The most important step in the undertaking of securing for the royal young city of the Nile the literary leadership of the world was the establishment of the great Museum, which appears to have comprised in one organization a great lending and reference library, a series of art collections, a group of colleges endowed for research (of the type of “All Souls” at Oxford), a university of instruction, and an academy with functions like those of the Paris Academy, assuming authority to fix a standard of language and of literary expression, and possibly even to decide concerning the relative rank of writers. The Museum (whose name is of course evidence of its Greek origin and character) is said to date from the year 290 B.C., in which case the founding of it must be credited to Ptolemy Soter, the father of Philadelphus, but its full organization and effective work certainly belonged to the reign of the latter.
Schools of instruction and courses of lectures had, as we have seen, existed at Athens for a century or more, and Athens had also possessed as early as 300 B.C., at least one public library. Alexandria, however, presents the first example of a university established on a state foundation, and offering to literary and scientific workers an assured income through salaried positions. Mahaffy finds in these positions a fair parallel to the institution of fellowships existing in the British universities. He says: “The fellows of the Alexandrian University, brought together into a society by the second Ptolemy, developed that critical spirit which sifted the wheat from the chaff of Greek literature, and preserved for us the great masterpieces in carefully edited texts.”[115]
A peculiarity of the literature of the Alexandrian school was that it had no connection with the country in which it was produced. No inspiration was derived by the Alexandrian writers from Egypt. The traditions and the accumulated learning of the civilization of the Nile (possibly the oldest civilization the world has known), appear to have been contemptuously ignored by the immigrant writers of the Museum, whose interests and whose literary connections remained exclusively Greek. The literature of Alexandria, as well during the reign of the Ptolemies as after the absorption of Egypt into the empire of Rome, remained a direct outgrowth of that of Greece (including, of course, in the term, Magna Græcia as well as the Peninsula). It presented certain distinctive characteristics of its own, but these seem to have been due rather to the academic influence, and in the later period to the growth of the theological spirit, than to the Egyptian environment or to the relations of the city with imperial Rome.
Of the several divisions of the Museum, that most frequently referred to in literature, and therefore the best known to later generations, is the Library, but concerning this the accounts are in many respects conflicting. John Tzetzes, a Greek scholar of the twelfth century, writing in Constantinople, tells us on the authority of the Alexandrian writer, Callimachus, that “the outer library” contained 42,000 rolls, while in the inner were placed 490,000 rolls. Callimachus noted “from an examination of the catalogue” that of the latter, 90,000, were βίβλοι ἀμιγεῖς or “unmixed” rolls, that is, rolls containing each only a single work, while 400,000 were βίβλοι συμμιγεῖς or “mixed” rolls, containing each two or more distinct works.[116] Josephus quotes Demetrius Phalerius as saying to Ptolemy Soter (the first Ptolemy) that the library already contained 200,000 volumes, and would soon include 500,000. In consideration of what is known of the extent of the literature of the time in existence, these figures have been considered by many authorities as too large to be credible. Birt points out, however, that the wholesale purchases which Philadelphus caused to be made throughout Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor had unquestionably brought to Alexandria not only single copies and duplicates of all the existing works, but supplies of them by the dozens or hundreds. The unlimited prices offered from the King’s treasury by the librarians of the Museum caused a steady flow of books to set in towards Alexandria from all parts of the civilized world, and in addition to the purchase of all the manuscripts that were offered, the representatives of the King appear to have made a thorough ransacking of all the public and private collections that could be reached, and even to have taken by force volumes which the owners did not wish to sell. Ptolemy is said to have refused food to the Athenians during a famine except on condition that they would give him certain authenticated copies of the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It is fair to add that he paid for these tragedies, in addition to the promised shipment of corn, the sum of fifteen talents in silver, the equivalent of about $16,200.
One result of this absorption of the book supplies into Alexandria was that the Greek world was now, and for a considerable time to come remained, dependent upon Alexandria for copies of all of the old writers. The measures of the King had succeeded not only in making it necessary for students and scholars to come to Alexandria for their reading, but in compelling book-buyers to come to Alexandrian dealers for their books. The publishers of Alexandria secured at once a monopoly for their editions, and through their enterprise in training numbers of skilled scribes (including now not only educated slaves but many of the impecunious scholars of the university) and by means of the distributing facilities afforded by the commercial connections of their capital, these publishers retained in their hands for about three centuries the control of the greater part of the book production of the world. The publishers of Athens disappeared, and the publishers who in the last century B.C. and the first century A.D. were carrying on book business in Rome, were obliged to have done in Alexandria the work of transcribing such of their issues as were in the Greek language, forming until the time of Trajan a very large, if not the larger, portion of their total production. The writers who formed what is known as the earlier Alexandrian school, comprised a considerable group of poets, of whom the most noteworthy were Theocritus, Callimachus, Timon, and Lycophron, and some original workers in original science, of whom the most important were Euclid, the father of geometry, Nicomachus, the first scientific arithmetician, Apollonius, whose work on conic sections still exists, and Aratus, the astronomer. If the first named of these scientists could have discounted some small portion even of the compensation due to him from the many generations of students who have utilized his problems in geometry, he would have been one of the nabobs of literature.
The writers who were perhaps the most characteristic of the academic circle of Alexandria, were, however, the so-called “grammarians,” who rendered to their own generation and to posterity the invaluable service of preparing authoritative editions of the great writers of the past. It is to these Alexandrian editions that we are indebted for the larger portion of the works of the Greek writers which have been preserved, while the fact of the existence of many works of which the texts have been lost is known only through the references to their titles made by Alexandrian commentators. One of these grammarians was Zenodotus, the Ephesian, who is credited with having established the first grammar school in Alexandria (about 250 B.C.). Among others whose names have been preserved are Eratosthenes, Crates, Apollonius, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and Zoilus. The term “grammarian” was evidently used to designate philologists and literati, whose work was by no means limited to the explanation of words, but corresponded more nearly to that done by the French cyclopædists. By this group of scholars was produced what is known as the Alexandrian Canon, a list of Greek authors whose writings were thought worthy of preservation as classics. This list included, according to Schöll,[117] five epic poets, five iambic poets, nine lyric poets, fourteen tragic poets, thirteen comic poets, seven poets of the group known as the Pleiades, eight historians, ten orators, and five philosophers, or in all seventy-nine authors, of whom fifty-six were poets. The academic or official character thus given to the authors named in the Canon was of undoubted service to the world’s literature in giving the needed incentive for the preservation of their writings through the multiplication of well edited copies. Moore suggests, however, that this service may in some measure have been offset by the injury caused to literature through the comparative neglect into which were sure to fall a vast number of writers who had failed to be honored with the stamp of the Canon, and the consequent loss of their works for posterity.[118]
Theocritus was a native of Syracuse, and appears to have divided his time between that city and Alexandria. In like manner Aratus, who belonged in Macedonia, did his literary work partly under the patronage of King Antigonus, and partly under that of Philadelphus. It appears to have been difficult for Greek authors, in whatever city they belonged, to escape the centripetal influence of the Alexandrian Academy, and the attractions presented by so powerful a patron of literature as Philadelphus, while it is also probable that the inducements offered by the Alexandrian publishers had some part in making it desirable for authors of note to make frequent visits to the city. Mahaffy points out that the literature of Alexandria under the Ptolemies possessed little popular character, and was in the main the work of court writers and of scholastic pedants rather than of authors in sympathetic touch with the people. As one evidence of the accuracy of this description, he mentions the omission of any reference in the writings of contemporary Alexandrian writers to the great Galatian invasion which in the early part of the third century B.C. desolated a large part of Asia Minor. While speaking appreciatively of the service rendered to literature by the liberal patronage of Philadelphus, Mahaffy is of opinion that the Museum fellowships came to be utilized (as has been the case in later times with other literary circles supported by royal bounty) by a number of lazy incompetents. In his trenchant phrase, he refers to these deteriorated fellowships as “literary hencoops filled with overfed and idle savants.” His description recalls some at least of the features of the literary circle brought together by Frederick the Great, but the Prussian monarch was probably much more of a barbarian, even in his literary methods, than the Ptolemies of Alexandria.
The most noteworthy literary undertaking emanating from Alexandria was the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, which was begun by certain learned Jews (according to tradition seventy Rabbis) about 285 B.C., and was completed in the course of years by various hands. The work of the translators had, of course, no connection with Greek literature other than as a recognition of the necessity of putting into Greek any writings for which a general distribution was planned. Eckhard says that the first use of the term Γραμματεῖς, in the sense of copyists, was as applied to these Hebrew scholars who were devoting themselves to the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. He adds that, in order to leave them undisturbed in their scholarly undertaking, the king assigned to them a special quarter of the city called Kiriath Sepher, or, in the Septuagint, πόλις Γραμμάτων, the first literary quarter or Grub Street of which history makes mention.[119]
Among the grammarians who rendered important service in the editing of the older classics was Callimachus, whose name also appears in the list of poets. This is the same Callimachus whose report concerning the number of the books contained in the library is quoted by Tzetzes. Very few of the other names of the Alexandrian editors have been preserved, their editions having in most cases been modestly sent forth with the names of the authors only.
The publishers of Alexandria must also have been modest, for not a single firm has sent its name down to posterity. There are many references in later literature to the existence in Alexandria of great book-producing concerns, and, as Birt remarks, an active production of literature must have necessitated an effective machinery for the distribution of literature.