The first five years of this reign, the quinquennium Neronis, while the emperor was under the tutorship of the philosopher Seneca, became in Rome proverbial for good government, and on the coinage we see marks of Egypt being equally well treated. In the third year we see on a coin the queen sitting on a throne with the word agreement, as if to praise the young emperor’s good feeling in following the advice of his mother Agrippina. On another the emperor is styled the young good genius, and he is represented by the sacred basilisk crowned with the double crown of Egypt. The new prefect, Balbillus, was an Asiatic Greek, and no doubt received his Roman names of Tiberius Claudius on being made a freedman of the late emperor. He governed the country mildly and justly; and the grateful inhabitants declared that under him the Nile was more than usually bountiful, and that its waters always rose to their just height. But in the latter part of the reign the Egyptians smarted severely under that cruel principle of a despotic monarchy that every prefect, every sub-prefect, and even every deputy tax-gatherer, might be equally despotic in his own department.
On a coin of the thirteenth year of the reign of this ruler, we see a ship with the word emperor-bearer, being that in which he then sailed into Greece, or in which the Alexandrians thought that he would visit their city. But if they had really hoped for his visit as a pleasure, they must have thought it a danger escaped when they learned his character; they must have been undeceived when the prefect Cæcinna Tuscus was punished with banishment for venturing to bathe in the bath which was meant for the emperor’s use if he had come on his projected visit.
During the first century and a half of Roman sway in Egypt the school of Alexandria was nearly silent. We have a few poems by Leonides of Alexandria, one of which is addressed to the Empress Poppæa, as the wife of Jupiter, on his presenting a celestial globe to her on her birthday. Pamphila wrote a miscellaneous history of entertaining stories, and her lively, simple style makes us very much regret its loss. Chæremon, a Stoic philosopher, had been, during the last reign, at the head of the Alexandrian library, but he was removed to Rome as one of the tutors to the young Nero.
He is ridiculed by Martial for writing in praise of death, when, from age and poverty, he was less able to enjoy life. We still possess a most curious though short account by him of the monastic habits of the ancient Egyptians. He also wrote on hieroglyphics, and a small fragment containing his opinion of the meanings of nineteen characters still remains to us. But he is not always right; he thinks the characters were used allegorically for thoughts, not for sounds; and fancies that the priests used them to keep secret the real nature of the gods.
He was succeeded at the museum by his pupil Dionysius, who had the charge of the library till the reign of Trajan. Dionysius was also employed by the prefect as a secretary of state, or, in the language of the day, secretary to the embassies, epistles, and answers. He was the author of the Periegesis, and aimed at the rank of a poet by writing a treatise on geography in heroic verse. From this work he is named Dionysius Periegetes. While careful to remind us that his birthplace Alexandria was a Macedonian city, he gives due honour to Egypt and the Egyptians. There is no river, says he, equal to the Nile for carrying fertility and adding to the happiness of the land. It divides Asia from Libya, falling between rocks at Syênê, and then passing by the old and famous city of Thebes, where Memnon every morning salutes his beloved Aurora as she rises. On its banks dwells a rich and glorious race of men, who were the first to cultivate the arts of life; the first to make trial of the plough and sow their seed in a straight furrow; and the first to map the heavens and trace the sloping path of the sun.
According to the traditions of the church, it was in this reign that Christianity was first brought into Egypt by the Evangelist Mark, the disciple of the Apostle Peter. Many were already craving for religious food more real than the old superstitions. The Egyptian had been shaken in his attachment to the sacred animals by Greek ridicule. The Greek had been weakened in his belief of old Homer’s gods by living with men who had never heard of them. Both were dissatisfied with the scheme of explaining the actions of their gods by means of allegory. The crumbling away of the old opinions left men more fitted to receive the new religion from Galilee. Mark’s preaching converted crowds in Alexandria; but, after a short stay, he returned to Rome, in about the eleventh year of this reign, leaving Annianus to watch over the growing church. Annianus is usually called the first bishop of Alexandria; and Eusebius, who lived two hundred years later, has given us the names of his successors in an unbroken chain. If we would inquire whether the early converts to Christianity in Alexandria were Jews, Greeks, or Egyptians, we have nothing to guide us but the names of these bishops. Annianus, or Annaniah, as his name was written by the Arabic historians, was very likely a Jew; indeed, the Evangelist Mark would begin by addressing himself to the Jews, and would leave the care of the infant church to one of his own nation. In the platonic Jews, Christianity found soil so exactly suited to its reception that it is only by he dates that the Thérapeute of Alexandria and their historian Philo are proved not to be Christian; and, again, it was in the close union between the platonic Jews and the platonists that Christianity found its easiest path to the ears and hearts of the pagans. The bishops that followed seem to have been Greek converts. Before the death of Annaniah, Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Roman armies, and the Jews sunk in their own eyes and in those of their fellow-citizens throughout the empire; hence the second bishop of Alexandria was less likely to be of Hebrew blood; and it was long before any Egyptians aimed at rank in the church. But though the spread of Christianity was rapid, both among the Greeks and the Egyptians, we must not hope to find any early traces of it in the historians. It was at first embraced by the unlearned and the poor, whose deeds and opinions are seldom mentioned in history; and we may readily believe the scornful reproach of the unbelievers, that it was chiefly received by the unfortunate, the unhappy, the despised, and the sinful. When the white-robed priestesses of Ceres carried the sacred basket through the streets of Alexandria, they cried out, “Sinners away, or keep your eyes to the ground; keep your eyes to the ground!” When the crier, standing on the steps of the portico in front of the great temple, called upon the pagans to come near and join in the celebration of their mysteries, he cried out, “All ye who are clean of hands and pure of heart, come to the sacrifice; all ye who are guiltless in thought and deed, come to the sacrifice.”
But many a repentant sinner and humble spirit must have drawn back in distrust from a summons which to him was so forbidding, and been glad to hear the good tidings of mercy offered by Christianity to those who labour and are heavy laden, and to the broken-hearted who would turn away from their wickedness. While such were the chief followers of the gospel, it was not likely to be much noticed by the historians; and we must wait till it forced its way into the schools and the palace before we shall find many traces of the rapidity with which it was spreading.