Note 650 — Chapter XCIV · MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON. (continued 2)

Strabo, xvii. p. 797, ὁ γοῦν Πολύβιος, γεγονὼς ἐν τῇ πόλει (Alexandria), βδελύττεται τὴν ταύτῃ κατάστασιν, etc.

The Museum of Alexandria (with its library) must be carefully distinguished from the city and the people. It was an artificial institution, which took its rise altogether from the personal taste and munificence of the earlier Ptolemies, especially the second. It was one of the noblest and most useful institutions recorded in history, and forms the most honorable monument of what Droysen calls the hellenistic period, between the death of Alexander and the extension of the Roman empire into Asia. But this Museum, though situated at Alexandria, had no peculiar connection with the city or its population; it was a College of literary Fellows (if we may employ a modern word) congregated out of various Grecian towns. Eratosthenes, Kallimuchus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, were not natives of Alexandria.