LiTERATURF,.— R. J. KnowUng-, EGT, 'Acts,' 1900; Comm. of Meyer, Zeller, Holtzraann ; 'W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul, 1895, p. 279 ; artt. in HDB and ££i. W. F. BOYD.
ALEXANDRIA ('AXefd;/5/)ia).— The city of Alex- andria almost realized Alexander the Great's dream of ' a city surpassing anything previously exist- ing' (Plutarch, Alex. xxvi.). Planned by Dino- crates under the king's supervision, and built on a neck of land two miles wide interposed between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis (Mariut), about 14 miles from the Canopic mouth of the Nile, it became successively the capital of Hellenic, Roman, and Christian Egypt, ' the greatest mart in the world ' (/i^yurTov i/Miropiov ttjs olKovfuevijs, Strabo, XVII. i. 13), and next to Rome the most splendid city in the Empire. About 4 miles long from E. to W., nearly a mile wide, and about 15 miles in
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ALEXA^^DRIA
ALEXANDRIA
circumference, it was quartered — like so many of the Hellenic cities of the period — by two colon- naded thoroughfares crossing each other at a great central square, terminating in tlie four principal gates, and determining the line of the other streets, so that the whole city was laid out in parallelo- grams. The three regions into which it was divided — the Begio Judceorum, Brucheium, and Rhacvtis — corresponded generally with the three classes of the population — Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians — while representatives of nearly all other nations commingled in its streets (Dio Chrys. Orat. 32). Diodorus Siculus, who visited it about 58 B.C., estimates (xvii. 52) its free citizens at 300,000, and it probably had at least an equal number of slaves.
' Its fine air,' says Strabo, ' is worthy of remark : this results from the city being on two sides surrounded by water, and from the favourable effects of the rise of the Nile,' one canal joining the great river to the lake, and another the lake to the sea. 'The Nile, being full, fills the lake also, and leaves no marshy matter which is likely to cause exhalations ' (xvii. L 7).
The name of the city does not occur in the NT, but ' Alexandrian,' as noun and adj. ('AXe|a^5pei/s, ' A\e^av5piv6s), is found 4 times in Acts. There was a synagogue of Alexandrians in Jerusalem (6''), fanatical defenders of the Mosaic faith, roused to indignation by the heresies of Stephen. Apollos was ' an Alexandrian by race, a learned man (dv7]p \&yios ; AV and RVm, 'eloquent'), mighty in the scriptures' (18^). In one Alexandrian ship St. Paul was wrecked at Melita (27"), and in another he continued his voyage to Puteoli (28^1). Here are references to the three most striking aspects of the life of Alexandria — her religion, culture, and commerce. We invert the order.
1. Commerce. — Alexandria was built on a site uniquely adapted for maritime trade. Served on her northern side by the Great Harbour and the Haven of Happy Return * (eiivoaTos), which were formed by a mole seven stadia in length — the Hepta- stadium — flung across to the island of Pharos,! and on her southern side by the wharves of Mareotis, Alexandria entered into the heritage of both Tyre and Carthage, and drew to herself the commerce of three continents. Under the Ptolemys Egypt largely took the place of the lands around the Euxine as a grain -producing country, and ' com in Egypt ' became as proverbial as it had been in the da^'s of the Piiaraohs.
'The corn which was sent from thence to Italy was con- veyed in ships of very ^reat size. From the dimensions ^ven of one of them by Lucian, they appear to have been quite as large as the largest class of merchant ships of modern times ' (Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul-*, 1880, p. 71 f. ).
The cruisers and coasters of Alexandria traded with every part of the Mediterranean, and it was an ordinary occurrence to find vessels bound for Italy in the harbours of Myra and Malta (Ac 27^ 28"). Seneca gives a vivid picture of the arrival of the Alexandrian fleet of merchantmen at Puteoli {Ep. 77). The trade which came to Lake Mareotis from the Nile and the Red Sea was equally im- portant.
' Large fleets,' says Strabo (xvii. L 13), ' are dispatched as far as India and the extremities of Ethiopia, from which places the most valuable freights are brought to Egypt, and are thence exported to other places, so that a double amount of custom is collected, arising from imports on the one hand, and from ex- ports on the other.'
2. Culture. — It was the great ambition of the Ptolemys to make their capital not only the com- mercial but the intellectual centre of the world. Alexandria really succeeded in winning for herself the crown of science, and was for centuries the foster-mother of an international Hellenic culture.
• Its inner basin, Eibotos, p-eatly enlarged, forms the modern harbour.
t On the eastern point of the island was the famous Light- house, one of the ' Seven Wonders ' of the world.
The proofs of her devotion to letters were seen in the Brucheium, or central quarter of the city, which contained not only the mausoleum* of Alexander, the palaces of the Egyptian kings, the Temple of Poseidon, and, at a later date, the Csesarium f in which divine honours were paid to the Roman emperors, but the Museum, which in many ways resembled a modern university, with lecture halls and State-paid professors, and the Library, in which were accumulated the books of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and India, to the number (according to Josephus, Ant. Xll. ii. 1) of more than half a million. In this home of endowed research the exact sciences flourished ; Alexandria had on her roll of fame the names of Euclid in geometry, Hipjiarchus in astronomy, Eratosthenes in geo- graphy ; and her physicians were the most cele- brated in the world. For literature her savants did a noble Avork in collecting, revising, and classify- ing the records of the past. On tlie whole, how- ever, her literary school was imitative rather than creative ; her poets trusted more to learning than to imagination, and the muses rarely visited the Museum. The artificial atmosphere of literary criticism, which was the breath of life to gram- marians, philologists, and dialecticians, cliilled rather than fostered original genius. Alexandria's most brilliant scholars, detached from the realities of life, immured in academic cloisters, were con- noisseurs, not writers, of classics.