Whilst on the one side of the world the Greeks were falling under the influence of the nation that had subdued them, on the other they were assimilating the views of the Oriental nations whom they had subdued by martial as well as by mental superiority. For two centuries, in philosophy at least, Greece had held her own against Oriental modes of thought. Now that her intellectual incapacity continually increased, those modes of thought gained for themselves a foothold in her philosophy. Alexandria was the place where the connection of Greece with the East was first and most completely brought about. In that centre of commerce for all parts of the globe, East and West entered into a connection more intimate and more lasting than in any other centre. Nor was this connection a mere accident of circumstances; it was also a work of political forecast. From its founder, Ptolemy Soter, the Ptolemæan dynasty inherited as the principle of government the rule always to combine what is native with what is foreign, and to clothe new things in the old and venerable forms of Egyptian custom and religious ceremony. At Alexandria, accordingly, there arose, towards the beginning of the first century before Christ, a School calling itself at first Platonic, afterwards Pythagorean, which later still, in the shape of Neoplatonism, gained the ascendency over the whole domain of philosophy. The very fact, however, that such a change in philosophic views did not appear sooner, is sufficient to show that it was produced by external circumstances. But notwithstanding external circumstances it would never have come about had not the intellect of Greece in the course of its own development been ripe for it. [(b) Scepticism and Eclecticism.]