IAN DRAFTSMANSHIP]

Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means of
squares, which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet high,
checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art,
when the Greek painters were idle enough to use it. We hear but little
of the statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help
remarking that, while the public places of Athens were filled with
the statues of the great and good men who had deserved well of their
country, the statues which were most common in Alexandria were those of
Cline, a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to the
king of Egypt.

The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by his
son. He even bought from his own soldiers and freed from slavery one
hundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over
Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one hundred and
twenty drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, to those of his subjects who
held them either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount
of the ransom, the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewish
advisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixed
by the Jewish law as the price of a slave. The Jews who lived in Lower
Egypt, in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, looked upon that
country as their home. They had already a Greek translation of either
the whole or some part of their sacred writings, which had been made for
those whose families had been for so many generations in Egypt that they
could not read the language of their forefathers. But they now hoped,
by means of the king's friendship and the weight which his wishes must
carry with them, to have a Greek translation of the Bible which should
bear the stamp of official authority.

Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris-taaus, a man whose
wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard,
both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest
of Jerusalem; and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a
Greek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer,
so runs the tradition, named seventy elders to undertake the task, who
held their first sitting on the business at the king's dinner-table;
when Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was also
present, who had been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from