d night, but
had their streets so well lighted that Achilles Tatius says the sun did
not set, but was distributed to illumine the gay night. The palace and
other royal buildings and parks were walled off like the palace at
Pekin, and had their own port and seashore, but all the rest of the town
had water near it and ship traffic in all directions. Every costume and
language must have been met in its streets and quays. It had its
fashionable suburbs too, and its bathing resorts to the east, Canopus,
Eleusis, and Nicopolis; to the west, its Necropolis. But of all this
splendor no eye-witness has left us in detail what we are reduced to
infer by conjecture."

The dynasty of the Ptolemies, so ably founded by Ptolemy Soter and
ending with the reign of the great Cleopatra, presents a series of
monarchs renowned for their culture, their luxury, their lasciviousness,
and their cruelty; and by the side of the kings may be found a series of
queens unrivalled in history for their cleverness, their wickedness, or
their beauty. Woman's place in this dynasty was a most influential one,
and she possessed all the freedom and power that could well fall to her
lot; she knew nothing whatever of the restrictions common in old Greek
life or in the life of the Orient. This was no doubt partly due to the
fact that the Macedonian spirit prevailed, partly that the status of
woman among the Egyptians themselves had its influence on the
conquerors. Papyri found in recent years demonstrate the legal
independence and freedom of women among the ancient Egyptians. A married
woman could make contracts and hold property in her own name and perform
all legal acts, without reference to her husband. Monogamy was the rule,
though in addition to the "dear wife" or "the lady of the house" there
were frequently subordinate wives. So supreme was the position of woman
that there were instances in which the husband settled all his property
on his wife, upon condition that she support him for the rest of his
days and give him a decent burial. There was such a contrast between the
Egyptian and the old Greek conception of woman that the Greek ofttimes
jeered at the Egyptian submission to feminine domination. In Alexandria
under the Ptolemies, accordingly, owing to Macedonian respect for woman
and the old Egyptian idea of feminine worth and capacity, the gentler
sex experienced conditions altogether different from those in ancient
Athens and enjoyed a freedom simila