"So it came to pass that Ptolemy Soter gathered into his capital every kind of splendor.... He established the most brilliant palace and court, with festivals which were the wonder of the world. He gathered all that he could command of learning and literary fame, and the city was adequate to the largeness and splendor of its external appearance. We have it described in later times as astonishing the beholder not only with its vastness, but also with the splendor of its colonnades, which lined the streets for miles and kept the ways cool for passengers; with the din and bustle of the thoroughfares, of which the principal were horse and carriage ways, contrary to the usual Greek practice; with the number and richness of its public buildings, and with the holiday and happy airs of its vast population, who rested not day and night, but had their streets so well lighted that Achilles Tatius says the sun did not set, but was distributed to illumine the gay night. The palace and other royal buildings and parks were walled off like the palace at Pekin, and had their own port and seashore, but all the rest of the town had water near it and ship traffic in all directions. Every costume and language must have been met in its streets and quays. It had its fashionable suburbs too, and its bathing resorts to the east, Canopus, Eleusis, and Nicopolis; to the west, its Necropolis. But of all this splendor no eye-witness has left us in detail what we are reduced to infer by conjecture." The dynasty of the Ptolemies, so ably founded by Ptolemy Soter and ending with the reign of the great Cleopatra, presents a series of monarchs renowned for their culture, their luxury, their lasciviousness, and their cruelty; and by the side of the kings may be found a series of queens unrivalled in history for their cleverness, their wickedness, or their beauty. Woman's place in this dynasty was a most influential one, and she possessed all the freedom and power that could well fall to her lot; she knew nothing whatever of the restrictions common in old Greek life or in the life of the Orient. This was no doubt partly due to the fact that the Macedonian spirit prevailed, partly that the status of woman among the Egyptians themselves had its influence on the conquerors. Papyri found in recent years demonstrate the legal independence and freedom of women among the ancient Egyptians. A married woman could make contracts and hold property in her own name and perform all legal acts, without reference to her husband. Monogamy was the rule, though in addition to the "dear wife" or "the lady of the house" there were frequently subordinate wives. So supreme was the position of woman that there were instances in which the husband settled all his property on his wife, upon condition that she support him for the rest of his days and give him a decent burial. There was such a contrast between the Egyptian and the old Greek conception of woman that the Greek ofttimes