unending palace of the Ptolemies. There was an abundance, unheard of
for those times, of objects of luxury--rugs, glass, stuffs, papyruses,
jewels, artistic pottery--because they made all these things at
Alexandria. There was an abundance, greater than elsewhere, of silk,
of perfumes, of gems, of all the things imported from the extreme
East, because through Alexandria passed one of the most frequented
routes of Indo-Chinese commerce. There, too, were innumerable artists,
writers, philosophers, and _savants_; society life and intellectual
life alike fervid; continuous movement to and fro of traffic,
continual passing of rare and curious things; countless amusements;
life, more than elsewhere, safe--at least so it was believed--because
at Alexandria were the great schools of medicine and the great
scientific physicians.

If other Italians who landed in Alexandria were dazzled by so many
splendours, Antony ought to have been blinded; _he_ entered Alexandria
as King. He who was born at Rome in the small and simple house of an
impoverished noble family who had been brought up with Latin parsimony
to eat frugally, to drink wine only on festival occasions, to wear
the same clothes a long time, to be served by a single slave--this man
found himself lord of the immense palace of the Ptolemies, where
the kitchens alone were a hundred times larger than the house of his
fathers at Rome; where there were gathered for his pleasure the most
precious treasures and the most marvellous collections of works of
art; where there were trains of servants at his command, and every
wish could be immediately gratified. It is therefore not necessary to
suppose that Antony was foolishly enamoured of the Queen of Egypt, to
understand the change that took place in him after their marriage, as
he tasted the inimitable life of Alexandria, that elegance, that ease,
that wealth, that pomp without equal.