Magas of Cyrene - Family Background and Early Life

Family Background and Early Life

Magas was the first born son of the noblewoman Berenice and her first husband Philip. He had two younger sisters: Antigone and Theoxena. His father, Philip was the son Amyntas by an unnamed mother. Based on the implying of Plutarch (Pyrrhus 4.4), his father was previously married and had children, including daughters born to him. Phillip served as a military officer in the service of the Greek King Alexander the Great and was known in commanding one division of the Phalanx in Alexander’s wars.

His mother Berenice was a noblewoman from Eordeaea. She was the daughter of local obscure nobleman Magas and noblewoman Antigone. Berenice’s mother was the niece of the powerful Regent Antipater and was a distant collateral relative to the Argead dynasty. He was the namesake of his maternal grandfather.

About 318 BC, his father died of natural causes. After the death of Magas’ father, Magas’ mother took him and his siblings to Egypt where they were a part of the entourage of his mother’s second maternal cousin Eurydice. Eurydice was then the wife of Ptolemy I Soter, the first Greek Pharaoh and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

By 317 BC, Ptolemy I fell in love with Berenice and divorced Eurydice to marry her. His mother through her marriage to Ptolemy I, was an Egyptian Queen and the Queen mother of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Through his mother’s marriage to Ptolemy I, Magas was a stepson to Ptolemy I; became an Egyptian Prince living in his stepfather’s court and was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. His mother bore Ptolemy I three children: two daughters, Arsinoe II, Philotera and the future Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus.