ancient aqueducts, there still bubbles up, from the Coan limestone,
the well-spring of the Nymphs. 'There they reclined on beds of
fragrant rushes, lowly strown, and rejoicing they lay in new stript
leaves of the vine. And high above their heads waved many a poplar,
many an elm-tree, while close at hand the sacred water from the
nymph's own cave welled forth with murmurs musical' (Idyl VII).

The old Dorian settlers in Syracuse pleased themselves with the fable
that their fountain, Arethusa, had been a Grecian nymph, who, like
themselves, had crossed the sea to Sicily. The poetry of Theocritus,
read or sung in sultry Alexandria, must have seemed like a new
welling up of the waters of Arethusa in the sandy soil of Egypt. We
cannot certainly say when the poet first came from Syracuse, or from
Cos, to Alexandria. It is evident however from the allusions in the
fifteenth and seventeenth idyls that he was living there after
Ptolemy Philadelphus married his own sister, Arsinoe. It is not
impossible to form some idea of the condition of Alexandrian society,
art, religion, literature and learning at the court of Ptolemy
Philadelphus. The vast city, founded some sixty years before, was
now completed. The walls, many miles in circuit, protected a
population of about eight hundred thousand souls. Into that changing
crowd were gathered adventurers from all the known world.
Merchantmen brought to Ptolemy the wares of India and the porcelains
of China. Marauders from upper Egypt skulked about the native
quarters, and sallied forth at night to rob the wayfarer. The king's
guards were recruited with soldiers from turbulent Greece, from Asia,
from Italy. Settlers were attracted from Syracuse by the prospect of
high wages and profitable labour. The Jewish quarters were full of
Israelites who did not disdain Greek learning. The city in which
this multitude found a home was beautifully constructed. The