Alexandria

On the Mediterranean at the western edge ofthe Nile

delta stands the most important and enduring of all the
many cities founded by Alexander. Though much of its
material past has been destroyed or lies underwater,
Alexandria's reputation as the intellectual powerhouse
ofthe Classical world, fusing Greek, Egyptian and
Roman culture, lives on, writes Paul Cartledge.

Alexandria
the Great or historians of ancient Greece agora is the

F term for a place of gathering, a market

perhaps or potitical assembly, one ofthe most
basic distinguishing markers of ancient Greek
cutture and civitisation. tn Athens, for exampte, hard
by the Acropolis you can visit the Greek Agora, still
being excavated by the American Schoot, and its near-
by successor, the tioman Agora, an eloquent jumble of
ruins. But, for cinemagoers. Agora may come to mean
something else, as it is the title of a new film starring
Rachel Weisz set not in ancient, pagan Athens but in
early (Christian Alexandria around AD 400.
Atexandria numtiers among the greatest of the city-
states founded by the Greeks, though it was far from

20 Í listoTyToday \ October 2009 www.historytoday.com


the crucible of (ireek culture. Strictly, there was no
such thing as 'ancient Greece'. The term 'Greece" comes
to us from the Romans. The Greeks themselves spoke
not of dniccia but tit Hdhis, 'the Hellenic wdrld', a cul-
tural rather than a political orgeogriiphical concept.
And there were at any one time around 1,000 very dif-
ferent cities making up Hellas, stretching from near the
Pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar) in the west to Phasisin
(xilchis (modern Georgia) in the far north-east. This
distribution was the outcome of a series of waves of
Greek emigration and settlement, starting in the late
Bronze Age (14th-12th centuries Bc], renewed greatly
in the eady historical period (especially the eighth to
sixth centuries) and taken up again in the wake of
www.historytod3y.com
Alexandria
Alexander the Great's conquest ofthe Persian empire Part of a colossal statue of
(334-323 nc). This Hellenic diaspora was an essential King Ptolemy emerges from
Alexandria's eastern port,
ingredient ofthe latter epoch-making process during 1995, a result of the
which Alexandria was founded. pioneering work of
Alexander III, posthumously labelled'the Great', underwater archaeologist,
was born in 356 BC; to Philip II of Macedón and his Jean-Yves Empereur.
Greek wife Olympias (one of seven wives in all). He
came to tbe throne of Macedón in 336 BC, aged just 20,
in highly dubious circumstances. A shadow of suspi-
cion hangs over him to this day for his possible role in
his father's assassination. This can never be proved and
there is at least as much reason to suspect the hand of
tbe e.stranged Olympias. liut Philip himself was a pretty-
hale 46 years of age and there arose a severe danger that
October 2009 | History TOÎVOV
 Alexandria
Alexander would be passed over tor the succession due
to Philip's marriage to Cleopatra Eurydice and the
chance that she might bear him a son and heir: hence,
arguably, ^Mexander's role in the assassination, carried
out by one of Philip's bodyguards in full public view as
he was celebrating the wedding of his daughter to her
uncle, Olympias's own royal brother, at the
Macedonian ceremonial capital of Aegae.
Whoever was behind the murder, Alexander
profited the most from it. Winning the sup-
port, crucially, ofthe formidable Macedonian
army, he was quick to assume his father's
role as champion of I lellenJsm against the
Persian empire. Philip's campaign had
been dressed up as a long-delayed act of
revenge on the Persians for their sacrile-
gious destruction of sacred sites and
property in Greece in 480-479 BC and as
a project for the liberation of the Greek
cities in Asia from their political subiec-
tion or'barbarian slavery'.
The revolts in Greece that folknved
Philip's assassination delayed Alexander
assuming the command of the advance force
sent across the Hellespont (Dardanelles) to
north-west Asia Minor in 336 ¡ic. But, before he
joined his army, in 335 üc ;\tcxander felt obliged
to annihilate tlie major Greek city of Thebes for
daring to question the legitimacy of his oriental proj-
ect. All he spared ofthe city's fabric, apart from the
religious sanctuaries, was the house that Pindar the
praise-poet (died c. 446 BC:) had lived in, since he
was seen as an emblematic spokesman for tlie sort
of cultural Panheüenism Alexander was claiming to
promote. All the same, destroying the city ofone of his
most important Greek allies was hardly an auspicious
omen for the coming Asiatic campaign.
Controversy attended the campaign throughout.
Alexander showed preternatural gifts tor leadership
and command in the most demanding of conditions
over more than a decade (334-323 BC). But he found it
ever more difficult to convince his courtiers and
Macedonian troops to follow him to the ends ofthe
earth. Nevertheless, he extended Macedon's dominion
as far east as 'India' (modern Pakistan and Kashmir},
not only destroying the old Persian empire in the
process but also laying the foundations for a new kind
of personal territorial monarchy, a kingdom of all
'Asia', with himself as the new-style, part-Greek, part-
orientaiised monarch, worshipped spontaneously as a
living god by many of his new as well as his Greek sub-
jects. Some Greeks, however, found the idea of divine
worship of their leader harder to get used to and the
expedition's official historian, Callisthenes (a relative
of Alexander's old tutor Aristotle), openly refused to
bow down before bis king in ceremonial obeisance as
he thought it 'too Persian'. Alexander had him executed
for high treason.
To stabilise his conquests strategically as he pro-
ceeded and to uniiy his new kingdom culturaliy for
the future, Alexander founded a number of Cireek-
speaking Alexandrias as far east as what is today
Afghanistan. There Is much dispute both in the
22 HisioryToi/uy | October 2009
ancient sources and among modern historians over
exactly how many cities were actually founded by
Alexander: perhaps only a dozen, rather than the 70-
plus attributed to him in antiquity Of those named
after him, the majority are located in the further east-
ern reaches of his empire and were surely established
in the first instance for strategic reasons, although
some had the potential, circumstances permitting, to
grow into more settled, peaceful and civilised Circek
cities. But the first brand-new Alexandria {that is,
^ .iftertheAlexandroupolisin northern Greece.
which he renamed rather than founded in 340
B(.) was established not in Furope, nor in Asia,
but in Africa, in the Nile delta, at that vast
river's Ganopic outlet into the
Mediterranean.
Not only thefirst,the Eg)'ptian
Alexandria was also by far the most impor-
tant. In the late winter of 332-31 BC (April
7th, 331 was the otificia! date) Alexander per-
sonally traced out the new city's limits. He
consulted, as was his superstitious wont, the
best soothsayers and seers at his disposal,
headed by his favourite, Adstander of
TelmessusdiowFethiye in south-west
Turkey). Alexander was carellil not to locate the
cit)' right on top of an existing Eg\'ptian site.
for fear of alienating powerful native opinion,
which he urgently needed on his side; it was.
after all, only six months or so before the final,
decisive battle with the Persian (jreat King
Darius III at Gaugamela in northern Iraq in
October 331 lw.:. Instead, he ItKated it next to a
local settlement known in (íreek as Rhacotis.
Alexander the A lexandria was regularly referred to in iiftlcial
Great, founder of
x \ a n c i e n t sources as 'by' Egypt rather than 'in' Egypt,
Alexandria, marble bust
from about the second so much was it seen as an exceptional, alien implant,
century BC. with its own separate identit)' from the start. Access to
residence and political membersbip of the city was
strictly controlled by the original Macedonian and
Greek settlers, some of whom were retired veterans,
others traders, yet others 'wide boys' on the make.
Below them was the required underclass of slaves of
many ethnicities, but there was also a lower order of
tree but unenfranchised Egyptians and other incomers
such as diaspora lews. It was tor the latter group that
the Hebrew bible was first translated into Greek, as the
Septiiagint, some time in the third century BC:.
At first, during Alexander's lifetime and a little
beyond, Alexandria was the new capital of an imperial
province, in succession to the "satrapy' of Egypt that the
Persians had ruled from 525 to 404 nc and again
between 343 and 332 lic, whose capital had been the
old Egyptian city of Memphis. The powerful Egyptian
priesthood and other members ofthe old native ruling
class had never settled comfortably under the
Achaemenid yoke (as they saw it) and they generally
welcomed Alexander as their enemies' enemy; but it
did not take long for the old grievances against a for-
eign, imperÍLiJ power to re-emerge. Alexander did not
deal with these new subjects tactfully. Rather he sought
to exploit his Egyptian connections mainly for personal
www, h istorytoday.com
 Alexandria

-*"^,

A mosaic ofthe Greek Gorgon Medusa which covered the dining-room floor of a house constructed during Alexandria's Roman period, second century AD.

The catacombs of Kom-el-Shuqafa, which lie beneath what is now a working-class district ofthe city, were constructed during the time ofthe Roman Empire,
second century AD. Yet they combine elements ofthe Greek pantheon and the old religion ofthe pharaohs, a cultural fusion typical of Alexandria.

www.historytoday.com October 2009 | HiaXoryToday 2 3

 Alexandria
and propaganda purposes, having himself declared
pharaoh at Memphis and even hailed, in Greek, as the
son of a god by the chief priest ofthe oracle of Ammon
( Amun) in the Siwah oasis many hundreds of miles to
the west, on the b<irders with Libya.
Alexander died in Babylon aged 32 in 323 BC. In
about 305 I5C one of his most successful Macedonian
generals, a companion since childhood called
Ptolemy, whom Alexander had appointed governor of
the province of Egj'pt, declared himself'king'ofthe
same territory, with Alexandria as his capital.
Impressively, Ptolemy 1, as he became, managed to
found a lasting, if often troubled, dynasty. For almost
three centuries (305-30 lic), Alexandria was the capital
of this 'Hellenistic' successor kingdom, culturally and
administratively Greek, but significantly influenced by
native ideas to the extent of there being some sort of
fusion between the two, for example in the new dynas-
tic cult of Serapis, a combination of the cult of Osiris
{representing the spirit ofthe dead pharaoh) and that
ofthe Apis bull of Memphis.
In the tbird century n<:, thanks to its new
Museum and Library (incorporating, for
example. Aristotle's presumably substan-
tial manuscript possessions), which
Ptolemy I had planned before he died
in 285 lit:, Alexandria became the cul-
tural capital ofthe entire Greek world.
It attracted intellects ofthe calibre of
Euclid (active c. 300 BC), the mathe-
matical genius; Eratosthenes (c. 276-
194 liC), who measured the Earth's cir-
cumference to within an acceptable
margin of error: Archimedes (c. 287-212
uc), another remarkable mathemaliclan
and military inventor; Gallimachus (c. 310-
240 BC), chief librarian and. ¡ike Eratosthenes,
originally Irom Gyrene in modern Libya; and
Theocritus (c. 300-260 BC), a pastoral poet from
Syracuse, who composed at the Alexandrian court in
the 270s BC: under Ptolemy II. Many other luminaries
graced the city's precincts.
T he coexistence of practitioners of'science' and
'arts' is noteworthy in itself, but harmony did not
always reign supreme. A contemporary wit, Timon of
Phlius. referred to the Museum as the 'birdcage of the
Muses', Implying that all sorts of highly competitive
birds were kept cooped up there, without an agreed
pecking order but with lots of mutual pecking going
on. Even Ptolemy ! had turned his hand to literature in
old age, writing an apologetic account of'my part in'
Alexander's campaigns. This has not survived as such
but it formed one ofthe bases of a good historical
account written by Arrian, a Greek fi"om Nicomedea
in Bithynia, in the second century AD. (The'lost mem-
oirs' trope has inspired at least one contemporary his-
torical novelist, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, who has
written a trilogy of books about Alexander the Great;
and one filmmaker, Oliver Stone, who cast Anthony
Hopkins as Ptolemy I in the 2004 Cum, Alexiwder).
Alexandria was thus (he first Hellenistic/»o/is, or
city-state, just as Alexander may fairly be designated as
24 Histon-rof/Hv October
In the third the first Hellenistic king. Would that archaeology
century BC could do anything like as much justice to the city's
architectural wonders as the survival of literature has
Alexandria done for its intellectual achievements. But subsequent
became the historical vicissitudes - hostile occupations, regime
cultural and Indeed cultural changes, as well as burnings both
deliberate and accidental - coupled with mighty forces
capital of of nature (earthquakes above all) have seen to it that
the entire much of Hellenistic Alexandria is today either obliter-
ated on land or under water To take the most con-
Greek world tentious example, where is Alexander's fabled tomb to
be located, the one that was built by Ptolemy I after he
had hijacked Alexander's body (en route from
Babylon for rehurial in Macedón) and which was vis-
ited three centuries later in reverent homage by the
first Roman emperor, Augustus? Are his remains really
now entombed in Venice, under St Mark's Basilica, as
has recently been speculated (the claim being that
what were removed as being supposedly the mortal
remains of St Mark, a native Alexandrian, were actual-
ly those of Alexander himself)? Or is that just the
sort of wikl surmise to which the absence of a
sound archaeological record can drive even
the sanest of historical investigators?
Credit must be given to underwater
archaeologists such as lean-Yves
Empereur who have recovered and are
still recovering remarkable objects otï
Alexandria's shore and in areas up to
12 miles further east {possibly the site
ol ancient Mcracleum) which are now
housed in the new National Museum of
Alexandria. Yet even the most skilled of
them will never be able to recover enough
ofthe Pharos lighthouse {328 feet tall,
allegedly) - designed for Ptolemy I or II by
Sostratus of Cnidus and one ofthe Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World - to reconstruct it
persuasively, either on paper or in computer-generated
image. The new Bihliotheca Alexandrina, a cultural
A 5ilver tetradrachma from
the reign of Ptolemy 1,323- centre and librar)- in the heart of Alexandria, is another
285 BC, portrays the Greek matter, a miracle of virtual resurrection.
goddess Athena.
Being a royal capital, in a brave new world of territo-
rial monarchies, Alexandria could not function as just
another Greek polls. Laws passed here by the Ptolemies
would have applied throughout Hgypt, to natives as well
as Greeks, as did their most impressive silver and gold
imperial coinages, being the first Greek issues to depict
a living ruler's image. But elsewhere in the post-
Alexander Hellenistic world, from about 300 to 30 BC,
recent research has shown ¡ust how vigorous thepo/is
remained as both a political and a cultural institution.
For example, Greeks and Macedonians in the time or
wake of Alexander took Xhc polls to central Asia, to
Bactria and Sogdia in what is now Afghanistan. The
prime case is Ai Khanum {'Moon Woman' in the local
Tadjik language), which is possibly ancient Alexandria
in Sogdia. Doubts have been expressed about the extent
ofthe riellenisation process here: were these not really
just supersize forts from whose cultural delights the
local 'barbarians' were rigorously debarred? Is not the
architecture more local or Persian than Greek? Though
that might be argued, it would be hard to test it and
www.hjstorytoday.com
 Alexandria

there ace stJine staggeringly powerful and unanswerable

pieces of evidence of Hellenisation, all the more power-
ful for coming from that most sensitive of cultural
spheres, religion.
I lad the Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavaiy (1863-1933)
still been alive to see this newly excavated evidence,
not available before the 1960s, he for one would not
have been at all perturbed. Writing as if in (or from)
the year 200 HC, he imagines a Hellenistic Greek ances-
tor proudly declaring:

We: the Alexandrians, the Antiochenes,

the Seleucians, and the mnnerous
other Hellenes of Egypt ami Syria,
and those in Media, and those in Persia, and so
many others.
With their extended dominions,
and llieir diverse endeavours towards judicious adaptations.
And the Greek koine language -
all the way to Bactria we carried it, to the Indians.

Conveniently for us as well, Cavaiy gives a brief

summary of almost the entire post-Alexander
Hellenistic world. The mention of ancient Creeks in
Media and Persia (northern and southern Iran
respectively) is especially salutary, since they are often
forguUcn even by scholars. Indeed, in Susa, the old
administrative capital of the Persian empire, we hear
of performances or at least staged recitations of
Euripides, something that would bave been a
commonplace in Alexandria, with its many theatres.
The koine language Cavafy refers to is the simplified
form of Classical Greek, based chiefly on the Athenian
dialect, that spread throughout the Middle East and
even into part ofwhat is today Pakistan. This was the The Greek historian PolybiLis of Megalopolis (c.2OO- 'Cleopatra's Needles'were
form of Greek language into which the Jewish 120 lie) sought to chronicle and explain Roman power. built by Pharaoh Tuthmosis
Septuagint was translated and the Greek version of tbe Ml and brought to
He began with Rome pulling itself off the floor after its Alexandria by Augustus.
Christian New Testament. terribledefeat at Cannae in 216 îîC and took the story as They now reside in London
However, the international equilibrium that far as 145 BC, by which time Cartilage had been and New York. Watercolour
emerged by the middle ofthe third century lii; was destroyed and in mainland (ireece'Macedonia'and by Dominique Vivant
'Achaea' had been established as a province and a pro- Denon, who accompanied
hard won, after two major internecine wars, and easily Napoleon's expedition to
disturbed or lost. Much of Hellenistic Greek public tectorate respectively within Rome's oftkial imperial Egypt(179e-1801).
political history is but a wearisome catalogue ambit. Eight)'years further on, Pompey the
of inter-dynastic wars. In old Greece the Great (emulating Alexander in his title
Antigonid dynasty of Macedón peri- as in much else) brought into tbe
odically came down like a wolf to empire in eftect the old Seleucid
demonstrate who was really in kingdom based on Syria and
charge. But all such would-be most ofthe rest of Anatolia.
bosses were eventually That left unconquered
trumped and triumphed over only Ptolemaic Egv'pt. Its
by the boss of all bosses, the acquisition by Rome was the
capo di capi, Rome. Around outcome of an even more
200 !i( ; Rome began its inex- titanic struggle for personal
orable rise to supreme power mastery of tbe entire Roman
and glory in the ancient world: between, in the
Mediterranean world. 'Western' corner, Gaius Julius
HventLially, by 30 nc it included ^.aesar Octavianus, Octavian for An allegory ofthe fertility
almost the entire Hellenistic world short (Emperor Augustus, 63 HO of Egypt under the
Ai> 14), the adopted son and heir of protection of Isis, Horus
within its orbit as the eastern. Greek- and Osiris-Sarapis. From
speaking half of its empire, though its hold lulius Caesar, the man who would surely the interior of the Tazza
on what are now Iran and Iraq was brief and have been Rome's first emperor but for his assassi- Farnese, a dish carved
tenuous and it never absorbed any part of modern- nation in 44 ii(.; and, in the 'Eastern' corner, Marcus from sardonyx, possibly
day Afghanistan or Pakistan. Antonius (c. 83-30 BC), 'Mark Antony', bigamous commissioned by
Cleopatra,fírstcentury BC.

www.historytoday.com October 2009 | HistoTyl'oday 25

 Alexandria
husband ot the last ot the Graeco-Macedonian
Ptolemies, the cultivated and resourceful Queen
Cleopatra\1I. At [henaval Battle of Actium in north-
west Greece in 31 liC Octavian s tleet decisively deteated
that of Cleopatra and Antony, who committed suicide
back in Alexandria rather than fall into their enemy's
vengeñal grasp.
In 30 !i( : Octavian turned Egypt into the equivalent
of a Roman imperial province, though it was governed
hy his direct appointees and members ofthe Senate
were banned from entering it without his express per-
mission. With this transformation of Egypt into a
Roman dependency, the Romans had completed the
absorption of almost the entire post-Alexander
Hellenistic world into their massive empire.
But, if ancient Alexandria was finished as an inde-
pendent political entity, it remained a cultural power-
house. The rolicalt of intellectuals who graced Roman
Alexandria is by no means inferior to that ofthe city's
illustrious Hellenistic Greek incarnation. Pride of
place should he accorded to another Ptolemy,
Claudius Ptolemaeus, the astronomer and geographer
(c. AD 100-178), who wrote at Alexandria between AD
146 and about AD 170. The medium onto which these
thinkers transcribed their thoughts was a specially
prepared product ofthe native Egyptian papyrus
plant. Always expensive, it had to compete in the
earlier (îreek world with the cheaper writing media of
bark, pottery, skin and wax. But under the Roman dis-
pensation papyrus comes into its own as our major
source of evidence on social and cultural life in the
ancient Greek world as a whole. Alexandria's soil and
climate being too wet, the recovered papyri have come
chiefly from further south in the Nile valley, from the
Fayum region and notably from the small and
26 History Todijy | October 2009
A map of Alexandria, from
Civitates Orbis Terrarum
by Georg Braun and Frans
Hogenberg, 16th century.
otherwise undistinguished town of Oxyrhynchus (lit-
erally translated as 'Sharp-nosed Fishville').
Alexandria's contribution to Western and world cul-
ture also included one of those few ancient Greek
women who are on record as having an impact on what
was a fundamentally male-orientated and male-domi-
nated universe. Her name is Hypatia (c. AD 370-413)
and she was the daughter of a mathematician called
Theon. She was not the first distinguished female
Alexandrian mathematician - that accolade goes to
Pandrosion (c. AD 350), who is thought to have invent-
ed a geometric construction to produce cube roots.
Hypatia for her part wielded the astrolabe and die
hydroscope with aplomb. But it is not her scientific
brains or alleged superior good looks to which she owes
her commemoration, but chiefly to the tact that she was
murdered - or rather martyred - as a pagan by a
('hristian mob possibly acting under orders of Bishop
Cyril of Alexandria, in AD 415. Sic transit gloria classica -
though Hollywood's dream factory has doubtless done
its best to ensure tbat the fame of I iypatia, in the guise
of Rachel Weisz, will live on for some time yet.
Paul Cartfedge is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the
University of Cambridge. His latest book, Ancient Greece: A History
in Eleven Cities (Oxford University Press), is published this month.
Further reading Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great: The Hunt
foraJVewPasf (Pan Macmillan, 2CX)4);J-Y Empereur,^/exondrá;
Jewel of Egypt (Harry N. Abrams, 2002); E.M. Forster, Alexandria:
A History and a Guide (1922, repr. M. Hagg, 1974); M. Haag,
Alexandria: City of Memory [Yale University Press, 2004); R.M.
MacLeod [ed.), The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in
the Ancient World (I.B.Tauris, 2000); J. Pollard and H. Reid, The
Rise and Fall of Alexandria {Penguin, 2007).
For further articles on this subject, visit:
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