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Historical person
369/368–282 BCE
Ptolemy I Soter was a Macedonian companion and general of Alexander the Great who became ruler of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 BCE. Appointed satrap in the first division of the empire, he secured Egypt as his power base, brought Alexander’s body to Egypt and defended his position through the wars of the Successors. In 305/304 BCE he assumed the royal title, establishing the Ptolemaic dynasty that would govern Egypt for nearly three centuries.
Ptolemy combined Macedonian military kingship with the institutions and religious traditions of pharaonic Egypt. Alexandria developed into the capital of his kingdom and a major centre of Hellenistic court culture, while his regime controlled Cyprus and other strategic territories at different stages of the Successor wars. He abdicated in favour of his son Ptolemy II shortly before his death in 282 BCE. Ancient tradition also associated him with a history of Alexander’s campaigns, now lost but used by later writers.
Ptolemy appears repeatedly in modern fiction about Alexander and the Successor wars, including Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games, Robert Fabbri’s Alexander sequence and Christian Cameron’s Tyrant novels. Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Alexander trilogy also includes him. The linked ancient histories, Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander and Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20, are important narrative sources for the world in which Ptolemy rose.
Series
The Tyrant series is set around the Black Sea during the conquests of Alexander the Great and the wars among his successors. It begins with the Athenian soldier Kineas and the Scythian leader Srayanka, then continues through their children Satyrus and Melitta as Macedonian generals compete to divide…
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The Alexander trilogy follows Alexander from childhood at the Macedonian court through the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire and into the violent struggle that followed his death. Fire from Heaven concentrates on his formation under Philip II, Olympias and Aristotle; The Persian Boy narrates the later campaigns through…
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Alexander’s Legacy follows the violent struggle for power after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. The sequence is not about Alexander’s conquests themselves but about the generals, royal women, heirs and soldiers left to divide an empire too large for any single successor to control.…
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The Alexander Trilogy follows Alexander of Macedon from his childhood at Philip II's court to the creation of an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt to Central Asia and India. The first volume traces the family, education and political violence that form the young prince; the later books…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
