It was customary, as in Persia and in old Macedonia, for the great men of the realm to send their children to court to be brought up with the children of the royal house. Those who had been so brought up with the king were styled his aiirpockoc. As under Alexander, so under his successors, we find a corps of 8acatt.Kol.ral3Es. They appear as a corps, 600 strong, in a tri umphal procession at Antioch.
All the Hellenistic courts felt it a great part of prestige to be filled with the light of Hellenic culture. A distin guished philosopher or man of letters would find them bidding for his presence, and most of the great names are associated with one or other of the contemporary kings. Antigonus Gonatas, bluff soldier-spirit that he was, heard the Stoic philosophers glad ly, and, though he failed to induce Zeno to come to Macedonia, persuaded Zeno's disciple, Persaeus of Citium, to enter his service. Nor was it philosophers only who made his court illustrious, but poets like Aratus. The Ptolemaic court, with the museum attached to it, is so prominent in the literary and scientific history of the age that it is unnecessary to give a list of the philosophers, the men of letters and science, who at one time or other ate at King Ptolemy's table. One may notice that the first Ptolemy himself made a contribution of some value to historical literature in his account of Alexander's campaigns; the fourth Ptolemy not only instituted a cult of Homer but himself published tragedies; and even Ptolemy Euergetes II. issued a book of memoirs. The Pergamene court was in no degree behind the Ptolemaic in its literary and artistic zeal. The notable school of sculpture con nected with it is treated elsewhere (see GREEK ART) ; to its liter ary school we probably owe in great part the preservation of the masterpieces of Attic prose, and two of its kings (Eumenes I. and Attalus III.) were themselves authors. The Seleucid court did not rival either of the last named in brilliance of culture ; and yet some names of distinction were associated with it. Under An tiochus I. Aratus carried out a recension of the Odyssey, and Berossus composed a Babylonian history in Greek. Under An tiochus III. Euphorion was made keeper of the library at Antioch. Antiochus IV., of course, the enthusiastic Hellenist, filled Antioch with Greek artists and gave a royal welcome to Athenian philos ophers. Even in the degenerate days of the dynasty, Antiochus Grypus, who had been brought up at Athens, aspired to shine as a poet. The values recognized in the great Hellenistic courts and the Greek world generally imposed their authority upon the dynasties of barbarian origin. The Cappadocian court admitted the full stream of Hellenistic culture under Ariarathes V. One of the kings called Nicomedes in Bithynia offered immense sums to acquire the Aphrodite of Praxiteles from the Cnidians. and to a king Nicomedes the geographical poem of the Pseudo-Scymnus is dedicated. Even Iranian kings in the last century B.C. found
pleasure in composing, or listening to, Greek tragedies, and Herod the Great kept Greek men of letters beside him and had spasmodic ambitions to make his mark as an orator or author.
The offering of divine honours to the king which we saw begin under Alexander, became stereotyped in the insti tutions of the succeeding Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander him self was after his death the object of various local cults, like that which centred in the shrine near Erythrae. His successors in the first years after his death recognized him officially as a divinity, except Antipater, and coins began to be issued with his image. At Alexandria the state cult of him seems to have been instituted by the second Ptolemy, when his body was laid in the Sema. The successors themselves received divine honours. Such worship might be the spontaneous homage of a particular Greek com munity, like that offered to Antigonus by Scepsis in 311, to An tigonus and Demetrius by Athens in 307, to Ptolemy I. by the Rhodians in 304, or by Cassandreia to Cassander, as the city's founder ; or it might be organised and maintained by royal au thority. The first proved instance of a cult of the latter kind is that instituted at Alexandria by the second Ptolemy for his father soon after the latter's death in 283-282, in which later 279-278, he associated his mother Berenice also, the two being worshipped together as Owl. CTCOTCWES . Antiochus I. followed the Ptolemaic precedent by instituting at Seleucia-in-Pieria a cult for his father as Seleucus Zeus Nicator. So far we can point to no instance of a cult of the living sovereign (though the cities might institute such locally) being established by the court for the realm. This step was taken in Egypt after the death of Arsinoe Philadelphus (271), when she and her still-living brother-husband, Ptolemy II. began to be worshipped together as Ofol a6EXckoi. After this the cult of the reigning king and queen was regularly maintained in Greek Egypt, side by side with that of the dead Ptolemies. Under Antiochus II. (261-246) a document shows us a cult of the reigning king in full working for the Seleucid realm, with a high priest in each province, appointed by the king himself ; the document declares that the Queen Laodice is now to be associated with the king. The official surname of Antiochus II., Theos, suggests that he himself had here been the innovator. Thenceforward, in the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East the wor ship of the living sovereign became the rule, although it appears to have been regarded as given in anticipation of an apotheosis which did not become actual till death. In the Pergamene king dom at any rate, though the living king was worshipped with sacrifice, the title 0E6s was only given to those who were dead. The Antigonid dynasty, simpler and saner in its manners, had no official cult of this sort. The divine honours offered on occa sion by the Greek cities were the independent acts of the cities.