A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Babylonian model, Ptolemy erected a great museum 

 and began collecting a library. Before his death it 

 was said that he had collected no fewer than two hun- 

 dred thousand manuscripts. He had gathered also a 

 company of great teachers and founded a school of 

 science which, as has just been said, made Alexandria 

 the culture-centre of the world. 



Athens in the day of her prime had known nothing 

 quite like this. Such private citizens as Aristotle are 

 known to have had libraries, but there were no great 

 public collections of books in Athens, or in any other 

 part of the Greek domain, until Ptolemy founded his 

 famous library. As is well known, such libraries had 

 existed in Babylonia for thousands of years. The 

 character which the Ptolemaic epoch took on was no 

 doubt due to Babylonian influence, but quite as much 

 to the personal experience of Ptolemy himself as an 

 explorer in the Far East. The marvellous conquering 

 journey of Alexander had enormously widened the 

 horizon of the Greek geographer, and stimulated the 

 imagination of all ranks of the people. It was but 

 natural, then, that geography and its parent science 

 astronomy should occupy the attention of the best 

 minds in this succeeding epoch. In point of fact, such 

 a company of star-gazers and earth-measurers came 

 upon the scene in this third century B.C. as had never 

 before existed anywhere in the world. The whole 

 trend of the time was towards mechanics. It was as 

 if the greatest thinkers had squarely faced about from 

 the attitude of the mystical philosophers of the pre- 

 ceding century, and had set themselves the task of 

 solving all the mechanical riddles of the universe. 



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