volume 1, chapter 10.

See ATHENS: A. D. 529.

EDUCATION: Alexandria.

"Ptolemy, upon whom, on Alexander's death, devolved the kingdom of Egypt, supplies us with the first great instance of what may be called the establishment of Letters. He and Eumenes may be considered the first founders of public libraries. ... A library, however, was only one of two great conceptions brought into execution by the first Ptolemy; and as the first was the embalming of dead genius, so the second was the endowment of living. ... Ptolemy, ... prompted, or at least, encouraged, by the celebrated Demetrius of Phalerus, put into execution a plan for the formal endowment of literature and science. The fact indeed of the possession of an immense library seemed sufficient to render Alexandria a University; for what could be a greater attraction to the students of all lands, than the opportunity afforded them of intellectual converse, not only with the living, but with the dead, with all who had anywhere at any time thrown light upon any subject of inquiry? But Ptolemy determined that his teachers of knowledge should be as stationary and as permanent as his books; so, resolving to make Alexandria the seat of a 'Studium Generale,' he founded a College for its domicile, and endowed that College with ample revenues. Here, I consider, he did more than has been commonly done, till modern times. It requires considerable knowledge of medieval Universities to be entitled to give an opinion; as regards Germany, for instance, or Poland, or Spain; but, as far as I have a right to speak, such an endowment has been rare down to the sixteenth century, as well as before Ptolemy. ... To return to the Alexandrian College. It was called the Museum,--a name since appropriated to another institution connected with the seats of science. ... There was a quarter of the city so distinct from the rest in Alexandria, that it is sometimes spoken of as a suburb. It was pleasantly situated on the water's edge, and had been set aside for ornamental buildings, and was traversed by groves of trees. Here stood the royal palace, here the theatre and amphitheatre; here the gymnasia and stadium; here the famous Serapeum. {685} And here it was, close upon the Port, that Ptolemy placed his Library and College. As might be supposed, the building was worthy of its purpose; a noble portico stretched along its front, for exercise or conversation, and opened upon the public rooms devoted to disputations and lectures. A certain number of Professors were lodged within the precincts, and a handsome hall, or refectory, was provided for the common meal. The Prefect of the house was a priest, whose appointment lay with the government. Over the Library a dignified person presided. ... As to the Professors, so liberal was their maintenance, that a philosopher of the very age of the first foundation called the place a 'bread basket,' or a 'bird coop'; yet, in spite of accidental exceptions, so careful on the whole was their selection, that even six hundred years afterwards, Ammianus describes the Museum under the title of 'the lasting abode of distinguished men.' Philostratus, too, about a century before, calls it 'a table gathering together celebrated men.' ... As time went on new Colleges were added to the original Museum; of which one was a foundation of the Emperor Claudius, and called after his name. ... A diversity of teachers secured an abundance of students. 'Hither,' says Cave, 'as to a public emporium of polite literature, congregated, from every part of the world, youthful students, and attended the lectures in Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, Philosophy, Astronomy, Music, Medicine, and other arts and sciences'; and hence proceeded, as it would appear, the great Christian writers and doctors, 'Clement, ... Origen, Anatolius, and Athanasius. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the third century, may be added; he came across Asia Minor and Syria from Pontus, as to a place, says his namesake of Nyssa, 'to which young men from all parts gathered together, who were applying themselves to philosophy.' As to the subjects taught in the Museum, Cave has already enumerated the principal; but he has not done justice to the peculiar character of the Alexandrian school. From the time that science got out of the hands of the pure Greeks, into those of a power which had a talent for administration, it became less theoretical, and bore more distinctly upon definite and tangible objects. ... Egyptian Antiquities were investigated, at least by the disciples of the Egyptian Manetho, fragments of whose history are considered to remain; while Carthaginian and Etruscan had a place in the studies of the Claudian College. The Museum was celebrated, moreover, for its grammarians; the work of Hephæstion 'de Metris' still affords matter of thought to a living Professor of Oxford; and Aristarchus, like the Athenian Priscian, has almost become the nickname for a critic. Yet, eminent as is the Alexandrian school in these departments of science, its fame rests still more securely upon its proficiency in medicine and mathematics. Among its physicians is the celebrated Galen, who was attracted thither from Pergamus; and we are told by a writer of the fourth century, that in his time the very fact of a physician having studied at Alexandria, was an evidence of his science which superseded further testimonial. As to Mathematics, it is sufficient to say, that, of four great ancient names, on whom the modern science is founded, three came from Alexandria. Archimedes indeed was a Syracusan; but the Museum may boast of Apollonius of Perga, Diophantus, a native Alexandrian, and Euclid, whose country is unknown. To these illustrious names, may be added, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, to whom astronomy has obligations so considerable; Pappus; Theon; and Ptolemy, said to be of Pelusium, whose celebrated system, called after him the Ptolemaic, reigned in the schools till the time of Copernicus, and whose Geography, dealing with facts, not theories, is in repute still. Such was the celebrated 'Studium' or University of Alexandria; for a while in the course of the third and fourth centuries, it was subject to reverses, principally from war. The whole of the Bruchion, the quarter of the city in which it was situated, was given to the flames; and, when Hilarion came to Alexandria, the holy hermit, whose rule of life did not suffer him to lodge in cities, took up his lodgment with a few solitaries among the ruins of its edifices. The schools, however, and the library continued; the library was reserved for the Caliph Omar's famous judgment; as to the schools, even as late as the twelfth century, the Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, gives us a surprising report of what he found in Alexandria."

_J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches: Rise and Progress of Universities, chapter 8._

"In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and Augustus, Athens was preëminently the training school for philosophy, Rhodes, on the other hand, as the only Greek state of political importance in which a career of grand and dignified activity was open for the orator, distinguished itself in the study of eloquence, while Alexandria rested its fame chiefly on the excellence of its instruction in Philology and Medicine. At a subsequent period the last mentioned University obtained even greater celebrity as having given birth to a school of philosophers who endeavored to combine into a species of theosophic doctrine the mental science of Europe with the more spiritual minded and profoundly human religions of the East. In the third century Alexandria became conspicuous as the headquarters of the Eclectics and Neo·Platonists."

_E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education,