A start accordingly was made at sunset. Everything favoured the voyagers. The wind never veered from the west, and though towards evening it commonly lulled, it never ceased; during the day it always blew briskly, but never was so strong as to cause inconvenience. In consequence the galley's voyage was almost a record, for she reached the quay in what was called the Eunostos or Haven of Happy Return in nine days. The travellers paid the customary visit of thanksgiving for a safe voyage to the Temple of Poseidon, and dropped a half-stater[47] apiece into the chest for offerings. This done, they presented a letter of introduction, with which Scipio had furnished them, to the official who represented Rome in Alexandria, were received by him with effusion, and pressed to accept his hospitality, but preferred the independence of lodgings of their own.
Their first visit was, of course, to the great Library. This had not at that time reached the enormous proportions which it attained about a century later, when it received, in addition to its own wealth, the vast collections of Pergamum,[48] but the volumes on its shelves already numbered more than a quarter of a million. The two friends could have spent months, had months been at their disposal, in this wilderness of learning. It was not only the multitude of its treasures that astonished them, it was the extraordinary value of many of the particular volumes. Here the student was permitted to inspect, under due safeguards, of course, the actual autographs of some of the most famous authors of the world. One of the Ptolemies, ironically called the Well-doer, had fraudulently possessed himself of the originals of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, presenting the Athenian people which owned them with copies and a money compensation. His successors had followed the same unscrupulous policy. Indeed, no valuable manuscript that once found its way into Alexandria was ever permitted to leave it.
Adjoining the Library was the Museum, with its theatre or great lecture-hall, its smaller lecture-rooms, its dining-hall, and collegiate buildings, cloisters, gardens, and park. The two friends wandered from room to room, where all comers were welcome—the munificent endowments of learning rendered all fees unnecessary—and listened to discourses on all the subjects of knowledge under the sun.
There did not happen to be any commanding or famous personality among the professors of the time, but there was plenty of learning and abundance of rhetoric if not of eloquence. A successor of Aristarchus discoursed on the criticism of Homer, denouncing, for such happened to be the subject of the day, the pernicious heresy of the Chorizontes, the critics who maintained a diverse authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The chair of Euclid was occupied by a geometrician who had made some additions to the science of trigonometry. In the lecture-room devoted to astronomy they had the good fortune to hear a really distinguished man of science, Hipparchus of Bithynia, who had been invited by the authorities of the Museum to give a course of lectures. He had chosen for his subject his own great discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, made, as he explained, by a comparison of his own observations with those of earlier astronomers.[49]
As they left the room they were invited by an attendant, who observed that they were strangers, to read an inscription written in letters of gold over the principal door. It was the epigram of Apollonius of Rhodes on the reception of the Hair of Berenice among the Constellations. Polybius was recognized by one of the professors, who had been glad to leave the thankless politics of Greece for a quiet competence in this abode of learning, and was invited by the professor to take dinner in the great banqueting-hall. Cleanor was, of course, included in the invitation. The intervening time was spent pleasantly enough in inspecting the garden, in which the collection of tropical plants, afterwards so famous, had been already begun, and in examining, what was then a sight peculiar to Alexandria, a menagerie.
Both Polybius and his friend were inclined to think that all time not spent in the Library or the lecture-room was more or less wasted. Still, there were sights which it was impossible for a visitor to Alexandria to neglect. Such was the mausoleum of the Ptolemies, with the coffin of gold in which reposed the remains of the great Alexander; the observatory; the palace of justice; and the market, thronged with the commerce of the whole of the civilized world. There were hours, too, when the Library was shut, and these were spent in a way both amusing and instructive. The two wandered through the different regions of the great city, the streets inhabited by the Jews, with squalid exteriors, often concealing palaces fit for kings, and the native quarter, crowded with figures and faces that might have belonged to long-dead subjects of the Pharaohs. Not less interesting than the city were the docks and quays. Egypt was already one of the great granaries of the world. Loading the wheat ships was an employment that provided thousands of labourers with sustenance, and at this time, thanks to the war, which had thrown out of cultivation the fertile territory of Carthage, the trade was particularly brisk.
Anyhow, the time did not hang heavily on the visitors' hands, and Cleanor could hardly believe that ten days had passed when Polybius introduced the subject of departure. There was a certain hesitation in the old man's manner, and Cleanor, who had all the quick observation and alert intelligence of his race, did not fail to perceive it.
"This is a delightful place, Cleanor," he said, "and I hope to see it again. Indeed, there are books in the Library which I must go through carefully before I give my magnum opus to the world. But that must be for the future. Now I have no choice but to go. We must not allow less than twelve days for the return voyage, though, if this wind holds, we shall not take so long."
"Yes," replied Cleanor, "I am ready to start at any time."