his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who employed his fleet to pressure lesser powers of the Mediterranean. The following article examines the activity of Ptolemy II’s fleet in the Aegean Sea. At the end of the 270s, Ptolemy II sent a naval expedition to the Black Sea; the operation helped him establish a political relationship with Byzantion and demonstrated that maintaining a naval presence on foreign waters could influence other rulers to favor the Ptolemies. The Ptolemaic fleet under Ptolemy II Philadelphus operated in the Aegean during two major international conflicts, the Chremonidean War and the Second Syrian War. In this article I argue that the surviving evidence on the Chremonidean War indicates that Ptolemy II’s aim was not to subdue Greece or even Macedonia but to maintain the Ptolemaic hold over the Aegean with Egypt’s relatively small naval force under Patroclus. In turn, the outcome of the Second Syrian War led to a considerable weakening of the Lagids’ position in the Aegean. Ptolemy II adroitly cultivated international relations through diplomacy, propaganda, international euergetism and spreading his dynastic cult; sending the Ptolemaic fleet to patrol foreign seas constituted one crucial instrument Philadelphus could employ to shift the Mediterranean balance of power in his favor.