Apollonius of Rhodes cannot be precisely dated, but he was active in the third century BC during the period of ancient Greek history that scholars typically refer to as the Hellenistic Period. The dates of this period are highly approximate and continue to be debated, but in the broadest terms, the Hellenistic period has been said to encompass the years between the death of Alexander of Macedon in 323 BC and the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the Ptolemaic Empire fell to the Roman Empire. After the death of Alexander, his successors divided the lands he had conquered into three empires: the Seleucids in Asia, the Antigonids in Macedonia, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. During and after Alexander’s conquests, colonization and immigration expanded the Greek-speaking world, and what it meant to be a Hellene continued to evolve.

The Hellenistic empire that most concerns readers of Apollonius is the Ptolemies, who ruled from a new city, Alexandria, named after Alexander. Unlike the city-states of archaic and classical Hellas, which claimed ancient and mythic origins, Alexandria was a city founded in the historical present by the people who lived there. In addition to being new, it was an ethnically mixed city of Greek-speaking immigrants from around the Hellenic world and indigenous populations.