eight
families, or even if it be meant for the half of eight families, proves
that they were of the nature of serfs, and that the master, either by
law or custom, could have had no power of cruelly overworking them. On
the other hand, in the reign of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken in
battle, who might be treated with greater severity, were ransomed at
fifteen dollars each. We see by the monuments that there were also a
few negroes in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were probably not
treated much worse than the lowest class of those born on the soil,
but they were much more valuable. Other slaves of the Berber race were
brought in coasting vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to the
island of Dioscorides.

Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II., and of a son of
Philometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupil
of Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates at
Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he
probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for
his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought
so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became
proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be
listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than
those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet,
was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria;
he can hardly have learned from the critic that just taste by which he
joined softness and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse.
Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, whose death he
so beautifully bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that he
learned so much. It may be as well to add that the lines in which he
says that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred years, joined
with him in his sorrow for the death of Bion are later additions not
found in the early manuscripts of his poems.

From our slight acquaintance with Bion's life, we are left in doubt
whether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria;
but it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the
death of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of the
Egyptians, named _maneros_, which they sang through the streets in the
procession on the feast of Isis, when the crowd joined in t