The capital of the Ptolemies, Alexandria, made Achilles Tatius exclaim, “We are conquered,” and the probability is that he saw this city only after the ruin of many of its fine edifices. But what at all times was most striking to the stranger was less the number and magnificence of the buildings than the noble order and symmetrical arrangement of the city. Two great avenues, bordered with colonnades of marble and crossing at right angles, traverse Alexandria—the longitudinal avenue, more than thirty stadia (four thousand eight hundred meters) in length, and thirty-five meters in width, ran from east to west, beginning at the gate of the Necropolis and terminating at the Canopic gate. The transverse avenue extended for a length of seventeen stadia, from the southern enclosure to the great port. All the other streets and avenues, alike paved with heavy blocks of stone and provided with sidewalks, all crossing at right angles, met the two chief thoroughfares. This regularity, this noble appearance, and endless perspectives gave to Alexandria a character peculiar to itself. One felt that, unlike other cities which grow by degrees, by successive additions, Alexandria had been created at one stroke, on a fixed plan; and in truth this city had, so to speak, risen from the sand at the will of Alexander. It was Alexander who determined the position of the city; it was Alexander who had given it the form of the Macedonian chlamys; it was Alexander who, with his architect Dinarchus, had traced this network of streets and avenues, marked out the dykes to be raised for the new port, and appointed the sites for the principal edifices. Afterwards the Ptolemies adorned the city; they built innumerable monuments, created wonderful gardens; populous suburbs arose, both east and west; but as a whole Alexandria remained as it was conceived by Alexander. It was from the Paneum, an artificial elevation in the heart of the city thirty-five meters in height, that a complete panorama of Alexandria could be seen. On the south, thousands of houses and private palaces stretched away to the circumference which, owing to the perspective, seemed to bathe in the shining waters of Lake Maratis. Humble cottages, rough-coated with lime, pierced irregularly with little windows, having wooden gratings, and terraced roofs surrounded by ventilators, serving as sleeping-places in the hot summer nights, alternated with vast residences rising amidst courts and gardens, concealing from the view of the outside world by lofty walls, turreted like ramparts, their white façades and sculptured porticos with rows of painted columns and cornices decorated with many colored bands. The grand Serapium overlooked this whole portion. This colossal edifice was reached by a winding staircase of a hundred steps; columns of syenite of the Corinthian order, thirty-two meters in height, supported the cupola.