Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/162

Rh MACEDONIAN EMPIRE and secret or public associations of various kinds. And it was in these commercial centres, with their somewhat cosmopolite character, free from old prejudices and ideas, that Christianity found an early home. Greek freedom made a great impression iu ths East. The Greeks had no system of castes, no close priesthood, no sacred books like those of India to limit their development ; their views may almost be called cosmopolitan, and the distinction between &quot;Greek &quot;and &quot;barbarian&quot; already tended to disappear, as Alexander perhaps had wished. Attic speech became the basis &quot;of the new written language, and, with Attic customs, prevailed at the courts of Alexandria and Babylon, of Bactra and Pergamon. Attic plays were acted at Ctesiphon down to Roman times ; and the later rhetoricians and sophists imitated the masters of Attic oratory. The Greek view as to Philip and Alexander was thus enabled to hold its own against the prevailing Macedonian tone on these matters, espscially when Macedonia lost its leading position, for that country produced only soldiers with the exception of Marsyas of Pella, and of King Ptolemy, who wrote with true military brevity an account of Alexander s campaigns, which Arrian wisely preferred to the more romantic account of Clitarchus. But, though the towns became Hellenized, yet the Hellenistic populations did not possess the highest qualities of the Greek mind, as the surrounding elements and the climate naturally wrought some alteration. Polybius looked with surprise at the Greeks settled in Alexandria. The living forces of Greece its productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political life were weakened and gradually lost their energy. The Attic language became the Hellenistic, Attic eloquence received a florid Asiatic tinge (though ^Eschines himself taught at Rhodes), but true eloquence can only flourish, as Tacitus points out, in a free state. Literature and art lost their connexion with a true national life. Architecture took another character, and the plastic art of Pergamon, though derived from Athens, and that of Rhodes, though derived from the Sicyonian school, through Chares of Lindus (who modelled the Sun-god, known as the &quot;Colossus&quot;), had lost the self-restraint and dignity of the highest Greek art. But the suppression of political freedom turned the force of the Greek mind all the more strongly into other channels, and science and criticism, and speculation and literary history, made a great advance. Considerable schools were opened at Tarsus and other centres of commerce. As the free state lost its power over the mind, men had recourse to philosophy, and regained in mental fortitude and independence the outward freedom they had lost. Then this feeling reacted on politics, and a generation of patriots like Philopoemen arose, worthy to represent Greece in these her last days. The new teaching of freedom came forth, as was right, from Athens ; it was the followers of Arcesilaus,. the founder of the new Academy, who freed Megalopolis from its tyrant. The later developments of philosophy were mainly due to Zeno of Citium in Cyprus, and to Epicurus, who finally taught at Mytilene and Lampsacus; but Athens was still the chief home of their teaching. The writings of the great philosophers of this age, however, are mostly lost to us, as well as those of the historians, and after Aristotle there is a strange gap in the tradition up to the Christian era. The Greeks now wished to know the early history of the East, and the Eastern peoples wished to make their history known to the great literary nation. Hence Berosus wrote the history of Babylon for Antiochus II., from the archives in the temple of Belus, Manetho that of Egypt for Ptolemy Philadelphus, Menander of Tyre that of Phoenicia, and Jewish writers the history of their race and religious views, which are finally summed up for us by Philo and Josephus. The sacred books of Egypt, Palestine, and Persia were to be found in the Alexandrian library, and the religious syncretism that resulted from the mixture of races prepared the way for monotheism arid for Christianity. The astrology, however, and divination of the East in turn made their way among the Greeks, and led to curious superstitions, and a whole literature of Sibylline books and similar forgeries sprang up. Christianity itself spread chiefly in the Hellenized towns ; the country districts were much longer in feeling the new influence. It was in Egypt, however, that Hellenism was perhaps most highly developed. The Ptolemies gained Cyrene and Cyprus, and struggled hard with the Syrian kings for the possession of Phoenicia ; Palestine was as of old the battle field for the king of the north and the king of the south. The Ptolemies even held Seleucia at the mouth of the Orontes for some time. The history of these times is lost in its detail ; the only thing certain is the spread of the Hellenistic spirit in the East. Many Jews were trans planted to Alexandria and Cyrene, occupied large quarters of those cities, and had full civil rights. The Ptolemies also pushed south into Ethiopia, and the African elephants which they trained for war enabled them to oppose the Syrian army with its Indian elephants. A Greek inscrip tion at Adulis, though of later origin, commemorates the conquests of the third king of this line. These kings also secured the route down the Red Sea, reopened the old canal of Necho leading from the Nile into that sea, founded Arsinoe and other important towns, and made discoveries on the route to India. The new information thus gained was recorded in the geographical works of Agatharcides of Cnidus and Artemidorus of Ephesus. The old trade of Egypt had chiefly consisted in the export of corn; now the wares of Arabia, South Africa, and India came through Egypt to Europe, and ships of Alexandria became frequent visitors to the western waters. Even in Asia Minor Egypt won influence as Syria lost it, and a court poet (perhaps Theocritus) was justified in praising the Egyptian king who was master of the sea. The carrying trade had fallen largely into the hands of Egypt from the time when the war between Seleucus and Antigonus stopped the trade of the caravans by land, and the import and export duties formed a large part of the Egyptian revenues. After the return of Pyrrhus from Italy, Philadelphus even made a treaty with Rome. The Sicilian Greeks might be rivals in trade, but the Italians were good customers, and produced the excellent wool which was invaluable for the Egyptian manufactures, as the cultivation of cotton in Egypt had but begun. Puteoli, the first really good port to the south of Rome, was the chief centre of the trade even at this early time. The Egyptian trade was concentrated in Alexandria, which thus became one of the greatest cities on the earth. Science flourished there, and men like Archimedes came thither to study. Much of what was done was done for ever. No mathematician has to redemonstrate the problems of Euclid. Geography was founded by Eratosthenes of Cyrene on a mathematical and astronomical basis ; he first calculated the magnitude of the earth by measuring an arc of the meridian, the process employed at the present day. Modern astronomy too is the natural development of the work of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Erasistratus and Herophilus investigated the structure and functions of the valves of the heart, and the nerves of sensation and motion, and a close connexion was thus formed between anatomy and medicine. The Museum, a sort of college, numbered Eratosthenes, Callimachus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus among its members. They fixed the text of the classical writers on critical principles; and grammar assumed the form it kept for centuries. Poetry itself had a kind of second summer with Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius, and, under Sicilian influences, with