ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL, a term applied to certain tendencies in literature, science and art, which took their rise in Alexandria. That city, founded by Alexander the Great, was in every way admirably adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and thought. Its situation brought it into com mercial relations with all the nations lying around the Mediter ranean, and at the same time rendered it the one communicating link with the wealth and civilization of the East. The great natural advantages it thus enjoyed were increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt, the Ptolemies Soter (323-285), Philadelphus (285-247) and Euergetes (247-222). The first began to draw around him from various parts of Greece a circle of men eminent in literature and philosophy. To these he gave every facility for the prosecution of their learned researches. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman and philosopher, this Ptolemy laid the foundations of the great Alexandrian library. He also built, for the convenience of his men of letters, the museum, which was in many respects not unlike a modern university. Philadelphus, whose librarian was the poet Callimachus, bought up all of Aris totle's library, and included in his collection some foreign works, among these was the Pentateuch, the Greek translation of which (the Septuagint) dates from his time. Euergetes largely increased the library by getting possession of the official Athenian copies of the dramatists, and by compelling all travellers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.
The intellectual movement so originated extended over a long period of years, 306 B.C.—A.D. 642 which falls into two divisions; 306--3o B.C. from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to its final subjugation by the Romans; and 3o B.C. to A.D. 642 when Alexandria was destroyed by the Arabs. In the first of the two periods the intellectual activity was of a purely literary and scien tific nature. This was particularly noticeable under the early Ptolemies, Alexandria being then almost the only home in the world for pure literature. During the last century and a half be fore the Christian era, the school, as it might be called, began to break up and to lose its individuality. This was due partly to the state of government under some of the later Ptolemies, partly to the formation of new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria and else where, whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian pecu liarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school. Under Roman sway the influence of the school was extended over the whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. Meanwhile, Alexandria devel oped a new movement, which was not in the old direction—having, indeed, nothing in common with it. With its character largely determined by Oriental gnosticism and containing Jewish and later, Christian elements, this second Alexandrian school resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neoplatonists and the reli gious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.
Thus we may distinguish an earlier Alexandrian school, which is scientific and literary, and a later, which is philosophic and theo logical. In both, "school" is used rather loosely; we should per haps do better to speak of "tendency." Literature.—Thegeneral character of the literature of the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state of af fairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and independ ence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been the products of the free and active, yet not undisciplined atmosphere of the Greek city-state. But with the rise of Macedonia, the city state vanished from practical politics, taking with it freedom as a Greek understood it, and in large measure, independence and originality of thought. A substitute for this originality was found by the Alexandrians in learned research, stimulated by a rever ential interest in the works of the past (cf. CLAssics). They studied criticism, grammar, prosody and metre, antiquities and mythology. The results of this study constantly appear in their productions. Their works are written by and for the learned; they appeal to a small public, little interested in political and military affairs of the time, courtly, as was natural, seeing that many were under the direct patronage of a king, full of literary and scientific interests of all kinds, but, as it happened, not includ ing any writer of first-rate genius. Three tendencies are very marked; viz., (1) Interest in all branches of science, and in the statement of its results in literary form. (2) Interest in the technique of literary expression, particularly that of verse ; prose was for some reason far less popular. (3) Preoccupation in what was then a comparatively new literary motif, since it dates only from Euripides, namely the psychology of love. Most of the great love stories date from this period, and almost for the first time, the heroine is apt to be the central figure. The chief literary forms were : (1) Epic.—This, against the advice and practice of the greatest literary authority, Callimachus, was attempted by several writers. The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius survives ; it is a very learned work, showing immense knowledge of epic metre and diction, and many episodes (notably the central one, the loves of Jason and Medea) are full of merit ; but as a whole, it is dull and lacks unity. Epic was also written by Rhianus, who produced a long poem, now lost, on the Messenian wars. Better and more characteristic was the epullion, or little epic, in which some one episode was treated at length, the rest of the story being merely alluded to. Good examples are the two poems on Heracles and on the Dioscuri, in the Theocritean corpus ; the most famous was the Hecale of Callimachus, of which fragments survive.
(2) Didactic poetry.—This was very popular, for it gave an opportunity to handle neatly and tastefully a subject interesting in itself. Prominent examples are the Phaenomena of Aratus, a ver sified handbook of astronomy and meteorology; the Theriaca of Nicander, on snake-bites and herbal remedies for them, is re markable for its highly learned and obscure diction, a fault, or rather a deliberate affectation, of many Alexandrians. Many mythological poems, as the Aetia of Callimachus, approach didac tic poetry in subject, since they profess to explain customs, rites and so forth.
(3) Elegiac poems were of many kinds. Most characteristic were those dealing with love ; in this genre, which was not strictly new, since it had been handled long before by Mimnermus, f or instance, the Alexandrians, with their new interest in psychology and ethos, excelled, to judge from the scanty fragments remaining, and the criticisms and imitations of Latin writers such as Proper tius. The Lyde of Antimachus was the pioneer of this movement ; the first Alexandrian writer of.the erotic elegy was Philetas of Cos; Callimachus, Hermesianax, and others also won distinction therein. The elegy was also used for mythological narrative, sometimes lengthy, as in Callimachus' Aetia; the mythological works of Euphorion, however, seem to have been mostly in hexameters. As an important offshoot of these compositions, we may notice the epigram (cf. ANTHOLOGY) which assumed a new importance among the Alexandrians.
(4) Closet-drama, including both tragedies and comedies. As the great age of drama was over, nothing first-rate was to be expected from the Pleiad, as the seven most admired authors in this vein were called. The fragments which survive, and the Alex andra of Lycophron (in form a rhesis or messenger's speech from a tragedy, and a byword for its extreme obscurity) do not whet our appetite for more.
(6) here the characteristic form is rhetorical history, or at least history written with an eye to stylistic effect, although research was not absent. 'Timaeus and Theopompus (both lost) were among the most celebrated; Cleitarchus and others wrote on the exploits of Alexander, which became in their hands more and more mixed with sheer fable. Polybius' history is in large measure a counterblast to the rhetorical style; it remained an almost iso lated attempt.
(8) Parody and satire flourished, for example the Saki of Timon, mock epic verses abusing philosophers.
In grammar and philology, the work of the Alexandrian critics, although lacking the minute accuracy of the best modern scholar ship, aided as that is by palaeography, comparative philology, and archaeology, was most meritorious. It was their aim to collect and preserve in a correct and intelligible form the literature of Greece, and to comment adequately on it, where necessary. Their methods (MAN:its, textual or lower criticism, with etvIttyvcim-ts, correct accentuation; ,T.xpn or syntactical study, kiryno-cs or commentary, and Kplcrts higher or literary criticism, differ little in principle from our own. (See CLASSICS ; TEXTUAL CRITICISM.) Besides the great Aristarchus, and Zenodotus, whose labours on Homer were second only to Aristarchus' in value, may be named Aristophanes of Byzantium, Homeric critic and inventor of the signs for accents; Crates; and several of the most famous writers, as Apollonius Rhodius, Lycophron, and Callimachus. Many works were written on grammar (as by Dionysius Thrax, the first im portant Greek grammarian), chronology (Eratosthenes is the great name here, see CHRONOLOGY) ; (Callimachus wrote on the chro nology.of the drama), mythology (the Bibliotheca falsely ascribed to Apollodorus, and many scholia, epitomize much of this learn ing), geography (again Eratosthenes took a leading part), and astronomy (Hipparchus, and later Claudius Ptolemaus, from whom the Ptolemaic system is named; see ASTRONOMY). Medi cine was studied with much success (Herophilus and Erasistratus were great anatomists), and finally, the mathematicians of that age notably advanced this science; Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga are especially great names (see MATHEMATICS) while Eucleides is still familiar as the "Euclid" but recently displaced as a text-book of geometry.
BismoGRAPHY.—Christ-Schmidt, Geschichte der griechischen Liter atur; Sandys, History of Scholarship, v.i; Couat, La Poesie alexan drine; Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alex andrinerzeit. Nicolai's Griechische Literaturgeschichte, though some what out of date, is useful for bibliography.
Philosophy.—The mutual criticisms of the various philo sophic schools, all of which continued to exist, had resulted in a general feeling of uncertainty and scepticism. As a result, any doc trine which claimed infallible certainty was sure of a hearing; and this was found in the various Eastern religions, notably Judaism. Hence arose that characteristic feature of Alexandrian ttiought which we may call gnosticism. A supposed revelation (gnosis) personal or derived from ancient writings, set forth with Greek logic and rhetoric, is the central feature of all the most character istic Alexandrian philosophy (see NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM ; HER MES TRISMEGISTUS).
So far as the Jewish succession is concerned, the great name is that of Philo in the first century of our era. He took Greek meta physical theories, and, by the allegorical method, read them into the Old Testament. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and (c) the great Logos doctrine as the ex planation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysic, and may be regarded as representing the climax of Jewish philosophy. Of pagan schools of philosophy, the first was Neo-Pythagoreanism, the second and last Neo-Platonism (q.v.). Their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in com munion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reaches it height in Plotinus, after whom it degenerated into magic and theurgy in its unsuccessful combat with the victorious Christianity. Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in purely histori cal work based mainly on the attempt to reorganize ancient phil osophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when Justinian closed the Athenian schools (A.D. 529). The influence of all this on some of the most enlightened Christians, as Clement and Origen, was enormous. They strove after a Christian gnosis. Side by side with them, a swarm of semi-Christian Gnostic sects arose. Such ideas are still present much later in Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and Neo Platonism, gradually absorbed into Christianity, profoundly and lastingly' modified its theology.
See Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Ueberweg, Windelband, etc., and bibliography of CHURCH HISTORY and the other special articles referred to above.