_Cairo Museum._] [_Photograph by Brugsch._
THE PAINTING DATES FROM A GENERATION LATER THAN THAT OF CLEOPATRA, BUT IT IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE WORK OF THE ALEXANDRIAN ARTISTS.]
Strabo tells us that Alexandria contained extremely beautiful public parks and grounds, and abounded with magnificent buildings of all kinds. The whole city was intersected by roads wide enough for the passage of chariots; and, as has been said, the three main streets, those leading to the Gate of Canopus, to the Serapeum, and to the Lake Harbour, were particularly noteworthy both for their breadth and length. Indeed, in the Fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus, one of the characters complains most bitterly of the excessive length of the Alexandrian streets. The kings of the Ptolemaic dynasty, for nearly three centuries, had expended vast sums in the beautification of their capital, and at the period with which we are now dealing it had become the rival of Rome in magnificence and luxury. The novelist, Achilles Tatius, writing some centuries later, when many of the Ptolemaic edifices had been replaced by Roman constructions perhaps of less merit, cried, as he beheld the city, “We are vanquished, mine eyes”; and there is every reason to suppose that his words were no unlicensed exaggeration. In the brilliant sunshine of the majority of Egyptian days, the stately palaces, temples, and public buildings which reflected themselves in the waters of the harbour, or cast their shadows across the magnificent Street of Canopus, must have dazzled the eyes of the spectator and brought wonder into his heart.
The inhabitants of the city were not altogether worthy of their splendid home. In modern times the people of Alexandria exhibit much the same conglomeration of nationalities as they did in ancient days; but the distinguishing line between Egyptians and Europeans is now more sharply defined than it was in the reign of Cleopatra, owing to the fact that the former are mostly Mohammedans and the latter Christians, no marriage being permitted between them. In Ptolemaic times only the Jews of Alexandria stood outside the circle of international marriages which was gradually forming the people of the city into a single type; for they alone practised that conventional exclusiveness which indicated a strong religious conviction. The Greek element, always predominant in the city, was mainly Macedonian; but in the period we are now studying so many intermarriages with Egyptians had taken place that in the case of a large number of families the stock was much mixed. There must have been, of course, a certain number of aristocratic houses, descended from the Macedonian soldiers and officials who had come to Egypt with Alexander the Great and the first Ptolemy, whose blood had been kept pure; and we hear of such persons boasting of their nationality, though the ruin of their fatherland and its subservience to Rome had left them little of which to be proud. In like manner there must have been many pure Egyptian families, no less proud of their nationality than were the Macedonians. The majority of educated people could now speak both the Greek and Egyptian tongues, and all official decrees and proclamations were published in both languages. Many Greeks assumed Egyptian names in addition to their own; and it is probable that there were at this date Egyptians who, in like manner, adopted Greek names.