ALEXANDRINE AGE. After liberty and intellectual cultivation had declined in Greece, Alexandria in Egypt became the home and center of science and literature. The time in which it held this position is styled the A.A., and may be divided into two periods: the first including tho reigns of the Ptolemies, from .323 to 30 is.o.; the second from 30 B.C. to 640 A.D., or from the fall of the Ptolemzean dynasty to the irruption of the Arabs.
Ptolemseus Soter, the first ruler who introduced and patronized Greek science and literature in Alexandria, was followed by that yet more munificent patron, Ptolemmus Philadelphus, who regularly established the celebrated Alexandrian library and museum, which had been probably begun by his father. This museum contained porticos, a lec ture-room, and a large hall, in which the learned men—the professors and fellows, as they might be called—dined together. The A. school consisted of Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, and latterly, Romans. The grammarians and poet's made the greatest figure. The grammarians were both philologists and littirateurs, who explained things as well as words, and were thus a kind of encyclopaedists. Among these rank Zenodotus of Ephe sus, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Crates of Manus, Dionysius the Thracian, Apollonius the sophist, and ZoIlus. Their chief service consists in having collected the writings then existing, prepared corrected texts, and preserved them for future generations. The most noted of the poets of the A. school were Apollonius Rhodius, Lycophron, Aratns, Nicander, Enphorion, Callimachus, Theocritus, Dionysius, and the seven tragedians called the A. Pleiades.
The A. school has a spirit and character altogether different from the previous intel lectual life of Greece. From the attention paid to the study of language, it was natural that correctness, purity, and elegance of expression should become especially cultivated ; and in these respects many of the A. writers are distinguished. But what no study and no efforts could give—the spirit, namely, that animated the earlier Greek poetry, was, in most of these works, wanting. In place of it, there was displayed greater art in compo
sition ' • what had formerly been done by genius, was now to be done by the rules fur nished by criticism. Only a few display real genius ; the works of the rest, faultless to rule, are destitute of life and soul. In a school, where imitation and rule thus took the place of inspiration, each generation of disciples became more artificial and lifeless than their masters. Criticism degenerated into frivolous fault-finding, and both prose and poetry became labored affectation.
The ALEXANDRINE PirmosoPirr is characterized by a blending of the philosophies of the east and of the west, and by a general tendency to eclectidsm, as it is called, or an en deavor to reconcile conflicting systems of speculation, by bringing together what seemed true in each. Not that the A. philosophers were without their sects ; the most famous of which were the Neo-Platonists (q.v.). Uniting the religious notions of the east with Greek dialectics, they represent the struggle of ancient civilization with Christianity ; and thus their system was not without influence on the form that Christian dogmas took in Egypt. The amalgamation of eastern ideas with Christian, gave rise to the system of the Gnostics (q.v.), which was elaborated chiefly in Alexandria. .—The A. school was no less distinguished for the culture of the mathematical and physical sciences, which here reached a greater height than anywhere else in ancient times. As early as the 3d C. B.C., Euclid had here written his great work on geometry. The astronomers of the A. school were distinguished from all their predecessors by their setting aside all meta physical speculation, and devoting themselves to strict observation. Among the distin guished physicists and mathematicians of the A. school were Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus of Samos, Ptolemicus, etc. For about 4 c. the A. school was the center of learning and science in the ancient world. Counting from its origin to its complete extinction, it lasted 1000 years.