ssful in
bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the
love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so
pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of
Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as
he had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and was
even sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not claim
the whole honour of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It is
therefore enough to say of him that, though a follower of Plato, he made
such changes in the opinions of the Academy, by not wholly throwing off
the evidence of the senses, that his school was called the New Academy.

Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is commonly called
Apollonius Rhodius because he passed many years of his life at Rhodes,
had been, like Eratosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only work
which we now know is his _Argonautics_, a poem on the voyage of Jason
to Colchis in search of the golden fleece. It is a regular epic poem,
in imitation of Homer; and, like other imitations, it wants the interest
which hangs upon reality of manners and story in the Iliad.

Callimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by hurling against him
a reproachful poem, in which he speaks of him under the name of an Ibis.
This is now lost, but it was copied by Ovid in his poem of the same
name; and from the Roman we can gather something of the dark and learned
style in which Callimachus threw out his biting reproaches. We do not
know from what this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the cause
of Apollonius leaving Alexandria. He removed to Rhodes, where he taught
in the schools during all the reign of Philopator, till he was recalled
by Epiphanes, and made librarian of the museum in his old age, on the
death of Eratosthenes.

Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time at Alexandria, and
was one of the seven men of letters sometimes called the Alexandrian
Pleiades, though writers are not agreed upon the names which fill up the
list. His tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which we now
have is the dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, or Cassandra, of which the
lines most striking to the historian are those in which the prophetess
foretells the coming greatness of Rome; that the children of AEneas will
raise the crown upon their spears, and seize the sceptres of sea and
land. Lycophron was the