Diogenes branches of knowledge. He was one of the men of learning who had taken part in the education of Philadelphus; and the king showed his gratitude to his Laertius, teacher by making him a present of eighty talents, or twelve thousand pounds sterling. He was for eighteen years at the head of one of the Alexandrian schools. lib. v. 58. Ptolemæi Mag. lib. vii. 3. (39) Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his observations at Alexandria in the last reign, and continued them through half of this reign. He began a cata- Syntax. logue of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and their longitudes measured from the equinoctial point; by the help of which Hipparchus, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, made the great discovery that the equinoctial point had moved. He has left an observation of the place of Venus, on the seventeenth day of the month of Mesore, in the thirteenth year of this reign, which by the modern tables of the planets is known to have been on the eighth day of October, B.C. 272; from which we learn that the first year of Philadelphus ended in November, B.c. 284, and the first year of Ptolemy Soter ended in November, B.C. 322; thus fixing the chronology of these reigns with a certainty which leaves nothing to be wished for. (40) Aristillus also made observations of the same kind at Alexandria. Few of them have been handed down to us, but they were made use of by Hipparchus. Dr. Young, Astron. Col. Ptolemæl Syntax. Mag. lib. vii. 3. likely Lib. iii. 2. ap. Wallis. (41) Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most came to Alexandria in the last reign, as some of his observations were made in the very beginning of the reign of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer who is known to have taken the true view of the solar system. He said that the sun was the centre round Archimedes which the earth moved in a circle; and, as if he had foreseen that even in after ages we should hardly be able to measure the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth's yearly path bore no greater proportion to the hollow globe of the heavens in which the stars were set, than the point without size in the centre of a circle does to its circumference. But the work in which he proved these great truths, or perhaps threw out these happy guesses, is lost; and the astro nomers who followed him clung to the old belief that the earth was the centre round which the sun moved. The only writings of Aristarchus which now remain are his short work on the distances and magnitude of the sun and moon, in which the error in his results arises from the want of good observations rather than from any mistake in his mathematical principles. Suidas. Tzetzes in Lyco (42) Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among the Pleiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His Phænomena is a short astronomical poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims at any phronte. of the grace or flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the constellations one by one, and tells us what stars are seen in the head, feet, and other parts of each figure; and then the seasons, and the stars seen at night at each time of the year. When maps were little known, it must have been of great use, in giving to learners who wished to know the names of the stars that knowledge which we now gain from globes; and its being in verse made it the more easy to remember. The value which the ancients set upon this poem is curiously shown by the number of Latin translations which were made from it. Cicero in his early youth, before he was known as an orator or philosopher, perhaps before he himself knew in which path of letters he was soon to take the lead, translated this poem; and it is not a little proof of the high place which Cicero's writings held in the opinions of those with whom he lived, that this is perhaps the only copy of school-boy's verses which has come down to us from the ancients. The next translation is by Germanicus Cæsar, whose early death and many good qualities have thrown such a bright light upon his name. He shone as a general, as an orator, and as an author; but his Greek comedies, his Latin orations, and his poem on Augustus, are lost, while his translation of Aratus is all that is left, to prove that this high name in literature was not given to him for his political virtues alone. Lastly, Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or perhaps of Theodosius, has left a rugged unpolished translation of this much-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, says Amor. i. 15. Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine. But mathematics and astronomy are as much opposed to poetry as prose is to verse. Poetry gives us pleasure by its grace and ease, while science leads to knowledge by laborious and often painful steps. Poetry places pictures before the eye, not arguments before the mind, and moves the heart and feelings rather than exercises the head. With a more happy choice of his subject, Aratus might perhaps have gained the honour which Ovid thought him entitled to. lib. xi. 12. (43) Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the Museum who lived upon the bounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit of verbal criti- Athenæus, cism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say that it had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and the book of receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names of Soter, Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic one syllable of his name in each of those words, said that putting them together, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. lib. xiv. 9. (44) Other authors wrote on lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelöus, the physician, addressed to Philadelphus a Lib. xi. 472. volume of advice as to which Greek wines were best fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Pliny, Sicilian were then unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneath his notice, while the vine had as yet hardly been planted in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. He particularly praised the Naspercenite wine from the southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from the island of Euboea; the Eneatic from Locris; the Leucadian from the island of Leucas; and the Ambraciote from Epirus. But above all these he placed the Peparethian wine from the island of Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true relish for it till after six years' acquaintance. (45) Such were the Greek authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that we now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history of Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the notice of men who called themSyncellus. selves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however, thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in Greek a history of Egypt, copied from the hiero glyphical writing on the temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in the quotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus; and what we have is little more than a list of kings' names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, which had been even from the time of Moses the great seat of Egyptian learning, and was so still for those branches of learning which were not cultivated by the Greeks of Alexandria. Josephus quotes him as a pagan, and therefore disinterested witness to the truth of the Jewish history; and from the high value which we set upon everything that throws light upon the Old Testament, nobody can read without feelings of deep interest the Egyptian, and therefore, of course, unfavourable, history of the Jews under Moses. The correctness of Manetho's list of kings, which runs back for fifteen hundred years, is shown by our finding the names agree with every Egyptian inscription with which they can be compared. But what little there is in it beyond the names would seem to be built on rather uncertain tradition. Besides his history, Manetho has left us a work on astrology, called Apotelesmatica, or Events, a work of which there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness. It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King Ptolemy, in which he calls not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had gained his knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might have been foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth, and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoë arose from the places of Venus and Saturn at the same time. But while we smile at this being said as the result of astronomical calculations, we must remember that for centuries afterwards, almost in our own time, the science of judicial astrology was made a branch of astronomy, and that the fault lay rather in the age than in the man; and we have the pain of thinking that, while many of the valuable writings by Manetho are lost, the copiers and readers of manuscripts have carefully saved for us this nearly worthless poem on astrology. Manetho, (46) Petosiris was another writer on astrology Apotelesm. and astronomy, who was highly praised by his friend Lib. ii. Manetho; and his calculations on the distances of the sun and planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; Anthologia Græca, lib. ii. 6. but his name calls for our notice, as he must have been a native Egyptian, and a priest. Like Manetho, he also wrote on the calculation of nativities; and the later Greek astrologers, when what they had foretold did not come to pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The priests were believed to possess Isaiah, these and other supernatural powers; and to help xliv. 25. &c. their claims to be believed many of them practised ap. LXX. ventriloquism, or the art of speaking from the stomach without moving the lips. 66 Strabo, lib. ix. 421. Plutarch, in (47) Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must not be forgotten in this list of authors; for though his verses to Apollo were little worth notice, his voyages of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours, placed him in the first rank among geographers. (48) Colotes, a pupil and follower of Epicurus, dedicated to Philadelphus a work of which the very title the nature of his philosophy, and how soon proves the rules of his master had fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Its title was, That it is impossible even to support life according to the philosophical rules of any but the Epicureans." It was a good deal read and talked about; and three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought it not a waste of time to write against it at some length. The moral philosophy of the Museum was by no means of that pure and lofty tone which raises the character of its followers; the science of morals did not there flourish equally with those of mathematics and physics; and hereafter we shall be able to trace in the unfortunate political tate of the Alexandrians a frivolity and a want of morality which was the natural growth of this unhealthy plant. (49) At a time when books were few, and far too dear to be within reach of the many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must have been small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst after knowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in the Theatre. This was not overlooked by Philadelphus, who employed Hegesias to read Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest historian and the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest root in the minds of the Greeks. These public readings, which Athenæus, |
