Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

2. THE ALEXANDRIAN POETS.—Among the poets of the period, Philetas, Callimachus, Lycophron, Apollonius, and the writers of idyls, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus are the most eminent. The founder of a school of poetry at Alexandria, and the model for imitation with the Roman writers of elegiac poetry, was Philetas of Cos (fl. 260 B. C), whose extreme emaciation of person exposed him to the imputation of wearing lead in the soles of his shoes, lest he should be blown away. He was chiefly celebrated as an elegiac poet, in whom ingenious, elegant, and harmonious versification took the place of higher poetry. Callimachus (fl. 260 B.C.) was the type of an Alexandrian man of letters, distinguished by skill rather than genius, the most finished specimen of what might be effected by talent, learning, and ambition, backed by the patronage of a court. He was a living representative of the great library over which he presided; he was not only a writer of all kinds of poetry, but a critic, grammarian, historian, and geographer. Of his writings, a few poems only are extant. Next to Callimachus, as a representative of the learned poetry of Alexandria, stands the dramatist Lycophron (fl. 250 B.C.). All his works are lost, with the exception of the oracular poem called the "Alexandra," or "'Cassandra," on the merits of which very opposite opinions are entertained. Apollonius, known as the Rhodian (fl. 240 B.C.), was a native of Alexandria, and a pupil of Callimachus, through whose influence he was driven from his native city, when he established himself in the island of Rhodes, where he was so honored and distinguished that he took the name of the Rhodian. On the death of Callimachus, he was appointed to succeed him as librarian at Alexandria. His reputation depends on his epic poem, the "Argonautic Expedition."

Of all the writers of the Alexandrian period, the bucolic poets have enjoyed the most popularity. Their pastoral poems were called Idyls, from their pictorial and descriptive character, that is, little pictures of common life, a name for which the later writers have sometimes substituted the term Eclogues, that is, selections, which is applicable to any short poem, whether complete and original, or appearing as an extract. The name of Idyls, however, was afterwards applicable to pastoral poems. Theocritus (fl. 272 B.C.) gives his name to the most important of these extant bucolics. He had an original genius for poetry of the highest kind; the absence of the usual affectation of the Alexandrian school, constant appeals to nature, a fine perception of character, and a keen sense of both the beautiful and the ludicrous, indicate the high order of his literary talent, and account for his universal and undiminished popularity. The two other bucolic poets of the Alexandrian school were Bion (fl. 275 B.C.), born near Smyrna, and his pupil Moschus of Syracuse (fl. 273 B.C.). It appears, from an elegy by Moschus, that Bion migrated from Asia Minor to Sicily, where he was poisoned. He wrote harmonious verses with a good deal of pathos and tenderness, but he is as inferior to Theocritus as he is superior to Moschus, whose artificial style characterizes him rather as a learned versifier than a true poet.

3. PROSE WRITERS OF ALEXANDRIA.—Many of the most eminent poets were also prose writers, and they exhibited their versatility by writing on almost every subject of literary interest. The progress of prose writing manifested itself from grammar and criticism to the more elaborate and learned treatment of history and chronology, and to observations and speculations in pure and mixed mathematics. Demetrius the Phalerian (fl. 295 B.C.), Zenodotus (fl. 279 B.C.), Aristophanes (fl. 200 B.C.), and Aristarchus (fl. 156 B.C.), the three last of whom were successively intrusted with the management of the Library, were the representatives of the Alexandrian school of grammar and criticism. They devoted themselves chiefly to the revision of the text of Homer, which was finally established by Aristarchus.

In the historical department may be mentioned Ptolemy Soter, who wrote the history of the wars of Alexander the Great; Apollodorus (fl. 200 B.C.), whose "Bibliotheca" contains a general sketch of the mystic legends of the Greeks; Eratosthenes (fl. 235 B.C.), the founder of scientific chronology in Greek history; Manetho (fl. 280 B.C.), who introduced the Greeks to a knowledge of the Egyptian religion and annals; and Berosus of Babylon, his contemporary, whose work, fragments of which were preserved by Josephus, was known as the "Babylonian Annals." While the Greeks of Alexandria thus gained a knowledge of the religious books of the nations conquered by Alexander, the same curiosity, combined with the necessities of the Jews of Alexandria, gave birth to the translation of the Bible into Greek, known under the name of Septuagint, which has exercised a more lasting influence on the civilized world than that of any book that has ever appeared in a new tongue. The beginning of that translation was probably made in the reigns of the first Ptolemies (320-249 B.C.), while the remainder was completed at a later period.

The wonderful advance, which took place in pure and applied mathematics, is chiefly due to the learned men who settled in Alexandria; the greatest mathematicians and the most eminent founders of scientific geography were all either immediately or indirectly connected with the school of Alexandria. Euclid (fl. 300 B.C.) founded a famous school of geometry in that city, in the reign of the first Ptolemy. Almost the only incident of his life which is known to us is a conversation between him and that king, who, having asked if there was no easier method of learning the science, is said to have been told by Euclid, that "there was no royal path to geometry." His most famous work is his "Elements of Pure Mathematics," at the present time a manual of instruction and the foundation of all geometrical treatises. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) was a native of Syracuse, in Sicily, but he traveled to Egypt at an early age, and studied mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished himself in the mathematical department by his work on "Conic Elements." Eratosthenes was not only prominent in the science of chronology, but was also the founder of astronomical geography, and the author of many valuable works in various branches of philosophy. Hipparchus (fl. 150 B.C.) is considered the founder of the science of exact astronomy, from his great work, the "Catalogue of the Fixed Stars," his discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, and many other valuable astronomical observations and calculations.

4. ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY.—Athens, which had been the centre of Greek literature during the second or classical period of its development, had now, in all respects but one, resigned the intellectual leadership to the city of the Ptolemies. While Alexandria was producing a series of learned poets, scholars, and discoverers in science, Athenian literature was mainly represented by the establishment of certain forms of mental and moral philosophy founded on the various Socratic schools. Two schools of philosophy were established at Athens at the time of the death of Aristotle: that of the Academy, in which he himself had studied, and that of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.) founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics were developed into Stoics by Zeno (341-260 B.C.), who borrowed much from the Megaric school and from the Old Academy; and, finally, the Middle and New Academy arose from a combination of doctrines which were peculiar to many of these sects.

Though these different schools, which flourished at Athens, had early representatives in Alexandria, their different doctrines, coming in contact with the ancient religious systems of the Persians, Jews, and Hindus, underwent essential modifications, and gave birth to a kind of electicism, which became later an important element in the development of Christian history. The rationalism of the Platonic school and the supernaturalism of the Jewish Scriptures were chiefly mingled together, and from this amalgamation sprang the system of Neo-Platonism. When the early teachers of Christianity at Alexandria strove to show the harmony of the Gospel with the great principles of the Greco-Jewish philosophy, it underwent new modifications, and the Neo-Platonic school, which sprang up in Alexandria three centuries B.C., was completed in the first and second centuries of the Christian era. The common characteristic of the Neo- Platonists was a tendency to mysticism. Some of them believed that they were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination; able to look into the future and to work miracles. Philo-Judaeus (fl. 20 B.C.), Numenius (fl. 150 A.D.), Ammonius Saccas (fl. 200 A.D.), Plotinus (fl, 260 A.D.), Porphyry (fl. 260 A.D.), and several fathers of the Greek Church are among the principal disciples of this school.

5. ANTI-NEO-PLATONIC TENDENCIES.—While the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria introduced into Greek philosophy Oriental ideas and tendencies, other positive and practical doctrines also prevailed, founded on common sense and conscience. First among these were the tenets of the Stoics, who owed their system mainly and immediately to the teaching of Epictetus (fl. 60 A.D.), who opposed the Oriental enthusiasm of the Neo-Platonists. He was originally a slave, and became a prominent teacher of philosophy in Rome, in the reign of Domitian. He left nothing in writing, and we are indebted for a knowledge of his doctrines to Arrian, who compiled his lectures or philosophical dissertations in eight books, of which only four are preserved, and the "Manual of Epictetus," a valuable compendium of the doctrines of the Stoics. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius not only lectured at Rome on the principles of Epictetus, but he left us his private meditations, composed in the midst of a camp, and exhibiting the serenity of a mind which had made itself independent of outward actions and warring passions within. Lucian (fl. 150 A.D.) may be compared to Voltaire, whom he equaled in his powers both of rhetoric and ridicule, and surpassed in his more conscientious and courageous love of truth. Though the results of his efforts against heathenism were merely negative, he prepared the way for Christianity by giving the death-blow to declining idolatry. Lucian, as a man of letters, is on many accounts interesting, and in reference to his own age and to the literature of Greece he is entitled to an important position both with regard to the religious and philosophical results of his works, and to the introduction of a purer Greek style, which he taught and exemplified. Longinus (fl. 230 A.D.), both as an opponent of Neo- Platonism and as a sound and sensible critic, occupies a position similar to that of Lucian, in the declining period of Greek literary history. During a visit to the East, he became known to Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, who adopted the celebrated scholar as her instructor in the language and literature of Greece, her adviser and chief minister; and when Palmyra fell before the Roman power he was put to death by the Roman emperor. To his treatise on "The Sublime" he is chiefly indebted for his fame. When France, in the reign of Louis XIV., gave a tone to the literary judgments of Europe, this work was translated by Boileau, and received by the wits of Paris as an established manual in all that related to the sublime and beautiful.

6. GREEK LITERATURE IN ROME.—After the subjugation of Greece by the Romans, Greek authors wrote in their own language and published their works in Rome; illustrious Romans chose the idiom of Plato as the best medium for the expression of their own thoughts; dramatic poets gained a reputation by imitating the tragedies and comedies of Athens, and every versifier felt compelled by fashion to revive the metres of ancient Greece. This naturalization of Greek literature at Rome was due to the rudeness and poverty of the national literature of Italy, to the influence exerted by the Greek colonies, and to the political subjugation of Greece. In Rome, Greek libraries were established by the Emperor Augustus and his successors; and the knowledge of the Greek language was considered a necessary accomplishment. Cicero made his countrymen acquainted with the philosophical schools of Athens, and Rome became more and more the rival of Alexandria, both as a receptacle for the best Greek writings and as a seat of learning, where Greek authors found appreciation and patronage. The Greek poets, who were fostered and encouraged at Rome, were chiefly writers of epigrams, and their poems are preserved in the collections called "Anthologies." The growing demand for forensic eloquence naturally led the Roman orators to find their examples in those of Athens, and to the study of rhetoric in the Grecian writers.

Among the writers on rhetoric whose works seem to have produced the, greatest effect at the beginning of the Roman period, we mention Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. 7 B.C.). As a critic, he occupies the first rank among the ancients. Besides his rhetorical treatises, he wrote a work on "Roman Archaeology," the object of which was to show that the Romans were not, after all, barbarians, as was generally supposed, but a pure Greek race, whose institutions, religion, and manners were traceable to an identity with those of the noblest Hellenes.