Appian of Alexandria

“ After the exploits of Athanasius the Patriarchate of Alexandria became very powerful. In theory Egypt belonged to the Emperor, who sent a Prefect and a garrison from Constantinople; in practise it was ruled by the Patriarch and his army of monks. The monks had not been important so long as each lived alone, but by the 4th cent., they had gathered into formidable communities, whence they would occasionally make raids on civilisation like the Bedouins to-day. One of these communities was only nine miles from Alexandria (the “Ennaton”) , others lay further west, in the Mariout desert ”

“ Alexandria itself was not, like other cities, gradually embellished, but at its very outset it was adorned with spacious roads. But after having been long torn by violent seditions, at last, when Aurelian was emperor, and when the intestine quarrels of its citizens had proceeded to deadly strife, its walls were destroyed, and it lost the largest half of its territory, which was called Bruchion, and had long been the abode of eminent men. ”

“ With the intimacy between Vespasian and Apollonius begins the use of gnostic emblems on the Alexandrian coins. The imperial pupil was not slow in learning from such a master; and the people were as ready to believe in the emperor’s miracles as in the philosopher’s. As Vespasian was walking through the streets of Alexandria, a man well known as having a disease in his eyes threw himself at his feet and begged of him to heal his blindness. He had been told by the god Serapis that he should regain his sight if the emperor would but deign to spit upon his eyelids. ”

“ The true reason was economic. He wanted to keep the Egyptian corn supply in his own hands, and thus control the hungry populace of Rome. Egypt, unlike the other Roman provinces, became a private appanage of the Emperor, who himself appointed the Prefect who governed it, and Alexandria turned into a vast imperial granary where the tribute, collected in kind from the cultivators, was stored for transhipment. It was an age of exploitation. Octavian posed locally as the divine successor of the Ptolemies, and appears among hieroglyphs at Dendyra and Philae. ”

“ Starting with the heroic figure of Alexander the Great, it inspects the dynasty of the Ptolemies, and in particular the career of the last of them, Cleopatra; an account of Ptolemaic literature and science follows, and closes this splendid period, to which I have given the title of “Greco-Egyptian.” The second period, called “Christian”, begins with the rule of Rome, and traces the fortunes of Christianity, first as a persecuted and then as a persecuting power: all is lost in 641, when the Patriarch Cyrus betrays Alexandria to the Arabs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides the ecclesiastical members of the council, Cynegius, the Imperial legate—Evagrius, the Prefect—and Romanus, the commander-in-chief and Comes of Egypt,—had all been present. The officials of the Empire—Roman statesmen who knew Alexandria and her citizens well, and who had often smarted under the spiritual haughtiness of her Bishop—were on the prelate’s side. ”

“ The glory of Alexandria in the olden time was the Serapeum, sacred to the worship of Serapis, a god originally worshipped in Sinope, and brought to Alexandria by the Emperor Ptolemy—worshipped p. 128eventually by the Romans as the Supreme Being, the beneficent Lord of Life and Death. It is clear the Ptolemies—at one and the same time Egyptian Pharaohs and Greek princes—felt the need of a real and presiding deity for the great city, with its enormous population, not only from Greece and its colonies, but from all the nations and tribes of the Mediterranean and the East. ”

“ During the six years of persecution and exile, Athanasius repeated his visits to his fair and faithful companion; and the formal declaration, that he saw the councils of Rimini and Seleucia, forces us to believe that he was secretly present at the time and place of their convocation. The advantage of personally negotiating with his friends, and of observing and improving the divisions of his enemies, might justify, in a prudent statesman, so bold and dangerous an enterprise: and Alexandria was connected by trade and navigation with every seaport of the Mediterranean. ”

“ Alexander, having left a garrison in Gaza, turned his arms toward Egypt; of which he made himself master without opposition. Here he formed the design of visiting the temple of Jupiter, which was situated in the sandy deserts of Lybia at the distance of twelve days' journey from Memphis, the capital of Egypt. His chief object in going thither was to get himself acknowledged the son of Jupiter, an honor he had long aspired to. In this journey he founded the city of Alexandria, which soon became one of the greatest towns in the world for commerce. ”

“ However, Apion, the common calumniator of men, hath the presumption to accuse the Jews for making this war against Physco, when he ought to have commended them for the same. This man also makes mention of Cleopatra, the last queen of Alexandria, and abuses us, because she was ungrateful to us; whereas he ought to have reproved her, who indulged herself in all kinds of injustice and wicked practices, both with regard to her nearest relations and husbands who had loved her, and, indeed, in general with regard to all the Romans, and those emperors that were her benefactors ”

“ Thirdly, when we Romans became her masters and took her out of the hands of the Ptolemies who misgoverned her, Augustus visited your city and made the following speech to your citizens: "Men of Alexandria, I absolve the city of all blame, because of my reverence for the mighty god Serapis, and further for the sake of the people themselves and the great renown of the city. ”

“ All around he looked for the ground of some new conquest. When the Caliph last visited Syria, he sought permission to make a descent upon Egypt, as every way desirable; for, to gain hold of a land that was at once weak and wealthy, would enfeeble the power of the enemy, and, by an easy stroke, augment their own. The advice was good; for Egypt, once the granary of Rome, now fed Constantinople with corn. Alexandria, though inhabited largely by natives of the country, drew its population from every quarter. It was the second city in the Byzantine empire, the seat of commerce, luxury, and letters. ”

“ But still he charges us with being the authors of sedition; which accusation, if it be a just one, why is it not laid against us all, since we are known to be all of one mind. Moreover, those that search into such matters will soon discover that the authors of sedition have been such citizens of Alexandria as Apion is; for while they were the Grecians and Macedonians who were ill possession of this city, there was no sedition raised against us, and we were permitted to observe our ancient solemnities ”

“ Ephesus and other cities of Asia Minor could be reached more quickly by land or sea from Egypt than they could from Rome. Rhodes, Lycia, Bithynia, Galatia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, Commagene, Crete, Cyprus, and many other great and important lands, were all closer to Alexandria than to Rome; while Thrace and Byzantium, by the land or sea route, were about equidistant from either capital. As a city, too, Alexandria was far more magnificent, more cultivated, more healthy, more wealthy in trade, and more “go-ahead” than Rome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the time which Hypatia describes, it is true, Rome was no longer mistress of the world, but there remains an all-pervading sense of her former greatness. Alexandria, though a city possessing its own distinctive characteristics, had not escaped the universal stamp of Roman influence. A few short years before Kingsley’s story opens, the Goths, under Alaric, had sacked Rome, (410 A. D.) , and Alexandria furnishes in some ways a better example of the many-sided life of the declining Roman empire than does Rome itself. There is, in short, an abundance of “Roman life” in Alexandria. ”

“ What principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene period was the great Church of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome for some centuries comparatively little is known. The battle of Arianism was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius, the champion of the truth, was Bishop of Alexandria; and in his writings he refers to the great religious names of an earlier date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others, who were the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological doctrine ”

“ His reputation was so great among the Alexandrians that they are said to have requested him to open a school for teaching the Aristotelian philosophy in their city. [3] He did great service to his fellow-citizens in Alexandria on their being besieged by the Romans in a.d. ”

“ Heraclius was furious and recalled him to Constantinople. But the mischief had been done; all Egypt, with the exception of Alexandria, had been abandoned to the heathen.
Alexandria was surely safe. In the first place the Arabs had no ships, and Amr, for all his courage, was not the man to build one. “If a ship lies still,” he writes, “it rends the heart; if it moves it terrifies the imagination. Upon it a man’s power ever diminishes and calamity increases. Those within it are like worms in a log, and if it rolls over they are drowned.” ”

“ Sometimes he hid in the Lybian desert, sometimes he escaped to Rome or Palestine and made Christendom ring with his grievances. Twice he came near to death in church—once in the Caesareum where he marched processionally out of one door as the enemy came in at the other, and once in St. Theonas at night, where he escaped from the altar just before the Arian soldiers murdered him there. He always returned, and he had the supreme joy of outliving Arius, who fell down dead one evening, while walking through Alexandria with a friend. ”

“ This was very unlike Ptolemy, who was a wise, clear-headed man, with much of Alexander’s spirit of teaching and improving people under him, and who ruled so as to make himself much beloved in Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Palestine. The new city of Alexandria was his capital, and under him and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus it grew to be a great merchant city, and also a school of art, science, and philosophy almost as famous as Athens, and with a library containing all the chief books in the world, including the Old Testament. ”

“ The first Ptolemy began it, and the second completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It is the prototype of all lighthouses (q.v.) in the world. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole. In the Augustan age the population of Alexandria was estimated at 300,000 free folk, in addition to an immense number of slaves.
III. History.—Founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis (q.v.) as a Greek centre in Egypt, and to be the link between Macedonia and the rich Nile Valley. ”

“ Would Rome, before she could annex Egypt, fall to pieces herself? There were signs of it. The victorious republic had absorbed more plunder and more ideas than she could conveniently digest. She had always found it particularly difficult to digest an idea. Rival Ptolemies had contended in Alexandria. But rival Romans were now contending in Rome. Might it be possible to play off against one the other, and so win through to safety? The scheme commended itself to the Alexandrians. It also occurred to the daughter of the bankrupt Ptolemy XIII, a beautiful and amusing princess called Cleopatra. ”

“ The inferior officers must have fulfilled their duties more faithfully than their superiors or the whole land would have been plunged in anarchy and destruction. The laws were administered, industry and commerce flourished, and Alexandria continued to be a large, populous and busy city, full of life and animation and adorned with many magnificent buildings. The Pharos steadily cast its beneficent light across the waters to be a guide to mariners; the Temple of Serapis, on its high platform, called attention to the worship of the gods ”

“ The Mausoleum of the Ptolemies, the High Court of justice, the Stadium, the Gymnasium, the Palaestra, the Amphitheatre, and the Temple of the Caesars, all called out the admiration of travelers. The Emporium far surpassed the quays of the Tiber. But the most imposing structure was the Exchange, to which, for eight hundred years, all the nations sent their representatives. It was commerce which made Alexandria so rich and beautiful, for which it was more distinguished than both Tyre and Carthage. ”