s to
be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream out
of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soon
became the machine most in use throughout Egypt for irrigation.

But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these clusters of men of
letters and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shut
our eyes to those faults which are always found in works called forth
rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love of
knowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the
museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its
best days, who had studied and taught without any pension from the
government, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged
forward towards excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; who
had no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked
for no reward beyond their love and esteem.

In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch of
literature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. In Athens
it fell with the loss of liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was the
last of the real Athenian orators. After his time the orations were
declamations written carefully in the study, and coldly spoken in the
school for the instruction of the pupils, and wholly wanting in fire and
genius; and the Alexandrian men of letters forbore to copy Greece in
its lifeless harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were not
successful in history. A species of writing, which a despot requires
to be false and flattering, is little likely to flourish; and hence
the only historians of the museum were chronologists, antiquaries, and
writers of travels. The coins of Euergetes bear the name of "Ptolemy the
king," round the head on the one side, with no title by which they can
be known from the other kings of the same name.

[Illustration: 175.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY III.]

But his portrait is known from his Phoenician coins. In the same way the
coins of his queen have only the name of "Berenice the queen," but
they are known from those of the later queens by the beauty of the
workmanship, which soon fell far below that of the first Ptolemies.

Euergetes had married his cousin Berenice, who like the other queens of
Egypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; by her he left two sons, Ptolemy
and Magas, to the eldest of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign of
twenty-five