B.

THE SCHOOL OF ARISTOTLE. THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES.

I. ARISTOTLE, THEOPHRASTUS, DICEARCHUS.

EGYPT had evidently a great charm for the penetrating genius of Plato, as his Books on the Republic and Laws more especially evince. Chronological inquiries were out of his jurisdiction. Still they had not altogether escaped his attention. He seems to have believed in the 10,000 years of antiquity, claimed by the Egyptians for certain of their monuments; and assigns 8000 years to the city of Sais. 107 But Aristotle, who in his lost work on the Olympic victors 108 ,may be presumed to have established the true landmarks of Grecian Chronology, has- after a careful study, no doubt, of that of Egypt 109-recorded his opinion, that Sesostris, one of its primeval Kings, lived long before Minos. The epoch here assigned him falls much earlier than the year 1400 B. C., that being the age of the Cretan King according to the Greeks, viz. 200 years before the Trojan war.

To this school of Aristotle, and particularly to Theophrastus, belongs the credit of having followed up this method of comparative chronology. We have seen above that Theophrastus quotes "Egyptian Annals." Porphyry mentions his having described the Egyptians as the most learned people, and the deepest antiquarians in the world. He had also, if we may credit the state

107 Plato, Legg. ii. 567. (already mentioned in the first Section) comp. with Timæus, p. 23.

108 Diog. Laërt. v. 26. viii. 51.

109 Arist. Polit. vii. 9.: ὁ χωρισμὸς ὁ κατὰ γένος τοῦ πολιτικοῦ πλήθους ἐξ Αἰγύπτου· πολὺ γὰρ ὑπερτείνει τοῖς χρόνοις τὴν Μίνω βασιλείαν ἡ Σεσωστριος.

ments of the same philosopher, made himself master of their religious tenets. He had probably himself digested a system of chronology Dicæarchus certainly had. The latter, in his work entitled "the Life of Greece," a model of geographical and historical statistics, had treated of the remote history of Egypt. This we learn from a remarkable fragment in the Scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius.110 He here ascribed to a primeval King of the country, whom the MSS. call Sesonchosis, the division of the people into castes, and a still earlier institution, the first origin of the breeding of horses, and of horsemanship, ascribed by others to the God Horus, that is, to the close of the most ancient mythological period. We shall see in the second Book that Sesonchōsis is but a slight orthographical error for Sesortōsis; a mistake which also occurs in Manetho. The date of this King was fixed by Dicæarchus in the following manner:

"From Sesortōsis to (King) Nilus From Nilus to the first Olympiad Consequently Sesortōsis reigned prior to the first Olympiad

- 2500 years.

436

2936 years."

It may here be proper to remark that there are no sufficient grounds for the assertion of Petavius and Marsham, that Timæus, the Sicilian historian of the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus, has the merit of fixing the Olympiads. Polybius, who has been appealed to in favour of this view, merely describes that writer as having collated the victors in the Olympic games with the Ephori of Sparta, the Archons of Athens, and the Priestesses of Argos, and as having adopted the dates. of the Olympiads as his guide in his history.111

The epoch of Nilus, therefore, here presents itself 110 See the Appendix of Authorities, B. III.

111 Marsham, Canon Chr. p. 487. seqq.; Ideler, Handbook of Chronology, i. 378. Timæus's history reached as far down as the 129th Olymp.-261 B. c.

as the first pivot in the Greco-Egyptian Chronology436 years before the Olympiads, therefore 1212 B. C. But this date, according to the Alexandrian chronographers, falls but eighteen years prior to the commencement of the Trojan war-the sack of Troy being in 1184 B. C. The Nilus of Dicæarchus, therefore, may safely be held to represent the contemporary of Menelaus. We shall see hereafter that the last King of the 19th Dynasty bore the Egyptian name of the Nile.

Whatever critical value may be attached to the authority of Dicæarchus, the fact is, that he placed one of the oldest historical Kings of Egypt 2500 years before the end of the 19th Dynasty, i. e. according to the above data, 3712 B. C. The commencement of Manetho's history coincides, as we have seen, with the year 3555 before the 9th year of Alexander, i. e. 3895 B. C. His oldest and most celebrated King, Sesortōsis, is the second or third of the 3rd Dynasty. His place, according to the letter of the Lists, is between the years 280 and 300 after Menes, or about 3600 B. C. Our scholiast consequently transmits to us facts of genuine Egyptian tradition, anterior to Manetho. The work of Dicæarchus cannot be placed later than about 300 B. C., and is therefore probably anterior to Manetho's history. Besides, it is uncertain whether Dicæarchus considered Sesonchosis the first historical King, as the letter of the passage quoted seems to imply, or merely as one of the earliest. In either case there is no material discrepancy between his and Manetho's genuine chronology for that period, still less can the coincidence be accidental, or admit of explanation from Hellenic

sources.

II. THE ALEXANDRIAN CRITICS.

THEIR GENERAL CHARACTER.

MANETHO'S Work found the Greek public fully prepared for chronological studies. It was a necessary result of the union of Egyptian knowledge with Greek

genius and research, that the appearance of his work, as before observed, should prove a standard epoch, in regard at least to the historical literature of Egypt. We might have assumed, even apart from any distinct notices on the subject, that the scholars of the Museum devoted a large share of their learned labours to Egypt and its history. The Hellenic mind had early turned with respect and veneration towards a land replete with the wonders of a world that had intellectually perished. The Father of History and the divine Plato had found there a system of primitive faith and primitive customs, around which, as the sacred background of Hellenic civilisation, many of their own mysterious rites, as well as popular traditions, appeared to be concentrated. Aristotle himself had investigated the primeval history and constitution of Egypt, and by the power of his genius, and the extent and clearness of his views, had directed the combined resources of his own school, and of Hellenic talent at large, into the paths of truth and reality, both in historical and natural science. After the nation, through its own folly and the vices of its rulers, had been deprived of its highest earthly blessing-its liberty-the nobler spirits turned with a force and elasticity, of which the Greeks alone among the races of the Old World were capable, towards the region of science. Alexander, moreover, by his conquests, aroused them to a sense of their historical importance, which compensated in some degree for that of individual or personal dignity. The youthful Hero had enshrined Grecian genius in the very sanctuary of Ammon, and founded for it a new capital on the banks of the Canopus. In it-the heiress of Heliopolis, of Memphis, and of Thebes - Egyptian and Hellenic Wisdom now sat side by side. The Ptolemies were Pharaohs, and, like the rulers of old, built temples, with hieroglyphical dedications, in honour of Phre, of Phtah, and of Ammon. While the Seleucida wasted their

energies in the struggle with the other heirs of Alexander, and in sensual luxury, the first three Ptolemies, the son of Lagus, Philadelphus and Euergetes, were occupied, and upon the whole successfully, in preserving the blessing of peace to the glorious land which had fallen to their lot. Under such circumstances the investigation of Egyptian antiquity could hardly fail to be a favourite object with those scholars, who, for the first time in the history of Greek culture, found themselves in a position where the eyes of the world were upon them, and surrounded by a profusion of intellectual treasures. It were a gross misapprehension of the spirit of this Alexandrian period, or indeed of Greek literature at large, to characterise these men as mere literary quacks and quibbling pedants, because, in the time of the Romans, Alexandria, like Athens, swarmed with those "Græculi," who knew everything except what was worth knowing, but were in reality as ignorant as they were frivolous. The intellectual energy of the Alexandrian Museum was the last spark in that of the Greek national character, and according to the universal laws of nature, on the decline of public spirit-civil and religious-could be but the forerunner of its complete dissolution. It was like a branch on a withered stem. The genius of the Eastern Greeks strove in vain to arrest the decay of national and religious feeling by blending mythological and theological subtilties with a narrow system of Platonic philosophy. The living basis was wanting-sincere faith and sound sense. It was Christianity that endowed Alexandria with intellectual life and activitythat constituted her the seat of the most learned and practical school of Christian doctrine, and by that means the metropolis of East African Christianity. But the great leaders and masters of the Museum in the first century and a half of the Ptolemies, were very different from the later scions of the Greco-Alexandrian school.