Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/161

 that Olympiodorus, who wrote Commentaries upon some of the Chymical Discourses of Zosimus, was 150 Years older than Constantine, because he mentions the Alexandrian Library in the Temple of Serapis, as actually in being, which in Ammianus Marcellinus's Time, who was contemporary with Julian the Apostate, was only talked of, as a thing destroyed long before. I don't mean that which was burnt in Julius Cæsars Time, but one afterwards erected out of the scattered Remains that were saved from that great Conflagration, which is mentioned by Tertullian, under the Name of Ptolemees Library at Alexandria. If this Zosimus is the same whom Galen mentions, for a Remedy for sore Eyes, in his 4th. Book of Topical Medicines, then both he and Olympiodorus might have been considerably older; and yet have lived since our Blessed Saviour's Time. However, be their Age what it will, they wrote to themselves, and their Art was as little known afterwards as it was before; Julius Firmicus is the First Author that has mentioned Alchemy, either by Name, or by an undisputed Circumlocution; and he dedicated his Book of Astrology to Constantine the Great. Manilius indeed (who is supposed to have lived in Augustus's Time)