A. S. Rappoport

“ Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world. Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the weather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the river’s side. The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah ”

“ They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps the reckoning roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise and fall: Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they still seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereafter call us ancients. ”

“ Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his time. The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of their entertainments passed belief. ”

“ And these haughty republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians, and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. The Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought only for ambition and for the glory of their country. ”

“ Athens had no poets or other writers during this century equal in merit to those who ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, by joining to the greatness and good government of his father the costly splendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after ages upon his reign that his name passed into a proverb: if any work of art was remarkable for its good taste or costliness, it was called Philadelphian; even history and chronology were set at nought, and we sometimes find poets of a century later counted among the Pleiades of Alexandria in the reign of Philadelphus. ”

“ Before this reign no Greek was ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syênê or Aswan since Herodotus made his hasty tour in the Thebaid; and during much of the last reign no part of Upper Egypt was safe for a Greek traveller, if he were alone, or if he quitted the highroad. The peasants, whose feelings of hatred we can hardly wonder at, waylaid the stragglers, and Egyptian-like as the Greeks said, or slave-like as it would be wiser to say, often put them to death in cold blood. ”

“ In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know that the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome would most likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime he might have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the people but his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, the historian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greater strength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for power. ”

“ Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwart or overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them, and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than the cities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were then pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by the overthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seen that the new government, when it gained shape and strength, would be a military despotism ”

“ Men, women, and boys were moving through the streets all night with torches. The crowds were greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, but most noisy in front of the palace. Agathocles was awakened by the noise, and in his fright ran to the bedroom of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting the palace walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and two or three guards, in the underground passage which led from the palace to the theatre. ”

“ The paintings and sculptures showed the men of all nations and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negro of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with these proud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke of Euergetes II. and Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a measure of justice has usually been given to a conquered people by their rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more than an escape from excess of tyranny. ”

“ They held that matter was itself eternal, like the other gods, and that our world, in the beginning, before it took any shape upon itself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by its divine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun, sent down his quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth out of the wet-land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, before the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Nile’s overflow has retreated. ”

“ Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit, in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens there was a lively sense of their own national importance, and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any rate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their street riots regularly and heartily. ”

“ Trade crowded the harbours and markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the discipline of the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour followed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would by many kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness, but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government. He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king of his age; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend and patron ”

“ Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined the cruelty and cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to the army during the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spite of the promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down their arms, he had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices of men whose virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles and Alexander, he dragged them living round the city walls, and then ordered them to be put to death. ”

“ For three years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every one of which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets, and the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrow of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove how slowly they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the conqueror’s distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of. Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been stormed after a long siege was when it first fell under the Persians ”

“ The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its best days, who had studied and taught without any pension from the government, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged forward towards excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; who had no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked for no reward beyond their love and esteem.
In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch of literature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. ”

“ Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but, in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind and mend the heart ”

“ Their splendid monarchy had not been built on the ruins of freedom; and even if the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed themselves into a free state, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been so well treated as they were by this military despotism. From the temples which were built or enlarged in Upper Egypt, and from the beauty of the hieroglyphical inscriptions, we find that even the native arts were more flourishing than they had ever been since the fall of the kings of Thebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek conquest as a blessing to Upper Egypt. ”

“ During the three hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt as its deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting to their own courage, stood up in arms against either Persians or Greeks; and the country was only then con-quered without a battle because the power and arms were already in the hands of the Greeks; because in the mixed races of the Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not the most numerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and for the same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place nine centuries later. ”

“ The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, could neither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed part of the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, had by this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battle of Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival of the Macedonians. By this success in war, and by their hatred of their vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the first time encouraged to take arms against the Greek government. ”

“ But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with much higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were called upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness ”

“ In earlier ages, when the warlike virtues of the Thebans had made Egypt the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis and the lowland corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but, with the improvements in navigation, the cities on the coast rose in importance; the navigation of the Red Sea, though always dangerous, became less dreaded, and Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade of the Nile. Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sovereignty to Lower Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries been at hand to fight for those who would pay them. ”

“ The population of the country was counted at seven millions. Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom, was not only the largest trading city in the world, but was one of the most favoured seats of learning. It surely must have been easy to foresee that the prince, then mounting the throne, even if but slightly gifted with virtues, would give his name to a reign which could not be otherwise than remarkable in the history of Egypt. But Philadelphus, though like his father he was not free from the vices of his times and of his rank, had more of wisdom than is usually the lot of kings ”

“ Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria. His short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so much listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing that in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, that he was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murder among his hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, for though the state watched over the public teaching, it took no notice of books; writing had not yet become the mightiest power on earth. ”

“ While the young king looked up to him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed; but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices gained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not long before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king, weary perhaps with last night’s debauchery, had one day fallen asleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreign ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. ”

“ Pothinus the eunuch, Achilles the general, who was a native Egyptian, and Theodotus of Chios, who was the prince’s tutor in rhetoric, were the men by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. “By putting him to death,” said Theodotus, “you will oblige Cæsar, and have nothing to fear from Pompey;” and he added with a smile, “Dead men do not bite.” So Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head of the Roman troops in the Egyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive him as a friend, and to murder him. ”

“ The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; the coasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich and happy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their own laws, and to the Greeks of Alexandria according to the Macedonian laws: the navy commanded the whole of the eastern half of the Mediterranean; the schools and library had risen to a great height upon the wise plans of Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief city in the world. ”

“ But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy’s plans, and the rise of this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, we cannot help being pained with the thought that the Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and asking whether it would not have been still better to have raised Thebes to the place which it once held, and to have recalled the days of Ramses, instead of trying what might seem the hopeless task of planting Greek arts in Africa. ”

“ While claiming to be equal among themselves they were making themselves slaves; and though at present the government so entirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy they enjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience. ”

“ Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what she was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders of Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth year of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to meet her, and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another, that Pompey, who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a friend, landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. ”

“ When it was rumoured that war was likely to break out between Ptolemy and the royal party, the Macedonians flocked to Alexandria, “every man ready to give all and to sacrifice himself in order to help his friend.” A popular belief of the day was that, although Ptolemy was known as the son of Lagos, he was in reality the son of Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembled the great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the successors of Alexander, not one understood as well as he how to retain and increase the power which he had won. ”