Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, said
Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine.

Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon the
bounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit of
verbal criticism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say
that it had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and the
book of receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names of
Soter, Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic one
syllable of his name in each of those words, said that putting them
together, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. Other
authors wrote on lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelous, the physician,
addressed to Philadelphus a volume of advice as to which Greek wines
were best fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian were
then unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneath
his notice, while the vine had as yet hardly been planted in the
neighbourhood of Alexandria. He particularly praised the Naspercenite
wine from the southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from the
island of Euboea; the OEneatic from Locris; the Leuca-dian from the
island of Leucas; and the Ambraciote from the kingdom of Epirus.

[Illustration: 128.jpg AN ATHLETE DISPORTING ON A CROCODILE]

But above all these he placed the Peparethian wine from the island of
Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this
experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true
relish for it till after six years' acquaintance. Such were the Greek
authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who
could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that
we now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history
of Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the
notice of men who called themselves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however,
thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in
Greek a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing on
the temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in the
quotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is little
more than a list of kings' names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, the
great seat of Egyptian learning. The general correctness of Manetho's
history, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our
finding the k