ALEXANDRIA.
It must not be imagined by the reader that the scenes of vicious
indulgence, and reckless cruelty and crime, which were exhibited with such
dreadful frequency, and carried to such an enormous excess in the palaces
of the Egyptian kings, prevailed to the same extent throughout the mass of
the community during the period of their reign. The internal
administration of government, and the institutions by which the industrial
pursuits of the mass of the people were regulated, and peace and order
preserved, and justice enforced between man and man, were all this time in
the hands of men well qualified, on the whole, for the trusts committed to
their charge, and in a good degree faithful in the performance of their
duties; and thus the ordinary affairs of government, and the general
routine of domestic and social life, went on, notwithstanding the
profligacy of the kings, in a course of very tolerable peace, prosperity,
and happiness. During every one of the three hundred years over which the
history of the Ptolemies extends, the whole length and breadth of the land
of Egypt exhibited, with comparatively few interruptions, one wide-spread
scene of busy industry. The inundations came at their appointed season,
and then regularly retired. The boundless fields which the waters had
fertilized were then every where tilled. The lands were plowed; the seed
was sown; the canals and water-courses, which ramified from the river in
every direction over the ground, were opened or closed, as the case
required, to regulate the irrigation. The inhabitants were busy, and,
consequently, they were virtuous. And as the sky of Egypt is seldom or
never darkened by clouds and storms, the scene presented to the eye the
same unchanging aspect of smiling verdure and beauty, day after day, and
month after month, until the ripened grain was gathered into the
store-houses, and the land was cleared for another inundation.
We say that the people were virtuous because they were busy; for there is
no principle of political economy more fully established than that vice in
the social state is the incident and symptom of idleness. It prevails
always in those classes of every great population who are either released
by the possession of fixed and unchangeable wealth from the necessity, or
excluded by their poverty and degradation from the advantage, of useful
employment. Wealth that is free, and subject to its possessor's control,
so that he can, if he will, occupy himself in the management of it, while
it sometimes may make individuals vicious, does not generally corrupt
classes of men, for it does not make them idle. But wherever the
institutions of a country are such as to create an aristocratic class,
whose incomes depend on entailed estates, or on fixed and permanent
annuities, so that the capital on which they live can not afford them any
mental occupation, they are doomed necessarily to inaction and idleness.
Vicious pleasures and indulgences are, with such a class as a whole, the
inevitable result; for the innocent enjoyments of man are planned and
designed by the Author of nature only for the intervals of rest and repose
in a life of activity. They are always found wholly insufficient to
satisfy one who makes pleasure the whole end and aim of his being.
In the same manner, if, either from the influence of the social
institutions of a country, or from the operation of natural causes which
human power is unable to control, there is a class of men too low, and
degraded, and miserable to be reached by the ordinary inducements to daily
toil, so certain are they to grow corrupt and depraved, that degradation
has become in all languages a term almost synonymous with vice. There are
many exceptions, it is true, to these general laws. Many active men are
very wicked; and there have been frequent instances of the most exalted
virtue among nobles and kings. Still, as a general law, it is
unquestionably true that vice is the incident of idleness; and the sphere
of vice, therefore, is at the top and at the bottom of society--those
being the regions in which idleness reigns. The great remedy, too, for
vice is employment. To make a community virtuous, it is essential that all
ranks and gradations of it, from the highest to the lowest, should have
something to do.
In accordance with these principles, we observe that, while the most
extreme and abominable wickedness seemed to hold continual and absolute
sway in the palaces of the Ptolemies, and among the nobles of their
courts, the working ministers of state, and the men on whom the actual
governmental functions devolved, discharged their duties with wisdom and
fidelity, and throughout all the ordinary ranks and gradations of society
there prevailed generally a very considerable degree of industry,
prosperity, and happiness. This prosperity prevailed not only in the rural
districts of the Delta and along the valley of the Nile, but also among
the merchants, and navigators, and artisans of Alexandria.
Alexandria became, in fact, very soon after it was founded, a very great
and busy city. Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial
emporium. In the first place, it was the depôt of export for all the
surplus grain and other agricultural produce which was raised in such
abundance along the Egyptian valley. This produce was brought down in
boats to the upper point of the Delta, where the branches of the river
divided, and thence down the Canopic branch to the city. The city was not,
in fact, situated directly upon this branch, but upon a narrow tongue of
land, at a little distance from it, near the sea. It was not easy to enter
the channel directly, on account of the bars and sand-banks at its mouth,
produced by the eternal conflict between the waters of the river and the
surges of the sea. The water was deep, however, as Alexander's engineers
had discovered, at the place where the city was built, and, by
establishing the port there, and then cutting a canal across to the Nile,
they were enabled to bring the river and the sea at once into easy
communication.
The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and through the
canal to the city. Here immense warehouses and granaries were erected for
its reception, that it might be safely preserved until the ships that came
into the port were ready to take it away. These ships came from Syria,
from all the coasts of Asia Minor, from Greece, and from Rome. They
brought the agricultural productions of their own countries, as well as
articles of manufacture of various kinds; these they sold to the merchants
of Alexandria, and purchased the productions of Egypt in return.
The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and
animation. Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or lying at
anchor in the roadstead. Seamen were hoisting sails, or raising anchors,
or rowing their capacious galleys through the water, singing, as they
pulled, to the motion of the oars. Within the city there was the same
ceaseless activity. Here groups of men were unloading the canal boats
which had arrived from the river. There porters were transporting bales of
merchandise or sacks of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one
landing to another. The occasional parading of the king's guards, or the
arrival and departure of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of
armed men, were occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as
perhaps the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of useful
industry; and now and then, for a brief period, these peaceful avocations
would be wholly suspended and set aside by a revolt or by a civil war,
waged by rival brothers against each other, or instigated by the
conflicting claims of a mother and son. These interruptions, however, were
comparatively few, and, in ordinary cases, not of long continuance. It was
for the interest of all branches of the royal line to do as little injury
as possible to the commercial and agricultural operations of the realm. In
fact, it was on the prosperity of those operations that the revenues
depended. The rulers were well aware of this, and so, however implacably
two rival princes may have hated one another, and however desperately each
party may have struggled to destroy all active combatants whom they should
find in arms against them, they were both under every possible inducement
to spare the private property and the lives of the peaceful population.
This population, in fact, engaged thus in profitable industry,
constituted, with the avails of their labors, the very estate for which
the combatants were contending.
Seeing the subject in this light, the Egyptian sovereigns, especially
Alexander and the earlier Ptolemies, made every effort in their power to
promote the commercial greatness of Alexandria. They built palaces, it is
true, but they also built warehouses. One of the most expensive and
celebrated of all the edifices that they reared was the light-house which
has been already alluded to. This light-house was a lofty tower, built of
white marble. It was situated upon the island of Pharos, opposite to the
city, and at some distance from it. There was a sort of isthmus of shoals
and sand-bars connecting the island with the shore. Over these shallows a
pier or causeway was built, which finally became a broad and inhabited
neck. The principal part of the ancient city, however, was on the main
land.[1]
The curvature of the earth requires that a light-house on a coast should
have a considerable elevation, otherwise its summit would not appear above
the horizon, unless the mariner were very near. To attain this elevation,
the architects usually take advantage of some hill or cliff, or rocky
eminence near the shore. There was, however, no opportunity to do this at
Pharos; for the island was, like the main land, level and low. The
requisite elevation could only be attained, therefore, by the masonry of
an edifice, and the blocks of marble necessary for the work had to be
brought from a great distance. The Alexandrian light-house was reared in
the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second monarch in the line. No pains
or expense were spared in its construction. The edifice, when completed,
was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It was indebted for
its fame, however, in some degree, undoubtedly to the conspicuousness of
its situation, rising, as it did, at the entrance of the greatest
commercial emporium of its time, and standing there, like a pillar of
cloud by day and of fire by night, to attract the welcome gaze of every
wandering mariner whose ship came within its horizon, and to awaken his
gratitude by tendering him its guidance and dispelling his fears.
The light at the top of the tower was produced by a fire, made of such
combustibles as would emit the brightest flame. This fire burned slowly
through the day, and then was kindled up anew when the sun went down, and
was continually replenished through the night with fresh supplies of fuel.
In modern times, a much more convenient and economical mode is adopted to
produce the requisite illumination. A great blazing lamp burns brilliantly
in the center of the lantern of the tower, and all that part of the
radiation from the flame which would naturally have beamed upward, or
downward, or laterally, or back toward the land, is so turned by a curious
system of reflectors and polyzonal lenses, most ingeniously contrived and
very exactly adjusted, as to be thrown forward in one broad and thin, but
brilliant sheet of light, which shoots out where its radiance is needed,
over the surface of the sea. Before these inventions were perfected, far
the largest portion of the light emitted by the illumination of
light-house towers streamed away wastefully in landward directions, or was
lost among the stars.
Of course, the glory of erecting such an edifice as the Pharos of
Alexandria, and of maintaining it in the performance of its functions,
was very great; the question might, however, very naturally arise whether
this glory was justly due to the architect through whose scientific skill
the work was actually accomplished, or to the monarch by whose power and
resources the architect was sustained. The name of the architect was
Sostratus. He was a Greek. The monarch was, as has already been stated,
the second Ptolemy, called commonly Ptolemy Philadelphus. Ptolemy ordered
that, in completing the tower, a marble tablet should be built into the
wall, at a suitable place near the summit, and that a proper inscription
should be carved upon it, with his name as the builder of the edifice
conspicuous thereon. Sostratus preferred inserting his own name. He
accordingly made the tablet and set it in its place. He cut the
inscription upon the face of it, in Greek characters, with his own name as
the author of the work. He did this secretly, and then covered the face of
the tablet with an artificial composition, made with lime, to imitate the
natural surface of the stone. On this outer surface he cut a new
inscription, in which he inserted the name of the king. In process of time
the lime moldered away, the king's inscription disappeared, and his own,
which thenceforward continued as long as the building endured, came out to
view.
The Pharos was said to have been four hundred feet high. It was famed
throughout the world for many centuries; nothing, however, remains of it
now but a heap of useless and unmeaning ruins.
Besides the light that beamed from the summit of this lofty tower, there
was another center of radiance and illumination in ancient Alexandria,
which was in some respects still more conspicuous and renowned, namely, an
immense library and museum established and maintained by the Ptolemies.
The Museum, which was first established, was not, as its name might now
imply, a collection of curiosities, but an institution of learning,
consisting of a body of learned men, who devoted their time to
philosophical and scientific pursuits. The institution was richly endowed,
and magnificent buildings were erected for its use. The king who
established it began immediately to make a collection of books for the use
of the members of the institution. This was attended with great expense,
as every book that was added to the collection required to be transcribed
with a pen on parchment or papyrus, with infinite labor and care. Great
numbers of scribes were constantly employed upon this work at the Museum.
The kings who were most interested in forming this library would seize the
books that were possessed by individual scholars, or that were deposited
in the various cities of their dominions, and then, causing beautiful
copies of them to be made by the scribes of the Museum, they would retain
the originals for the great Alexandrian Library, and give the copies to
the men or the cities that had been thus despoiled. In the same manner
they would borrow, as they called it, from all travelers who visited
Egypt, any valuable books which they might have in their possession, and,
retaining the originals, give them back copies instead.
In process of time the library increased to four hundred thousand volumes.
There was then no longer any room in the buildings of the Museum for
further additions. There was, however, in another part of the city, a
great temple called the Serapion. This temple was a very magnificent
edifice, or, rather, group of edifices, dedicated to the god Serapis. The
origin and history of this temple were very remarkable. The legend was
this:
It seems that one of the ancient and long-venerated gods of the Egyptians
was a deity named Serapis. He had been, among other divinities, the object
of Egyptian adoration ages before Alexandria was built or the Ptolemies
reigned. There was also, by a curious coincidence, a statue of the same
name at a great commercial town named Sinope, which was built upon the
extremity of a promontory which projected from Asia Minor into the Euxine
Sea.[2] Sinope was, in some sense, the Alexandria of the north, being the
center and seat of a great portion of the commerce of that quarter of the
world.
The Serapis of Sinope was considered as the protecting deity of seamen,
and the navigators who came and went to and from the city made sacrifices
to him, and offered him oblations and prayers, believing that they were,
in a great measure, dependent upon some mysterious and inscrutable power
which he exercised for their safety in storms. They carried the knowledge
of his name, and tales of his imaginary interpositions, to all the places
that they visited; and thus the fame of the god became extended, first, to
all the coasts of the Euxine Sea, and subsequently to distant provinces
and kingdoms. The Serapis of Sinope began to be considered every where as
the tutelar god of seamen.
Accordingly, when the first of the Ptolemies was forming his various plans
for adorning and aggrandizing Alexandria, he received, he said, one night,
a divine intimation in a dream that he was to obtain the statue of Serapis
from Sinope, and set it up in Alexandria, in a suitable temple which he
was in the mean time to erect in honor of the god. It is obvious that very
great advantages to the city would result from the accomplishment of this
design. In the first place, a temple to the god Serapis would be a new
distinction for it in the minds of the rural population, who would
undoubtedly suppose that the deity honored by it was their own ancient
god. Then the whole maritime and nautical interest of the world, which had
been accustomed to adore the god of Sinope, would turn to Alexandria as
the great center of religious attraction, if their venerated idol could be
carried and placed in a new and magnificent temple built expressly for him
there. Alexandria could never be the chief naval port and station of the
world, unless it contained the sanctuary and shrine of the god of seamen.
Ptolemy sent accordingly to the King of Sinope and proposed to purchase
the idol. The embassage was, however, unsuccessful. The king refused to
give up the god. The negotiations were continued for two years, but all in
vain. At length, on account of some failure in the regular course of the
seasons on that coast, there was a famine there, which became finally so
severe that the people of the city were induced to consent to give up
their deity to the Egyptians in exchange for a supply of corn. Ptolemy
sent the corn and received the idol. He then built the temple, which, when
finished, surpassed in grandeur and magnificence almost every sacred
structure in the world.
It was in this temple that the successive additions to the Alexandrian
library were deposited, when the apartments at the Museum became full. In
the end there were four hundred thousand rolls or volumes in the Museum,
and three hundred thousand in the Serapion. The former was called the
parent library, and the latter, being, as it were, the offspring of the
first, was called the daughter.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who interested himself very greatly in collecting
this library, wished to make it a complete collection of all the books in
the world. He employed scholars to read and study, and travelers to make
extensive tours, for the purpose of learning what books existed among all
the surrounding nations; and, when he learned of their existence, he
spared no pains or expense in attempting to procure either the originals
themselves, or the most perfect and authentic copies of them. He sent to
Athens and obtained the works of the most celebrated Greek historians, and
then causing, as in other cases, most beautiful transcripts to be made, he
sent the transcripts back to Athens, and a very large sum of money with
them as an equivalent for the difference of value between originals and
copies in such an exchange.
In the course of the inquiries which Ptolemy made into the literature of
the surrounding nations, in his search for accessions to his library, he
heard that the Jews had certain sacred writings in their temple at
Jerusalem, comprising a minute and extremely interesting history of their
nation from the earliest periods, and also many other books of sacred
prophecy and poetry. These books, which were, in fact, the Hebrew
Scriptures of the Old Testament, were then wholly unknown to all nations
except the Jews, and among the Jews were known only to priests and
scholars. They were kept sacred at Jerusalem. The Jews would have
considered them as profaned in being exhibited to the view of pagan
nations. In fact, the learned men of other countries would not have been
able to read them; for the Jews secluded themselves so closely from the
rest of mankind, that their language was, in that age, scarcely ever heard
beyond the confines of Judea and Galilee.
Ptolemy very naturally thought that a copy of these sacred books would be
a great acquisition to his library. They constituted, in fact, the whole
literature of a nation which was, in some respects, the most extraordinary
that ever existed on the globe. Ptolemy conceived the idea, also, of not
only adding to his library a copy of these writings in the original
Hebrew, but of causing a translation of them to be made into Greek, so
that they might easily be read by the Greek and Roman scholars who were
drawn in great numbers to his capital by the libraries and the learned
institutions which he had established there. The first thing to be
effected, however, in accomplishing either of these plans, was to obtain
the consent of the Jewish authorities. They would probably object to
giving up any copy of their sacred writings at all.
There was one circumstance which led Ptolemy to imagine that the Jews
would, at that time particularly, be averse to granting any request of
such a nature coming from an Egyptian king, and that was, that during
certain wars which had taken place in previous reigns, a considerable
number of prisoners had been taken by the Egyptians, and had been brought
to Egypt as captives, where they had been sold to the inhabitants, and
were now scattered over the land as slaves. They were employed as servile
laborers in tilling the fields, or in turning enormous wheels to pump up
water from the Nile. The masters of these hapless bondmen conceived, like
other slave-holders, that they had a right of property in their slaves.
This was in some respects true, since they had bought them of the
government at the close of the war for a consideration; and though they
obviously derived from this circumstance no valid proprietary right or
claim as against the men personally, it certainly would seem that it gave
them a just claim against the government of whom they bought, in case of
subsequent manumission.
Ptolemy or his minister, for it can not now be known who was the real
actor in these transactions, determined on liberating these slaves and
sending them back to their native land, as a means of propitiating the
Jews and inclining them to listen favorably to the request which he was
about to prefer for a copy of their sacred writings. He, however, paid to
those who held the captives a very liberal sum for ransom. The ancient
historians, who never allow the interest of their narratives to suffer for
want of a proper amplification on their part of the scale on which the
deeds which they record were performed, say that the number of slaves
liberated on this occasion was a hundred and twenty thousand, and the sum
paid for them, as compensation to the owners, was six hundred talents,
equal to six hundred thousand dollars.[3] And yet this was only a
preliminary expense to pave the way for the acquisition of a single series
of books, to add to the variety of the immense collection.
After the liberation and return of the captives, Ptolemy sent a splendid
embassage to Jerusalem, with very respectful letters to the high priest,
and with very magnificent presents. The embassadors were received with the
highest honors. The request of Ptolemy that he should be allowed to take a
copy of the sacred books for his library was very readily granted.
The priests caused copies to be made of all the sacred writings. These
copies were executed in the most magnificent style, and were splendidly
illuminated with letters of gold. The Jewish government also, at Ptolemy's
request, designated a company of Hebrew scholars, six from each tribe--men
learned in both the Greek and Hebrew languages--to proceed to Alexandria,
and there, at the Museum, to make a careful translation of the Hebrew
books into Greek. As there were twelve tribes, and six translators chosen
from each, there were seventy-two translators in all. They made their
translation, and it was called the _Septuagint_, from the Latin
_septuaginta duo_, which means seventy-two.
Although out of Judea there was no feeling of reverence for these Hebrew
Scriptures as books of divine authority, there was still a strong interest
felt in them as very entertaining and curious works of history, by all
the Greek and Roman scholars who frequented Alexandria to study at the
Museum. Copies were accordingly made of the Septuagint translation, and
were taken to other countries; and there, in process of time, copies of
the copies were made, until, at length the work became extensively
circulated throughout the whole learned world. When, finally, Christianity
became extended over the Roman empire, the priests and monks looked with
even a stronger interest than the ancient scholars had felt upon this
early translation of so important a portion of the sacred Scriptures. They
made new copies for abbeys, monasteries, and colleges; and when, at
length, the art of printing was discovered, this work was one of the first
on which the magic power of typography was tried. The original manuscript
made by the scribes of the seventy-two, and all the early transcripts
which were made from it, have long since been lost or destroyed; but,
instead of them, we have now hundreds of thousands of copies in compact
printed volumes, scattered among the public and private libraries of
Christendom. In fact, now, after the lapse of two thousand years, a copy
of Ptolemy's Septuagint may be obtained of any considerable bookseller in
any country of the civilized world; and though it required a national
embassage, and an expenditure, if the accounts are true, of more than a
million of dollars, originally to obtain it, it may be procured without
difficulty now by two days' wages of an ordinary laborer.
Besides the building of the Pharos, the Museum, and the Temple of Serapis,
the early Ptolemies formed and executed a great many other plans tending
to the same ends which the erection of these splendid edifices was
designed to secure, namely, to concentrate in Alexandria all possible
means of attraction, commercial, literary, and religious, so as to make
the city the great center of interest, and the common resort for all
mankind. They raised immense revenues for these and other purposes by
taxing heavily the whole agricultural produce of the valley of the Nile.
The inundations, by the boundless fertility which they annually produced,
supplied the royal treasuries. Thus the Abyssinian rains at the sources of
the Nile built the Pharos at its mouth, and endowed the Alexandrian
library.
The taxes laid upon the people of Egypt to supply the Ptolemies with funds
were, in fact, so heavy, that only the bare means of subsistence were
left to the mass of the agricultural population. In admiring the greatness
and glory of the city, therefore, we must remember that there was a gloomy
counterpart to its splendor in the very extended destitution and poverty
to which the mass of the people were every where doomed. They lived in
hamlets of wretched huts along the banks of the river, in order that the
capital might be splendidly adorned with temples and palaces. They passed
their lives in darkness and ignorance, that seven hundred thousand volumes
of expensive manuscripts might be enrolled at the Museum for the use of
foreign philosophers and scholars. The policy of the Ptolemies was,
perhaps, on the whole, the best, for the general advancement and ultimate
welfare of mankind, which could have been pursued in the age in which they
lived and acted; but, in applauding the results which they attained, we
must not wholly forget the cost which they incurred in attaining them. At
the same cost, we could, at the present day, far surpass them. If the
people of the United States will surrender the comforts and conveniences
which they individually enjoy--if the farmers scattered in their
comfortable homes on the hill-sides and plains throughout the land will
give up their houses, their furniture, their carpets, their books, and the
privileges of their children, and then--withholding from the produce of
their annual toil only a sufficient reservation to sustain them and their
families through the year, in a life like that of a beast of burden, spent
in some miserable and naked hovel--send the rest to some hereditary
sovereign residing upon the Atlantic sea-board, that he may build with the
proceeds a splendid capital, they may have an Alexandria now that will
infinitely exceed the ancient city of the Ptolemies in splendor and
renown. The nation, too, would, in such a case, pay for its metropolis the
same price, precisely, that the ancient Egyptians paid for theirs.
The Ptolemies expended the revenues which they raised by this taxation
mainly in a very liberal and enlightened manner, for the accomplishment of
the purposes which they had in view. The building of the Pharos, the
removal of the statue of Serapis, and the endowment of the Museum and the
library were great conceptions, and they were carried into effect in the
most complete and perfect manner. All the other operations which they
devised and executed for the extension and aggrandizement of the city
were conceived and executed in the same spirit of scientific and
enlightened liberality. Streets were opened; the most splendid palaces
were built; docks, piers, and breakwaters were constructed, and fortresses
and towers were armed and garrisoned. Then every means was employed to
attract to the city a great concourse from all the most highly-civilized
nations then existing. The highest inducements were offered to merchants,
mechanics, and artisans to make the city their abode. Poets, painters,
sculptors, and scholars of every nation and degree were made welcome, and
every facility was afforded them for the prosecution of their various
pursuits. These plans were all eminently successful. Alexandria rose
rapidly to the highest consideration and importance; and, at the time when
Cleopatra--born to preside over this scene of magnificence and
splendor--came upon the stage, the city had but one rival in the world.
That rival was Rome.