12 THE GREAT EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION. 
uaxtuor is no longer strictly limited to the native Egyptian soldiers; it is applied also to “Greek 
machimot.”  WKgyptians are then called expressly “Egyptian machimoi” and play a much 
smaller part than before, it seems.' Probably the Ptolemies, after the unfortunate experiences 
of the great revolution, had filled the vacant soldier fiefs with Greeks in order to eliminate 
gradually that dangerous native class. y | 
We should expect that the soldiers, claiming to be superior to the cowardly serf-class of 
the peasants, rather lived from their fields by subletting them to the peasants, but it remains 
to be examined whether the lots of the soldiers as described by Herodotus (II, 168, “12 Arures’’) 
allowed this plan, which would agree so well with Oriental manners. The Greek papyrus 63 
of the Louvre (Notices et extr. des manuscr., XVIII, p. 360) speaks of the economic condition of 
the soldiers under Ptolemy Euergetes II. (Cp. Lumbroso, L’économie politique, 229.2) ‘This 
petition describes the warriors as (l. 87) “in the city night and day, overworked with their 
duties” (Aerovpyiar) (1. 100). “Of the people (Aaoi) dwelling in the villages, the majority, 
driven by bitter need, must work and earn a living; but many of those connected with the army 
(rev év TH oTpaTiwTiK@® epouevwy) can not live from the state appointments. Some of the 
machimoi, rather the majority, can not with their own labor procure from their own lot (é 
Tov idiov kAnpous alroupyeiv) enough’”’ and must live over the winter by borrowing money. They 
have not even enough seed for their fields (1. 110). 
Unfortunately, it is not clear how all these gloomy descriptions apply to the native warriors. 
The “‘people”’ (Aaot) ought to be distinguished from them according to the ordinary use of this 
word (cp. below on Rosetta, |. 12), and indeed (lines 132, 133) we find “‘the poor people and the 
machimot.”’ But that petition does not seem to make this distinction regularly. Finally, the 
needy warriors there (in 165 B. C.) appear to be largely Greeks, accord ng to what has been 
observed above. ‘Therefore we are in doubt whether those complaints may be taken as a 
description of the native warrior’s life. Granting all this and admitting the petition to move in 
great exaggerations, nevertheless we may conclude that the warriors always had only a very 
moderate existence under the Ptolemies. We suspect also that not much remained of the 
freedom from taxation which they still had enjoyed under the Persians, but we have no certain 
data on this point.* 
It is questionable how often the Ptolemies armed the native warriors. I should not press 
the passage of Polybius (V, 107), which we shall discuss below, so far as to imply that, up to the 
year 217’ B.C., they never had been used practically. It would be strange if the first three 
kings of the Macedonian dynasty had not needed them in their numerous wars. Diodorus 
(XIX, 80) refers to an employment of the natives in war under the first Ptolemy in a rather 
credible way. Still we may infer from Polybius that they were not used regularly and had not 
been called to arms for some time; the special necessity of an unusually dangerous attack on 


1J. Lesquier, p. 10, 105, Pap. Tebtunis, I, Index. 
2 I found the edition needing many corrections, after the facsimile, pl. 6, but do not have the book now at hand. 
3 The Mendes stela (1. 14) reports that the king Ptolemy selected as pages or guards for the sacred ram or goat of Mendes “‘of the 
fine youths from the warriors (mnftyw, see p. 38) of Egypt, the best ¢p(y)w from the children . . . ” ‘This.looks as though the 
wealthier temples had to contribute something for the support of the warrior families under such pretexts of an honorary employment. 
Such a pretext for a sinecure would be more natural with the aristocracy of Macedonian blood, but would these people send their 
children to the temples of the native gods for such services? 
‘For practical reasons I have throughout this book, as much as possible, adopted the chronology given by Mahaffy, The Empire 
of the Ptolemies, without touching various uncertainties. 
