The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

290 E. S. G. ROBINSON.
of Athens and Smyrna, to which it may
be added that
the position of Magas himself would be likely to give
the name popularity; and (3) that, if the monogram
must be referred to a royal person, there is the grand-
son of Magas, son of Berenice II and Ptolemy III,
about whom we know nothing except that he was very
popular with the army, and that like his mother he was
put to death shortly after the accession of his brother
on suspicion of plotting for the throne.
On the strength of the first or second of these
considerations the Berenice coins have been placed
between the death of Demetrius the Handsome and
the accession of Ptolemy III, 210 when it has been sup-
posed that the latter reigned
wife. 217
as consort of his future
This, however, seems impossible, for the
portrait is that of a mature woman, and Berenice
certainly was not such at the time, while the Berenice
coins, in view of the common monogram M~, cannot
be separated from those reading BA3IAEI13 flTOAE-
MAIOY, some of which, as we have seen, must be later
than 250.
The third explanation, that we have here to deal
with the younger Magas, and that these very coins
imply a condition of affairs which would account for
his murder, has been suggested by Miiller 218 and
adopted by Six 219 , who
assigns to the same date the
well-known bronze coins with the supposed reading
BASIAEHS MAfA. 220 But there is no ground for
16
217
Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Berenike II.
Mahaffy, Empire of the Ptolemies, p. 491, notes to pp. 188
and 196.
218 Vol. i, p. 147.
219 Num. Chron., 1897, p. 223
220
Svor., Nos. 860-61.