Immediately after, he invaded and conquered Egypt, and shewed to its gods the same respect as to those of Greece. Almost without a pause he founded the celebrated city of Alexandria (a.c. 332), an event which, perhaps more than any other cause, permanently altered the state of the East, and brought about a direct interchange of mind be tween Greece, Egypt, and Judaea. Sidon had been utterly ruined by Artaxerxes Ochus (B.c. 351), and Tyre, this very year, by Alexander : the rise of a new commercial metropolis on the Mediterranean was thus facilitated ; and when the sagacious Ptolemy became master of Egypt (B.c. 323), that country presently rose to a prosperity which it never could have had under its distant and intoler ant Persian lords. The Indian trade was diverted from its former course up the Euphrates into the channel of the Red Sea ; and the new Egyptian capital soon became a centre of attraction for Jews as well as Greeks. Under the dynasty of the Ptolemies the Hellenic race enjoyed such a prac tical ascendancy (though on the whole to the benefit of the native Egyptians) that the influx of Greeks was of course immense. At the same time, owing to the proximity of the Egyptian religion, both the religion and the philosophy of the Greeks assun ed here a modified form ; and the monarcns, who were accustomed to tolerate and protect Egyptian superstition, were naturally very indul gent to Jewish peculiarities. Alexandria, therefore, became a favourite resort of the Jews, who here lived under their own laws, administered by a go vernor (Ovcipvis) of their own nation ; but they learned the Greek tongue, and were initiated more or less into Greek philosophy. Their numbers were so great as to make them a large fraction of the whole city; and out of their necessities arose the translation of the Old Testament into Greek. The close connection which this Egyptian colony maintained with their brethren in Palestine pro duced various important mental and spiritual effects on the latter. [Esso:NEs.] The most accessible specimen of rhetorical morality produced by the Hebrew culture of Greek learning is to be seen in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon : the most elaborate development of Hebrew Platonism is contained in the works of Philo. In the writing called the Third Book of the Maccabees is a sufficiently unfavourable specimen of an attempt at rhetorical history by a mind educated in the same school. How deep an impress has been left on the Christian Church by the combination of Greek and Hebrew learning which characterized Alexandria, it needs many pages for the ecclesiastical historian to discuss. The Grecian cities afterwards built in
northern Palestine [DECAPOLIS] seem to have exerted little spiritual influence on the south ; for a strong repulsion existed in the strictly Jewish mind against both Samaria and Galilee.
The tolerant policy of Alexander was closely followed by his great successor Seleucus, who ad mitted the Jews to equal rights with Macedonians in all his new cities, even in his capital of Antioch (Joseph. Antig. xii. 3, 1) ; and similar or greater liberality was exercised by the succeeding kings of that line, down to Antiochus Epiphanes. [AN-rio citus.] It can scarcely be doubted that on this to a great extent depended the remarkable west ward migration of the Jews from Media and Babylon into Asia Minor, which went on silently and steadily until all the chief cities of those parts had in them the representatives of the twelve tribes. This again greatly influenced the planting of Christianity, the most favourable soil for which, during the time of its greatest purity, was in a Greek population which had previously received a Jewish culture. In passing we may remark, that we are unable to find the shadow of a reason for the popular assumption that the modern European Jews are descendants of the two more than of the other ten or eleven tribes.
The great founder of Alexandria died in his thirty-second year, B. C. 323. The empire which he then left to be quarrelled for by his generals comprised the whole dominions of Persia, with the homage and obedience of Greece superadded. But on the final settlement which took place after the battle of Ipsus (B.c. 301), Seleucus, the Greek re presentative of Persian majesty, reigned over a less extended district than the last Darius. Not only were Egypt and Cyprus severed from the eastern empire, but Palestine and Ccelesyria also fell to their ruler, placing Jerusalem for nearly a century beneath an Egyptian monarch. Ou this subject, see further under A NTIOCHUS.
The word Alexander means the hel,per or rescues of men, denoting military prowess. It is Homer's ordinary name for Paris, son of Priam, and was borne by two kings of Macedon before the knit Alexander. The history of this conqueror is known to us by the works of Arrian and Quintus Curtius especially, besides the general sources for all Greek history. Neither of these authors wrote within four centuries of the death of Alexander ; but they had access to copious contemporary narratives since lost. —F. W. N.