Never, perhaps, did the wonderful genius of Alexander the Great appear to better advantage than when he selected Alexandria as a commercial centre and distributing point for the products of three continents, and as an intellectual focus from which Hellenic culture should be transmitted to those countries of Asia and Africa which his victories had opened to Greek civilization. The rapidity with which the city--to which Alexander had given his own name--grew to the dimensions of a great capital and a world-emporium, proved the sagacity and ingenious foresight of its founder, and was unrivalled among all the cities of the ancient world. It became the greatest seaport of the world, surpassing in the grandeur and magnificence of its buildings every other city except Rome itself; and when, through the genius of the Ptolemies, the successors of Alexander as rulers of Egypt, the great library was added to its monuments and treasures of art, it became also the intellectual capital of the world, rivalling and in some respects eclipsing the city of the Cæsars. It is true, long before Alexandria had reached its greatest prosperity, the creative power of Hellenic genius in the higher spheres of poetry and philosophy had passed its zenith. In the so-called Alexandrian age of literature the most beautiful and most poetical inspirations were the idyls of Theocritus. But Alexandria was the first city in the ancient world which became the seat of a many-sided, methodical scholarship, and of systematic, zealous studies of the exact sciences,--a university in the modern sense. It also became the great library city of the world.