In the first century of the Christian era, Egypt passed from the Greek kings to the Roman emperors, and the Alexandrian school continued to be adorned by the first men of the age. This splendor, more Grecian than Egyptian, was extinguished in the seventh century by the Saracens, who conquered the country, and, it is believed, burned the great Alexandrian Library. After the wars of the immediate successors of Mohammed, the Arabian princes protected literature, Alexandria recovered its schools, and other institutions of learning were established; but in the conquest of the country by the Turks, in the thirteenth century, all literary light was extinguished.
8. LITERARY CONDITION OF MODERN EGYPT.—For more than nine hundred years Cairo has possessed a university of high rank, which greatly increased in importance on the accession of Mehemet Ali, in 1805, who established many other schools, primary, scientific, medical, and military, though they were suffered to languish under his two successors. In 1865, when Ismail- Pacha mounted the throne as Khedive (tributary king), he gave powerful aid to the university and to public instruction everywhere. The number of students at the University of Cairo advanced to eleven thousand. The wife of the Khedive, the Princess Cachma-Afet, founded in 1873, and maintained from her privy purse, a school for the thorough instruction of girls, which led to the establishment of a similar institution by the Ministry of Public Instruction. This princess is the first in the history of Islam who, from the interior of the harem, has exerted her influence to educate and enlighten her sex.
When the Khedive was driven into exile in 1879, the number of schools, nearly all the result of his energetic rule, was 4,817 and of pupils 170,000. Since the European intervention and domination the number of both has sensibly diminished, and a serious retrograde movement has taken place.
The higher literature of Egypt at the present time is written in pure Arabic. The popular writing in magazines, periodicals, etc., is in Arabic mixed with Syriac and Egyptian dialects. Newspaper literature has greatly increased during the past eight years.
GREEK LITERATURE.
INTRODUCTION.—1. Greek Literature and its Divisions.—2. The Language.— 3. The Religion.
PERIOD FIRST.—1. Ante-Homeric Songs and Bards.—2. Poems of Homer; the
Iliad; the Odyssey.—3. The Cyclic Poets and the Homeric Hymns.—4. Poems
of Hesiod; the Works and Days; the Theogony.—5. Elegy and Epigram;
Tyrtaeus; Archilochus; Simonides.—6. Iambic Poetry, the Fable, and
Parody; Aesop.—7. Greek Music and Lyric Poetry; Terpander.—8. Aeolic
Lyric Poets; Alcasus; Sappho; Anacreon.—9. Doric, or Choral Lyric Poets;
Alcman; Stesichorus; Pindar.—10. The Orphic Doctrines and Poems.—11.
Pre-Socratic Philosophy; Ionian, Eleatic, Pythagorean Schools.—12.
History; Herodotus.
PERIOD SECOND.—1. Literary Predominance of Athens.—2. Greek Drama.—3.
Tragedy.—4. The Tragic Poets; Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides.—5.
Comedy; Aristophanes; Menander.—6. Oratory, Rhetoric, and History;
Pericles; the Sophists; Lysias; Isocrates; Demosthenes; Thucydides;
Xenophon.—7. Socrates and the Socratic Schools; Plato; Aristotle.
PERIOD THIRD.—1. Origin of the Alexandrian Literature.—2. The
Alexandrian Poets; Philetas; Callimachus; Theocritus; Bion; Moschus.—3.
The Prose Writers of Alexandria; Zenodotus; Aristophanes; Aristarchus;
Eratosthenes; Euclid; Archimedes.—4. Philosophy of Alexandria; Neo-
Platonism.—5. Anti-Neo-Platonic Tendencies; Epictetus; Lucian; Longinus.
—6. Greek Literature in Rome; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Flavius
Josephus; Polybius; Diodorus; Strabo; Plutarch.—7. Continued Decline of
Greek Literature.—8. Last Echoes of the Old Literature; Hypatia; Nonnus;
Musaeus; Byzantine Literature.—9. The New Testament and the Greek
Fathers. Modern Literature; the Brothers Santsos and Alexander Rangabé.