CHAPTER III. ALEXANDRIA. Internal administration
CHAPTER III.
ALEXANDRIA.
Internal administration of the Ptolemies.--Industry of the people.--Its
happy effects.--Idleness the parent of vice.--An idle aristocracy
generally vicious.--Degradation and vice.--Employment a cure for
both.--Greatness of Alexandria.--Situation of its port.--Warehouses and
granaries.--Business of the port.--Scenes within the city.--The natives
protected in their industry.--Public edifices.--The light-house.--Fame
of the light-house.--Its conspicuous position.--Mode of lighting the
tower.--Modern method--The architect of the Pharos.--His ingenious
stratagem.--Ruins of the Pharos.--The Alexandrian library.--Immense
magnitude of the library.--The Serapion.--The Serapis of Egypt.--The
Serapis of Greece.--Ptolemy's dream.--Importance of the
statue.--Ptolemy's proposal to the King of Sinope.--His ultimate
success.--Mode of obtaining books.--The Jewish Scriptures.--Seclusion of
the Jews.--Interest felt in their Scriptures.--Jewish slaves in
Egypt.--Ptolemy's designs.--Ptolemy liberates the slaves.--Their ransom
paid.--Ptolemy's success.--The Septuagint.--Early copies of the
Septuagint.--Present copies.--Various other plans of the
Ptolemies.--Means of raising money.--Heavy taxes.--Poverty of the
people.--Ancient and modern capitals.--Liberality of the
Ptolemies.--Splendor and renown of Alexandria.--Her great rival.
It must not be imagined by the reader that the scenes of vicious
indulgence, and reckless cruelty and crime, which were exhibited with
such dreadful frequency, and carried to such an enormous excess in the
palaces of the Egyptian kings, prevailed to the same extent throughout
the mass of the community during the period of their reign. The internal
administration of government, and the institutions by which the
industrial pursuits of the mass of the people were regulated, and peace
and order preserved, and justice enforced between man and man, were all
this time in the hands of men well qualified, on the whole, for the
trusts committed to their charge, and in a good degree faithful in the
performance of their duties; and thus the ordinary affairs of
government, and the general routine of domestic and social life, went
on, notwithstanding the profligacy of the kings, in a course of very
tolerable peace, prosperity, and happiness. During every one of the
three hundred years over which the history of the Ptolemies extends, the
whole length and breadth of the land of Egypt exhibited, with
comparatively few interruptions, one wide-spread scene of busy industry.
The inundations came at their appointed season, and then regularly
retired. The boundless fields which the waters had fertilized were then
every where tilled. The lands were plowed; the seed was sown; the canals
and water-courses, which ramified from the river in every direction over
the ground, were opened or closed, as the case required, to regulate the
irrigation. The inhabitants were busy, and, consequently, they were
virtuous. And as the sky of Egypt is seldom or never darkened by clouds
and storms, the scene presented to the eye the same unchanging aspect of
smiling verdure and beauty, day after day, and month after month, until
the ripened grain was gathered into the store-houses, and the land was
cleared for another inundation.
