Kyrenean

Recall the intimate relations which we know to have subsisted between Kyrene and Arcadia: community of cults, such as that of Zeus Lykaios; the divine figure of Aristaios, son of the nymph Kyrene and a god in Arcadia; the mission of Demonax—Demonax of Mantineia—to reform the Kyrenean constitution; […]

In 322 Kyrene raised 30,000 troops under elected generals, but these included Libyan and Carthaginian allies. Ophellas, Ptolemy I’s governor of Kyrene, marched in 308 to join Agathokles of Syracuse with 10,000 foot, 600 horse, and 100 chariots with 300 crew, plus 10,000 non-combatants. The chariots were presumably Kyrenean; […]

As the University of Chicago’s Alain Bresson argues in his definitive analysis of the document, the actual price charged by the Kyrenean state authorities was probably well below what they could have demanded in light of the grain shortage.

There is no specific evidence for Kyrenean troops being called up to fight for Ptolemaic Egypt, unless the cavalry “from Libya” at Raphia were indeed Kyreneans, but it is likely they could be called on if wanted. Kyreneans however seem to have enlisted in the Ptolemaic regular army in some numbers.

We cannot know why Stephanos disguised his witnesses as Kyreneans. Stephanos may not have wanted the court to know that the witnesses he was presenting—who were perhaps manifestly non-Greek—were slaves. But why Kyrene was selected as their country of origin is not clear.

As Alain Bresson cogently argues, the Kyreneans erected the inscription because they were proud of having saved the other Greeks from a potential famine.