Borne and Athens at this time alike looked upon Alexandria as the centre of the world’s learning.  The library was then in its greatest glory; the readers were numerous, and Christianity had as yet raised no doubts about the value of its pagan treasures.  All the wisdom of Greece, written on rolls of brittle papyrus or tough parchment, was ranged in boxes on the shelves.  Of these writings the few that have been saved from the wreck of time are no doubt some of the best, and they are perhaps enough to guide our less simple taste towards the unornamented grace of the Greek model.  But we often fancy those treasures most valuable that are beyond our reach, and hence when we run over the names of the authors in this library we think perhaps too much of those which are now missing.  The student in the museum could have read the lyric poems of Alcaeus and Stersichorus, which in matter and style were excellent enough to be judged not quite so good as Homer; the tender lamentations of Simonides; the warm breathings of Sappho, the tenth muse; the pithy iambics of Archilochus, full of noble flights and brave irregularities; the comedies of Menander, containing every kind of excellence; those of Eupolis and Cratinus, which were equal to Aristophanes; the histories of Theopompus, which in the speeches were as good as Thucydides; the lively, agreeable orations of Hyperides, the accuser of Demosthenes; with the books of travels, chronologies, and countless others of less merit for style and genius, but which, if they had been saved, would not have left Egypt wholly without a history.

[Illustration:  120.jpg ALEXANDRIAN FORMS OF WRITING]

The trade of writing and making copies of the old authors employed a great many hands in the neighbourhood of the museum.  Two kinds of handwriting were in use.  One was a running hand, with the letters joined together in rather a slovenly manner; and the other a neat, regular hand, with the letters square and larger, written more slowly but read more easily.  Those that wrote the first were called quick-writers, those that wrote the second were called book-writers.  If an author was not skilled in the use of the pen, he employed a quickwriter to write down his words as he delivered them.  But in order that his work might be published it was handed over to the book-writers to be copied out more neatly; and numbers of young women, skilled in penmanship, were employed in the trade of copying books for sale.  For this purpose parchment was coming into use, though the old papyrus was still used, as an inexpensive though less lasting writing material.