"That the discourse turned upon letters. Thoth maintained the value of Writing, as capable of making the People wiser, increasing the powers of Memory; to this the king dissented, and expressed his opinion that by the exercise of this Art the multitude would appear to be knowing of those things of which they were really ignorant, possessing only an idea of Wisdom, instead of Wisdom itself." Pythagoras, B. C. 532, we are informed by Astle: "Went into Egypt where he resided twenty-two years; he was initiated into the sacerdotal order, and, from his spirit of inquiry, he has been justly said to have acquired a great deal of Egyptian learning, which he afterwards introduced into Italy. The Pythagorean schools which he established in Italy when writing was taught, were destroyed when the Platonic or new philosophy prevailed over the former. Polybius (lib. ii. p. 175) and Jamblichus (in vita Pythag.) mention many circumstances, relative to these facts, quoted from authors now lost; as doth Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras." For the hundred years or more following, however, the dissemination of learning and the transcription of events was not to be denied. We find ink-written volumes (rolls) relating to diverse subjects being loaned to one another; correspondence by letter to and from distant lands of frequent occurrence, and the art of handwriting regularly taught in the schools of learning. Its progress was to be interrupted by the wars of the Persians. Mr. Astle in calling attention to events which have contributed to deprive us of the literary treasures of antiquity thus refers to them: "A very fatal blow was given to literature, by the destruction of the Phoenician temples, and of the Egyptian colleges, when those kingdoms, and the countries adjacent, were conquered by the Persians, about three hundred and fifty years before Christ. Ochus, the Persian general, ravaged these countries without mercy, and forty thousand Sidonians burnt themselves with their families and riches in their own houses. The conqueror then drove Nectanebus out of Egypt, and committed the like ravages in that country; afterwards he marched into Judea, where he took Jericho, and sent a great number of Jews into captivity. The Persians had a great dislike to the religion of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians; this was one reason for destroying their books, of which Eusebius (De Preparat. Evang.) says, they had a great number." These losses, apparently, did not interfere with the progress of the art in more western countries. Professor Rollin in his "Ancient History," 1823, remarks: