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to the city of Canopus; and the Posideion, or temple of Neptune, which naturally had a place in a seaport town, where the Greek sailors might offer up their vows on setting sail, or perform them on their safe return from a long voyage. There also stood the burial-place for the Greek kings of Egypt, which was named the Soma, because it held "the body," as that of Alexander was from its importance called. The city was supplied with water from the Nile, which was led into large public cisterns built under the houses, with two or three stories of arches. On the other side of the Heptastadium, and on the outside of the city, were some more docks, and a ship-canal into the Lake Mareotis ; on that side also was the Necropolis, or public burial-place for the city, with large underground catacombs regularly formed with a main passage and numerous side passages branching off from it and countless cells on each side of the passages. There were also for the amusement of the citizens a theatre, an amphitheatre, a gymnasium with a large stoa or portico, a stadium in which games were celebrated every fifth year, public groves or gardens, and a hippodrome for chariot races.

Egyptian

(16) Towering above all these buildings was the temple of Serapis, the god whose worship became so popular in the later ages of the Roman empire. The Egyptian god Osiris was at the same time the bearded Bacchus of the Greeks, who conquered India beyond the Ganges, and the god of the lower regions, who sat as judge while the actions of the dead were weighed before him in a pair of scales. Inscrip- He was afterwards divided into two persons; one tions, of these was named Pthah-sokar Osiris, and the plate 4. other Apis Osiris, or Osiri-Apis. The latter, who was called Serapis by the Greeks, was in this division of the persons made the husband of Isis and the judge of the dead; and it may have been for this reason that his temple was often on the outside of the city walls with the public burialplace. He is known by his having, beside the whip and crozier which are the two sceptres of Osiris, a bull's head, which shows his connection with Apis (see Fig. 211). He was sometimes called by the Greeks the Sinopite in Dionysio Jupiter, a name which may mean Memphite Jupiter, Alexandr. from Sinopion, a hill near Memphis, as the other Osiris was named Pthah-sokar from Sakara, another hill in

Eustathius,

CHAP. VII.] THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS, THE MUSEUM. 269

the same neighbourhood. Or it may mean Pontic Jupiter, from Sinope, a city of Pontus, from whence Ptolemy is

Fig. 211.

said to have brought a statue to Plutarch.
ornament Alexandria, which De Iside
when it arrived Manetho and et Osiride.
Timotheus declared to be a Serapis. To
receive this statue a new temple was
built, which before it was finished was
the largest building in the city. Osiris
was also the god from whom the native
kings traced their pedigree; and as, to
spare the nation's wounded vanity, the
Ptolemies were no longer to be Diod. Sic.
counted as foreign conquerors, lib. i. 18.
a new god was added to the

mythology, who was given as another son
to Osiris, and named Macedon, from whom
the Macedonian kings were said to have
sprung; and they were thus brought into
the religion of the people. The

Antioch. ii.

Greeks readily took up the same Theophilus, story; and three reigns later, Satyrus traced the royal family of the Ptolemies from Bacchus or Osiris, through Hercules or Horus, and the kings of Macedonia.

Strabo, lib. xvii.

(17) But among the public buildings of Alexandria which were planned in the enlarged mind of Ptolemy, the one which chiefly calls for our notice, the one indeed to which the city owes its fairest fame, is the Museum or college of philosophy. Its chief room was a great hall, which was used as a lecture-room and common dining-room; it had it had a covered walk or portico all round the outside, and there was an exhedra or seat on which the philosophers sometimes sat in the open air. The professors or fellows of the college were supported by a public income. Its library soon became the largest in the world. It was open equally to those who read for the sake of knowledge and those who copied for the sake of gain; and it thus helped to make science, wisdom, lofty thoughts, and poetic beauties, those rare fruits of genius and industry, the common property of all that valued them. Ptolemy was himself an author; his history of Alexander's wars was highly praised by Arrian, in

whose pages we now read much of it; his love of art was shown in the buildings of Alexandria; and those agreeable manners and that habit of rewarding skill and knowledge wherever he could find them, which had already brought to his army many of the bravest of Alexander's soldiers, were now equally successful in bringing to his court such painters and sculptors, such poets, historians, and mathematicians, as soon made the Museum one of the brightest spots in the known world. Fortunate indeed was Alexandria in having a sovereign who took such a true view of his own dignity as to encourage arts and letters as the means of making himself more respected at the head of a great commercial nation. Such an academy not only brings together a number of men of learning to direct the student, but its book-shelves are a storehouse of materials for future study, and it may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of knowledge, which makes tens of thousands better for the instruction which is delivered to a few hundreds in the class rooms. The arts and letters which Ptolemy then planted, did not perhaps bear their richest fruit till the reign of his son; but they took such good root that they continued to flourish under the last of his successors, unchoked by the vices and follies by which they were then surrounded.

(18) In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained the knowledge of papyrus, a Pliny, tall rush which grows wild near the sources of the lib. xiii. 21. Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian

marshes. Before that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of trees; and public records on stone, brass, or lead; but the knowledge of papyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing in modern Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time, and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, when parchment was made, about two centuries later, it was too costly to be used as long as papyrus was within reach. Copies were multiplied on frail strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, when worth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed by time than temples and palaces of the hardest stone.

(19) While Egypt under Ptolemy was thus enjoying the advantages of its insulated position, and was thereby at

B.C. 315.

lib. xix.

leisure to cultivate the arts of peace, the other provinces were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander's generals, who were aiming like Ptolemy at raising their own power. Many changes had taken place among them in the short space of eight years which had passed since the death of Alexander. Philip Arridæus, in whose name the provinces had been governed, had been Diod. Sic. put to death; Antigonus was master of Asia Minor with a kingdom more powerful though not so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander held Macedonia, and had the care of the young Alexander Ægus (see Fig. 212), who was then called the heir to the whole of his father's wide conquests, and whose life, like that of Arridæus, was soon to end with his minority; Lysimachus was trying to form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a short time held Babylonia.

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Fig. 212.

(20) Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes, beyond being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard his province of Cole-Syria. But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over the whole of the provinces, had by force or treachery driven Seleucus out of Babylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy received him with the kindness and good policy which had before gained so many friends. No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy that Antigonus was aiming at universal conquest, and that his next attack would be upon Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of alliance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him against the common

enemy.

B.C. 314.

(21) The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasion of Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. All Syria, except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his approach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had been already removed to the ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phenicia to furnish him with eight thousand ship-builders and carpenters, to build galleys from the forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send four hundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushels

of wheat, for the use of his army within the year. By theso means he raised his fleet to two hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships of war.

B.C. 313.

(22) Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by a rising in Cyrene. The Cyrenæans, who clung to their Doric love of freedom, and were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were besieging the Egyptian, or as they would have called themselves the Macedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He at first sent messengers to order the Cyrenmans to return to their duty; but his orders were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought themselves safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the eastern frontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege of the citadel pushed forward with all possible speed. On this he sent a large land force, followed by a fleet, in order to crush the revolt at a single blow; and the ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Magas, a son of Queen Berenice and step-son of Ptolemy, was then made governor of Cyrene.

(23) When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over to Cyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island for having joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to be settled by naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very important to the neighbouring states. The island of Cyprus is one hundred and fifty miles long and seventy-five broad, or not much less than Lower Egypt. It has always been rich in corn and wine, and not less so in its mines and harbours. It had usually been divided into nine little states, each

Diod. Sic.

lib. xvi. 42. governed by a king having several cities under him.

One of these cities was Citium, whence the island or its people had been known to the Jews and in the east by the name of Chittim. It had long shared the trade of the Mediterranean with the cities of Tyre and Sidon and Tarsus, and when those seaports fell under Babylon and Persia, Cyprus shared their fate. The large and safe harbours gave to this island a great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phenicia, and Asia Minor. Alexander had given it as his opinion that the command of the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor he called Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with still greater

Arrian.

lib. ii.

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