During the first century and a half of Roman sway in Egypt the school of Alexandria was nearly silent.  We have a few poems by Leonides of Alexandria, one of which is addressed to the Empress Poppaea, as the wife of Jupiter, on his presenting a celestial globe to her on her birthday.  Pamphila wrote a miscellaneous history of entertaining stories, and her lively, simple style makes us very much regret its loss.  Chaeremon, a Stoic philosopher, had been, during the last reign, at the head of the Alexandrian library, but he was removed to Rome as one of the tutors to the young Nero.

[Illustration:  059.jpg COIN OF NERO]

He is ridiculed by Martial for writing in praise of death, when, from age and poverty, he was less able to enjoy life.  We still possess a most curious though short account by him of the monastic habits of the ancient Egyptians.  He also wrote on hieroglyphics, and a small fragment containing his opinion of the meanings of nineteen characters still remains to us.  But he is not always right; he thinks the characters were used allegorically for thoughts, not for sounds; and fancies that the priests used them to keep secret the real nature of the gods.

He was succeeded at the museum by his pupil Dionysius, who had the charge of the library till the reign of Trajan.  Dionysius was also employed by the prefect as a secretary of state, or, in the language of the day, secretary to the embassies, epistles, and answers.  He was the author of the Periegesis, and aimed at the rank of a poet by writing a treatise on geography in heroic verse.  From this work he is named Dionysius Periegetes.  While careful to remind us that his birthplace Alexandria was a Macedonian city, he gives due honour to Egypt and the Egyptians.  There is no river, says he, equal to the Nile for carrying fertility and adding to the happiness of the land.  It divides Asia from Libya, falling between rocks at Syene, and then passing by the old and famous city of Thebes, where Memnon every morning salutes his beloved Aurora as she rises.  On its banks dwells a rich and glorious race of men, who were the first to cultivate the arts of life; the first to make trial of the plough and sow their seed in a straight furrow; and the first to map the heavens and trace the sloping path of the sun.

According to the traditions of the church, it was in this reign that Christianity was first brought into Egypt by the Evangelist Mark, the disciple of the Apostle Peter.  Many were already craving for religious food more real than the old superstitions.  The Egyptian had been shaken in his attachment to the sacred animals by Greek ridicule.  The Greek had been weakened in his belief of old Homer’s gods by living with men who had never heard of them.  Both were dissatisfied with the scheme of explaining the actions of their gods by means of allegory.  The crumbling away of the old opinions left men more fitted to receive the new religion from Galilee.