one hundred and ninety-eight thousand of that people, paying their Egyptian owners a just money equivalent for each.  To all these Jews the same privileges were accorded as to the Macedonians.  In consequence of this considerate treatment, vast numbers of their compatriots and many Syrians voluntarily came into Egypt.  To them the designation of Hellenistical Jews was given.  In like manner, tempted by the benign government of Soter, multitudes of Greeks sought refuge in the country, and the invasions of Perdiccas and Antigonus showed that Greek soldiers would desert from other Macedonian generals to join is armies.

The population of Alexandria was therefore of three distinct nationalities:  1.  Native Egyptians 2.  Greeks; 3.  Jews—­a fact that has left an impress on the religious faith of modern Europe.

Greek architects and Greek engineers had made Alexandria the most beautiful city of the ancient world.  They had filled it with magnificent palaces, temples, theatres.  In its centre, at the intersection of its two grand avenues, which crossed each other at right angles, and in the midst of gardens, fountains, obelisks, stood the mausoleum, in which, embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians, rested the body of Alexander.  In a funereal journey of two years it had been brought with great pomp from Babylon.  At first the coffin was of pure gold, but this having led to a violation of the tomb, it was replaced by one of alabaster.  But not these, not even the great light-house, Pharos, built of blocks of white marble and so high that the fire continually burning on its top could be seen many miles off at sea—­the Pharos counted as one of the seven wonders of the world—­it is not these magnificent achievements of architecture that arrest our attention; the true, the most glorious monument of the Macedonian kings of Egypt is the Museum.  Its influences will last when even the Pyramids have passed away.

The Alexandrian museum.  The Alexandrian Museum was commenced by Ptolemy Soter, and was completed by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus.  It was situated in the Bruchion, the aristocratic quarter of the city, adjoining the king’s palace.  Built of marble, it was surrounded with a piazza, in which the residents might walk and converse together.  Its sculptured apartments contained the Philadelphian library, and were crowded with the choicest statues and pictures.  This library eventually comprised four hundred thousand volumes.  In the course of time, probably on account of inadequate accommodation for so many books, an additional library was established in the adjacent quarter Rhacotis, and placed in the Serapion or temple of Serapis.  The number of volumes in this library, which was called the Daughter of that in the Museum, was eventually three hundred thousand.  There were, therefore, seven hundred thousand volumes in these royal collections.

Alexandria was not merely the capital of Egypt, it was the intellectual metropolis of the world.  Here it was truly said the Genius of the East met the Genius of the West, and this Paris of antiquity became a focus of fashionable dissipation and universal skepticism.  In the allurements of its bewitching society even the Jews forgot their patriotism.  They abandoned the language of their forefathers, and adopted Greek.