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OCTAVIAN AFTER THE FALL OF ALEXANDRIA
By ULRICH WILCKEN
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OCTAVIAN AFTER THE FALL OF ALEXANDRIA 139
as the papyri prove, the kratesis-era was reckoned not from the
surrender of Alexandria on i August8 but from the Egyptian New
Year's Day, on which the regnal year also began; but this may be
explained by the assumption that Octavian, who can scarcely have
failed to settle these matters in Egypt himself, took charge of the
re-arrangement of the calendar to prevent two different New Year's
Days from falling close together at the beginning and end of August-
which in practice would have been an absurdity. 9 He was committed,
however, to the Egyptian New Year by the tradition of the regnal
reckoning, and this made him abandon the original significance of
the era ordained by the Senate-the commemoration of the fall of
Alexandria. There is a good deal to be said for the view that, when
the shift was made to i Thoth, Octavian allowed the era to mark
the acquisition not of Alexandria, but of Egypt, which from his
point of view had a far greater political importance. Unfortunately
the only text which is so far known to have contained a
qualification of xpa-Tascoq 0 ? breaks off at the crucial p
A[ .....xocracq KouLacpoq] Ozo5 [u]Loii, and we must hope
for a new find to decide whether 'A[? voApztocs or A[ly6wTrou is to be
supplied. Wessely, who published this document, Preisigke, Kiessling
and others have accepted AlyurnTcou, in my opinion rightly; and in
Liddell and Scott as well ` Kocaocpoq xpxcpmq is glossed' (sc. Aly6wTrou)'.
In any case, in the alteration of the calendar we have an arbitrary
modification of the senatus consultum by Octavian.
So much for what is really no more than a summary of our know-
ledge hitherto about the two systems of dating; but my reason for
returning to the subject is that a new monument has recently been
discovered which will perhaps enable us to penetrate somewhat
deeper into their political significance. The three sumptuous
volumes entitled The Bucheum, edited by Sir Robert Mond and
Oliver H. Myers, contain matter of first-class importance to historians,
archaeologists and students of religion. 11 They record the brilliant
results achieved by the British excavators in five seasons at Hermonthis
(in the Thebaid). Among other discoveries were the burials of the
Buchis-bulls, which are an exact parallel to the Apis-burials at
Sakkara, and those of the Mothers of Buchis. These finds are of the
greatest value for historians of religion; but for our purpose the
main interest lies in Volume ii, where H. W. Fairman gives an
excellent publication of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among them
are included the Buchis-stelae, stretching (with some lacunae) from
Nectanebo II to Diocletian, and thcse are quite unlike the familiar
8 There is no trace of an era beginning on VK?7, did not begin on 2 September, the day of the
I August: hence Mommsen, to whom the kratesis- battle, but on the Syrian New Year's Day which
era was unknown, assumed that Dio was in error fell soon afterwards-on I October.
(Rdm. Staatsr. ii3, 804 n. 2).
0 Preisigke, Sammelbuch 5244.
9 For this point cf. Hermes xxx, I 53. In Gr.
Ostraka, i, 788 1 called attention to the fact that 11inFortv-first Excavation Memoir of the Egypt
Syria the Actian Era, which was counted from the Exploration Society, 1934.
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I40 ULRICH WILCKEN
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OCTAVIAN AFTER THE FALL OF ALEXANDRIA 14I
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I42 ULRICH WILCKEN
had recognized Octavian as Pharaoh, with all the titles and honours,
including divinity, which had gradually become regular in the course
of ages. Whether these were offered spontaneously, or whether the
initiative was his, or whether the wishes of both parties were the
same, we have no information to show; and I refrain from conjecture.
In any case it is clear that the acknowledgment of Octavian as Pharaoh
happened soon after his victory and certainly before he left Egypt;
for the change in the kratesis-era which the Senate had established
after the surrender of Alexandria assumes, as we have seen already,
a consideration of his regnal years starting on i Thoth. Moreover,
in P Oxy. xii, 1453, we have evidence for the regnal dating from the
beginning of Year i; and this same text proves that his first regnal
year followed immediately on Year 22= -7 (of Cleopatra),1 9 the last
year of the Lagidae. The energy with which Octavian insisted from
the outset on his own worship in Egypt is revealed by the fact that
during the first year of his reign, certainly before his departure from
Egypt, he installed a certain Psenamon as ' Prophet of Caesar' in
Memphis. 20 Naturally this divine kingship had no relevance outside
Egypt. It was completely incompatible with the Roman con-
stitution ; and, though his royal position gave it a very peculiar
character, he included Egypt in his new settlement of the Empire as
a province: 21 as he afterwards said in the Monumentum, ' Aegyptum
imperio populi Romani adieci.' 22 Nevertheless, the decisive fact
was that, by assuming the position of Pharaoh, he showed from the
first his determination that in Egypt, which was economically of
supreme importance to his future, he would rule alone. And this
decision also explains his extraordinarily stringent prohibition,
unparalleled elsewhere, against any senator setting foot in this
country of which he was king, without his own express permission.
The part played by the person of Octavian in this system of
dating by his regnal years is altogether different from that in dates
by the kratesis. In the latter he is nothing more than the victorious
general who had conquered Egypt, a Roman called ' Caesar divi
filius '-an outstanding man indeed, but still a man. This perhaps
enables us to understand why the priests of Buchis, if they were
still bitter against the Roman power after the suppression of the
Theban revolt, found this conquest-era more attractive for dating
than the use of regnal years, which would have involved the
recognition of Caesar as Pharaoh. It exempted them from the
necessity of giving him any of the divine titles of kings, like ' Horus '
and the rest; and they did not even need to enclose his name in the
cartouche, which was the prerogative of kings alone. Its omission
19 For this interpretation of the double date 21 To the earlier evidence for the provincia,
see my comments on P Wisrz. 5, S (Abhandl. P Gnomon ?I02 (ercapXa) is now to be added.
Preuss. Ak. 1933, no. 6, p. 4I f.). 22 Mon. Ancyranum v, 24. Cf. also ' Aegypto in
20 See the demotic text in Gauthier, op. cit., v, potestatem populi Romani redacta' in the obelisk-
4; cf. thereon F. Blumenthal in Archiv fiir Pap. inscriptions (ILS 9i).
V, 317.
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OCTAVIAN AFTER THE FALL OF ALEXANDRIA I43
shows how clearly they appreciated the meaning of the Roman era;
and our conclusion must be that, startling as their dating appeared at
first sight, 23 it was wholly correct save for the omission of divifilius.
On the other hand, they were not prepared to refrain from connecting
the new master with their god in the customary way, and so they
added the traditional formula ' beloved of Osiris-Buchis, the Great
God, the Lord of the House of Atum.'
With this political distinction between the two dating-systems.
in mind, one may be. tempted, though it involves venturing on
hypotheses, to draw inferences about the political designs of the two
parties responsible for them-of the Senate, that is, and of Octavian..
So far as Octavian is concerned it can scarcely be doubted that, by
reckoning years as the years of his reign in the same way as the
Ptolemies and their predecessors, his intention was to make plain the
monarchical position he occupied in Egypt and to keep it permanently
impressed on the minds of the inhabitants. But is it true that the
Senate, as Dio makes out, really sought to do no more than honour
the victorious ' Caesar, divi filius ' when it voted that the day on
which Alexandria surrendered should mark the beginning of an
era ? Or did it suspect and fear that Octavian, for whom the capture
of Alexandria meant an immeasurable increase of power, would
avail himself of the saecular tradition in Egypt to become its king,
and did it seek for that reason to anticipate the introduction of
Octavian's regnal years by ordaining an era of the fall of Alexandria ?
If this was in fact its unconfessed intention-a point which I will not
attempt to decide-it was defeated by the imperiousness of Octavian:
he did indeed adopt the era established by the Senate, though as.
we have seen with a by no means insignificant modification, but side
by side with this republican-Roman method of dating, if so it may be
labelled, he set up another which was that of his own monarchy.
Thus the study of these two radically different dating-systems
leads us to the most intimate arcana imperii and reveals a detail of
Octavian's political career which, though it must be used with
caution, may not be without interest in the controversial question
of the interpretation to be put on his subsequent establishment of
the Principate.24
In conclusion one may add that the original distinction between.
the two systems of dating, which is particularly clear in the stelae of
Year i from Hermonthis and Philae, was completely forgotten in
the course of Augustus' long and peaceful reign. From Years 36 and
38 we have Greek documents in which both datings are used by the
same person on a single page,25 and the hieroglyphic texts from Years
zI and 41 26 show a cartouche round the name of Caesar in a kratesis-
2 3 Above, p. 140. (Ueber Werden und Vergeben der Universalreiche,
Bonn, Fr. Cohen), p. 24.
24 My position on this subject is indicated in my 25 Supra, p. I40, n. i6 (vi) and (vii).
address on the birthday of the Kaiser in 1915 26 Supra, p. I40, n. i6 (ii) and (ix).
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144 OCTAVIAN AFTER THE FALL OF ALEXANDRIA
27 Supra, p. I40, n. i 6 (v). the era (in years of the KCpdr-qts), and by the quite
28S; Re which comes after the first cartouche general phraseology of Caesius Dio (Ii, i9, 6)-ds i-&
*should not be taken, with Spiegelberg, to represent gwvtra &sT. I emphasize this point against the doubt;
divi filius, which would have had to follow the expressed by A. Stein in Gnomon, i, 342.
second cartouche. It is rather the regular royal 31 Hermes xxx, . 5 I .
title, ' Son of Re.' 32 Die alexandriniscben Munzen i, I924, I2.
29I do not agree with Spiegelberg that these 33 Thus one may agree with Vogt in referring to
unintelligible signs represent Kafaapos. Moreover,the regnal years the whole series of dates found on
the name of Caesar follows in a second cartouche. the Alexandrine coinage of Augustus, which goes
3? This is suggested both by the regular form ofup to Year 42.
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