IX 



GREEK SCIENCE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN OR 

 HELLENISTIC PERIOD 



WE are entering now upon the most important 

 scientific epoch of antiquity. When Aristotle 

 and Theophrastus passed from the scene, Athens 

 ceased to be in any sense the scientific centre of the 

 world. That city still retained its reminiscent glory, 

 and cannot be ignored in the history of culture, but 

 no great scientific leader was ever again to be born or 

 to take up his permanent abode within the confines 

 of Greece proper. With almost cataclysmic sudden- 

 ness, a new intellectual centre appeared on the south 

 shore of the Mediterranean. This was the city of 

 Alexandria, a city which Alexander the Great had 

 founded during his brief visit to Egypt, and which 

 became the capital of Ptolemy Soter when he chose 

 Egypt as his portion of the dismembered empire of 

 the great Macedonian. Ptolemy had been with his 

 master in the East, and was with him in Babylonia 

 when he died. He had therefore come personally 

 in contact with Babylonian civilization, and we 

 cannot doubt that this had a most important influ- 

 ence upon his life, and through him upon the new 

 civilization of the West. In point of culture, Alexan- 

 dria must be regarded as the successor of Babylon, 

 scarcely less directly than of Greece. Following the 



