learning, which he afterwards introduced into Italy.
The Pythagorean schools which he established in
Italy when writing was taught, were destroyed
when the Platonic or new philosophy prevailed over
the former. Polybius (lib. ii. p. 175) and Jamblichus
(in vita Pythag.) mention many circumstances,
relative to these facts, quoted from authors now
lost; as doth Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras."

For the hundred years or more following, however,
the dissemination of learning and the transcription of
events was not to be denied. We find ink-written
volumes (rolls) relating to diverse subjects being loaned
to one another; correspondence by letter to and from
distant lands of frequent occurrence, and the art of
handwriting regularly taught in the schools of learning.
Its progress was to be interrupted by the wars
of the Persians. Mr. Astle in calling attention to
events which have contributed to deprive us of the
literary treasures of antiquity thus refers to them:

"A very fatal blow was given to literature, by
the destruction of the Phoenician temples, and of
the Egyptian colleges, when those kingdoms, and
the countries adjacent, were conquered by the Persians,
about three hundred and fifty years before
Christ. Ochus, the Persian general, ravaged these
countries without mercy, and forty thousand Sidonians
burnt themselves with their families and riches
in their own houses. The conqueror then drove