frequently or almost always distinguished in several special
sciences. The most renowned poets were at the same time men
of culture and science, critics, archaeologists, astronomers
or physicians. To such writers the poetical form was
merely a convenient vehicle for the exposition of science.
The forms of poetical composition chiefly cultivated by the
Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics
are wanting; but in their place, as might almost have been
expected, are found the historical and the didactic or expository
epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally
some of the well-known myths, in the exposition of which
the writer could exhibit the full extent of his learning and
his perfect command of verse. These poems are in a sense
valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is
on the whole bad, and infinite patience is required to clear
up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant
specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the
most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of
Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.
The subjects of didactic epics were very numerous; they
seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by
the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their
information. Some, e.g. the lost poem of Callimachus,
called Ai'tia, were on the origin of myths and religious
observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have
two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria,
was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to
be with reason included in the school; the one is an essay
on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the
weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one
on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous
beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The
spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned
research. They are distinguished by artistic form, purity
of expression and strict attention to the laws of metre and
prosody, qualities which, however good in themselves, do
not compensate for want of originality, freshness and power.
In their lyric and elegiac poetry there is much worthy of
admiration. The specimens we possess are not devoid of
talent or of a certain happy art of expression. Yet, for
the most part, they either relate to objects thoroughly
incapable of poetic treatment, where the writer's endeavour
is rather to expound the matter fully than to render it
poetically beautiful, or else expend themselves on short
isolated subjects, generally myths, and are erotic in
character. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philetas,
the sweet singer of Cos. But the most distinguished was
Callimachus, undoubtedly the greatest of the Alexandrian
poets. Of his numerous works there remain to us only a few
hymns, epigrams and fragments of elegies.1 Other lyric poets
were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolla and Lycophron.
Some of the best productions of the school were their
epirams. Of these we have several specimens, and the art
of composing them seems to have been assiduously cultivated,
as might naturally be expected from the court life of the
poets, and their constant endeavours after terseness and
neatness of expression. Of kindred character were the
parodies and satirical poems, of which the best examples
were the Silli of Timon and the Cinaedi of Sotades.
Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some
extent. There are still extant three or four varying lists
of the seven great dramatists who composed the Pleiad of
Alexandria. Their works, perhaps not unfortunately, have
perished. A ruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or
bucolic mime, developed into the only pure stream of genial
poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of
Theocritus. The name of these poems preserves their
original idea; they were pictures of fresh country life.
The most interesting fact connected with this Alexandrian poetry
is the powerful influence it exercised on Roman literature.
That literature, especially in the Augustan age, is not to be
thoroughly understood without due appreciation of the character
of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period
were numerous and prolific. Many of them, e.g. Cleitarchus,
devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the
Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.
Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works,
their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient
Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the
world, it must be handed down to posterity in a form capable
of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out
by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect
works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to
criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them
which at a later date might become obscure. The complete
philological examination of any work consisted, according to
them, of the following processes:---diorthosis, arrangement
of the text; anagnosis, settlement of accents; tenn??,
theory of forms, syntax; lxegnsis, explanation either of
words or things; and finally, krisis, judgment on the author
and his work, including all questions as to authenticity and
integrity. To perform their task adequately required from the
critics a wide circle of knowledge; and from this requirement
sprang the sciences of grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology
and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is
invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of
the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of
them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were
Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the
theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of
Samothrace, confessedly the coryphaeus of criticism. Others
were Lycophron, Callimachus, Eratosthenes and many of a later
age, for the critical school long survived the literary.
Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek
grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours
were of great indirect importance, for they led immediately
to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a
more accurate knowledge of geography and history. Considerable
attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece,
and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and
cities. A large collection of such curious information
is contained in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, a pupil
of Aristarchus who flourished in the 2nd century B.C.
Eratosthenes was the first to write on mathematical and physical
geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological
table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of
Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine
were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria,
but they can scarcely be said to have their origin there, or in
any strict sense to form a part of the peculiarly Alexandrian
literature. The founder of the mathematical school was
the celebrated Euclid (Eucleides); among its scholars were
Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on
Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first
measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of
the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the
Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius
Ptolemaeus. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a
school of mathematics and science long after the Christian
era. The science of medicine had distinguished representatives
in Herophilus and Erasistratus, the two first great anatomists.
AUTHORITIES.--Muller and Donaldson, History of the
Literature of Ancient Greece; W. Christ, Geschichte
der griechischen Litteratur; Mahaffy, Greek Life
and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman
Empire; Couat, La Poesie alexandrine; and especially
Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der
Alexandninerzeit. Nicolai's Gricchische Literaturgeschichte,
though somewhat out of date, is useful for bibliography.
II. Philosophy.--Although it is not possible to divide
literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although
the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to
science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period
the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up,
seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the
field of pure literature bear the stamp of Rome rather than of
Alexandria. But in that city for some time past there had
been various forces secretly working, and these, coming in
contact with great spiritual changes in the world around,
produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is
generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The
doctrines of this school were a fusion of Eastern and Western
thought, and combined in varying proportions the elements of
Hellenistic and Jewish philosophy. Traces of this eclectic
tendency are discoverable as far back as 280 B.C., but for
practical purposes the dates of the school may be given as
from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 529. The city of Alexandria
had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and
Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a
heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted
a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the
beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of
the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact
of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great
problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority
and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly
attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration
in the dry intellectualism into which they had fallen (see
NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM). At the same time the Jews of the
Dispersion had to some extent shaken off the exclusiveness
of their old political relations and were prepared to compare
and contrast their old territorial theology with cosmopolitan
culture. Further, when the two sides came to consider
the results of their intellectual inheritance they found
that they had sufficient common ground for the initial
compromise. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal
revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a
complete theology revealed to a special people. The result
was the application of a purely philosophical system to the
somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The
matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the
relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism,
the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of
Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and eclectic Platonism.
The members of the school may be enumerated under three heads.
(1) The beginnings of the eclectic spirit are, according
to some authorities, discernible in the Septuagint (280
B.C.) (see Frankel, Historisch-kritische Studien zur
Septuaginta, 1841), but the first concrete exemplification is
found in Aristobulus (e. 160 B.C.). 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 metaphysical
theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them
in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. 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,
