CULTURE.--In the Greek cities which were founded by the Macedonians, the political life and independence which Greece had enjoued did not exist. The "Hellenistic" literature and culture, as it is called, which followed, lacked the spontaneous energy and original spirit of the old time. The civilization was that of people not exclusively Greek in blood. _Alexandria_ was its chief seat. Poetry languished. It was _prose_--and prose in the form of _learned inquiries, criticism_, and _science_--that flourished. The path was the same as that marked out by Aristotle. _Theocritus_, born in Syracuse, or Cos, under _Ptolemy I._ (about 320 B.C.), had distinction as a pastoral or bucolic poet. _Euclid_, under _Ptolemy Soter_, systemized geometry. _Archimedes_, who died in 212 B.C., is said to have invented the screw, and was skillful in mechanics. _Eratosthenes_ founded descriptive astronomy and scientific chronology. "The Alexandrian age busied itself with literary or scientific research, and with setting in order what the Greek mind had done in its creative time." After Greece became subject to Rome (146 B.C.) the _Graeco Roman period_ in Greek literature begins. The Greek historian _Polybius_ stands on the border between the Alexandrian age and this next era. He was born about 210 B.C., and died about 128 B.C. LITERATURE.--Works mentioned on p. 16: Histories of Greece by GROTE (12 vols.) (democratic in his sympathies), E. CURTIUS (5 vols.), THIRLWALL (8 vols.), W. Smith (1 vol.), G. W. Cox. Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_; Fyffe, _History of Greece_ (primer); Duncker, _History of Greece_ [separately published]; Abbott (2 vols.); Holm (4 vols.); Bury; Oman. On special periods: The writings of the ancient authors,--Herodotus (Rawlinson's translation, 4 vols.), Xenophon, THUCYDIDES (Jowett's translation, 2 vols.), Polybius, Plutarch's _Lives_. Schäfer, _Demosthenes und seine Zeit_ (3 vols.); DROYSEN, _Geschichte des Hellenismus_ (3 vols.); E. A. FREEMAN, _History of Federal Government_ (vol. i.); FINLAY, _History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans_ (7 vols.); G. W. Cox, _History of Greece from the Earliest Period to the End of the Persian War_ (2 vols.), and _Lives of Greek Statesmen_ (1 vol.); Freeman, _History of Sicily_ (4 vols.).