The Chremonidean War, which broke out in late 268 BC, provides the stage for the better known part of Patroclus' career. Patroclus has frequently been called "nauarchos" (admiral) by modern studies, beginning with the British classicist William Woodthorpe Tarn, who in the early 20th century conceived the Ptolemaic "nauarchos" as having been an office of almost viceregal authority, held by men like Philocles, the king of Sidon, for terms of ten years each. As the French historian Marcel Launey has shown, the title is applied to Patroclus only once in ancient sources, by the 2nd-century BC geographer Pausanias; all contemporary or later literary and epigraphical sources refer to him as "strategos" (general), which must have been his actual title. Indeed, according to the German classicist Hans Hauben, his Macedonian origin seems to argue for a previous career in the army rather than in the navy. The actual extent of Patroclus' authority is a matter of dispute in current scholarship, but it is clear that he enjoyed broad powers over the other Ptolemaic commanders and their allies in the Aegean Sea.