The History of Egypt, from the Earliest Times till the Conquest of the Arabs, A. D. 640

It is not as the birthplace of art and science alone that Egypt now claims our attention. No sooner did Greece itself sink than Greek literature took refuge in Alexandria. Philosophy then became coloured with the mysticism of Egypt, and literature was waited on by its criticism. To the Alexandrian copiers and libraries we mainly owe our knowledge of the great Greek writers and our earliest manuscripts of the Bible; while whatever help we have received from grammarians and critics,...
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It is not as the birthplace of art and science alone that Egypt now claims our attention. No sooner did Greece itself sink than Greek literature took refuge in Alexandria. Philosophy then became coloured with the mysticism of Egypt, and literature was waited on by its criticism. To the Alexandrian copiers and libraries we mainly owe our knowledge of the great Greek writers and our earliest manuscripts of the Bible; while whatever help we have received from grammarians and critics, whatever in history we have gained from chronology, in poetry from prosody, in geography from mathematics, in medicine from anatomy, was first taught in Alexandria. Its public library was the admiration of the world. But Alexandria may be pointed to as a warning that it is possible to cultivate the intellect without raising man's moral worth ; and after a reign or two we find that every public virtue was wanting among its citizens, while vice and luxury rioted in the palace. Every succeeding Ptolemy seemed worse than his father; till Cleopatra, the last sovereign of that remarkable family, unable to quell the rebellion of her Alexandrian subjects, yielded up her person and her capital to each Roman general who in his turn seemed able to uphold her power.