The possession of Palestine, inevitably, because of its position, had been very much disputed between Seleucus and Ptolemy after Alexander's death, but the dispute was decided by the battle of Ipsus, which seems to have cleared the air all round. Palestine then became subject to Egypt and so remained under successive Ptolemies for more than a hundred years. [Sidenote: Alexandria] The Jews in Judæa, with that love of their own customs which has always been remarkably strong in their nation, held out against the introduction of Greek thought and language, and so on, longer than any of their neighbours, but many Jews, as we have seen, had settled in Alexandria. The first three, at least, of the Ptolemies, who successively reigned in Egypt, showed favour to them; they had synagogues in other cities of Egypt besides Alexandria, and those Jews of Egypt, besides those who were in Babylonia and other parts of Asia, had the habit of coming up to Jerusalem, where was the Temple, to attend their great religious ceremonies. And these Jews brought to Jerusalem the {163} Greek language and thought, so that the Greek influence penetrated there too at last. Alexandria became a great city for men of letters, learned men and writers, as well a great city of trade and a great seaport. The largest library of the ancient world was collected--and later was destroyed by fire--in that city. And there, probably before 250 B.C., the books of the Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, were translated into Greek. Possibly not all were translated at that time, but it seems at least certain that the first five books, called the Pentateuch, were done into Greek about that date. Wherever they went the Jews never lost sight of their sacred books. The records of their history and their religious institutions were always with them. Under the later kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty the government of Egypt was less strongly maintained, the power of Egypt waned, and in 198 B.C. the Egyptians were thoroughly defeated by the Syrians on the banks of the Jordan, and Judæa and Jerusalem came under the rule of the Syrian king. He did not interfere with their religion or their customs, and for a while the change of rulers appears to have made very little difference to them. Such, then, is the outline which I would have you carry in your minds of the position of those peoples of the story on the eastern side of the Mediterranean, in Egypt southward, and in Thrace, Macedon, and Greece. And now I would ask you to come back again to look at the western side of the picture, for the time has fully come when we should bring more prominently into it a figure which will grow larger and larger until it grows to such a size as to fill in the whole frame, and more than the frame--the figure of world-conquering Rome. {164} CHAPTER XII ROME AND CARTHAGE