Alexandrian School
After the decline of liberty and intellectual cultivation in Greece, Alexandria, in Egypt,
became the home and centre of science and literature. The time in which it held this position
may be divided into two periods—the first including the reigns of the Ptolemies,
from B.C. 323 to 30; the second, from B.C. 30 to A.D. 640, or from the fall of the Ptolemaean
dynasty to the irruption of the Arabs. During the first period the intellectual activity at
Alexandria was mainly of a purely literary or scientific kind; but during the second, partly
from Jewish and Christian influences, it developed into the speculative philosophy of the
Neo-Platonists (q. v.) and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics. See
Gnostici.
Ptolemy Soter, the first ruler who introduced and patronized Greek science and literature in
Alexandria, was followed by a still more munificent patron, Ptolemy Philadelphus, who
regularly established the celebrated Alexandrian Library and Museum, which had been begun by
his father. This Museum was somewhat like a modern university, and within its walls learned
scholars both lived and taught. (See
Museum.) The
loss of Greek freedom soon took from Greek thought much of its boldness and originality, but
thinkers found substitutes for these in learned research and criticism. They studied grammar,
prosody, mythology, astronomy, and medicine, and unfolded their information in long didactic
poems in epic form, full of learning, and marked by perfect mastery of verse, but often dull
to a degree, and marred by numerous obscure and recondite allusions. Examples of these are the
Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, and the
Alexandra or
Cassandra of Lycophron. Other writers of epics were Euphorion, Nicander of
Colophon, Dionysius Periegetes, Rhianus, and Oppianus. Many poets employed lyric and elegiac
forms for subjects completely unsuited for poetic treatment, which are yet happily expressed
in verse. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philetas of Cos; the greatest, perhaps,
Callimachus (q.v.). Among the lyric poets were
Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolia, and Lycophron. Epigrams and dramas were also
written, but of the latter scarcely anything has survived beyond the names of the seven
tragedians called the Alexandrian Pleiades. Out of the Amoebean verse or bucolic
mime—a rudimentary kind of drama—grew the best product of Alexandrian
poetry, the idyls of
Theocritus (q.v.). Still
more active than the poets were the grammarians, to whom it is mainly due that we now possess
the masterpieces of Greek literature at all. They were both philologists and
littérateurs, who explained things as well as words, and were thus a kind of
encyclopædists. Among these the greatest were Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of
Byzantium, and Aristarchus of Samothrace; only less eminent crities were Alexander of Aetolia,
Lycophron, Callimachus, and Eratosthenes. Their chief service consists in having collected the
writings then existing, prepared corrected texts, and preserved them for future generations.
See
Textual Criticism.
The Alexandrian School had a spirit and character altogether different from the previous
intellectual life of Greece. From the attention paid to the study of language, it was natural
that correctness, purity, and elegance of expression should be especially cultivated; and in
these respects many of its writers are distinguished. But what no study and no effort could
give—the spirit that animated the earlier Greek poetry—was in most of
these works wanting. In place of it, there was displayed greater art in composition; what had
formerly been done by genius was now to be done by the rules furnished by criticism. Where
imitation and rule thus took the place of inspiration, each generation of disciples became
more artificial and lifeless than their masters, until ultimately criticism degenerated into
frivolous fault-finding, and both prose and poetry became laboured affectation. Still, for
about four centuries, the Alexandrian School was the centre of learning and science in
the ancient world. Counting from its origin to its complete extinction, it lasted a thousand
years; and its lasting influence upon Latin literature in the Augustan age must not be
forgotten. We find it in all the contemporary poets, and notably in Vergil, the greatest poet
of the group. See Matter,
Histoire de l'École d'Alexandrie, 2 vols.
(2d ed. Paris, 1840-44); St.-Hilaire,
De l'École
d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1845); Simon,
Histoire de l'École
d'Alexandrie, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1844-45); and especially Vacherot,
Histoire Critique de l'École d'Alexandrie, 3 vols.
(Paris,
1846-51).