Kos in 218 B.C.

Kos — Ptolemaic Egypt › The Overseas Empire.

The Dodecanese island where Ptolemy II was born, and ever after a favoured cornerstone of the Aegean order — a leading member of the Ptolemy-sponsored League of the Islanders (the Nesiotic League) and a station of the fleet. Famed for its Asklepieion and its physicians, and for the poet Philitas who taught the masters of Alexandrian verse, Kos binds the dynasty to the cultural life of the islands.