Alexandria

“ Alexandria, from the sea, presents a very imposing appearance; long lines of handsome buildings, apparently of white stone, relieved by green Venetian blinds, afford evidence of increasing prosperity, and a wish to imitate the style of European cities. There is nothing, however, in the landing-place worthy of the approach to a place of importance; a confused crowd of camels, donkeys, and their drivers, congregated amidst heaps of rubbish, awaited us upon reaching the shore. ”

“ The orders of a king cannot give enduring greatness to a city; but Alexander's keen eye and marvelous brain saw at once that the site of Alexandria was such that a great commercial community planted there would live and flourish throughout out succeeding ages. He was right; for within a century this new capital of Egypt leaped to the forefront among the exchanges of the world's commerce, while everything that art could do was lavished on its embellishment. ”

“ We can picture to ourselves how it must have startled the refined Græco-Egyptian world of Alexandria when occasionally some man, long lost to society and forgotten by his friends, reappeared in the streets and squares of the city, with attenuated limbs and mortified countenance, with a dark hair-cloth tunic for his only clothing, with a reputation for exalted sanctity and spiritual wisdom, and vague rumours of supernatural revelations of the unseen world; like another John Baptist sent to preach repentance to the luxurious citizens ”

“ A glance at the map will show you what an ὀμφαλὸς γῆς, a centre of the world, this Alexandria is, and perhaps arouse in your minds, as it has often done in mine, the suspicion that it has not yet fulfilled its whole destiny, but may become at any time a prize for contending nations, or the centre of some world-wide empire to come. ”

“ Modern Alexandria is scarcely a city of the soul. Founded upon cotton with the concurrence of onions and eggs, ill built, ill planned, ill drained—many hard things can be said against it, and most Yet to some of them, are said by its inhabitants. ”

“ Alexandria was now the first commercial city of the world, second only to Rome. She supplied the great population in the heart of the Empire with Egyptian corn. Ships sailed from Alexandria to every part of the known world. It was, therefore, a suitable place for Ptolemy to listen to the yarns of the merchants, to read the works of Homer, Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, and others, to study and observe, and finally to write.
He begins his great geography with the north-west extremities of the world—the British Isles, Iverna, and Albion as he calls Ireland and England. ”

“ One can well conceive the delight which his idyls must have given to those dusty Alexandrians, pent up forever between sea and sand-hills, drinking the tank-water, and never hearing the sound of a running stream—whirling, too, forever, in all the bustle and intrigue of a great commercial and literary city. ”

“ At war with England, he saw himself gaining at England’s expense an Oriental realm and reviving the power of Alexander the Great. In him, as in Mark Antony, Alexandria nourished imperial dreams. The expedition failed but its memory remained with him: he had touched the East, the nursery of kings.
Leaving Alexandria at once, he marched on Cairo and won the battle of the Pyramids. Then an irreparable disaster befel him. He had left his admiral, Brueys, with instructions to dispose the fleet as safely as possible, since Nelson was known to be in pursuit. ”

“ In later years he returned to Alexandria, to confound the teaching of the Arians. Even the pagans flocked to hear a man so holy, so learned, and withal so meek and humble. They found him sociable and courteous; and he altogether won their hearts by his gentleness and simple charity to all men. They marvelled how one so wise could choose to live alone in the desert, apart from men and books; but he taught them that he never was alone, and that, as for books, Nature was the great volume which to him supplied the place of all others. ”

“ There is nothing beautiful or pleasant in the present Alexandria, but a handsome street of modern houses, where a very active and intelligent number of merchants live upon the miserable remnants of that trade, which made its glory in the first times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alexander next passed on to Egypt, where he built, at the mouth of the Nile, the famous city that still is called by his name, Alexandria; indeed he founded cities everywhere, and made more lasting changes than ever did conqueror in the short space of twelve years. He then hunted Darius into the mountain parts of the north of Persia, and after two more victories, the Greeks found the poor Persian king dying on the ground, from wounds given by his own subjects. So the soft silver of Persia yielded to the brazen might of Greece. ”

“ They are the omnibuses of the city, and it is surprising to see how rapidly and easily they pass through crowded streets.
I must first give you a better idea of Alexandria as it now is under Mehemet Ali, and not as it once was under Alexander the Great, when it only yielded to imperial Rome in wealth and magnificence. Formerly it was fifteen miles in circumference, with a population of three hundred thousand citizens and as many slaves, with four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, and four hundred theatres and public edifices. ”

“ And then there was the mausoleum of Alexander, there were the courts of justice, the theatres, the baths, the temples, the lines of shops and houses—all on a scale of grandeur and completeness which has never been surpassed by any city of the world. Such a city necessarily attracted men. Alexandria was fitly called the "many-peopled," whether the epithet referred to the actual number of citizens or to the varieties of tongue, complexion, and costume that thronged its streets. ”

“ Alexandria was a Greek city, and it became at once one of the most important commercial centers in all those seas. Greek and Roman travelers found now a language spoken in Egypt which they could understand, and philosophers and scholars could gratify the curiosity which they had so long felt, in respect to the institutions, and monuments, and wonderful physical characteristics of the country, with safety and pleasure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alexandria seems to have been the common mother of all that is new in religion. It is here where have sprung up, in all ages, those subtle questions which have led the minds of men from sense and reason to pursue mischievous phantoms. We infer from the writings of Eusebius, and from other sources, that the Therapeutæ Christians in Alexandria were numerous at an early date. The letter of Adrian from Alexandria, in A. D. 134, is the first notice we have of a church with a Bishop at its head. ”

“ Alexandria—one of the many towns founded by Alexander—had become the world centre of the learned from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its position was unrivalled. Situated at the mouth of the Nile, it commanded the Mediterranean Sea, while by means of the Red Sea it held easy communication with India and Arabia. When Egypt had come under the sway of Alexander, he had made one of his generals ruler over that country, and men of intellect collected there to study and to write. ”

“ Love as a cruel and wanton boy flits through the literature of Alexandria as through the thousands of terra cotta statuettes that have been exhumed from her soil; one tires of him, but it is appropriate that he should have been born under a dynasty that culminated in Cleopatra.
Literature took its tone from Callimachus—a fine poet, though not as fine as his patrons supposed. He began life as a schoolmaster at Eleusis (the modern Nouzha) and then was called to the Mouseion, where he became Librarian under Euergetes. ”

“ The stream of commerce is now rapidly turning back to its old channel; and British science bids fair to make Alexandria once more the inn of all the nations.
It is with a feeling of awe that one looks upon the huge possibilities of her future. Her own physical capacities, as the great mind of Napoleon saw, are what they always have been, inexhaustible; and science has learnt to set at naught the only defect of situation which has ever injured her prosperity, namely, the short land passage from the Nile to the Red Sea. ”

“ Scholar-life in Alexandria.Although the place which Alexandria occupies, or seems to occupy, in the intellectual and literary development of the later Greece and of Occidental culture generally cannot be fitly estimated in a description of the 269local circumstances of Egypt, but only in the delineation of this development itself, the Alexandrian scholarship and its continuation under the Roman government are too remarkable a phenomenon not to have its general position touched on in this connection. ”

“ The forefathers of the genuine Hebrews were the slaves of the Egyptians long ago, but in these days, men of Alexandria, you who conquered the Egyptians — for your founder was the conqueror of Egypt — submit yourselves, despite your sacred traditions, in willing slavery to men who have set at naught the teachings of their ancestors. You have then no recollection of those happy days of old when all Egypt held communion with the gods and we enjoyed many benefits therefrom. ”

“ The importance of Alexandria as a medium of interchange of ideas between the Eastern and Western worlds must also be considered as exploded. Nothing was more common, about forty or fifty years ago, than to hear learned men account for the presence of Oriental ideas in Europe, by the transmission of these ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alexandria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental philosophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and other great names, were imagined to be the representatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental thought. ”

“ It is a dynasty much censored by historians, but the Egyptians, who lived under it, were more tolerant. For it had one element of greatness: it did represent the complex country that it ruled. In Upper Egypt it carried on the tradition of the Pharaohs: on the coast it was Hellenistic and in touch with Mediterranean culture. After its extinction, the vigour of Alexandria turns inwards. ”

“ Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour, with a powerful squadron of the largest ironclads and a number of gun-boats, had been ordered to Alexandria, in observation.
The city of Alexandria, named from its founder, Alexander the Great, has experienced many vicissitudes. The modern city is built on a peninsula, which was formerly the Island of Pharos, and on the isthmus connecting it with the mainland. The ancient city was on the mainland, where its ruins cover a vast extent of surface. ”

“ This country is extended as far as the Ethiopians, and Arabia the Happy, and borders upon India; it hath seven millions five hundred thousand men, besides the inhabitants of Alexandria, as may be learned from the revenue of the poll tax; yet it is not ashamed to submit to the Roman government, although it hath Alexandria as a grand temptation to a revolt, by reason it is so full of people and of riches, and is besides exceeding large, its length being thirty furlongs, and its breadth no less than ten; and it pays more tribute to the Romans in one month than you do in a year ”

“ There is still at Alexandria a fair church, all white, without pictures; and so are all the other churches which belonged to the Christians all white within, for the Pagans and the Saracens whitewashed them, to destroy the images of saints that were painted on the walls. The city of Alexandria is full thirty furlongs in length, but it is but ten broad; and it is a noble and fair city. Here the river Nile enters the sea; in which river are found many precious stones, and much also of lignum aloes, a kind of wood that comes out of terrestrial Paradise, and is good for many different medicines ”

“ Romans and Greeks, Arabs and Copts, Christians, Jews, and Gentiles mingled here on common ground. But the life was essentially Byzantine. The vast population was provided in unexampled profusion and magnificence with theatres, baths, and places of amusement. A forest of ships, guarded by the ancient Pharos, ever congregated in its safe and spacious harbour, from whence communication was maintained with [240] all the seaports of the empire. And Alexandria was thus a European, rather than an Egyptian, city. ”

“ Alexander the Great founded Alexandria. He came with Dinocrates, his architect, and ordered him to build, between the sea and the lake, a magnificent Greek town. Alexander still conceived of civilization as an extended Greece, and of himself as a Hellene. ”