Pithom with the Nile not sufficing to render it possible to make
even a narrow strip of arable land. Fresh water flowed from beautiful
fountains adorned with rich carvings, and the pure fluid filled large
porphyry and marble basins. Statues, single and in groups, stood forth in
harmonious arrangement against green masses of leafage, and Grecian
temples, halls, and even a theatre, rapidly constructed in the noblest
forms from light material, invited the people to devotion, to the
enjoyment of the most exquisite music, and to witness the perfect
performance of many a tragedy and comedy.

Statues surrounded the hurriedly erected palaestra where the Ephebi every
morning practised their nude, anointed bodies in racing, wrestling, and
throwing the discus. What a delight it was to Hermon to feast his eyes
upon these spectacles! What a stimulus to the artist, so long absorbed in
his own thoughts, who had so recently returned from the wilderness to the
world of active life, when he was permitted, in Erasistratus's tent, to
listen to the great scholars who had accompanied the King to the desert!
Only the regret that Daphne was not present to share his pleasure clouded
Hermon's enjoyment, when Eumedes related to his parents, himself, and a
few chosen friends the adventures encountered, and the experiences
gathered in distant Ethiopia, on land and water, in battle and the chase,
as investigator and commander.

The utmost degree of variety had entered into the simplicity of the
monotonous desert, the most refined abundance for the intellect and the
need of beauty appeared amid its barrenness.

The poet Callimachus had just arrived with a new chorus of singers,
tablets by Antiphilus and Nicias had come to beautify the last days of
the residence in the desert--when doves, the birds of Aphrodite, flew
with the speed of lightning into Pithom, but instead of bringing a new
message of love and announcing the approach of fresh pleasure, they bore
terrible tidings which put joy to flight and stifled mirthfulness.

The unbridled greed of rude barbarians had chosen Alexandria for its
goal, and startled the royal pair and their chosen companions from the
sea of pleasure where they would probably have remained for weeks.

The four thousand Gauls who had been obtained to fight against Cyrene
were in the act of rushing rapaciously upon the richest city in the
world. The most terrible danger hung like a black cloud over the capital
founded by