Alexandria: A History and a Guide

Thus the career of the Greco-Egyptian city closes, as it began, in an atmosphere of Romance. Cleopatra is of course a meaner figure than Alexander the Great. Ambition with her is purely selfish; with Alexander it was mystically connected with the welfare of mankind. She knows nothing beyond the body and so shrinks from discomfort and pain: Alexander attained the strength of the hero. Yet for all their differences, the man who created and the woman who lost Alexandria have one element in common: monumental greatness; and between them is suspended, like a rare and fragile chain, the dynasty of the Ptolemies. It is a dynasty much censored by historians, but the Egyptians, who lived under it, were more tolerant. For it had one element of greatness: it did represent the complex country that it ruled. In Upper Egypt it carried on the tradition of the Pharaohs: on the coast it was Hellenistic and in touch with Mediterranean culture. After its extinction, the vigour of Alexandria turns inwards. She is to do big things in philosophy and religion. But she is no longer the capital of a kingdom, no longer Royal.

Before leaving the Ptolemies, let us glance back at their civilisation. We have seen how they founded two great institutions, the Palace and the Mouseion, which communicated with one another, and which stretched from the promontory of Silsileh to some point inland—as far as the modern railway station, perhaps. It was in this area, among gardens and colonnades, that the culture of Alexandria came into being. The Palace provided the finances and called the tune: the Mouseion responded with imagination or knowledge; the connection between them was so intimate as almost to be absurd. When, for instance, Queen Berenice the wife of Euergetes lost her hair from the temple where she had dedicated it, it was the duty of the court astronomer to detect it as a constellation and of the court poet to write an elegy thereon. And Stratonice, who was perfectly bald, presented an even more delicate problem; she sent over a message to the Mouseion that something must be written about her hair also. Victory odes, Funeral dirges, Marriage hymns, jokes, genealogical trees, medical prescriptions, mechanical toys, maps, engines of war: whatever the Palace required it had only to inform the Mouseion, and the subsidised staff set to work at once. The poets and scientists there did nothing that would annoy the Royal Family and not much that would puzzle it, for they knew that if they failed to give satisfaction they would be expelled from the enchanted area, and have to find another patron or starve. It was not an ideal arrangement, as outsiders were prompt to point out, and snobbery and servility taint the culture of Alexandria from the first. It sprang up behind walls, it never knew loneliness, nor the glories and the dangers of independence, and the marvel is that it flourished as well as it did. At all events it is idle to criticise it for not being different, for if it had been different it would not have been Alexandrian. In spirit as in fact the Palace and the Mouseion touched, and the Palace was the stronger and the older. The contact strangled Philosophy and deprived Literature of such sustenance as Philosophy can bring to her. But it encouraged Science and gave even to Literature certain graces that she had hitherto ignored.

(A) LITERATURE.

The literature that grew up in the Mouseion had no lofty aims. It was not interested in ultimate problems nor even in problems of behaviour, and it attempted none of the higher problems of art. To be graceful or pathetic or learned or amusing or indecent, and in any case loyal—this sufficed it, so that though full of experiments it is quite devoid of adventure. It developed when the heroic age of Greece was over, when liberty was lost and possibly honour too. It was disillusioned, and we may be glad that is was not embittered also. It had strength of a kind, for it saw that out of the wreck of traditional hopes three good things remained—namely the decorative surface of the universe, the delights of study, and the delights of love, and that of these three the best was love. Ancient Greece had also sung of love, but with restraint, regarding it as one activity among many. The Alexandrians seldom sang of anything else: their epigrams, their elegies and idylls, their one great epic, all turn on the tender passion, and celebrate it in ways that previous ages had never known, and that future ages were to know too well. Darts and hearts, sighs and eyes, breasts and chests, all originated in Alexandria and from the intercourse between Palace and Mouseion—stale devices to-day, but then they were fresh.

runs a couplet ascribed to one of the early Librarians, and containing in brief the characteristics of the school—decorative method, mythological allusiveness, and the theme of love. Love as a cruel and wanton boy flits through the literature of Alexandria as through the thousands of terra cotta statuettes that have been exhumed from her soil; one tires of him, but it is appropriate that he should have been born under a dynasty that culminated in Cleopatra.

Literature took its tone from Callimachus—a fine poet, though not as fine as his patrons supposed. He began life as a schoolmaster at Eleusis (the modern Nouzha) and then was called to the Mouseion, where he became Librarian under Euergetes. His learning was immense, his wit considerable, his loyalty untiring. It was he who wrote the poem about Berenice’s hair. Dainty and pedantic in all that he did, he announced that “a big book is a big nuisance” and cared more about neatness of expression than depth of feeling, though the feeling emerges in his famous epigram:

Only once was this exquisite career interrupted. There was among his pupils a young man from Rhodes with thin legs, by name Apollonius. Apollonius was ambitious to write an Epic—a form of composition detested by Callimachus, and opposed to all his theories. In vain he objected; Apollonius, then only eighteen, gave in the Mouseion a public reading of the preliminary draft of his poem. A violent quarrel was the result, Apollonius was expelled, and Callimachus wrote a satire called the Ibis, in which his rival’s legs and other deficiencies were exposed. The friends of Apollonius retorted with equal spirit, and the tranquillity of the Mouseion was impaired. Callimachus won, but his victory was not eternal; after his death Apollonius was recalled to Alexandria, and in time became librarian there in his turn.

The Epic Apollonius insisted on writing has survived. It is modelled on Homer and deals with the voyage of the Argo to recover the Golden Fleece. But there is nothing Homeric in the treatment and though we are supposed to be in barbaric lands we never really leave the cultivated court of the Ptolemies. Love is still the ruling interest. He slips, the naughty little boy, into the Palace of Medea, and shoots his tiny dart at her, to inspire her with passion for Jason. So might he have inspired Queen Berenice or Arsinoe. Pains, languors, and raptures succeed, and the theme of the heroic quest is forgotten. Callimachus can have found nothing to object to in such a poem except its length, for it is typical of his school. Its pictorial method is also characteristic of Alexandria; many of the episodes might be illustrated by terra cotta statues and gems.

But one of the poets who worked in the Mouseion—Theocritus—was a genius of a very different kind, a genius that Alexandria matured but cannot be said to have formed. Theocritus came here late in his career. He had been born at Cos and had lived in Sicily, and he arrived full of memories that no town-dweller could share—memories of fresh air and the sun, of upland meadows and overhanging trees, of goats and sheep, of the men and the women who looked after them, and of all the charm and the coarseness that go to make up country life. He had thrown these memories into poetical form, sometimes idealising them, sometimes giving them crudely, and he had called these poems Idylls—little pictures of rural existence. Love, mythological fancies, decorative treatment—he liked these things too, but he backed them with a width of experience and a zest for it that Callimachus and Apollonius never knew. While they are “Classics” who have to be studied, Theocritus appeals to us at once; his Fifteenth Idyll, describing life in the Greek Quarter at Alexandria, is as vivid now as when he wrote it. The dialogue with which it opens can be heard to-day in any of the little drawing rooms of Camp de César or Ibrahimieh. Praxinoe, a lady of the middle classes, is discovered seated, doing nothing in particular. In comes Gorgo, her friend.

Gorgo. Is Praxinoe at home?

Praxinoe. Oh my dear Gorgo, it’s ages since you were here. She is at home. The wonder is that you’ve come even now. (calls to the maid). Eunoe, give her a chair and put a cushion on it.

Gorgo. Oh it does beautifully as it is.

Praxinoe. Sit down!

G. My nerves are all to bits—Praxinoe, I only just got here alive ... what with the crowd, what with the carriages ... soldiers’ boots—soldiers’ great-coats, and the street’s endless—you really live too far.

P. That’s my insane husband. We took this hut—one can’t call it a house—at the ends of the earth so that we shouldn’t be neighbours. Mere jealousy. As usual.

G. But, dear, don’t talk about your husband when the little boy’s here—he’s staring at you. (to the little boy) Sweet pet—that’s all right—she isn’t talking about papa.—Good Heavens, the child understands.—Pretty papa!

P. The other day, papa—we seem to call every day the other day—the other day he went to get some soda at the Baccal and brought back salt by mistake—the great overgrown lout.

G. Mine’s exactly the same, he....^[3]

And so on. But Gorgo wants to go out again, in spite of her nerves. It is the Feast of the Resurrection—the Resurrection of Adonis—and there is to be a magnificent service inside the Palace, with a special singer, Praxinoe decides to venture too, and puts on the dress with the full body, that cost “at least eight pounds,” excluding embroidery. They are ready at last and then the little boy begins to scream; he wishes to be of the party. But his mother remarks, “cry as much as you like, I cannot have you lamed,” and takes Eunoe instead. In the street the crush is terrific, they are terrified of the Egyptians (just like Greek ladies to-day) and Eunoe, who is always awkward, nearly falls under a horse. The battle at the Palace Gate is worse still, Praxinoe’s best muslin veil is torn, and she is more thankful than ever that she did not bring her little boy. But for a kind gentleman in the crowd, they would never have got in. Once inside, all is enjoyment. The draperies are gorgeous as might be expected when the Queen Arsinoe is paying for them—Arsinoe the wife of Philadelphus. And here is a Holy Sepulchre on which lies an image of Adonis, the down of early manhood just showing on his cheeks! The ladies are in ecstacies and can scarcely quiet themselves to listen to the Resurrection Hymn. In this Hymn Theocritus displays the other side of his genius—the “Alexandrian” side. He is no longer the amusing realist, but an erudite poet, whose chief theme is love.

O Queen that lovest Golgi and Idalium and Eryx, O Aphrodite that playest with gold—lo from the everlasting stream of Hades they have brought thee back Adonis.... A bridegroom of eighteen or nineteen years is he, his kisses are not yet rough, the golden down being yet on his lips.... Thou only, dear Adonis, so men tell, visitest both this world and the stream of Hades. For Agamemnon had no such fate, nor Ajax the wrathful, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus that returned out of Troy, nor the heroes of yet more ancient days.... Be gracious now, dear Adonis, and bless us in the coming year. Dear has thy resurrection been, and dear shall it be when thou comest again.

A beautiful hymn; but as Gorgo remarks “all the same it’s time to be getting home; my husband hasn’t had his dinner and when he’s kept waiting for his dinner he’s as sour as vinegar.” They salute the risen god, and go.

This delightful Idyll is not quite characteristic of Theocritus—he generally sings of Shepherds and their flocks. But it is his great contribution to the literature of Alexandria, and our chief authority for daily life under the Ptolemies. History is too much an affair of armies and kings. The Fifteenth Idyll corrects the error. Only through literature can the past be recovered and here Theocritus, wielding the double spell of realism and of poetry, has evoked an entire city from the dead and filled its streets with men. As Praxinoe remarks of the draperies “Why the figures seem to stand up and to move, they’re not patterns, they are alive.”

The Mouseion was at its best under the first three Ptolemies. Then it declined—at least in its literary output—and though Alexandria turned out poems, etc. for several hundred years, few of them merit attention. With the coming of the Romans her genius took a new line, and essayed the neglected paths of philosophy and religion. But she remained attractive to men of letters, and nearly every writer of note visited her in the course of his travels.

(B) SCHOLARSHIP.

In the Mouseion at Alexandria Greece first became aware of her literary heritage, and the works of the past were not only collected in the Library but were codified, amended, and explained. Scholarship dates from Zenodotus, the first Librarian. He turned his attention to Homer, divided the Iliad and Odyssey into “Books,” struck out spurious verses from the text, marked doubtful ones, and introduced new readings. He gave a general impulse to research. Hitherto the Greek language had developed unnoticed. Now it was consciously examined, and the result of the examination was the first Greek Grammar (about 100 B.C.). Grammar is a valuable subject but also a dangerous one, for it naturally attracts pedants and schoolmasters and all who think that Literature is an affair of rules. And the Grammarians of Alexandria forgot that they were merely codifying the usages of the past, and presumed to dictate to the present, and to posterity; they set a bad example that has been followed for nearly 2000 years. Greek accents—another doubtful boon—were also invented in the Mouseion. Indeed the whole of literary scholarship, as we know it, sprang up, including that curious by-product the Scholarly Joke. For instance: one learned man wrote a poem that had, when transcribed, the shape of a bird, another wrote a poem in the shape of a double-headed axe, and a third re-wrote the whole of the Odyssey without using the letter S. The donnish wit of the Mouseion infected the Palace, and was practiced by the Ptolemies themselves. One scholar, Sosibius by name, complained to King Philadelphus that he had not received his salary. The King replied “The first syllable of your name occurs in Soter, the second in Sosigenes, the third in Bion, and the fourth in Apollonius; I have paid these four gentlemen, and therefore I have paid you.”

(C) ART.

Unimportant. Alexandria had her special industries—e.g. glass, terra cotta, “Egyptian Queen” pottery, and woven stuffs, and her mint was famous; but for creative artists the Ptolemies looked over seas. Greek and Egyptian motives did not blend in Art as they did in Religion; attempts occur, but they are not notable and on the whole the city follows the general Hellenistic tendencies of the time. These tendencies led as we have seen away from the ideal and the abstract, and towards portraiture and the dainty and the picturesque. Men had lost for the time many illusions, both religious and political, and were trying to beautify their private lives, and the tombs of those whom they had loved.

(D) PHILOSOPHY.

Unimportant. The Ptolemies imported some second-rate disciples of Aristotle to give tone to the Mouseion, but took no interest in the subject, and were indeed averse to it, since it might lead to freedom of thought. It was not until their dynasty was extinct that the great school of Alexandrian Philosophy arose. (See p. 60, under heading “The Spiritual City.”)

(E) SCIENCE.

The Ptolemies were more successful over Science than over Literature. They preferred it, for it could not criticise their divine right. Its endowment was the greatest achievement of the dynasty and makes Alexandria famous until the end of time. Science had been studied in Ancient Greece, but sporadically: there had been no co-ordination, no laboratories, and though important truths might be discovered or surmised, they were in danger of oblivion because they could not be popularised. The foundation of the Mouseion changed all this. Working under royal patronage and with every facility, science leapt to new heights, and gave valuable gifts to mankind. The third century B.C. is (from this point of view) the greatest period that civilisation has ever known—greater even than the nineteenth century A.D. It did not bring happiness or wisdom: science never does. But it explored the physical universe and harnessed many powers for our use. Mathematics, Geography, Astronomy, Medicine, all grew to maturity in the little space of the land between the present Rue Rosette and the sea, and if we had any sense of the fitting, some memorial to them would arise on the spot to-day.

(i). Mathematics.

Mathematics begin with the tremendous but obscure career of Euclid. Nothing is known about Euclid: indeed one thinks of him to-day more as a branch of knowledge than as a man. But Euclid was once alive, landing here in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and informing that superficial monarch that there is “no royal road to geometry.” Here he composed, among other works, his “Elements” in which he incorporated all previous knowledge, and which have remained the world’s text book for Geometry almost down to the present day. Here he founded a mathematical school that lasted 700 years, and acknowledged his leadership to the last. Apollonius of Perga, who inaugurated the study of Conic Sections, was his immediate pupil: Hyspicles added to the thirteen books of his “Elements” two books more: and Theon—father to the martyred Hypatia—edited the “Elements” and gave them their present form, so that from first to last the mathematicians of Alexandria were preoccupied with him. An insignificant man, according to tradition, and very shy; his snub to Philadelphus seems to have been exceptional.

(ii). Geography.

In Geography there are two leading figures—Eratosthenes and Claudius Ptolemy. Eratosthenes is the greater. He seems to have been an all round genius, eminent in literature as well as science. He was born at Cyrene in B.C. 276 and, on the death of Callimachus, was invited to Alexandria to become librarian. It was in the Mouseion observatory that he measured the Earth—perhaps not the greatest achievement of Alexandrian science, but certainly the most thrilling. His method was as follows. He knew that the earth is round, and he was told that the midsummer sun at Assouan in Upper Egypt cast no shadow at midday. At Alexandria, at the same moment, it did cast a shadow, Alexandria being further to the north on the same longitude. On measuring the Alexandria shadow he found that it was 7⅕ degrees—i.e. 1/50th of a complete circle—so that the distance from Alexandria to Assouan must be 1/50th the circumference of the Earth. He estimated the distance at 500 miles, and consequently arrived at 250,000 miles for the complete circumference, and 7,850 for the diameter; in the latter calculation he is only 50 miles out. It is strange that when science had once gained such triumphs mankind should ever have slipped back again into fairy tales and barbarism.

The other great work of Eratosthenes was his “Geographies,” including all previous knowledge on the subject, just as the “Elements” of Euclid had included all previous mathematical knowledge. The “Geographies” were in three books, and to them was attached a map of the known world. (See p. 37). It is, of course, full of inaccuracies—e g. Great Britain is too large, India fails to be a peninsula and the Caspian Sea connects with the Arctic Ocean. But it is conceived in the scientific spirit. It represents the world as Eratosthenes thought it was, not as he thought it ought to be. When he knows nothing, he inserts nothing; he is not ashamed to leave blank spaces. He bases it on such facts as he knew, and had he known more facts he would have altered it.

The other great geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, belongs to a later period (A.D. 100) but it is convenient to notice him here. Possibly he was a connection of the late royal family, but nothing is known of his life. His fame has outshone Eratosthenes’, and no doubt he was more learned, for more facts were at his disposal. Yet we can trace in him the decline of the scientific spirit. Observe his Map of the World (p. 39). At first sight it is superior to the Eratosthenes Map. The Caspian Sea is corrected, new countries—e.g. China—are inserted, and there are (in the original) many more names. But there is one significant mistake. He has prolonged Africa into an imaginary continent and joined it up to China. It was a mere flight of his fancy: he even scattered this continent with towns and rivers. No one corrected the mistake and for hundreds of years it was believed that the Indian Ocean was land bound. The age of enquiry was over, and the age of authority had begun, and it is worth noting that the decline of science at Alexandria exactly coincides with the rise of Christianity.

(iii). Astronomy and the Calendar.

Astronomy develops on the same lines as Geography. There is an early period of scientific research under Eratosthenes, and there is a later period in which Claudius Ptolemy codifies the results and dictates his opinions to posterity. He announced, for example, that the Universe revolves round the Earth, and this “Ptolemaic” Theory was adopted by all subsequent astronomers until Galileo, and supported by all the thunders of the Church. Yet another view had been put forward, though Ptolemy ignores it. Aristarchus of Samos, working at Alexandria with Eratosthenes, had suggested that the earth might revolve round the sun, and it is only a chance that this view was not stamped as official and imposed as orthodox all through the Middle Ages. We do not know what Aristarchus’ arguments were, for his writings have perished, but we may be sure that, working in the 3rd century B.C., he had arguments and did not take refuge in authority. Astronomy under the Ptolemies was a serious affair—lightened only by the episode of Berenice’s Hair.

As to the Calendar. The Calendar we now use was worked out in Alexandria. The Ancient Egyptians had calculated the year at 365 days. It is actually 365 ¼, so before long they were hopelessly out; the official Harvest Festival, for instance, only coincided with the actual harvest once in 1,500 years. They were aware of the discrepancy, but were too conservative to alter it: that was left to Alexandria. In B.C. 239 the little daughter of Ptolemy Euergetes died, and the priests of Serapis at Canopus passed a decree making her a goddess. A reformer even in his grief, the King induced them to rectify the Calendar at the same time by decreeing the existence of a Leap Year, to occur every four years, as at present; he attempted to harmonise the traditions of Egypt with the science of Greece. The attempt—so typical of Alexandria—failed, for though the priests passed the decree they kept to their old chronology. It was not until Julius Caesar came to Egypt that the cause of reform prevailed. He established the “Alexandrian Year” as official, and modelled on it the “Julian,” which we use in Europe to-day; the two years were of the same length, but the “Alexandrian” retained the old Egyptian arrangement of twelve equal months.

(iv). Medicine.

Erasistratus (3rd. cent. B.C.) is the chief glory of the Alexandrian medical school. In his earlier life he had been a great practitioner, and had realised the connection between sexual troubles and nervous breakdowns. In his old age he settled in the Mouseion, and devoted himself to research. He practised vivisection on animals, and possibly on criminals, and he seems to have come near to discovering the circulation of the blood. Less severely scientific were the healing cults that sprang up in the great temples of Serapis, both at Alexandria and at Canopus;—cults that were continued into Christian times under other auspices.

Octavian (Augustus) the founder of the Roman Empire, so disliked Alexandria that after his triumph over Cleopatra he founded a town near modern Ramleh—Nicopolis, the “City of Victory.” He also forbade any Roman of the governing classes to enter Egypt without his permission, on the ground that the religious orgies there would corrupt their morals. The true reason was economic. He wanted to keep the Egyptian corn supply in his own hands, and thus control the hungry populace of Rome. Egypt, unlike the other Roman provinces, became a private appanage of the Emperor, who himself appointed the Prefect who governed it, and Alexandria turned into a vast imperial granary where the tribute, collected in kind from the cultivators, was stored for transhipment. It was an age of exploitation. Octavian posed locally as the divine successor of the Ptolemies, and appears among hieroglyphs at Dendyra and Philae. But he had no local interest at heart.

After his death things improved. The harsh ungenerous Republic that he had typified passed into Imperial Rome, who, despite her moments of madness, brought happiness to the Mediterranean world for two hundred years. Alexandria had her share of this happiness. Her new problem—riots between Greeks and Jews—was solved at the expense of the latter; she gained fresh trade by the improved connections with India (Trajan A.D. 115, recut the Red Sea Canal); she was visited by a series of appreciative Emperors on their way to the antiquities of Upper Egypt.

In about A.D. 250 she, with the rest of the Empire, reentered trouble. The human race, as if not designed to enjoy happiness, had slipped into a mood of envy and discontent. Barbarians attacked the frontiers of the Empire, while within were revolts and mutinies. The difficulties of the Emperors were complicated by a religious problem. They had, for political reasons, been emphasising their own divinity—a divinity that Egypt herself had taught them: it seemed to them that it would be a binding force against savagery and schism. They therefore directed that everyone should worship them. Who could have expected a protest, and a protest from Alexandria?

THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.

According to the tradition of the Egyptian Church, Christianity was introduced into Alexandria by St. Mark, who in A.D. 45 converted a Jewish shoemaker named Annianus, and who in 62 was martyred for protesting against the worship of Serapis. There is no means of checking this tradition; the origins of the movement were unfashionable and obscure, and the authorities took little notice of it until it disobeyed their regulations. Its doctrines were confounded partly with the Judaism from which they had sprung, partly with the other creeds of the city. A letter ascribed to the emperor Hadrian (in Alexandria 134) says “Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis,” showing how indistinct was the impression that the successors of St. Mark had made. The letter continues “As a race of men they are seditious, vain, and spiteful; as a body, wealthy and prosperous, of whom nobody lives in idleness. Some blow glass, some make paper, and others linen. Their one God is nothing peculiar; Christians, Jews, and all nations worship him. I wish this body of men was better behaved.”

The community was organised under its “overseer” or bishop, who soon took the title of patriarch, and appointed bishops elsewhere in Egypt. The earliest centres were (i) the oratory of St. Mark which stood by the sea shore—probably to the east of Silsileh—and was afterwards enlarged into a Cathedral; (ii) a later cathedral church dedicated (285) by the Patriarch Theonas to the Virgin Mary; it was on the site of the present Franciscan Church by the Docks. (iii) a Theological College—the “Catechetical School,” founded about 200, where Clement of Alexandria and Origen taught—site unknown.

It was its “bad behaviour,” to use Hadrian’s term, that brought the community into notice—that is to say, its refusal to worship the Emperors. To the absurd spiritual claims of the state, Christianity opposed the claims of the individual conscience, and the conflict was only allayed by the state itself becoming Christian. The conflict came to its height in Alexandria, which, more than any other city in the Empire, may claim to have won the battle for the new religion. Persecution, at first desultory, grew under Decius, and culminated in the desperate measures of Diocletian (303)—demolition of churches, all Christian officials degraded, all Christian non-officials enslaved. Diocletian, an able ruler—the great column miscalled Pompey’s is his memorial—did not persecute from personal spite, but the results were no less appalling and definitely discredited the pagan state. While we need not accept the Egyptian Church’s estimate of 144,000 martyrs in nine years, there is no doubt that numbers perished in all ranks of society. Among the victims was St. Menas, a young Egyptian soldier who became patron of the desert west of Lake Mariout, where a great church was built over his grave. St. Catherine of Alexandria is also said to have died under Diocletian, but it is improbable that she ever lived; she and her wheel were creations of Western Catholicism, and the land of her supposed sufferings has only recognised her out of politeness to the French. The persecution was vain, the state was defeated, and the Egyptian Church, justly triumphant, dates its chronology, not from the birth of Christ, but from the “Era of Martyrs” (A.D. 284). A few years later the Emperor Constantine made Christianity official, and the menace from without came to an end.

ARIUS AND ATHANASIUS.
(4th Cent. A.D.)

It was natural that Alexandria, who had suffered so much for Christianity, should share in its triumph, and as soon as universal toleration was proclaimed her star reemerged. Rome, as the stronghold of Paganism, was discredited, and it seemed that the city by the Nile might again become Imperial, as in the days of Antony. That hoped was dashed, for Constantine, a very cautious man, thought it safer to found a new capital on the Bosphorus, where no memories from the past could intrude. But Alexandria was the capital spiritually, and at least it seemed that she, who had helped to free imprisoned Christendom, would lead it in harmony and peace to its home at the feet of God. That hope was dashed too. An age of hatred and misery was approaching. The Christians, as soon as they had captured the machinery of the pagan state, turned it against one another, and the century resounds to a dispute between two dictatorial clergymen.

Both were natives of Alexandria. Arius, the older, took duty at St. Mark’s—the vanished church by the sea at Chatby where the Evangelist was said to have been martyred. Learned and sincere, tall, simple in his dress, persuasive in his speech, he was accused by his enemies of looking like a snake, and of seducing, in the theological sense, 700 virgins. Athanasius, his opponent, first appears as a merry little boy, playing with other children on the beach below St. Theonas’—on the shore of the present western harbour, that is to say. He was playing at Baptism, which not being in orders he had no right to do, and the Patriarch, who happened to be looking out of the palace window, tried to stop him. No one ever succeeded in stopping St. Athanasius. He baptised his playmates, and the Patriarch, struck by his precocity, recognised the sacrament as valid and engaged the active young theologian as his secretary. Physically Athanasius was blackish and small, but strong and extremely graceful—one recognises a modern street type. His character can scarcely be discerned through the dust of the century, but he was certainly not loveable, though he lived to be a popular hero. His powers were remarkable. As a theologian he knew what is true, and as a politician he knew how truth can be enforced, and his career blends subtlety with vigour and self-abnegation with craft in the most remarkable way.

The dispute—Arius started it—concerned the nature of Christ. Its doctrinal import is discussed below (p. 75); here we are only dealing with the outward results. Constantine who was no theologian and dubiously Christian, was appalled by the schism which rapidly divided his empire. He wrote, counselling charity, and when he was ignored summoned the disputants to Nicaea on the Black Sea (325). Two hundred and fifty bishops and many priests attended, and amid great violence the Nicene Creed was passed, and Arius condemned. Athanasius who was still only a deacon, returned in triumph to Alexandria, and soon afterwards became Patriarch here. But his troubles were only beginning. Constantine, still obsessed with hopes of toleration, asked him to receive Arius back. He refused, and was banished himself.

He was banished five times in all—once by the orthodox Constantine (335), twice by the Arian Constantius (338 and 356), once by the pagan Julian (362), and once, shortly before his death, by the Arian Valens. Sometimes he hid in the Lybian desert, sometimes he escaped to Rome or Palestine and made Christendom ring with his grievances. Twice he came near to death in church—once in the Caesareum where he marched processionally out of one door as the enemy came in at the other, and once in St. Theonas at night, where he escaped from the altar just before the Arian soldiers murdered him there. He always returned, and he had the supreme joy of outliving Arius, who fell down dead one evening, while walking through Alexandria with a friend. To us, living in a secular age, such triumphs appear remote, and it seems better to die young, like Alexander the Great, than to drag out this arid theological Odyssey. But Athanasius has the immortality that he would have desired. Owing to his efforts the Church has accepted as final his opinion on the nature of Christ, and, duly grateful, has recognised him as a doctor and canonised him as a saint. In Alexandria a large church was built to commemorate his name. It stood on the north side of the Canopic Street; the Attarine Mosque occupies part of its site to-day.