Part 13

The Mongols, under Khulagu, or Houlagou, brother of Mangu Khan, having overrun Mesopotamia and extinguished the Caliphate at Bagdad, crossed the Euphrates in the spring of 1260 and advanced to Aleppo. The city was taken after a siege of seven days and given up for five days to pillage and slaughter. "When the carnage ceased, the streets were cumbered with corpses. … It is said that 100,000 women and children were sold as slaves. The walls of Aleppo were razed, its mosques destroyed, and its gardens ravaged." Damascus submitted and was spared. Khulagu was meditating, it is said, the conquest of Jerusalem, when news of the death of the Great Khan called him to the East.

_H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, pages 209-211._

ALEPPO: A. D. 1401. Sack and Massacre by Timour.

See TIMOUR.

ALESIA, Siege of, by Cæsar.

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

ALESSANDRIA: The creation of the city (1168).

See ITALY: A. D. 1174-1183.

ALEUTS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESKIMO.

ALEXANDER ALEXANDER the Great, B. C. 334-323. Conquests and Empire.

See MACEDONIA, &c., B. C. 334-330, and after.

Alexander, King of Poland, A. D. 1501-1507.

Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria. Abduction and Abdication.

See BULGARIA: A. D. 1878-1886.

Alexander I., Czar of Russia, A. D. 1801-1825.

Alexander I., King of Scotland, A. D. 1107-1124.

Alexander II., Pope, A. D. 1061-1073.

Alexander II., Czar of Russia, A. D. 1855-1881.

Alexander II., King of Scotland, A. D. 1214-1249.

Alexander III., Pope, A. D. 1159-1181.

Alexander III., Czar of Russia, A. D. 1881-.

Alexander III., King of Scotland, A. D. 1249-1286.

Alexander IV., Pope, A. D. 1254-1261.

Alexander V., Pope, A. D. 1409-1410 (elected by the Council of Pisa).

Alexander VI., Pope, A. D. 1492-1503.

Alexander VII., Pope, A. D. 1655-1667.

Alexander VIII., Pope, A. D. 1689-1691.

Alexander Severus, Roman Emperor, A. D. 222-235.

ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 332. The Founding of the City.

"When Alexander reached the Egyptian military station at the little town or village of Rhakotis, he saw with the quick eye of a great commander how to turn this petty settlement into a great city, and to make its roadstead, out of which ships could be blown by a change of wind, into a double harbour roomy enough to shelter the navies of the world. All that was needed was to join the island by a mole to the continent. The site was admirably secure and convenient, a narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the great inland Lake Mareotis. The whole northern side faced the two harbours, which were bounded east and west by the mole, and beyond by the long, narrow rocky island of Pharos, stretching parallel with the coast. On the south was the inland port of Lake Mareotis. The length of the city was more than three miles, the breadth more than three-quarters of a mile; the mole was above three-quarters of a mile long and six hundred feet broad; its breadth is now doubled, owing to the silting up of the sand. Modern Alexandria until lately only occupied the mole, and was a great town in a corner of the space which Alexander, with large provision for the future, measured out. The form of the new city was ruled by that of the site, but the fancy of Alexander designed it in the shape of a Macedonian cloak or chlamys, such as a national hero wears on the coins of the kings of Macedon, his ancestors. The situation is excellent for commerce. Alexandria, with the best Egyptian harbour on the Mediterranean, and the inland port connected with the Nile streams and canals, was the natural emporium of the Indian trade. Port Said is superior now, because of its grand artificial port and the advantage for steamships of an unbroken sea route."

_R. S. Poole, Cities of Egypt, chapter 12._

See, also, MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 334-330; and EGYPT: B. C. 332.

ALEXANDRIA: Reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C. 282-246. Greatness and splendor of the City. Its Commerce. Its Libraries. Its Museum. Its Schools.

Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter, succeeded to the throne of Egypt in 282 B. C. when his father retired from it in his favor, and reigned until 246 B. C. "Alexandria, founded by the great conqueror, increased and beautified by Ptolemy Soter, was now far the greatest city of Alexander's Empire. It was the first of those new foundations which are a marked feature in Hellenism; there were many others of great size and importance—above all, Antioch, then Seleucia on the Tigris, then Nicomedia, Nicæa, Apamea, which lasted; besides such as Lysimacheia, Antigoneia, and others, which early disappeared. … Alexandria was the model for all the rest. The intersection of two great principal thoroughfares, adorned with colonnades for the footways, formed the centre point, the omphalos of the city. The other streets were at right angles with these thoroughfares, so that the whole place was quite regular. Counting its old part, Rhakotis, which was still the habitation of native Egyptians, Alexandria had five quarters, one at least devoted to Jews who had originally settled there in great numbers. The mixed population there of Macedonians, Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians gave a peculiarly complex and variable character to the population. Let us not forget the vast number of strangers from all parts of the world whom trade and politics brought there. It was the great mart where the wealth of Europe and of Asia changed hands. Alexander had opened the sea-way by exploring the coasts of Media and Persia. Caravans from the head of the Persian Gulf, and ships on the Red Sea, brought all the wonders of Ceylon and China, as well as of Further India, to Alexandria. There, too, the wealth of Spain and Gaul, the produce of Italy and Macedonia, the amber of the Baltic and the salt fish of Pontus, the silver of Spain and the copper of Cyprus, the timber of Macedonia and Crete, the pottery and oil of Greece—a thousand imports from all the Mediterranean—came to be exchanged for the spices of Arabia, the splendid birds and embroideries of India and Ceylon, the gold and ivory of Africa, the antelopes, the apes, the leopards, the elephants of tropical climes. Hence the enormous wealth of the Lagidæ, for in addition to the marvellous fertility and great population—it is said to have been seven millions—of Egypt, they made all the profits of this enormous carrying trade. {38} We gain a good idea of what the splendours of the capital were by the very full account preserved to us by Athenæus of the great feast which inaugurated the reign of Philadelphus. … All this seems idle pomp, and the doing of an idle sybarite. Philadelphus was anything but that. … It was he who opened up the Egyptian trade with Italy, and made Puteoli the great port for ships from Alexandria, which it remained for centuries. It was he who explored Ethiopia and the southern parts of Africa, and brought back not only the curious fauna to his zoological gardens, but the first knowledge of the Troglodytes for men of science. The cultivation of science and of letters too was so remarkably one of his pursuits that the progress of the Alexandria of his day forms an epoch in the world's history, and we must separate his University and its professors from this summary, and devote to them a separate section. … The history of the organization of the University and its staff is covered with almost impenetrable mist. For the Museum and Library were in the strictest sense what we should now call an University, and one, too, of the Oxford type, where learned men were invited to take Fellowships, and spend their learned leisure close to observatories in science, and a great library of books. Like the mediæval universities, this endowment of research naturally turned into an engine for teaching, as all who desired knowledge flocked to such a centre, and persuaded the Fellow to become a Tutor. The model came from Athens. There the schools, beginning with the Academy of Plato, had a fixed property—a home with its surrounding garden, and in order to make this foundation sure, it was made a shrine where the Muses were worshipped, and where the head of the school, or a priest appointed, performed stated sacrifices. This, then, being held in trust by the successors of the donor, who bequeathed it; to them, was a property which it would have been sacrilegious to invade, and so the title Museum arose for a school of learning. Demetrius the Phalerean, the friend and protector of Theophrastus, brought this idea with him to Alexandria, when his namesake drove him into exile [see GREECE: B. C. 307-197] and it was no doubt his advice to the first Ptolemy which originated the great foundation, though Philadelphus, who again exiled Demetrius, gets the credit of it. The pupil of Aristotle moreover impressed on the king the necessity of storing up in one central repository all that the world knew or could produce, in order to ascertain the laws of things from a proper analysis of detail. Hence was founded not only the great library, which in those days had a thousand times the value a great library has now, but also observatories, zoological gardens, collections of exotic plants, and of other new and strange things brought by exploring expeditions from the furthest regions of Arabia and Africa. This library and museum proved indeed a home for the Muses, and about it a most brilliant group of students in literature and science was formed. The successive librarians were Zenodotus, the grammarian or critic; Callimachus, to whose poems we shall presently return; Eratosthenes, the astronomer, who originated the process by which the size of the earth is determined to-day; Appollonius the Rhodian, disciple and enemy of Callimachus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, founder of a school of philological criticism; and Aristarchus of Samos, reputed to have been the greatest critic of ancient times. The study of the text of Homer was the chief labour of Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus, and it was Aristarchus who mainly fixed the form in which the Iliad and Odyssey remain to this day. … The vast collections of the library and museum actually determined the whole character of the literature of Alexandria. One word sums it all up—erudition, whether in philosophy, in criticism, in science, even in poetry. Strange to say, they neglected not only oratory, for which there was no scope, but history, and this we may attribute to the fact that history before Alexander had no charms for Hellenism. Mythical lore, on the other hand, strange uses and curious words, were departments of research dear to them. In science they did great things, so did they in geography. … But were they original in nothing? Did they add nothing of their own to the splendid record of Greek literature? In the next generation came the art of criticism, which Aristarchus developed into a real science, and of that we may speak in its place; but even in this generation we may claim for them the credit of three original, or nearly original, developments in literature—the pastoral idyll, as we have it in Theocritus; the elegy, as we have it in the Roman imitators of Philetas and Callimachus; and the romance, or love story, the parent of our modern novels. All these had early prototypes in the folk songs of Sicily, in the love songs of Mimnermus and of Antimachus, in the tales of Miletus, but still the revival was fairly to be called original. Of these the pastoral idyll was far the most remarkable, and laid hold upon the world for ever."

_J. P. Mahaffy, The Story of Alexander's Empire, chapter 13-14._

"There were two Libraries of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, the larger one in the quarter called the Bruchium, and the smaller one, named 'the daughter,' in the Serapeum, which was situated in the quarter called Rhacotis. The former was totally destroyed in the conflagration of the Bruchium during Cæsar's Alexandrian War [see below: B. C. 48-47]; but the latter, which was of great value, remained uninjured (see Matter, _Histoire de l'École d'Alexandrie, volume 1, page 133 seg., 237 seq.)_ It is not stated by any ancient writer where the collection of Pergamus [see PERGAMUM] was placed, which Antony gave to Cleopatra (Plutarch, Anton., c. 58); but it is most probable that it was deposited in the Bruchium, as that quarter of the city was now without a library, and the queen was anxious to repair the ravages occasioned by the civil war. If this supposition is correct, two Alexandrian libraries continued to exist after the time of Cæsar, and this is rendered still more probable by the fact that during the first three centuries of the Christian era the Bruchium was still the literary quarter of Alexandria. But a great change took place in the time of Aurelian. This Emperor, in suppressing the revolt of Firmus in Egypt, A. D. 273 [see below: A. D. 273] is said to have destroyed the Bruchium; and though this statement is hardly to be taken literally, the Bruchium ceased from this time to be included within the walls of Alexandria, and was regarded only as a suburb of the city. {39} Whether the great library in the Bruchium with the museum and its other literary establishments, perished at this time, we do not know; but the Serapeum for the next century takes its place as the literary quarter of Alexandria, and becomes the chief library in the city. Hence later writers erroneously speak of the Serapeum as if it had been from the beginning the great Alexandrian library. … Gibbon seems to think that the whole of the Serapeum was destroyed [A. D. 389, by order of the Emperor Theodosius—see below]; but this was not the case. It would appear that it was only the sanctuary of the god that was levelled with the ground, and that the library, the halls and other buildings in the consecrated ground remained standing long afterwards."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 28. Notes by Dr. William Smith. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

Concerning the reputed final destruction of the Library by the Moslems,

See below: A. D. 641-646.

ALSO IN _O. Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, chapter 3._

_S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapters 7, 8 and 12._

See, also, NEOPLATONICS.

ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 48-47. Cæsar and Cleopatra. The Rising against the Romans. The Siege. Destruction of the great Library. Roman victory.

From the battle field of Pharsalia (see ROME: B. C. 48) Pompeius fled to Alexandria in Egypt; and was treacherously murdered as he stepped on shore. Cæsar arrived a few days afterwards, in close pursuit, and shed tears, it is said, on being shown his rival's mangled head. He had brought scarcely more than 3,000 of his soldiers with him, and he found Egypt in a turbulent state of civil war. The throne was in dispute between children of the late king, Ptolemæus Auletes. Cleopatra, the elder daughter, and Ptolemæus, a son, were at war with one another, and Arsinoë, a younger daughter, was ready to put forward claims (see EGYPT: B. C. 80-48). Notwithstanding the insignificance of his force, Cæsar did not hesitate to assume to occupy Alexandria and to adjudicate the dispute. But the fascinations of Cleopatra (then twenty years of age) soon made him her partisan, and her scarcely disguised lover. This aggravated the irritation which was caused in Alexandria by the presence of Cæsar's troops, and a furious rising of the city was provoked. He fortified himself in the great palace, which he had taken possession of, and which commanded the causeway to the island, Pharos, thereby commanding the port. Destroying a large part of the city in that neighborhood, he made his position exceedingly strong. At the same time he seized and burned the royal fleet, and thus caused a conflagration in which the greater of the two priceless libraries of Alexandria—the library of the Museum—was, much of it, consumed. [See above: B. C. 282-246.] By such measures Cæsar withstood, for several months, a siege conducted on the part of the Alexandrians with great determination and animosity. It was not until March, B. C. 47, that he was relieved from his dangerous situation, by the arrival of a faithful ally, in the person of Mithridates, king of Pergamus, who led an army into Egypt, reduced Pelusium, and crossed the Nile at the head of the Delta. Ptolemæus advanced with his troops to meet this new invader and was followed and overtaken by Cæsar. In the battle which then occurred the Egyptian army was utterly routed and Ptolemæus perished in the Nile. Cleopatra was then married, after the Egyptian fashion, to a younger brother, and established on the throne, while Arsinoë was sent a prisoner to Rome.

_A. Hirtius, The Alexandrian War._

ALSO IN _G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 5, chapter 20._

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 18._

_S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapter 12._

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 116. Destruction of the Jews.

See JEWS: A. D. 116.

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 215. Massacre by Caracalla.

"Caracalla was the common enemy of mankind. He left the capital (and he never returned to it) about a year after the murder of Geta [A. D. 213]. The rest of his reign [four years] was spent in the several provinces of the Empire, particularly those of the East, and every province was, by turns, the scene of his rapine and cruelty. … In the midst of peace, and upon the slightest provocation, he issued his commands at Alexandria, Egypt [A. D. 215], for a general massacre. From a secure post in the temple of Serapis, he viewed and directed the slaughter of many thousand citizens, as well as strangers, without distinguishing either the number or the crime of the sufferers."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 6. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 260-272. Tumults of the Third Century.

"The people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable. After the captivity of Valerian [the Roman Emperor, made prisoner by Sapor, king of Persia, A. D. 260] and the insolence of his son had relaxed the authority of the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of their passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a civil war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) above twelve years. All intercourse was cut off between the several quarters of the afflicted city, every street was polluted with blood, every building of strength converted into a citadel; nor did the tumult subside till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined. The spacious and magnificent district of Bruchion, with its palaces and museum, the residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, is described, above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its present state of dreary solitude."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 10. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 273. Destruction of the Bruchium by Aurelian.

After subduing Palmyra and its Queen Zenobia, A. D. 272, the Emperor Aurelian was called into Egypt to put down a rebellion there, headed by one Firmus, a friend and ally of the Palmyrene queen. Firmus had great wealth, derived from trade, and from the paper-manufacture of Egypt, which was mostly in his hands. He was defeated and put to death. "To Aurelian's war against Firmus, or to that of Probus a little before in Egypt, may be referred the destruction of Bruchium, a great quarter of Alexandria, which according to Ammianus Marcellinus, was ruined under Aurelian and remained deserted everafter."

_J. B. L. Crevier, History of the Roman Emperors, book 27._

{40}

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 296. Siege by Diocletian.

A general revolt of the African provinces of the Roman Empire occurred A. D. 296. The barbarous tribes of Ethiopia and the desert were brought into alliance with the provincials of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Carthage and Mauritania, and the flame of war was universal. Both the emperors of the time, Diocletian and Maximian, were called to the African field. "Diocletian, on his side, opened the campaign in Egypt by the siege of Alexandria, cut off the aqueducts which conveyed the waters of the Nile into every quarter of that immense city, and, rendering his camp impregnable to the sallies of the besieged multitude, he pushed his reiterated attacks with caution and vigor. After a siege of eight months, Alexandria, wasted by the sword and by fire, implored the clemency of the conqueror, but it experienced the full extent of his severity. Many thousands of the citizens perished in a promiscuous slaughter, and there were few obnoxious persons in Egypt who escaped a sentence either of death or at least of exile. The fate of Busiris and of Coptos was still more melancholy than that of Alexandria; those proud cities … were utterly destroyed."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 13. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 365. Great Earthquake.

See EARTHQUAKE IN THE ROMAN WORLD: A. D.365.

ALEXANDRIA: A. D. 389. Destruction of the Serapeum.