You're getting remarkably huffy about this.Taphoi wrote:You are wrong to compare the probabilityof 14 with the probability of fatherhood at all other ages, because the latter allows a much greater duration to achieve fatherhood. Rather the probability at 14 should be compared with the probability for some other single year. We can say for example that in a town like Rochester in the modern US it is about ten times more likely that a man will conceive a child at the age of 20 than at the age of 14. Thus it is not even significantly statistically unlikely that Philip could have conceived Ptolemy at 14. It is quite wrong to cite Philip's age as a reason to disbelieve the story.
As for Pausanius, I cannot see any problem for the view that Ptolemy was fathered by Philip. It is either possible that Philip as a royal prince really did negotiate the marriage to Lagos, else Pausanius is reading something into the story which was not in the ultimate source, else Lucian is wrong about Ptolemy's age and he was fathered when Philip was already king.
On the matter of Diodorus you continue to pursue arguments from his silence, even though there are good reasons for Hieronymus (Diodorus' source) to have exercised discretion in these matters. This is not sound historical method. Arrian does not mention the Branchidae, but that is not a sound reason to argue that they did not exist.
Best wishes,
Andrew
My (one-off) comment about Diodorus was a joke -- hence the emoticon!
Putting aside your suggestions that Pausanias and Lucian were simply wrong (which is a line of argument you can use to support any conclusion you like), can you give any precedent or example for Philip to have married Arsinoe off to a compliant patsy when he was only 14 and just a minor princeling between hostageships?
As a general principle in genealogical reconstructions, those which push people to biological extremes are usually regarded as improbable unless there is strong circumstantial evidence to the contrary. 14 is an extremely young age for paternity, and the circumstantial evidence for the veracity of the story is weak.
Chris