SPREAD AND INFLUENCE OF GREEK HIGHER EDUCATION. Alexander the Great rendered a very important service in uniting the western Orient and the eastern Mediterranean into a common world empire, and in establishing therein a common language, literature, philosophy, a common interest, and a common body of scientific knowledge and law. It was his hope to create a new empire, in which the distinction between European and Asiatic should pass away. No less than seventy cities were established with a view to holding his empire together. These served to spread Hellenic culture. Greek schools, Greek theaters, Greek baths, and Greek institutions of every type were to be found in practically all of them, and the Greek tongue was heard in them all. With Alexander the Great the history of Greek life, culture, and learning merges into that of the history of the ancient world. Everywhere throughout the new empire Greek philosophers and scientists, architects and artists, merchants and colonists, followed behind the Macedonian armies, spreading Greek civilization and becoming the teachers of an enlarged world. [8] "Greek cities stretched from the Nile to the Indus, and dotted the shores of the Black and the Caspian seas. The Greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a universal language of culture, spoken even by barbarian lips, and the art, the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy, developed in isolation by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage of many nations." [9] Greek universities were established at Pergamum and Tarsus in Asia Minor; at Rhodes on the island of that name in the Aegean; and at the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Antioch, in Syria, became another important center of Greek influence and learning. A large library was developed at Pergamum, and it was here that writing on prepared skins of animals [10] was begun, from which the term "parchment" (originally "per- gament") comes. It was also at Pergamum that Galen (born c. 130 A.D.) organized what was then known of medical science, and his work remained the standard treatise for more than a thousand years. Rhodes became a famous center for instruction in oratory. During Roman days many eminent men, among whom were Cassius, Caesar, and Cicero, studied oratory here. [Illustration: FIG. 14 THE GREEK UNIVERSITY WORLD]