world; and it might truly be said to have been the Paris of antiquity.
At the courts of the Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the greatest
men of the age lived and taught. Demetrius Phalerius, one of the most
learned and cultured men of an age of learning and knowledge, when
driven from his luxurious palace at Athens, found hospitality at the
court of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of the famous Museion and
library of Alexandria was most probably due to his influence. He
advised the first Ptolemy to found a building where poets, scholars, and
philosophers would have facilities for study, research, and speculation.
The Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy of Plato. It
was an edifice where scholars lived and worked together. Mental
qualification was the only requirement for admission. Nationality and
creed were no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them worthy of
becoming members of this ideal academy and of being received among the
immortals of antiquity. The Museion was in no sense a university, but an
academy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learning. It might
be compared in some respects to the College de France, or regarded as
a development of the system under which scholars had already lived and
worked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses II. The generosity of the
Lagidas provided amply for this new centre of learning and study. Free
from worldly cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information and
hand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. From all parts
of the world men flocked to this centre of fashionable learning, the
birthplace of modern science. All that was brilliant and cultured,
all the coryphées in the domain of intellect, were attracted by that
splendid court.

In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly--Ptolemy, Euclid,
Hipparchus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes--made great discoveries and
added materially to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid wrote