anean, and even
penetrated to Britain and India.

But greater than Tyre or Antioch, or any eastern city, was Alexandria,
the capital of Egypt. Egypt even in its decline was still a great
monarchy; and when the sceptre of three hundred kings passed from
Cleopatra the last of the Ptolemies, to Augustus Caesar the conqueror at
Actium, the military force of Egypt is said to have amounted to seven
hundred thousand men. The annual revenues of this State under the
Ptolemies amounted to about seventeen million dollars in gold and
silver, besides the produce of the earth. A single feast cost
Philadelphus more than half a million of pounds sterling, and he had
accumulated treasures to the amount of seven hundred and forty thousand
talents, or about eight hundred and sixty million dollars. What European
monarch ever possessed such a sum? The kings of Egypt, even when
tributary to Rome, were richer in gold and silver than was Louis XIV. in
the proudest hour of his life.

The ground-plan of Alexandria was traced by Alexander himself, but it
was not completed until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Its
circumference was about fifteen miles; the streets were regular, and
crossed one another at right angles, being wide enough for free passage
of both carriages and foot passengers. Its harbor could hold the largest
fleet ever congregated; its walls and gates were constructed with all
the skill and strength known to antiquity; its population numbered six
hundred thousand, and all nations were represented in its crowded
streets. The wealth of the city may be inferred from the fact that in
one year sixty-two hundred and fifty talents, or more than six million
dollars, were paid to the public treasury for port dues. The library was
the largest in the world, numbering over seven hundred thousand
volumes; and this was connected with a museum, a menagerie, a botanical
garden, and various halls for lectures, altogether forming the most
famous university in the Roman empire. The inhabitants were chiefly
Greek, and had all the cultivated tastes and mercantile thrift of that
quick-witted people. In a commercial point of view Alexandria was the
most important city in the world, and its ships whitened every sea.
Unlike most commercial cities, it was intellectual, and its schools of
poetry, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and theology were more
renowned than even those of Athens during the third and fourth
centuries. Alexandria, could it have b