rose to its pinnacle of glory and began to decline, without ever
challenging the intellectual supremacy of the Egyptian city. We
shall see, in a later chapter, that the Alexandrian influences
were passed on to the Mohammedan conquerors, and every one is
aware that when Alexandria was finally overthrown its place was
taken by another Greek city, Byzantium or Constantinople. But
that transfer did not occur until Alexandria had enjoyed a longer
period of supremacy as an intellectual centre than had perhaps
ever before been granted to any city, with the possible
exception of Babylon.


EUCLID (ABOUT 300 B.C.)

Our present concern is with that first wonderful development of
scientific activity which began under the first Ptolemy, and
which presents, in the course of the first century of Alexandrian
influence, the most remarkable coterie of scientific workers and
thinkers that antiquity produced. The earliest group of these new
leaders in science had at its head a man whose name has been a
household word ever since. This was Euclid, the father of
systematic geometry. Tradition has preserved to us but little of
the personality of this remarkable teacher; but, on the other
hand, his most important work has come down to us in its
entirety. The Elements of Geometry, with which the name of Euclid
is associated in the mind of every school-boy, presented the
chief propositions of its subject in so simple and logical a form
that the work remained a textbook everywhere for more than two
thousand years. Indeed it is only now beginning to be superseded.
It is not twenty years since English mathematicians could deplore
the fact that, despite certain rather obvious defects of the work
of Euclid, no better textbook than this was available. Euclid's
work, of course, gives expression to much knowledge that did not
originate with him. We have already seen that several important
propositions of geometry had been developed by Thales, and one by
Pythagoras, and that the rudiments of the subject were at least
as old as Egyptian civilization. Precisely how much Euclid added
through his own investigations cannot be ascertained. It seems
probable that he was a diffuser of knowledge rather than an
originator, but as a great teacher his fame is secure. He is
credited with an epigram which in itself might insure him
perpetuity of fame: "There is no royal road to geometry," was his
answer to Ptolemy when that ruler had questioned whether the
Elements might not be simplified. Doubtless this, like most
similar good sayings, is apocryphal; but whoever invented it has
made the world his debtor.


HEROPHILUS AND ERASISTRATUS

The catholicity of Ptolemy's tastes led him, naturally enough, to
cultivate the biological no less than the physical sciences. In
particular his influence permitted an epochal advance in the
field of medicine. Two anatomists became famous through the
investigations they were permitted to make under the patronage of
the enlightened ruler. These earliest of really scientific
investigators of the mechanism of the human body were named
Herophilus and Erasistratus. These two anatomists gained their
knowledge by the dissection of human bodies (theirs are the first
records that we have of such practices), and King Ptolemy himself
is said to have been present at some of these dissections. They
were the first to discover that the nerve- trunks have their
origin in the brain and spinal cord, and they are credited also
with the discovery that these nerve-trunks are of two different
kinds--one to convey motor, and the other sensory impulses. They
discovered, described, and named the coverings of the brain. The
name of Herophilus is still applied by anatomists, in honor of
the discoverer, to one of the sinuses or large canals that convey
the venous blood from the head. Herophilus also noticed and
described four cavities or ventricles in the brain, and reached
the conclusion that one of these ventricles was the seat of the
soul--a belief shared until comparatively recent times by many
physiologists. He made also a careful and fairly accurate study
of the anatomy of the eye, a greatly improved the old operation
for cataract.

With the increased knowledge of anatomy came also corresponding
advances in surgery, and many experimental operations are said to
have been performed upon condemned criminals who were handed over
to the surgeons by the Ptolemies. While many modern writers have
attempted to discredit these assertions, it is not improbable
that such operations were performed. In an age when human life
was held so cheap, and among a people accustomed to torturing
condemned prisoners for comparatively slight offences, it is not
unlikely that the surgeons were allowed to inflict perhaps less
painful tortures in the cause of science. Furthermore, we know
that condemned criminals were sometimes handed over to the
medical profession to be "operated upon and killed in whatever
way they thought best" even as late as the sixteenth century.
Tertullian[1] probably exaggerates, however, when he puts the
number of such victims in Alexandria at six hundred.

Had Herophilus and Erasistratus been as happy in their deductions
as to the functions of the organs as they were in their knowledge
of anatomy, the science of medicine would have been placed upon a
very high plane even in their time. Unfortunately, however, they
not only drew erroneous inferences as to the functions of the
organs, but also disagreed radically as to what functions certain
organs performed, and how diseases should be treated, even when
agreeing perfectly on the subject of anatomy itself. Their


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