Egyptians to a fabulous antiquity, the belief of the
Jews in the sacred character of their laws, the faith of the Persians in
the writings of Zoroaster, all these were fit subjects for discussion in
the halls and libraries of Alexandria. We probably owe the translation of
the Old Testament, the Septuagint, to this spirit of literary inquiry
which was patronized at Alexandria by the Ptolemies.(65) The writings of
Zoroaster also, the Zend-Avesta, would seem to have been rendered into
Greek about the same time. For Hermippus, who is said by Pliny to have
translated the writings of Zoroaster, was in all probability
Hermippus,(66) the Peripatetic philosopher, the pupil of Callimachus, one
of the most learned scholars at Alexandria.

But although we find at Alexandria these and similar traces of a general
interest having been excited by the literatures of other nations, there is
no evidence which would lead us to suppose that their languages also had
become the subject of scientific inquiry. It was not through the study of
other languages, but through the study of the ancient dialects of their
own language, that the Greeks at Alexandria were first led to what we
should call critical and philological studies. The critical study of Greek
took its origin at Alexandria, and it was chiefly based on the text of
Homer. The general outline of grammar existed, as I remarked before, at an
earlier period. It grew up in the schools of Greek philosophers.(67) Plato
knew of noun and verb as the two component parts of speech. Aristotle
added conjunctions and articles. He likewise observed the distinctions of
number and case. But neither Plato nor Aristotle paid much attention to
the forms of language which corresponded to these forms of thought, nor
had they any inducement to reduce them to any practical rules. With
Aristotle the verb or _rhemha_ is hardly more than predicate, and in
sentences such as "the snow is white," he would have called _white_ a
verb. The first who reduced the actual forms of language to something like
order were the scholars of Alexandria. Their chief occupation was to
publish correct texts of the Greek classics, and particularly of Homer.
They were forced, therefore, to pay attention to the exact forms of Greek
grammar. The MSS. sent to Alexandria and Pergamus from different parts of
Greece varied considerably, and it could only be determined by careful
observation which forms were to be tolerated in Homer and which