This delightful Idyll is not quite characteristic of Theocritus—he generally sings of Shepherds and their flocks. But it is his great contribution to the literature of Alexandria, and our chief authority for daily life under the Ptolemies. History is too much an affair of armies and kings. The Fifteenth Idyll corrects the error. Only through literature can the past be recovered and here Theocritus, wielding the double spell of realism and of poetry, has evoked an entire city from the dead and filled its streets with men. As Praxinoe remarks of the draperies “Why the figures seem to stand up and to move, they’re not patterns, they are alive.” The Mouseion was at its best under the first three Ptolemies. Then it declined—at least in its literary output—and though Alexandria turned out poems, etc. for several hundred years, few of them merit attention. With the coming of the Romans her genius took a new line, and essayed the neglected paths of philosophy and religion. But she remained attractive to men of letters, and nearly every writer of note visited her in the course of his travels. STATUETTES OF LOVES: Museum, Room 18. NOUZHA (birthplace of Callimachus): p. 156 (B) SCHOLARSHIP. In the Mouseion at Alexandria Greece first became aware of her literary heritage, and the works of the past were not only collected in the Library but were codified, amended, and explained. Scholarship dates from Zenodotus, the first Librarian. He turned his attention to Homer, divided the Iliad and Odyssey into “Books,” struck out spurious verses from the text, marked doubtful ones, and introduced new readings. He gave a general impulse to research. Hitherto the Greek language had developed unnoticed. Now it was consciously examined, and the result of the examination was the first Greek Grammar (about 100 B.C.). Grammar is a valuable subject but also a dangerous one, for it naturally attracts pedants and schoolmasters and all who think that Literature is an affair of rules. And the Grammarians of Alexandria forgot that they were merely codifying the usages of the past, and presumed to dictate to the present, and to posterity; they set a bad example that has been followed for nearly 2000 years. Greek accents—another doubtful boon—were also invented in the Mouseion. Indeed the whole of literary scholarship, as we know it, sprang up, including that curious by-product the Scholarly Joke. For instance: one learned man wrote a poem that had, when transcribed, the shape of a bird, another wrote a poem in the shape of a double-headed axe, and a third re-wrote the whole of the Odyssey without using the letter S. The donnish wit of the Mouseion infected the Palace, and was practiced by the Ptolemies themselves. One scholar, Sosibius by name, complained to King Philadelphus that he had not received his salary. The King replied “The first syllable of your name occurs in Soter, the second in Sosigenes, the third in Bion, and the fourth in