Cyclades owned his mastery. Thus the wealth of the richest part of
the world flowed into Alexandria, attracting thither the priests of
strange religions, the possessors of Greek learning, the painters and
sculptors whose work has left its traces on the genius of Theocritus.

Looking at this early Alexandrian age, three points become clear to
us. First, the fashion of the times was Oriental, Oriental in
religion and in society. Nothing could be less Hellenic, than the
popular cult of Adonis. The fifteenth idyl of Theocritus shows us
Greek women worshipping in their manner at an Assyrian shrine, the
shrine of that effeminate lover of Aphrodite, whom Heracles,
according to the Greek proverb, thought 'no great divinity.' The
hymn of Bion, with its luxurious lament, was probably meant to be
chanted at just such a festival as Theocritus describes, while a
crowd of foreigners gossiped among the flowers and embroideries, the
strangely-shaped sacred cakes, the ebony, the gold, and the ivory.
Not so much Oriental as barbarous was the impulse which made Ptolemy
Philadelphus choose his own sister, Arsinoe, for wife, as if absolute
dominion had already filled the mind of the Macedonian royal race
with the incestuous pride of the Incas, or of Queen Hatasu, in an
elder Egyptian dynasty. This nascent barbarism has touched a few of
the Alexandrian poems even of Theocritus, and his panegyric of
Ptolemy, of his divine ancestors, and his sister-bride is not much
more Greek in sentiment than are those old native hymns of Pentaur to
'the strong Bull,' or the 'Risen Sun,' to Rameses or Thothmes.

Again, the early Alexandrian was what we call a 'literary' age.
Literature was not an affair of religion and of the state, but
ministered to the pleasure of individuals, and at their pleasure was
composed. {0f} The temper of the time was crudely critical. The