hich Menander was the most famous
writer, making in his plays some approach to the modern form. Philosophy
left later exponents in Zeno, Epicurus, and many others, and history in
Polybius, Strabo, Plutarch, Arrian, and others of note. Science, as
developed by Aristotle and Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was
carried forward by many others, including Theophrastus, the able
successor of Aristotle; Euclid, the first great geometer; Eratosthenes
and Hipparchus, the astronomers; and, latest of ancient scientists,
Ptolemy, whose works on astronomy and geography became the text-books of
the middle-age schools.

Long before these later writers came into the field the centres of
literary effort had shifted to new localities. Sicily became the field
of the choicest lyric poetry, giving us Theocritus, with his charming
"Idyls," or scenes of rural life, and his songful dialogues, with their
fine description and delightful humor. Following him came Bion and
Moschus, two other bucolic poets, whose finest productions are elegies
of unsurpassed beauty.

Syracuse was the home of this new field of lyric poetry, but there were
other centres in which literature flourished, especially Pergamus,
Antiochia, Pella, and above all Alexandria, the city founded by
Alexander the Great in Egypt, and which under the fostering care of the
Ptolemies, Alexander's successors in this quarter, developed into a
remarkable centre of intellectual effort.

The first Ptolemy made Alexandria his capital and founded there a great
state institution which became famous as the Museum, and to which
philosophers, scholars, and students flocked from all parts of the
world. Here learned men could find a retreat from the bustle of the
great metropolis which Alexandria became, and pursue their studies or
teach their pupils in peace within its walls, and it is said that at one
time fourteen thousand students gathered within its classic shades.

Here grew up two great libraries, said to number seven hundred thousand
volumes, and embracing all that was worthy of study or preservation in
the writings of ancient days. Of these, one was burned during the siege
of the city by Julius Caesar, but it was replaced by Marc Antony, who
robbed Pergamus of its splendid library of two hundred thousand volumes
and sent it to Alexandria as a present to Cleopatra.

In this secure retreat, amply supported by the liberality of the
Ptolemies, philosophers and scholars spent their day