Question to the ancient greek students.

[ziegenpeter]

Hello fellow EB fans!
I was wandering how do you say 'III' in ancient greek because I'd like to know how you pronounce
Aléxandros III ho Mégas right.

thx

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Maybe you will notice that I posted a lot of new threads today. I dont want to spam, I recently collected all the questions I have about EB, and which I always forget when I am in the EB forum.

[/Bean\]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't numbering monarchs a rather modern idea? They would have simply called him Alexandros, Megas Alexandros or Alexandros son of Phillip, surely.

[ziegenpeter]

Surely in privacy, Hephaistion didnt call him Aléxandros III ho Mégas (or maybe he did?) but anyways, I'd be very greatful to know the right pronounciation and now that you mentioned it, if they numberd monarchs back then...

[MButcher]

I'm unsure about the Makedonians, but as far as the Ptolemaioi, Pergamenes and Seleukids are concerned, they were known by their lineage.

For example, the Adoulis inscription (c. 246 B.C.E.) describes Ptolemy III Euergetes as, "Great King Ptolemy (son) of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe the Brother and Sister Gods, the children of King Ptolemy and Queen Berenike the Saviour Gods, descendant on the paternal side of Herakles (son) of Zues, on the maternal of Dionysos (son) of Zues having inherited from his father the king of Egypt and Libya and Syria..."

From the descriptions it sounds like this is geared toward the native Egyptian population. When Hellenistic monarchs addressed fellow Hellenes, as in this letter from Ptolemy II to Miletos, they are known as simply "King ____".

Example - "King Ptolemy to the boule and the demos of the Milesians, greeting..."
Or - "King Antiochos to the boule and demos of the Erythraians, greeting..."

[Ephialtes]

It would probably be like in Modern Greek

Aléxandros Treetos ho Mégas

The "ee" in "treetos" is read like it's read in "weekend"

Also remember that the ancient Greeks used the letters of the Alphabet as numbers
so:

Alexandros III oh makedon would be better written
Alexandros G oh Makedon (G as the the third letter of the greek Alphabet "Gamma") or
Αλέξανδος Γ' Ο Μακεδών