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.
Read more about this topic: Magas Of Cyrene
Famous quotes containing the words family, background, early and/or life:
“For most women who are considering it, single motherhood is not their first choice, but it’s not their last one either. They would prefer a husband in their family, but they’d rather have a family without one than no family at all.”
—Anne Cassidy. “Every Child Should Have a Father But....,” McCall’s (March 1985)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Kittering’s brain. What we will he think when he resumes life in that body? Will he thank us for giving him a new lease on life? Or will he object to finding his ego living in that human junk heap?”
—W. Scott Darling. Erle C. Kenton. Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke)