Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/113

 ALEXANBREIA. firamtiMCuobie moath of the Nile. At ita eftstem point Blood the fitf-fiuned lighthonae, the work of So- ■tntes of Cnidiis, and, neuer the Heptastadinm, was a iBnfk d Phtah or Hephaestus. The Pharos was bqnni bj- Ptolem J Soter, but oompleted hy his sac- ceuor, aad dedicated bj him to **tbe gods So- tenss*' or Soler and Berenice, his parents. (Strsb. p. 792.) It onottsted of sereral stories, and is said to have been foor hundred feet in height. The old lijrht-hanse of Akxandreia still occupies the site of it§ sDcient predecessor. A deep bay on the northern aide of the island was called the " Pirates' Haven,** frqm its having been an earlj jdace of refuge for Cariaa and Sandan mariners. The islets whidi •tad the northern coast of Pharos became, in the 4tii and 5th centuries ▲. d., the resort of Christian anchorites. The island is said by Strabo to have been neailj desolated by Julius Caesar when he was beaef!ed by the Akxttadiians in B. c. 46. (Hirt £, Akx. 17.) The iiiarob was coonected with the mainland by aa aztifidal mound or causeway, called, from its hapk (7 stadia, 4270 English feet, or | of a mile), the Heptastadium. There were two breaks in the lUe to let the water flow through, and prevent the jocamoktioD of sflth ; over these passages bridges w<ae hid, which oonld be raised up at need. The leaipfe of Hephaestus on Pharos stood at one ex- tnaoty of the llcile, and the Gate of the Moon on the mainland at the other. The form of the Hepta* stidhim can no koger be distinguished, since modem Aksandieia is principally erected upon it, and upon the earth which has •rf^rnnnninfaH about its piers. It pobably lay in a direct line between fort CaffareBi and the island. IiOerior of the CUf^, Alexandreia was divided vio three regions. ( 1 ) The Begio Judaeonim. (2) The Brocheium or Pyrocheimn, the Boyal or Greek Qaarter. (3) The Bhaodtis or Egyptian Quarter. Thai division corresponded to the three original oon- fTTtaents of the Alexandrian popuhition (jpla yirrii Pojyh. xxxir. 14; Strab. p. 797, seq.) After a. c. 31 the Romans added a foorth element, but this was prindpally militaxy and financial (the garri- son, the govenunent, and its official staff, and the BegntJatores), and confined to the Region Bruchdom. 1. Jiegio Jmdaeonan, or Jews' Qnaiter, occupied tile KE. angle of the dty, and was encompassed by the Ks, the dty walls, mm! the Bmchdmn. Like the Jewry of modem European dties, it had walls nd gates of ita own, which were at times highly aeceaisiy far its security, since between the Alexan- drian Greeks and Jews frequent hostilities raged, iafiamed both by pditical jealousy and religions haEred. The Jews were governed by their own Edmareb, or Arabarches (Joseph. Antiq. xiv. 7. § 2, la § 1, xviiL 6. § 3, xix,5. § 2, B.J, iL 18. § 7), by a sanhedrim or senate, and their own national Inrs. Augustus Caesar, in B. c 31, granted to the Akxandiian Jews equal privil^^ with their Greek Mbw citizens, and recorded liis grant by a pnblic Eacriptian. (Id. AnHq. xiL 3, c. Apion, 2.) Philo Jndaeos {L^fot, m Cotum) gives a full account of the immanities of the R^io Jadaeoram. They vers frequently confirmed or annulled by succes- ■he Bonum emperors. (Sharpe, Bitt, of Egypt^ p. 347, seq. Snd edit.) «, BrmMmm^ or Pymehama (Bpwxeibi', IIupo- XM', Salmasins, ad SpartioH, Badrian, c 20), the Bofal or Greek Qaarter, was bounded to the S. and £.'by the dty walls, K. by the Greater Uaibour, ALEXANDREU. 97 and W. by the region Rhacdtis and the main stnet which connected the Gate of the Sun with that of the Moon and the Heptastadium. It was also sur- rounded by its own walls, and was the quarter in which Caesar defended himself against the Alex- andrians. (Hirtius, B. Alex. 1.) The Brachdnm was bisected by the High Street, which ran from the Canobic Gate to the Necropolis, and was supplied with water from the Nile by a tunnel or aqueduct, which entered the dty on the south, and passed a little to the west of the Gymnasium. This was the quarter of the Alexandrians proper, ta Hellenic dti- zens, the Royal Residence, and the district in which were contained the most conspicuous of the public buildings. It was so much adorned and extended by the later Ptolemies that it eventually occupied one-fifth of the entire dty. (Plin. v. 10. s. 1 1 .) It omtained the following remarkable edifices: On the Lochias, the Palace of the Ptolemies, with the smaller palaces appropriated to their children and the adja- cent gardens and groves. The far-&med Library | and Museum, with its Theatre for lectures and / public assemblies, connected with one another and with the palaces by long colonnades of the most costly marble from the Egyptian quarries, and adorned with obelisks and sphinxes taJsen from the | Pharaonic dties. The Library contained, according I to one account, 700,000 volumes, according to another 400,000 (Joseph. Antiq. xii. 2; Athen. i. p. 3); part, however, of this unrivalled collection was lodged in the temple of Serapis, in the quarter Rha- cdtis. Here were deposited the 200,000 volumes collected by the kings of Pergamus, and presented by M. Antonins to Cleopatra. The libra ry of the ^ Museum was destn^ed during theblockaHo of Julius 1 Caesar in the Bracheium; that of the Serapeion was frequently injured by the cHUBrMla <^Xlex- andreia, and especially when that temple was de- stroyed by the Christian fanatics in the 4th century A. D. It was finally destroyed by the orders of the khalif Chnar, a. d. 640. The collection was begun by Ptolemy Soter, augmented by his successors, — for the worst of the Lagidae were patrons of litera- ture, — and respected, if not increased, by the Cae- sars, who, like their predecessors', appointed and sala- ried the librarians and the professore of the Museum. The Macedonian kings replenished the shdves of the Library zealously but unscrapulously, since they laid an embaiigo on all books, whether public or private property, which were brought to Alexandreia, retained the originals, and gave copies of them to thdr proper owners. In this way Ptolemy Euergetes (b. c. 246 — ^221) b said to have got possession of authentic copies of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and to have returned transcripts of them to the Athenians, with an accompanying compensation of fifteen talents. The Museum succeeded the once renowned college of Heliopolis as the University of Egypt. It contained a great hall or banqueting room (oIkos lUyas), where the professors dined in common; an exterior peristyle, or corridor (vcpiira- Tot), for exercise and ambulatory lectures; a theatre where public disputations and scholastic festivals were held; chambers for the different professors; and possessed a botanical garden which Ptolemy Phila- ddphus enriched with tropical flora (Philostrat. Vit. ApoUon, vi. 24), and a menagerie (Athen. xiv. p. 654). It was diWded into four prindpal sections, — poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine,— and enrolled among its professors or pupils the illustrious naoies of Euclid, Ctcsibius, Collimachus, Aratus,