of homage. They raised him to the rank of a divinity, dedicated a temple
to him, and instituted a series of new festivals in his honor; partly no
doubt to win his partiality for their city and to express their pride and
satisfaction in his long stay there, but also because the pleasure-loving
community was glad to seize this opportunity as a favorable one for
gratifying their own inclinations and revelling in mere unusual
enjoyment. Thus the Imperial visit swallowed up millions, and Hadrian,
who enquired into every detail and contrived to obtain information as to
the sums expended by the city, blamed the recklessness of his lavish
entertainers. He wrote afterwards to his brother-in-law, Servianus, his
fullest recognition of both the wealth and the industry of Alexandrians,
saying, with terms of praise, that among them not one was idle. One made
glass, another papyrus, another linen; and each of these restless
mortals, said he, is busied in some handiwork. Even the lame, the blind
and the maimed here sought and found employment. Nevertheless he calls
the Alexandrians a contumacious and good-for-nothing community, with
sharp and evil tongues that had spared neither Verus nor Antinous. Jews,
Christians, and the votaries of Serapis, he adds in the same letter,
serve but one God instead of the divinities of Olympus, and when he
asserts of the Christians that they even worshipped Serapis he means to
say that they were persuaded of the doctrine of the survival of the soul
after death. The dispute as to which temple should be assigned as the
residence of the newly-found Apis gave Hadrian much to do. From time
immemorial this sacred bull had been kept in the temple of Ptah at
Memphis, but this venerable city of the Pyramids had been outstripped by
Alexandria, and the temple of Serapis outvied that at Memphis in the
province of Sokari, tenfold in size and in magnificence. The Egyptians
of Alexandria, who dwelt in the quarter called Rhakotis, close to the
Serapeum, desired to have the incarnation of the god in the form of a
bull, in their midst; but the Memphites would not abandon their old