The Alexandrian period of Greek literature embraces the time between the break-up of Alexander's empire and the conquest of Greece by Rome (300-146 B.C.). During this period Alexandria in Egypt was the centre of literary activity, hence the term Alexandrian, applied to the literature of the age. The great Museum and Library of the Ptolemies afforded in that capital such facilities for students and authors as existed in no other city in the world.
[Illustration: IDEAL SCENE IN THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY]
But the creative age of Greek literature was over. With the loss of political liberty, literature was cut off from its sources of inspiration. Consequently the Alexandrian literature lacked freshness and originality. The writers of the period were grammarians, commentators, and translators,—in a word, book-worms.
One of the most important literary undertakings of the age was the translation of the Old Testament into Greek. From the traditional number of translators (seventy) the version is known as the Septuagint (Latin for seventy.) The work was probably begun by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was completed under his successors.
Among the poets of the period one name, and only one, stands out clear and
pre-eminent. This is that of Theocritus, a Sicilian idyllist, who wrote at
Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus. His idyls are beautiful pictures of
Sicilian pastoral life.
CONCLUSION: GRÆCO-ROMAN WRITERS.—After the Roman conquest of Greece, the centre of Greek literary activity shifted from Alexandria to Rome. Hence Greek literature now passes into what is known as its Græco-Roman period (146 B.C.-527 A.D.).
The most noted historical writer of the first part of this period was Polybius (about 203-121 B.C.), who wrote a history of the Roman conquests from 264 to 146 B.C. His work, though the larger part of it has reached us in a very mutilated state, is of great worth; for Polybius wrote of matters that had become history in his own day. He had lived to see the larger part of the world he knew absorbed by the ever-growing power of the Imperial City.
Plutarch (b. about 40 A.D.), "the prince of ancient biographers," will always live in literature as the author of the Parallel Lives, in which, with great wealth of illustrative anecdotes, he compares or contrasts Greek and Roman statesmen and soldiers.