As more and more copies of the classic writers were wanted, a regular publishing trade arose in Alexandria. Callimachus was not only the Librarian of the Library, but a publisher of the works of classic writers. Large numbers of copyists were employed whose business it was to make careful and accurate copies of the works required. This accounts for the fact that in certain works of ancient literature it is sometimes difficult to know what is the really original form of certain lines or passages, because in spite of their care, the copyists made mistakes, and unfortunately many original copies of the classics were lost in the great fire which destroyed the Library in the last century B.C. The Alexandrian school of copyists was a very famous one, and Alexandrian Editions of the classics were considered the very best to be had.
Not only were Greek works copied, but other literature was translated into Greek and then copied. It was in Alexandria that the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament we possess was transcribed. It was a translation of the whole of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, made, according to tradition, by a group of seventy Jewish scholars, whence comes its name, the Septuagint. These scholars were encouraged to undertake this work by the King, who is said to have provided the means for their support whilst they were engaged on the translation, and who gave them a special quarter of the city in which to live.
III. SCIENCE IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Greek science had been born in Ionia, and during the Hellenic Period of Greek civilization, it had gone hand in hand with philosophy. The earliest days of pure science came in the Hellenistic Age, and its home was in Alexandria. Amongst the many names of men of this time who contributed something of value to science, there are two which must be remembered: those of Euclid and Archimedes.
Euclid lived in Alexandria. He was a mathematician and wrote a great work on geometry. No scientific work in the world has lived in quite the same way as has this book of Euclid, for since the time that the Elements of Euclid were written, it was used as a school text book without interruption until a very few years ago.
Archimedes was probably the greatest of the Greek scientific thinkers of the third century B.C. He did not live in Alexandria; he was a native of Syracuse in Sicily, but he was in close touch with all the scientific work that was being done there. He was a great scientific investigator, the inventor of many practical and ingenious devices and discovered the principle of moving heavy bodies by means of pulleys and levers. An extraordinarily large ship was made for the King of Syracuse, a ship of marvel to that age. It contained a gymnasium, gardens of most wonderful beauty and full of rich plants, a temple to Aphrodite, a drawing-room with its walls and doors of boxwood, having a bookcase in it, a bath-room with three brazen vessels for holding hot water, and a fish-pond. All the furnishings were of the most exquisite craftsmanship, and all the rooms had floors of mosaic, in which the whole story of the Iliad was depicted in a most marvellous manner. There were doors of ivory, beautiful couches, and it was full of pictures and statues, goblets and vases of every form and shape imaginable. But the ship was so large that no one could move it. Archimedes, however, we are told, launched it by himself with the aid of only a few people. For having prepared a helix (probably some mechanical contrivance with pulleys), he drew this vessel, enormous as it was, down to the sea. And it was said that Archimedes was the first person who ever invented this helix.[[1]]
Archimedes believed it possible to move greater bodies even than the ship, and he is said to have boasted: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth."
This great inventor did other things which struck the imagination of the men amongst whom he lived, for of some of them they had never seen the like before. During the siege of Syracuse by the Romans, in 212 B.C., Archimedes invented marvellous war-engines: strange grappling hooks which, it was said, could seize an enemy's ship and overturn it in the sea, and he showed the Syracusans how to set up a water pump in their ships, so that should water get into the hold, it could be pumped out and the ship saved from sinking. He is also said to have made some arrangement of mirrors and burning glass by means of which the Roman ships were set on fire. But in spite of all these inventions, the Romans took the city, and Archimedes was killed. He was found by a Roman soldier, sitting in his house and paying no heed to any danger, but intent on drawing mathematical diagrams on the ground. Looking up and seeing the enemy, all he said was: "Stand away, fellow, from my diagram." The soldier, not knowing who he was, killed him.