0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

82
ANCIENT TIMES.
although undertaken at the instance of madness and cruelty,
had this advantage for medical science, that they led to a careful
examination of the properties and powers of many substances
; and the statements of medical authors of a later
period testify that they were not unproductive of results.
The benevolent protection which was extended to they;
sciences by the first PTOLEMIES was changed later intoj^
indifference and mistrust, and gave place at last to a;
feeling of hatred and contempt. The seventh PTOLEMY^
drove men of learning from Alexandria and shut up their
institutions. When these were reopened at a later
period, they bore the signs of decay on their face. The
appointments for learned men at the museum were now ,
held at the caprice of the Prince and served as rewards
for flattery and base services. The biting words of TlMON
of Phlius might have been said of this period, " that the -
museum is a great food-trough in which scribblers fatten c
and quarrel about things they do not understand."* Under ]
the Roman dominion it came to such a pass that athletes '
were nominated as members of the museum. The cetebrated
libraries were partly destroyed by fire, partly pluh-,,
dered by the foreign conquerors who came to Egypt. Some
of their literary treasures reached Italy and Constantinople,
and served to found or enlarge the libraries formed there.
What remained must, at the capture of Alexandria, have
suffered mutilation at the hands of the Arabs or have been
destroyed by the Christians.
In the year 389 the temple of SERAPIS was changed into
a Christian Church, and in the Serapeum " monks, so-called,
took up their abode ; who" as EUNAPIOS writes " in their
figures resembled men but in their manner of livingswine."
t He must surely have had in his mind unclean .
Oriental monks and not highly cultivated people like the |
Benedictines of our day. The medical schools in Alexandria ,|
maintained their prominent position under the Roman ;
* ATIIENJEOS: Deipnosophistse, i, p. 11, Basil. 1535, Ed. Bedrotus.
t EUNAPIOS in aedes i, p. 43, in Parthey op. cit. S. 102.