Keep your friends close: <i>philoi </i>and factions in the Ptolemaic court

<p dir="ltr">This thesis analyses the occurrences of factionalism in the court of the Ptolemaic dynasty, from 323 – 30 BC. It also analyses the interaction between the wider social groups at court, including the military, Greek and non-Greek elites, and the interaction between the court and the general populace, building upon Elias’ sociological theory, that the king relied upon a network of interdependences. It is argued that the role court that factions played in the structure of the court changed over time. There were also different centres of power at the court that factions would coalesce around: heirs, regents, royal siblings, and queens. In particular, the role of factions for queens clearly changed over time, in line with the increased political strength of the office of queen. The main underlying principal appears to have been self-interest, with a clear ideological divide only appearing late in Ptolemaic history, between pro-Roman and anti-Roman factions at court. By focussing in particular on the interaction between the court and general populace of Alexandria, this thesis also presents a new interpretation of crowd behaviour in Ptolemaic history. It is argued that older interpretations, which utilised ‘classical crowd psychology,’ and the idea of the inherently irrational crowd, should be re-evaluated. This thesis uses more recent sociological theory, that seeks to find rational explanations for instances of crowd violence. It will be argued that there were four underlying contextual causes of crowd behaviour in Ptolemaic history: (1) crowd violence occurred in conjunction with the military, (2) crowd behaviour occurred due to moral outrage, (3) the crowd was incited by a court faction, (4) or anti-Roman sentiment. Some other underlying sociological causes of crowd violence were: urbanization and the proximity to the centre of political power (<i>i.e</i>. being a capital city). A comparison is also made between contemporary instances of crowd violence in the Seleucid kingdom and Roman Republic. The conclusion reached was that the Seleucid kingdom had comparable underlying causes to the Ptolemaic kingdom, due to having a similar political system, whereas Rome’s different political system created different causes of crowd violence.</p>