Students of antiquity usually follow Jakob Attje Otesen Larsen and believe that the notion koinon, ethnos and sympliteia were “official” or semi-official designations for Greek Leagues. [1] This view was challenged by Adalberto Giovannini, who argued that the terms klinon, ethnos, sympoliteia had no legal meaning. Consequently, Giovannini concluded that there was no difference between federal states and unitary ones in ancient Greece. [2] The most systemic and powerful defence of traditional views was presented by Frederick W. Walbank in a short study entitled “Were there Greek federal States?” [3]

In the course of seminars on the Hellenistic world the question was raised several times: who were the categories of persons named in Ptolemaic documents, and in particular who were "the Persai"? We can attempt an answer by considering the employment of non European personnel as troops in Alexander's lifetime and in the years shortly after his death. We can then consider which of these troops may have settled in Ptolemaic Egypt. The article is therefore in two parts.

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(c) Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond CBE, DSO (15 November 1907 – 24 March 2001) was a British scholar of ancient Greece of great accomplishment and an operative for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied Greece during World War II. His scholarship focused on the history of ancient Macedonia and Epirus.