When Marcus arrived in Alexandria the citizens were agreeably surprised by the mildness of his conduct. He at once forgave his enemies; and no offenders were put to death for having joined in the rebellion. The severest punishment, even to the children of Cassius, was banishment from the province, but without restraint, and with the forfeiture of less than half their patrimony. In Alexandria the emperor laid aside the severity of the soldier, and mingled with the people as a fellow-citizen in the temples and public places; while with the professors in the museum he was a philosopher, joining them in their studies in the schools. Borne and Athens at this time alike looked upon Alexandria as the centre of the world's learning. The library was then in its greatest glory; the readers were numerous, and Christianity had as yet raised no doubts about the value of its pagan treasures. All the wisdom of Greece, written on rolls of brittle papyrus or tough parchment, was ranged in boxes on the shelves. Of these writings the few that have been saved from the wreck of time are no doubt some of the best, and they are perhaps enough to guide our less simple taste towards the unornamented grace of the Greek model. But we often fancy those treasures most valuable that are beyond our reach, and hence when we run over the names of the authors in this library we think perhaps too much of those which are now missing. The student in the museum could have read the lyric poems of Alcaeus and Stersichorus, which in matter and style were excellent enough to be judged not quite so good as Homer; the tender lamentations of Simonides; the warm breathings of Sappho, the tenth muse; the pithy iambics of Archilochus, full of noble flights and brave irregularities; the comedies of Menander, containing every kind of excellence; those of Eupolis and Cratinus, which were equal to Aristophanes; the histories of Theopompus, which in the speeches were as good as Thucydides; the lively, agreeable orations of Hyperides, the accuser of Demosthenes; with the books of travels, chronologies, and countless others of less merit for style and genius, but which, if they had been saved, would not have left Egypt wholly without a history. [Illustration: 120.jpg ALEXANDRIAN FORMS OF WRITING]