Finally the Soma, the immense mausoleum in which Alexander’s body rested in a coffin of solid gold, afterwards replaced by one of glass. One other edifice of the Bruchium attracted the eye by its vast proportions and its epistyle crowned by a dome. It was the celebrated museum of Alexandria, at once a school, a monastery, and an academy. Grammarians, poets, philosophers, and astronomers lived there together at the expense of the Ptolemies, and it was maliciously called the Cage of the Muses,—a splendid cage, however, in which sang Theocritus, Callimachus, Apollonius, and whence arose the noble voice of the Alexandrian philosophy. Beyond the temple of Poseidon the quays inflected in a broken line towards the southwest. There also edifice succeeded to edifice—the exchange, the temple of Bendis, the temple of Arsinoë, and the immense Apostasia in which was gathered the merchandise of the whole world. Beyond the Heptastadium was the old port with its great shipbuilding yards, and farther to the west, outside the walls, the suburb of the Necropolis, the funeral quarter of the embalmers. [Illustration] [Illustration] II. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city. Whilst the cities of Upper Egypt and Heptanomis had preserved the national character, in the Delta the Hellenic civilization had been grafted on the Egyptian, or rather they went side by side. The laws and decrees were written in both languages; the priesthood, the government, the police, the tribunals, the whole administration belonged equally to both; the army was composed of Greek and Gallic mercenaries, of Cilician robbers, of fugitive Roman slaves. In Alexandria, where for more than two centuries unnumbered colonies had settled, the native race dwelt together in the ancient Egyptian city of Rhakotis, but they composed at the most only one-third of the population. The Jews, who inhabited a distinct quarter where they had their ethnarch and their Sanhedrim, were in the proportion of one to three. From the Pharos to the Serapium, from the gate of the Necropolis to the Canopic gate were seen as many foreigners as Egyptians. They composed a noisy and variegated crowd of Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Italians, Arabs, Illyrians, Persians, and Phenicians. In the streets and on the wharves every language was spoken, in the temples every god was worshiped. Into this Babel each race brought its own passions. The population of Alexandria, which amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand exclusive of the slaves, was as turbulent as that of the other Egyptian cities was tranquil and resigned, and during the reigns of the latter Lagidæ the Alexandrian populace always seconded the revolutions of the palace, hoping under new sovereigns to find more liberty and less taxes.