No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous than the physicians. Erasistratus of Cos had the credit of having once cured Antiochus, afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may be called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love with his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair. Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway cured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act strongly points out the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonial relation; for it was then thought the father’s best title to the name of Nicator; he had before conquered his enemies, but he then conquered himself.
Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowledge of anatomy should be made a part of the healing art. Before his time surgery and medicine had been deemed one and the same; they had both been studied by the slow and uncertain steps of experience, unguided by theory. Many a man who had been ill, whether through disease or wound, and had regained his health, thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours to write up in the temple of the god the nature of his ailings, and the simples to which he fancied that he owed his cure. By copying these loose but well-meant inscriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had, a century earlier, laid the foundations of the science; but nothing further was added to it till Erasistratus, setting at nought the prejudices in which he was born, began dissecting the human body in the schools of Alexandria. There the mixing together of Greeks and Egyptians had weakened those religious feelings of respect for the dead which are usually shocked by anatomy; and this study flourished from the low tone of the morality as much as from the encouragement which good sense should grant to every search for knowledge.
Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasistratus, and was, like him, famous for his knowledge of the anatomy of man. But so hateful was this study in the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged by writers who ought to have known better, with the cruelty of cutting men open when alive. They had few followers in the hated use of the dissecting-knife. It was from their writings that Galen borrowed the anatomical parts of his work; and thus it was to the dissections of these two great men, helped indeed by opening the bodies of animals, that the world owed almost the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of man, till the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold enough to face the outcry of the mob, and to study the human body with the knife.
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. The miseries, however, of this world, which he so eloquently and feelingly described in his lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an end to his own life.
Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalist who wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of who thought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the science of natural history.
But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato had studied mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of its own which gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour of being present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took money from his pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons more for having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren for thus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He died several years before Ptolemy Soter came into Egypt. The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness, not goodness, was the end to be aimed at through life, and selfishness, rather than kindness to others, the right spring of men’s actions. It would hardly be fair to take their opinions from the mouths of their enemies; and the dialogues of Socrates, with their founder, as told to us by Xeno-phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is likely to have held. The wish for happiness and the philosophical love of self, which should lead to goodness, though a far worse rule of life than the love of goodness for its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion, was certainly far better than unguided passion and the love of to-day’s pleasure. But often as this unsafe rule has been set up for our guidance, there have always been found many to make use of it in a way not meant by the teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute to which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when Epicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the low-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were many things worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrow bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook friendship, kindness, honouring our parents, and serving our country; and he thought that a wise man would undertake many labours which would bring him no return in the things which were alone thought happiness.
The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards filled by Arete, the daughter of Aristippus; for such were the hindrances in the way of gaining knowledge, that few could be so well qualified to teach as the philosopher’s daughter. Books were costly, and reading by no means a cheap amusement. She was followed, after her death, by her son Aristippus, who, having been brought up in his mother’s lecture-room, was called, in order to distinguish him from his grandfather of the same name, Metrodidactus, or mother-taught. History has not told us whether he took the name himself in gratitude for the debt which he owed to this learned lady, or whether it was given him by his pupils; but in either case it was a sure way of giving to the mother the fame which was due to her for the education of her son; for no one could fail to ask who was the mother of Metrodidactus.
Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, though at one time banished from Cyrene, rose to honour under Soter, and was sent by him as ambassador to Lysimachus, He was called the Atheist by his enemies, and the Divine by his friends, but we cannot now determine which title he best deserved. It was then usual to call those atheists who questioned the existence of the pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all who suffered under that reproach denied that the world was governed by a ruling providence. The disbeliever in the false religion of the many is often the only real believer in a God. Theodorus was of the cold school of philosophy, which was chiefly followed in Alexandria. It was earthly, lifeless, and unpoetical, arising from the successful cultivation of the physical sciences, not enough counteracted by the more ennobling pursuits of poetry and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and the arts of production were carried to higher perfection than at any former time, and science was made greatly to assist in the supply of our bodily wants, the arts of civilisation, though by no means neglected, were cultivated without any lofty aim, or any true knowledge of their dignity.
