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lacking in essentials: oil, wheat and clothing. Should a woollen cloak
be too expensive, he would be satisfied for the time being with a linnen
one, but "give an end to our poverty so that we do not appear as players
waiting to be signed on and so that they should not persecute us in our
nudity. Cease to be inconsistent in your obligations lest we become totally
discouraged". The writer was obviously in dire financial straits.
He felt under pressure also due to the lowering of his social position and
the accompanying care for the education of his son. As regards that
the recipient of the letter had given certain definite promises which
must at last be carried out. The description of financial distress must
not make us attach undue importance to the appeal to the responsability
for the maintenance of the Greek good name. It is not possible,
however, to deduct the impression that the father Pyrrhon wishes to
entrust his son to a trainer of athletics or to a manager in the sense
given to this text in the affair Marrius (History of Education in classical
antiquity, 1957). "that young slaves received an athletic training in the
palaestra with the object of becoming professional contestants". We
have already referred to the fact that in Hellenistic times there was no
indication that slaves were entered in the gymnasia, or that there were
special palaestra for them.
The word palaestridion of the Pyrrhon text would confirm our
contention that "palaestra" refers especially to schooling and culture.
Probably here it is a question of one of the childrens' schools which Nilsson
describes (The Hellenistic schools, 1955). for which generous patrons
often undertook to grant scholarships. The recipient of the Pyrrhon
letter would in consequence have been one of the protectors of education
with a Greek conscience. If we would be certain of this, then we would
have defined a significant characterisation of a man whose life and activity
are placed in a certain way clearly before us, by other Greek citizens
of Egypt of the Ptolemies during that period.
The person in question is a certain Zeno, born in Kaunos of Asia
Minor, who had traded successfully in Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine and
Alexandria. Recently he had been nominated Agent General and in the
confidence of the Royal Minister of Finance, Apollonios, one of the great
feudal lords of the land. In 257 B.C. Zeno transferred his headquarters
to Philadelphia where he was exclusively preoccupied with the mangement
of the extensive landed properties of his master Apollonios. This
Zeno would appear to have been a representative type of the Hellenistic
city dweller: wealthy and with influence and contacts all over the
world.
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