After the death of Alexander the Great, one of his generals, Ptolemy, seized Egypt and established the "Ptolemaic kingdom." For nearly three centuries Egypt was ruled by his descendants, all of whom were named Ptolemy. The Ptolemies carefully adhered to Egyptian customs in order to remain popular with their subjects. Ptolemy II took for his second wife, for instance, his full sister, Arsinoe. As a result, first she, and then he, received the surname Philadelphus ("sibling lover"). He did not have children by her. Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt (see page I-318), was married in turn to two of her brothers, though each marriage was purely formal, for both were children at the time of the marriage.

Furthermore, in the Persian dominions in the days before Alexander's conquest, nicest was not abhorred and father-daughter unions were allowed. Antiochus the Great ruled over most of the core of the old Persian Empire. It is not on record that he followed Persian custom in this respect, but that old custom may have been in the mind of the anonymous Greek writer who first invented the tale which worked its way down the centuries and came to rest in Shakespeare's Pericles.

To keep his luscious daughter from the princely suitors that sought her hand, Antiochus forced all to attempt to solve a riddle. Failure to solve the riddle was punished with death and numerous suitors had already suffered that penalty.

The play itself begins before the palace at Antioch, where a young suitor has come to present himself for the hand of the princess. Antiochus says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

Tyre is a city on the Mediterranean coast, about 220 miles south of Antioch. It is much the more ancient of the two cities, for it was a flourishing town in the thirteenth century b.c. when the ancient Egyptian Empire was at its height.

Tyre was an important port of the Canaanites, who were called Phoenicians by the Greeks. Its ships ventured far through the Mediterranean, founding what eventually became the still greater city of Carthage on the north African shore. Tyrian ships even ventured outside the Mediterranean, reaching Britain on the north and, as one tale has it, circumnavigating the African continent to the south.

Tyre's stronghold was on a rocky island off the shore and this, combined with her navy, kept her secure against the land-based empires of Asia. She maintained her independence not only against David's Israelite Empire but against the much more dangerous Assyrian and Chaldean empires. Nebuchadrezzar subjected it to a thirteen-year siege from 587 to 574 b.c. and managed only a partial victory.

The real end of Tyre's independence came in 332 b.c., when one much greater than Nebuchadrezzar banged against its gates. This was Alexander the Great himself. He had been sweeping through Asia Minor with scarcely any resistance and was now heading toward Egypt, when Tyre unexpectedly refused to yield. Even Alexander required seven full months to take Tyre, and when he completed the job, he was vengeful enough to have ten thousand of its citizens executed and another thirty thousand sold into slavery.

Although Tyre recovered to some extent, it remained only a shadow of its former self, first under the Ptolemies of Egypt, then under the Seleucid Empire, and finally under the Roman Empire.

It was in 198 b.c., just about the suggested time of the events of this play, that Antiochus the Great wrested the southern part of Syria from Egypt.

Tyre vanished from the view of western Europe after the breakup of the Roman Empire, but reappeared in the time of the Crusades. The Crusaders captured it in 1124 and for over a century it remained one of the chief cities of the Christian "Kingdom of Jerusalem." When the Crusaders were finally driven out of the East, Tyre was destroyed. A small village, still bearing the old name, exists on its site now, in southern Lebanon.

The original Greek version of the story of Pericles is lost, but a Latin prose romance based on that Greek version exists. It begins with the incest and riddle of Antiochus, and the young man who comes to win the princess is "Apollonius of Tyre." The "of Tyre" merely means he was born there, or lives there. To make him Prince of Tyre is an anachronism, for Tyre did not have independent rulers in Hellenistic times.

Shakespeare did not use the name Apollonius. He was influenced, apparently, by a character in Arcadia, a romance written in 1580 by Sir Philip Sidney, which had as one of its heroes a character named Pyrocles. Pyrocles' nobility was something like that which Shakespeare had in mind for his own hero, and, perhaps for that reason, he used the name, converting it to the more common Greek form of Pericles.

The only important historical Pericles was the leader of democratic Athens from 460 to 429 b.c. Under him, Athens was at the height of its power and culture and his rule may be taken as coinciding with the Golden Age of Greece. It must be emphasized, though, that the Pericles of Shakespeare's play has nothing whatever to do with Pericles of Golden Age Athens.

Pericles declares himself aware of the danger of wooing Antiochus' daughter, and she is brought out before him-a vision of loveliness. Antiochus says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 28-30

This is a reference to the eleventh of the twelve labors which Hercules was supposed to undergo in the Greek myths. The Hesperides are so named from a Greek word meaning "west." They were the three daughters of Hesperus, the Evening Star (which always appears in the west after sunset), according to one version of the myth. Another version has them the daughters of the Titan Atlas, who gave his name to the Atlantic Ocean and who was associated with what was, to the Greeks, the Far West.

On the far western section of the north African coast there was supposed to be a garden containing a tree bearing golden apples (oranges, I wonder?), which was guarded by an ever watchful dragon. Hercules achieved this task, as he did all others, but Antiochus seems to doubt that Pericles can do the equivalent.

Antiochus presents the riddle Pericles must solve. It is a silly riddle and quite transparent. Pericles sees the answer at once and is horrified. He carefully hints at the truth and Antiochus is, in his turn, horrified.

Pericles sees that to have solved the riddle is as dangerous as to have missed it and leaves hurriedly for Tyre. Antiochus sends a servant after the young prince to poison him.

Even at Tyre, Pericles is uneasy. He is not far enough from Antioch and he feels that Antiochus will come against him with an army and bring misery on the whole city. (And well he might, for in actual history, Tyre became part of Antiochus' dominions in 198 b.c.)

Pericles tells his loyal lord, Helicanus, the story and says he intends to go into exile: