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By Root 3224 0

Macedonian domain, and Alexandria was in an extraordinarily favoured position for commerce. The Ptolemies were patrons of learning, and attracted to their capital many of the best men of the age. Mathematics became, and remained until the fall of Rome, mainly Alexandrian. Archimedes, it is true, was a Sicilian, and belonged to the one part of the world where the Greek City States (until the moment of his death in 212 B.C.) retained their independence; but he too had studied in Alexandria. Eratosthenes was chief librarian of the famous library of Alexandria. The mathematicians and men of science connected, more or less closely, with Alexandria in the third century before Christ were as able as any of the Greeks of the previous centuries, and did work of equal importance. But they were not, like their predecessors, men who took all learning for their province, and propounded universal philosophies; they were specialists in the modern sense. Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, and Apollonius, were content to be mathematicians; in philosophy they did not aspire to originality.

Specialization characterized the age in all departments, not only in the world of learning. In the self-governing Greek cities of the fifth and fourth centuries, a capable man was assumed to be capable of everything. He would be, as occasion arose, a soldier, a politician, a lawgiver, or a philosopher. Socrates, though he disliked politics, could not avoid being mixed up with political disputes. In his youth he was a soldier, and (in spite of his disclaimer in the Apology) a student of physical science. Protagoras, when he could spare time from teaching scepticism to aristocratic youths in search of the latest thing, was drawing up a code of laws for Thurii. Plato dabbled in politics, though unsuccessfully. Xenophon, when he was neither writing about Socrates nor being a country gentleman, spent his spare time as a general. Pythagorean mathematicians attempted to acquire the government of cities. Everybody had to serve on juries and perform various other public duties. In the third century all this was changed. There continued, it is true, to be politics in the old City States, but they had become parochial and unimportant, since Greece was at the mercy of Macedonian armies. The serious struggles for power were between Macedonian soldiers; they involved no question of principle, but merely the distribution of territory between rival adventurers. On administrative and technical matters, these more or less uneducated soldiers employed Greeks as experts; in Egypt, for example, excellent work was done in irrigation and drainage. There were soldiers, administrators, physicians, mathematicians, philosophers, but there was no one who was all these at once.

The age was one in which a man who had money and no desire for power could enjoy a very pleasant life—always assuming that no marauding army happened to come his way. Learned men who found favour with some prince could enjoy a high degree of luxury, provided they were adroit flatterers and did not mind being the butt of ignorant royal witticisms. But there was no such thing as security. A palace revolution might displace the sycophantic sage's patron; the Galatians might destroy the rich man's villa; one's city might be sacked as an incident in a dynastic war. In such circumstances it is no wonder that people took to worshipping the goddess Fortune, or Luck. There seemed nothing rational in the ordering of human affairs. Those who obstinately insisted upon finding rationality somewhere withdrew into themselves, and decided, like Milton's Satan, that

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Except for adventurous self-seekers, there was no longer any incentive to take an interest in public affairs. After the brilliant episode of Alexander's conquests, the Hellenistic world was sinking into chaos, for lack of a despot vstrong enough to achieve stable supremacy, or a principle powerful enough to produce social cohesion. Greek intelligence, confronted with new political