The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865: A Monthly Eclectic MagazineVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865: A Monthly Eclectic Magazine
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
magnificent temple of Serapis, with its four hundred columns, of which
Pompey's Pillar is, perhaps, all that is left. And then there was the
mausoleum of Alexander, there were the courts of justice, the
theatres, the baths, the temples, the lines of shops and houses--all on
a scale of grandeur and completeness which has never been surpassed by
any city of the world. Such a city necessarily attracted men.
Alexandria was fitly called the "many-peopled," whether the epithet
referred to the actual number of citizens or to the varieties of
tongue, complexion, and costume that thronged its streets. The Greeks,
the Egyptians, and the Jews, each had their separate quarter; but
there were constant streams of foreigners from the remote India, from
the lands beyond the black rocks that bound the Nile-valley, and from
the Ethiopic races to which St. Matthew preached, where the Red Sea
becomes the Indian Ocean. At the time we speak of, these discordant
elements were held in subjection by the Roman conquerors, whose
legionaries trod the streets of the voluptuous city with stern and
resolute step, and were not without occasion, oftentimes, for a
display of all the sternness and resolution which their bearing
augured.
Alexandria, however, in addition to the busy life of commerce and
pleasure that went on among Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Africans, was
the home of another kind of life, still more interesting to us.
Ptolemy Soter, who carried out Alexander's plans, was a man of no
common foresight and strength of character. He was not content with
building a city. He performed, in addition, two exploits, either of
which, from modern experience, we should be inclined to consider a
title to immortality. He invented a new god, and established a
university. The god was Serapis, whom he imported from Pergamus, and
who soon became popular. The university was the Museum, in which lived
and taught Demetrius of Phalerus, Euclid, Stilpo of Megara, Philetas
of Cos, Apelles the painter, Callimachus, Theocritus, Eratosthenes,
Apollonius Rhodius, and a host of others in philosophy, poetry,
geometry, astronomy, and the arts. Here, under successive Ptolemies,
professors lectured in splendid halls, amid honored affluence. All
that we have of the Greek classics we owe to the learned men of the
Museum. Poetry bloomed sweetly and luxuriantly in the gardens of the
Ptolemies; though, it must be confessed, not vigorously, not as on
Ionic coast-lands, nor as in the earnest life of Athenian freedom--save
when some Theocritus appeared, with his broad Doric, fresh from the
sheep-covered downs of Sicily. The name of Euclid suggests that
geometry was cared for at the Museum; Eratosthenes, with his
voluminous writings, all of which have perished, and his one or two
discoveries, which will never die, may stand for the type of
geography, the science for which he lived; and Hipparchus, astronomer
and inventor of trigonometry, may remind us how they taught at the
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