In this paper, I shall look at the early stages of the development of the office of gymnasiarch in the gymnasia of villages in Ptolemaic Egypt. I intend to show how the rural gymnasia originally had the structure and status of simple private associations and then became more institutionalised entities invested with some sort of public importance or character, although never becoming fully public institutions controlled by the central or local administration. This process seems to have been well on its way already towards the end of the third century, and by the end of the Ptolemaic period gymnasia occupied a social position of such a kind that made them ready to play the new role with which Roman rule eventually invested them¹. In identifying the development of the legal status of Ptolemaic gymnasia, the organisation of the governing body plays a particularly important role, and that is why it is the object of special attention.

As we know, Ptolemaic gymnasia – unlike those of the Roman period – are found not only in the three Greek poleis and in the nome-capitals, but also in the villages, especially in the Arsinoite nome, where a great quantity of land was reclaimed and allotted to cle ruchs after the drainage of marsh-land by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. In the three poleis, the gymnasium presumably followed the civic constitutional traditions of a Greek polis²: it is therefore not surprising at all that the oldest attestations of gymnasiarchs in Egypt concern the Greek poleis of Alexandria and Naukratis, and date to the third century³.

Gymnasiarchs in the nome-capitals and villages appear from the second century onwards – supposed examples from the end of the third century are in fact doubtful⁴. The fragmentary state of our evidence certainly contributes to the patchy picture, but I think that at least in this case we have enough reasons to believe that until the end of the third century gymnasiarchs had not yet been introduced for the gymnasia in the Egyptian chora.

One papyrus from the Zenon archive is particularly relevant here; it is the oldest document giving us evidence for some internal organisation of a rural gymnasium⁵. A donation was given for the village gymnasium to Demeas, at the time when he was president; but since he did not spend this donation, it is requested that the money be passed on to the two new presidents, Agelaos and Philios⁶. It is the only evidence for the office of president, director, superintendent or chief (προεοτηκώc) of the gymnasium.

It seems that the president was the official person in charge of controlling the activities of the gymnasium: he was its representative, the person responsible for the administration, and entrusted with control of financial matters. As such, with the duties of treasurer, he personally received and administered the money contributed from private funding and he presumably had to pay for the expenses of the gymnasium. The charge could also be shared by more than one person: undoubtedly, in this way, the administrative and financial burdens would become lighter.

The nature of the role (and the name) of the president-chief was strictly connected to the formal character of simple association which the Ptolemaic gymnasium appears to have originally had: a group of private individuals who decided to gather around a common meeting-place, privately funded and run, in the form of a club with a president-in-chief (προεcτηκώc), who took care of the organisation and represented them when necessary.

A similar term (προcτάτηc) is indeed normally employed to define presidents of various private associations⁷. Some of them can be connected to the gymnasium⁸. With the exception of this text from the Zenon archive, the office of president/chief of the gymnasium is otherwise unattested⁹.

Firstly, it is striking that the duties of the president resemble those of the gymnasiarch. The gymnasiarch was indeed in charge of the general organisation of the gymnasium; he was responsible for paying the daily expenses and the other expenses which the gymnasium might incur¹⁰. He took care of the management of the finances, being responsible for the good order of the accounts of the gymnasium. In short, he was the person who bore overall responsibility.

This being so, one would seriously wonder what a gymnasiarch would have to do in the gymnasium of Philadelpheia during the presidency of Demeas. The most logical answer would be to suppose that there was no gymnasiarch at all. And, as I have already said, I think that this is indeed true: the president was established before the introduction of gymnasiarchs in village gymnasia, regularly attested from the second century.

In the beginning, gymnasia in villages were simple meeting centres for the few people whose background was Hellenic: with a desire for group identity typical of immigrants in a foreign country, they met as a small association in what was often probably a simple hall and courtyard (or not much more), used for physical activities and recreational gatherings. That place was probably what most sharply reminded them of the gymnasia, and therefore the term was immediately adopted for its simplicity and familiarity, and for the ring of Greekness attached to it.

The lack of sources for the period certainly biases our research, but from the evidence which is available to us, I am inclined to see a Macedonian heritage influencing the original character of the rural gymnasia of Egypt; or at least one could see in it a case in support of this interpretation. In Macedonia, gymnasia are made the object of regulations by the city around late third/early second century, as the gymnasiarchic law from Beroea and an ephebarchic law from Amphipolis seem to attest¹¹. Before that time they seem to have functioned as independent private associations¹². In fact, even after being put under the supervision of the city, the internal administration was carried out independently: the members of the gymnasium took their decisions and managed their private funds in complete autonomy. The interference of the city in the gymnasium’s business related to the gymnasiarch only: from that moment onwards he became a civic magistrate, was elected by the city and was responsible to the city for the gymnasium’s accounts, on which he was compelled to give reports to the city’s magistrates in charge of the public accounts (έξεταcταί). But the city neither financially supported nor directly controlled the gymna sium¹³: after recognising the importance of such an institution in the framework of civic life and for the physical (and military) education of the youth, it regulated its governing body in a first attempt to establish an influence on it – royal interest behind this process may well be supposed¹⁴.

The original Macedonian element among the cleruchs in Egypt is well attested¹⁵: one founder of a gymnasium, out of the five we know, was most probably a Macedonian (that is what his name, Peukestes, suggests)¹⁶; he founded the gymnasium in the village of Mouchis in the Arsinoite nome in the second half of the third century¹⁷. At all events, the Macedonian version of the gymnasium (rather than, say, the Athenian one after the reform of 334) suited perfectly the social environment of the Egyptian countryside of early Ptolemaic times, where cities and even proper urban centres were absent¹⁸: what the cleruchs needed was a centre in which to gather and perform physical exercises and hold religious ceremonies, without implications of citizenship or dependence on civic institutions. After all this is what occurred in the gymnasia of Macedonia up to the third century too¹⁹: the youth trained, anointed themselves with oil and held races, sacrifices and banquets inde pendently of the city; and not only the youth, but adults as well²⁰. The lack of urban centres and the history of the settlements must have played a particularly important role in this respect: how many independent palaestrae which the adults could use instead of the gymnasium might there have been in a village? Probably none²¹.

Besides, the gymnasium in the Egyptian countryside was introduced by and for those who had settled in the new country from various parts of the Hellenistic oecumene: they were military men and later emigrants, obviously adults, and the gymnasium had to meet their needs first, and eventually those of their future offspring. The gymnasium had to per form the job of a club, and, although sharing the same name, its original internal structure and size were not quite comparable to those of the civic gymnasia.

For practical reasons there was soon a need for someone among the users of rural gymnasia who would oversee their management and stand at the head of their gathering places (thus the use of the perfect participle of προίcτημι). From this perspective, a shared chairmanship-presidency would not seem to present a problem, as long as the two presidents were able to run the place in orderly fashion. It was a different business for the gymnasiarchy proper, which in Egypt was a yearly charge (as is clearly stated in some documents) and can therefore be used for dating²²: for that reason and from some hints in the texts, it does not seem plausible that there was more than one gymnasiarch (for one gymnasium – which often meant for one town/village) at a time²³.

With the passing of time (perhaps from the last decades of the third century?), the village gymnasia increased in their importance, the number of users, the size and range of activities and their position in society: they began a process of institutionalisation which eventually led to the recognition of rural gymnasia as places with public importance. An influence of the civic gymnasia can be reasonably supposed: often the members of rural gymnasia were not extraneous to the life of their civic counterparts. In a completely different environment, though, without any civic background, the members of the rural gymnasia started to recreate in the villages what they saw in the poleis. Village gymnasia therefore gave up their under-stated status and started to adopt the internal organisation of the gymnasia in the Greek poleis, although formally remaining private associations²⁴. Presidents were no longer of use: there were now gymnasiarchs, kosmetai and all the rest²⁵.

The chronology of the attestations of ephebes in village gymnasia seems also to agree with this picture: like the gymnasiarchs, they also appear from the second century onwards. Obviously I do not intend to say that young people were not allowed into the gymnasia before that time: simply, they were probably not formally organised as ephebes strictly speaking.

Similarly, I think that the first steps of this process of institutionalisation can be traced in a petition to the king: P.Enteux. 8 (Samareia [Arsinoite nome], 221). The cleruch Apol lodoros, founder of the gymnasium in Samareia, left Polykleitos heir to his fortune. Polykleitos lives in the capital and appoints another cleruch, the Macedonian Aristo machos, to act as superintendent (προεcτηκώc) and to administer his assets in Samareia²⁶. The gymnasium is seen to be part of Polykleitos’ properties. Hence, Aristomachos has been taking care of it for some time on his behalf. The man is writing to the King because a certain Dallos and his purported wife acted wrongly towards the gymnasium²⁷: the passage is unfortunately fragmentary and not clear, but it seems that the two occupied the building (or part of it) illegally and went on living there. The gymnasium is considered to be and treated as private property belonging to the founder’s family. The summarizing docket written by the office of the strategos on the back of the petition pointedly reads «Aristomachos against Dallos, about buildings»²⁸: the case brought forward to the attention of the authority is considered merely a private dispute, without any mention of the gymnasium.

Nonetheless, a passage in the text may be worthy of particular attention: Aristomachos obtained permission from the strategos before demolishing a collapsing construction built upon the gymnasium²⁹. In this case, Aristomachos’ behaviour may also be connected to the circumstances, and to the type of document, a petition: he is keen to mention that he sought and obtained permission to demolish the building because he wants to strengthen his case, showing how his activity was legal and carried out with the approval of the autho rity; but it also points towards a developing public character of the gymnasium.

Rather than thinking about a direct control of the gymnasium by the local administration (which is nowhere attested; the contrary, in fact, seems very clear from the text), it seems closer to the truth to think that the authority was considered somehow interested in the building. As one sees in the few other cases of requests for permission to demolish, this can only be the case because the gymnasium had started acquiring a position of local public importance³⁰: owing to the kind of activities carried out in the premises with their sacred tone (sacrifices to the King and other links to the dynastic cult and the Royal House) and to a Hellenised local elite which tended to identify itself with the leading class (and very often was part of it), the gymnasium started playing the role of a publicly embedded place, where important men met and important events took place. One could even think that the gymnasium invested itself with the function of rendering public the sacred nature of the Sovereign and of introducing him into the daily life of the Greek-speaking communities of the villages of the Egyptian chora.

I think that by the end of the third century the public character of rural gymnasia must have been distinctive and generally perceived, and this eventually led to the introduction of the rural gymnasiarchs, whose complete diffusion is attested in the second century. And this process continued as time went on: at the end of the Ptolemaic era, the gymnasium occupied such a position in the local community that it was made the object of official visits by the strategos, who offered sacrifices in it and held special audience with its members³¹. A similar picture is offered for the role of gymnasiarchs, who could also occupy a semi-official position of authority as the first port of call for financial quarrels among the local population³².

I am aware that it is often here the case of an argumentum e silentio, but I hope to have made clear enough how the evidence at our disposal seems to testify that the gymnasiarchy in the rural gymnasia of Egypt developed from the presidency of simple private associations to a more institutionalised role, thus also attesting the evolution of the social status of the gymnasia themselves.

The rural gymnasium in Egypt was born thanks to private euergetism as a recreational centre for a few Hellenic immigrants who gave a local interpretation to the old classical (or rather traditional Macedonian?) gymnasial institution, as an answer to the necessity of having a gathering place where to meet in association. It then became a communal centre for public feasts, contests, cults and ceremonies: a sort of institutionalised gentlemen’s club. Still privately run and used by clubs and associations, it acquired public importance and character at local level as place of the community and was recognised and visited by central and local authorities: an official public meeting place of the Greek-speaking community, whose most visible members belonged to the rich or well-to-do class, with more or less tight connections to the army, the central bureaucracy and the Royal House.