e want of a steady government, and were ready to obey
any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus
autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized in
the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptian
monarchy.

Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done
more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history.
Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and
historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to
guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but,
in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the
critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly
successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the
high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which
mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind
and mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long looked
for knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve the
arts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. Though
great and good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, so few
valued them that none took the trouble to record them. The well-paid
writers never wrote the lives of the Ptolemies. The muse of history
had no seat in the museum, but it was almost the birthplace of anatomy,
geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and hydrostatics.

[Illustration: 357.jpg GRAND COLUMN AT KARNAK]

If we retrace the steps by which this Graeco-Egyptian monarchy rose and
fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care and
thoughtlessness, were for the most part followed by the rewards which to
us seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks into
the country, and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy,
afterwards undermined those same energies, and became one of the
principal causes of its final overthrow.

In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity,
and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid wherever
they were found; no service left unrewarded; the people trusted and
taught the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even-handed
justice; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; and
by these means a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill
the