Herodotus, though he
travelled in Egypt and Persia, never gives us to understand that he was
able to converse in any but his own language.

As far as we can tell, the barbarians seem to have possessed a greater
facility for acquiring languages than either Greeks or Romans. Soon after
the Macedonian conquest, we find(63) _Berosus_ in Babylon, _Menander_ in
Tyre, and _Manetho_ in Egypt, compiling, from original sources, the annals
of their countries.(64) Their works were written in Greek, and for the
Greeks. The native language of Berosus was Babylonian, of Menander
Phenician, of Manetho Egyptian. Berosus was able to read the cuneiform
documents of Babylonia with the same ease with which Manetho read the
papyri of Egypt. The almost contemporaneous appearance of three such men,
barbarians by birth and language, who were anxious to save the histories
of their countries from total oblivion, by entrusting them to the keeping
of their conquerors, the Greeks, is highly significant. But what is
likewise significant, and by no means creditable to the Greek or
Macedonian conquerors, is the small value which they seem to have set on
these works. They have all been lost, and are known to us by fragments
only, though there can be little doubt that the work of Berosus would have
been an invaluable guide to the student of the cuneiform inscriptions and
of Babylonian history, and that Manetho, if preserved complete, would have
saved us volumes of controversy on Egyptian chronology. We learn, however,
from the almost simultaneous appearance of these works, that soon after
the epoch marked by Alexander's conquests in the East, the Greek language
was studied and cultivated by literary men of barbarian origin, though we
should look in vain for any Greek learning or employing any but his own
tongue for literary purposes. We hear of no intellectual intercourse
between Greeks and barbarians before the days of Alexander and Alexandria.
At Alexandria, various nations, speaking different languages, and
believing in different gods, were brought together. Though primarily
engaged in mercantile speculations, it was but natural that in their
moments of leisure they should hold discourse on their native countries,
their gods, their kings, their law-givers, and poets. Besides, there were
Greeks at Alexandria who were engaged in the study of antiquity, and who
knew how to ask questions from men coming from any country of the world.
The pretension of the