Alexandrian school
The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Alexandria was a remarkable center of learning due to the blending of Greek and Oriental influences, its favorable situation and commercial resources, and the enlightened energy of some of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Ptolemies ruling over Egypt, in the final centuries BC. Much scholarly work was collected in the great Library of Alexandria during this time. Large amounts of epic poetry and works on geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine were composed in Alexandria during this period.
Alexandrian school is also used to describe the religious and philosophical developments in Alexandria after the 1st century. The mix of Jewish theology and Greek philosophy led to a syncretic mix and much mystical speculation. The Neoplatonists devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and sought communion with God. The two great schools of biblical interpretation in the early Christian church incorporated Neoplatonism and philosophical beliefs from Plato's teachings into Christianity, and interpreted much of the Bible allegorically. The founders of the Alexandrian school of Christian theology were Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
History
, founded by Alexander the Great during his Egyptian campaign, was well positioned to become a center of culture and commerce. As it grew into a major seaport, it became a hub for trade and travel throughout the Mediterranean world, serving as a gateway between East and West. The natural advantages it enjoyed were increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt. Ptolemy Soter, to whom Egypt had fallen after the death of Alexander, began to subsidize Greek scholars and poets in Alexandria as part of his broader campaign to Hellenize Egypt. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman, and philosopher, Ptolemy laid the foundations of the Musaeum: a large complex which contained the Library of Alexandria. The work begun by Ptolemy Soter was carried on by his descendants, in particular by his two immediate successors, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes. Philadelphus, whose librarian was the celebrated Callimachus, gathered all the works of Aristotle, and also introduced a number of Jewish and native Egyptian works. Among these appears to have been a portion of the Septuagint. Euergetes increased the library by seizing on the original editions of the dramatists from the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travelers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.Despite sharing certain tendencies, there was never a definitively "Alexandrian" system of thought. The literary, scientific, and philosophical activities of Alexandrian scholars in the Hellenistic and Roman periods were highly varied; they have only in common a certain spirit or form. This intellectual "school" lasted centuries and can be split into two major periods. The first period extends from about 306 to 30 BC, the time from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to the annexation of Egypt by the Romans; the second extends from 30 BC to the destruction of the Great Library sometime before or upon the capture of Alexandria by 'Amr ibn al-'As in 641 AD.
Scholarship of the early Ptolemaic period was usually either literary or scientific. This tendency reflects the larger project of the early Ptolemies to synthesize Egyptian and Hellenic intellectual culture. By the 1st century BC, the Alexandrian school began to fracture and diversify. This was due in part to the relative weakness of the government under the later Ptolemies, but also to the rise of new scholarly circles in Rhodes, Syria and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. This gradual dissolution was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway.
As the influence of the school was extended over the whole Graeco-Roman world, scholars began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In Alexandria, however, there were new forces in operation, which produced a second great outburst of intellectual life. The new movement, which was influenced by Judaism and Christianity, resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neoplatonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.
Literature
The forms of poetry chiefly cultivated by the Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics are wanting; but in their place are found the historical and the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally some of the well-known myths, in which the writer could show the full extent of his learning and his perfect command of verse. These poems are valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is often bad, and great patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.The subjects of the didactic epics were very numerous; they seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their information. Some, such as the lost poem of Callimachus, were on the origin of myths and religious observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria, was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to be included in the school; the one is an essay on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research.
Alexandrian lyric and elegiac poetry was often technical and derivative. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philitas of Cos. but Callimachus was perhaps the most famous. Of his numerous works only a few hymns, epigrams and fragments of elegies remain extant. Other lyric poets were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolia and Lycophron.
Epigrams were popular, as well as parodies and satirical poems, which include the Silloi of Timon and the Kinaidoi of Sotades.
Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some extent. Extant are three or four varying lists of the seven great dramatists who composed the Alexandrian Pleiad. Their works have perished. A cruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or bucolic mime, developed into the only pure stream of genial poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of Theocritus. As the name of these poems suggests, they were pictures of fresh country life.
Alexandrian poetry had a powerful influence on Roman literature. That literature, especially in the Augustan age, can only be understood by appreciating of the character of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period were numerous and prolific. Many of them, such as Cleitarchus, devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.
Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works, their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the world, it had to be handed down to posterity in a form capable of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them which at a later date might become obscure. They studied the arrangement of the texts; settlement of accents; theories of forms and syntax; explanations either of words or things; and judgments on the authors and their works, including all questions as to authenticity and integrity.
The critics required a wide range of knowledge; and from this requirement sprang grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, the coryphaeus of criticism. Others were Lycophron, Callimachus, Eratosthenes and many of a later age, for the critical school long survived the literary. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours were of great indirect importance, for they led to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a more accurate knowledge of geography and history. Considerable attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece, and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and cities. A large collection of such curious information is contained in the Bibliotheca. Eratosthenes was the first to write on physical geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria, but they did not have their origin there, and did not, in any strict sense, form part of the peculiarly Alexandrian literature. The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid; among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemy. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a school of mathematics and science long after the Christian era.