The third century saw a great efflorescence of theatrical activity in Alexandria. Under Ptolemy II (285-247 B.C.), that city became the centre of world-culture as it already was of commerce. All artistic forms were protected and rewarded with imperial liberality. The great library became one of the wonders of the world, and the Dionysiac festivals were performed with sedulous magnificence. Among the many writers of tragedy seven were looked on as forming a class by themselves—the famous Pleiad (“The Constellation of Seven”). Only five names of these are certain—Philiscus, Homerus, Alexander, Lycophron, and Sositheus; for the other two “chairs” various names are found in our authorities: Sosiphanes, Dionysiades, Æantides, Euphronius. Nor can we be sure that all these men worked at Alexandria.[117] That the splendour of the city and Ptolemy’s magnificent patronage should have drawn the leading men of art, letters, and science to the world’s centre, is a natural assumption and indeed the fact: Theocritus the idyllist, Euclid the geometer, Callimachus the poet and scholar, certainly lived there. Of the Pleiad, only three are known to have worked in Alexandria: Lycophron, to whom Ptolemy entrusted that section of the royal library which embraced Comedy, Alexander, who superintended Tragedy, and Philiscus the priest of Dionysus. Homerus may have passed all his career in Byzantium, which later possessed a statue of him, and Sositheus was apparently active at Athens. LYCOPHRON’S _Menedemus_ has already been mentioned. His fame now rests upon the extant poem _Alexandra_, in high repute both in ancient and in modern times for its obscurity. But SOSITHEUS is the most interesting of the galaxy. We may still read twenty-one lines from his satyric drama _Daphnis_ or _Lityerses_, describing with grim vigour the ghoulish harvester Lityerses who made his visitors reap with him, finally beheading them and binding up the corpses in sheaves. Sositheus made his mark, indeed, less in tragedy than in satyric writing: he turned from the tendency of his day which made this genre a form of satire, and went back to the antique manner. SOSIPHANES, finally, deserves mention for a remarkable fragment:— ὦ δυστυχεῖς μὲν πολλά, παῦρα δ’ ὄλβιοι βροτοί, τί σεμνύνεσθε ταῖς ἐξουσίαις, ἃς ἕν τ’ ἔδωκε φέγγος ἕν τ’ ἀφείλετο; ἢν δ’ εὐτυχῆτε, μηδὲν ὄντες εὐθέως ἴσ’ οὐρανῷ φρονεῖτε, τὸν δὲ κύριον Αἵδην παρεστῶτ’ οὐχ ὁρᾶτε πλησίον.