This article is about the scholarly tradition of ancient Alexandria. For the Alexandrian school in Christian theology, see Catechetical School of Alexandria.
Alexandria was a remarkable center of learning due to the blending of Greek and Oriental influences, its favorable situation and commercial resources, and the enlightened energy of some of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Ptolemies ruling over Egypt, in the final centuries BC. Much scholarly work was collected in the great Library of Alexandria during this time. Large amounts of epic poetry and works on geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine were composed in Alexandria during this period.
Alexandrian school is also used to describe the religious and philosophical developments in Alexandria after the 1st century. The mix of Jewish theology and Greek philosophy led to a syncretic mix and much mystical speculation. The Neoplatonists devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and sought communion with God. The two great schools of biblical interpretation in the early Christian church incorporated Neoplatonism and philosophical beliefs from Plato's teachings into Christianity, and interpreted much of the Bible allegorically. The founders of the Alexandrian school of Christian theology were Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
History
Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great during his Egyptian campaign, was well positioned to become a center of culture and commerce. As it grew into a major seaport, it became a hub for trade and travel throughout the Mediterranean world, serving as a gateway between East and West. The natural advantages it enjoyed were increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt. Ptolemy Soter (reigned 323–285 BC), to whom Egypt had fallen after the death of Alexander, began to subsidize Greek scholars and poets in Alexandria as part of his broader campaign to Hellenize Egypt. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman, and philosopher, Ptolemy laid the foundations of the Musaeum: a large complex which contained the Library of Alexandria. The work begun by Ptolemy Soter was carried on by his descendants, in particular by his two immediate successors, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes. Philadelphus (285–247), whose librarian was the celebrated Callimachus, gathered all the works of Aristotle, and also introduced a number of Jewish and native Egyptian works. Among these appears to have been a portion of the Septuagint. Euergetes (247–222) increased the library by seizing on the original editions of the dramatists from the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travelers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.[2]
Despite sharing certain tendencies, there was never a definitively "Alexandrian" system of thought. The literary, scientific, and philosophical activities of Alexandrian scholars in the Hellenistic and Roman periods were highly varied; they have only in common a certain spirit or form.[2] This intellectual "school" lasted centuries and can be split into two major periods. The first period extends from about 306 to 30 BC, the time from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to the annexation of Egypt by the Romans; the second extends from 30 BC to the destruction of the Great Library sometime before or upon the capture of Alexandria by 'Amr ibn al-'As in 641 AD.
Scholarship of the early Ptolemaic period was usually either literary or scientific. This tendency reflects the larger project of the early Ptolemies to synthesize Egyptian and Hellenic intellectual culture. By the 1st century BC, the Alexandrian school began to fracture and diversify. This was due in part to the relative weakness of the government under the later Ptolemies, but also to the rise of new scholarly circles in Rhodes, Syria and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. This gradual dissolution was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway.[2]
As the influence of the school was extended over the whole Graeco-Roman world, scholars began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In Alexandria, however, there were new forces in operation, which produced a second great outburst of intellectual life. The new movement, which was influenced by Judaism and Christianity, resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neoplatonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.[2]
Literature
The forms of poetry chiefly cultivated by the Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics are wanting; but in their place are found the historical and the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally some of the well-known myths, in which the writer could show the full extent of his learning and his perfect command of verse. These poems are valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is often bad, and great patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.[3]
The subjects of the didactic epics were very numerous; they seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their information. Some, such as the lost poem of Callimachus, were on the origin of myths and religious observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria, was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to be included in the school; the one is an essay on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research. [3]
Epigrams were popular, as well as parodies and satirical poems, which include the Silloi of Timon and the Kinaidoi of Sotades.[3]
Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some extent. Extant are three or four varying lists of the seven great dramatists who composed the Alexandrian Pleiad. Their works have perished. A cruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or bucolicmime, developed into the only pure stream of genial poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of Theocritus. As the name of these poems suggests, they were pictures of fresh country life.[3]
Alexandrian poetry had a powerful influence on Roman literature. That literature, especially in the Augustan age, can only be understood by appreciating of the character of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period were numerous and prolific. Many of them, such as Cleitarchus, devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.[3]
Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works, their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the world, it had to be handed down to posterity in a form capable of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them which at a later date might become obscure. They studied the arrangement of the texts; settlement of accents; theories of forms and syntax; explanations either of words or things; and judgments on the authors and their works, including all questions as to authenticity and integrity.[3]
The critics required a wide range of knowledge; and from this requirement sprang grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, the coryphaeus of criticism. Others were Lycophron, Callimachus, Eratosthenes and many of a later age, for the critical school long survived the literary. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours were of great indirect importance, for they led to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a more accurate knowledge of geography and history. Considerable attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece, and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and cities. A large collection of such curious information is contained in the Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus). Eratosthenes was the first to write on physical geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria, but they did not have their origin there, and did not, in any strict sense, form part of the peculiarly Alexandrian literature. The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid; among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemy. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a school of mathematics and science long after the Christian era.
Philosophy
After the Roman conquest, pure literature bears the stamp of Rome rather than of Alexandria. But in Alexandria for some time there had been various forces working, and these, coming in contact with great spiritual changes in the world, produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy.[4]
The city of Alexandria had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration in the dry intellectualism of Hellenistic philosophy. At the same time the Jews had to some extent shaken off their exclusiveness and were prepared to compare and contrast their old theology with cosmopolitan culture. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a complete theology revealed to a special people. The result was the application of a purely philosophical system to the somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. According to the relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism, the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of Neopythagoreanism and Neoplatonism.[4]
The first concrete exemplification of this is found in Aristobulus (c.160 BC). So far as the Jews are concerned, the great name is that of Philo in the 1st century. He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Humanity to God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysics.[4]
The first pure philosophy of the Alexandrian school was Neopythagoreanism, the second and last Neoplatonism. Their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a dose of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in communion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reached its height with Plotinus; later followers emphasized theurgy in its unsuccessful combat with Christianity. Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch of Athens and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in commentaries based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when Justinian closed the Athenian schools (529).[4]
Neoplatonism had a considerable effect on certain Christian thinkers at the beginning of the 3rd century. Among these the most important were Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement, as a scholar and a theologian, proposed to unite the mysticism of Neoplatonism with the practical spirit of Christianity. He combined the principle of pure living with that of free thinking, and held that instruction must regard the mental capacity of the hearer. The compatibility of Christian and later Neoplatonic ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and though Neoplatonism eventually succumbed to Christianity.[4]
The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The Library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is comparable to what is now known as the study of geography, and he introduced some of the terminology still used today.
Greek literature dates back from the ancient Greek literature, beginning in 800 BC, to the modern Greek literature of today.
Callimachus was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variety of genres, most of which did not survive. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature.
Lycophron was a Hellenistic Greek tragic poet, grammarian, sophist, and commentator on comedy, to whom the poem Alexandra is attributed.
Apollonius of Rhodes was an ancient Greek author, best known for the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. The poem is one of the few extant examples of the epic genre and it was both innovative and influential, providing Ptolemaic Egypt with a "cultural mnemonic" or national "archive of images", and offering the Latin poets Virgil and Gaius Valerius Flaccus a model for their own epics. His other poems, which survive only in small fragments, concerned the beginnings or foundations of cities, such as Alexandria and Cnidus places of interest to the Ptolemies, whom he served as a scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria. A literary dispute with Callimachus, another Alexandrian librarian/poet, is a topic much discussed by modern scholars since it is thought to give some insight into their poetry, although there is very little evidence that there ever was such a dispute between the two men. In fact almost nothing at all is known about Apollonius and even his connection with Rhodes is a matter for speculation. Once considered a mere imitator of Homer, and therefore a failure as a poet, his reputation has been enhanced by recent studies, with an emphasis on the special characteristics of Hellenistic poets as scholarly heirs of a long literary tradition writing at a unique time in history.
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. The Ancient Greek word Hellas was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the word Hellenistic was derived. "Hellenistic" is distinguished from "Hellenic" in that the latter refers to Greece itself, while the former encompasses all ancient territories under Greek influence, in particular the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great.
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, constituted the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
Christianity and Hellenistic philosophies experienced complex interactions during the first to the fourth centuries.
The Musaeum or Mouseion of Alexandria, which arguably included the Great Library of Alexandria, was an institution said to have been founded by Ptolemy I Soter and his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Originally, the word mouseion meant any place that was dedicated to the Muses, often related to the study of music or poetry, but later associated with sites of learning such as Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum.
Ancient Roman philosophy is philosophy as it was practiced in the Roman Republic and Roman empire. Roman philosophy includes not only philosophy written in Latin, but also philosophy written in Greek in the late Republic and Roman empire. Important early Latin-language writers include Lucretius, Cicero, and Seneca the Younger. Greek was a popular language for writing about philosophy, so much so that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius chose to write his Meditations in Greek.
Greek astronomy is astronomy written in the Greek language in classical antiquity. Greek astronomy is understood to include the Ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, and Late Antiquity eras. It is not limited geographically to Greece or to ethnic Greeks, as the Greek language had become the language of scholarship throughout the Hellenistic world following the conquests of Alexander. This phase of Greek astronomy is also known as Hellenistic astronomy, while the pre-Hellenistic phase is known as Classical Greek astronomy. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, much of the Greek and non-Greek astronomers working in the Greek tradition studied at the Museum and the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt.
The concept of Hellenistic religion as the late form of Ancient Greek religion covers any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of the people who lived under the influence of ancient Greek culture during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire. There was much continuity in Hellenistic religion: people continued to worship the Greek gods and to practice the same rites as in Classical Greece.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom was an Ancient Greek state based in Egypt during the Hellenistic Period. It was founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great, and lasted until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Ruling for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemies were the longest and most recent Egyptian dynasty of ancient origin.
The Catechetical School of Alexandria was a school of Christian theologians and bishops and deacons in Alexandria. The teachers and students of the school were influential in many of the early theological controversies of the Christian church. It was one of the two major centers of the study of biblical exegesis and theology during Late Antiquity, the other being the School of Antioch.
Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa region, both founded at the end of the fourth century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists.
The history of Alexandria dates back to the city's founding, by Alexander the Great, in 331 BC. Yet, before that, there were some big port cities just east of Alexandria, at the western edge of what is now Abu Qir Bay. The Canopic (westernmost) branch of the Nile Delta still existed at that time, and was widely used for shipping.
The Pinakes is a lost bibliographic work composed by Callimachus that is popularly considered to be the first library catalog in the West; its contents were based upon the holdings of the Library of Alexandria during Callimachus' tenure there during the third century BCE.
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common ideas it does maintain is that of monism, the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One".
Middle Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of the Middle East regions, including the Fertile Crescent and Iran. Traditions include Ancient Egyptian philosophy, Babylonian philosophy, Jewish philosophy, Iranian/Persian philosophy, and Islamic philosophy.
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