to-day; Appollonius the Rhodian, disciple and enemy of Callimachus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, founder of a school of philological criticism; and Aristarchus of Samos, reputed to have been the greatest critic of ancient times. The study of the text of Homer was the chief labour of Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus, and it was Aristarchus who mainly fixed the form in which the Iliad and Odyssey remain to this day. … The vast collections of the library and museum actually determined the whole character of the literature of Alexandria. One word sums it all up—erudition, whether in philosophy, in criticism, in science, even in poetry. Strange to say, they neglected not only oratory, for which there was no scope, but history, and this we may attribute to the fact that history before Alexander had no charms for Hellenism. Mythical lore, on the other hand, strange uses and curious words, were departments of research dear to them. In science they did great things, so did they in geography. … But were they original in nothing? Did they add nothing of their own to the splendid record of Greek literature? In the next generation came the art of criticism, which Aristarchus developed into a real science, and of that we may speak in its place; but even in this generation we may claim for them the credit of three original, or nearly original, developments in literature—the pastoral idyll, as we have it in Theocritus; the elegy, as we have it in the Roman imitators of Philetas and Callimachus; and the romance, or love story, the parent of our modern novels. All these had early prototypes in the folk songs of Sicily, in the love songs of Mimnermus and of Antimachus, in the tales of Miletus, but still the revival was fairly to be called original. Of these the pastoral idyll was far the most remarkable, and laid hold upon the world for ever." _J. P. Mahaffy, The Story of Alexander's Empire, chapter 13-14._