were common throughout Greece and its colonies, had not a little effect on the authors. Books were then written for the ear rather than for the eye, to be listened to rather than to be read, and this was one among the causes of Greek elegance and simplicity of style.

Vitruvius,

(50) Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the fame of Philadelphus's bounty was Zoilus, the lib. vii. grammarian, whose ill-natured criticism on Homer's præfat. poems had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or the scourge of Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadelphus, who was so much displeased with his carping and unfair manner of finding fault, that he even refused to relieve him when in distress. The king told him, that while hundreds had earned a livelihood by pointing out the beauties of the Iliad and Odyssey in their public readings, surely one person who was so much wiser might be able to live by pointing out the faults. With the ill-natured Zoilus we may mention the licentious Sotades, who gave Quintilian, his name to a species of poetry peculiar in its measure and pauses, and also in its want of decency. But his writings are lost, having been of course thrown aside the sooner for the impurity with which they were tainted.

lib. i. 5.

Diogenes

(51) Timon, a tragic poet, was also one of the visitors to this court; but, as he was more fond of eating Laertius. and drinking than of philosophy, we need not Athenæus, wonder at our knowing nothing of his tragedies, or - lib. i. 19. at his not being made a professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on the better-fed philosophers of the court, in a poem in which he calls them literary fightingcocks, who were being fattened by the king, and were always quarrelling in the coops of the Museum.

(52) The Alexandrian men of science and letters maintained themselves, some few by fecs received from their pupils, others as professors holding salaries in the Museum, and others by civil employments under the government. There was little to encourage in them the feelings of noble pride or independence. The first rank The first rank in Alexandria was held by the civil and military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative employments of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, and repressing rebellions.

With these men the philosophers mixed, not as equals, but partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying their score with wit and conversation. There were no landholders

Plutarch.

36.

in the city, as the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthy trading classes, of all nations and languages, could bestow little patronage on Greek learning, and therefore little independence on its professors. (53) Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books; and he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of the Aratus. pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending to him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an acknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first school of Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of Pamphilus, the master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles. Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he Pliny, is said to have received from every pupil the large lib. xxxv. sum of ten talents, or fifteen hundred pounds, a year. His best-known pieces were, Ulysses in his ship, and the victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius; but we are not told whether either of these were sent to Philadelphus. It was through Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughout all Greece, drawing was taught to boys as part of a liberal education. Neacles also painted for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was as a gift to the king of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between the Egyptians and the Persians, in which the painter shows us that it was fought within the mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an ass drinking on the shore. (54) Helena, the daughter of Timon, was a painter of some note at this time, at Alexandria; but the only piece of hers known to us by name is the Battle of Ptolemæus, Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up by Vespasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a woman choosing to paint the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as we are not told what point of time was chosen, we may hope that it was after the battle, when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their knees the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been found among the prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they

Lib. xxxv.

40.

ap. Photium.

showed no taste in painting. Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means of squares (see Fig. 230), which was not unsuitable in working a statue Arbit. Sat. sixty feet high, checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art, when the Greek

Petronius

painters were idle enough to use it.

(55) We hear but little of the statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help remarking, that, while the public places of Athens were filled with the statues of the great and good men who had deserved well Athenæus, of their country, the statues which were most lib. x. 7. common in Alexandria were those of Cline, a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cupbearer to the king.

(56) The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by his son. Josephus, He even bought from Antiq. xii. his own soldiers and freed from slavery one hundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal

2.

treasury, one hundred and twenty drachmas, or about three pounds, to those of his subjects who held them either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount of the ransom, the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewish advisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixed by the Jewish law as the price of a slave. The Jews who lived in Lower Egypt, in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, looked upon that country as their home. They had already a Greek translation of either the whole or some part of their sacred writings, which had been made for those whose families had been for so many generations in Egypt, that they could not read the language of their forefathers. But they now hoped, by means of the king's friendship and the weight which his wishes must carry with them, to have a Greek translation of the Bible which should bear the stamp of authority.

(57) Accordingly, to please them Philadelphus sent Aristæus, a man whose wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andræus, a captain of the guard, both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest of Jerusalem, and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a Greek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer named seventy elders to undertake the task, who held their first sitting on the business at the king's dinner-table; when Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was also present, who had been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from Euboea. The translators then divided the work among themselves; and when each had finished his task it was laid before a meeting of the seventy, and then published by authority. Thus was said to have been made the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which, from the number of the translators, we now call the Septuagint; but a doubt is thrown upon the whole story by the fables which have been mingled with it to give authority to the translation.

that

(58) The difference of style in the several books proves it was the work of many writers, and perhaps of different times. It bears in every part the strongest marks of the country in which it was written. It contains many Egyptian words, and gives the Coptic names for the Egyptian towns. In the book of Zechariah the translator's knowledge of

Ch. xiv. 18.

1 Kings,

ch. vi. 1.

Exodus, ch. xii. 40.

the climate leads him to omit the threat against the Israelites in Egypt that they shall have no rain if they come not up to Jerusalem to the feast. There are at the same time ample traces of the language from which it was taken, and even of the characters in which the original was written. Occasional mistakes arise from one Hebrew letter being like another; which prove that they were the square characters now in use, and that there were no vowel points. The chief disagreement between the original and the translation is in the chronology, which the translators very improperly undertook to correct, in order to make it better agree with Egyptian history and the more advanced state of Alexandrian science. They made the Exodus of Moses only forty years more modern; but they shortened the residence of Jacob's children in Egypt by one hundred and seventy-five years, allowing to it only the more probable space of two hundred and fifty-five years. They thus made the great Jewish epoch, the migration of Abraham out of Chaldæa, two hundred and fifteen years more modern, and then they thought it necessary to make such a large addition to the age of the world as the history of science and civilisation, and the state of Egypt at the time of Abraham, seemed to call for. Accordingly, they added to the genealogies of the patriarchs neither more nor less than a whole Egyptian cycle of fourteen hundred and sixty years, or five hundred and eighty between Adam and Noah, and eight hundred and eighty between Noah and Abraham, though in so doing they carelessly made Methuselah outlive the Flood. Again when they say that the city of On, which Ezekiel by the addition of a single letter calls Aven, or vanity, was Heliopolis, we are inclined to think that they are purposely misleading us. was probably the old name of Onion, where the Israelites, even in the time of Isaiah, were carrying on a temple-service, to the horror of their brethren in Jerusalem; and Ezekiel called it Aven, or vanity, to join Isaiah in the blame of such doings. To relieve the Jewish town of Onion from this reproach, the Greek translators said that On and Aven meant Heliopolis.

On

(59) The Alexandrian Jews did not venture to write in Greek letters the sacred word Jehovah; in its place they called the Almighty by the name of The Lord. It will be enough