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wanted to send his son to the palaestridion, as also regarding the Macedonian
Hermon who wanted to divest himself of the assumption of
the obligation of being in charge of the liturgy of the torch procession.
The salary of the child educator Phanias is referred to and we learn of
the request of the Gymnasion master Panormus to Zeno to send him
from Memphis a dozen scrapers of the Sicyonian type, and in fact six
for men and six for boys, since they will be cheaper from there. A short
but illuminating note has been preserved regarding certain financial
demands of the "horse-riders" of Philadelphia, connected with the Gymnasion,
and about which they requested the intervention of Zeno. The
palaestra of Alexandria is, one the contrary, the object of a lengthy
and vehement, if not always entirely comprehensible, letter of denouncement.
It is a question of intrigues, which are woven by a favourite of the
king, and concerns the opening of the palaestra about which the king
must not be informed and about the appointment of someone named
Ptolemy as a manager or coach of the establishment. But even in this
there lie at the end two precise requests of a business nature: "Write
to Artemidorus to give the cloak to the boy" and "send me the youth
that you showed me so that we can admit him to the lectures".
We can note therefore: The palaestra of Alexandria is the object
of court intrigues and that here the king takes the final decisions and
that the appointment of a certain Ptolemy is being discussed, obviously
the same athletic coach who considers himself particularly indebted to
Zeno and whom we will come across again during the examination of
information of great significance regarding gymnastics.
Thus, from the little information and indications obtained from this
collection of letters, the outline of a picture can be traced, which, supplemented
from other sources, allows us to understand at least the
milieu in which gymnasion education was carried out, and the governing
lines which direct it. And here an attempt should be made to interpret
a text of Zeno's correspondence which deals almost exclusively
with gymnasion interpretation. It deals with the answers of a certain
Hierocles to a question of Zeno, which has not been traced, regarding
the achievements and progress of the boy Pyrrhus who was being
brought up in the palaestra of Alexandria at the expense of Zeno.
This letter of Hierocles exists, strangely enough, in three, but not
precisely similar versions, the receipt of which are noted with two
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