dren were alike
heated into passion, and overcome with eagerness and warmth of feeling.
A scurrilous song or a horse-race would so rouse them into a quarrel
that they could not hear for their own noise, nor see for the dust
raised by their own bustle in the hippodrome; while all those acts of
their rulers, which in a more wholesome state of society would have
called for notice, passed by unheeded.

[Illustration: 086.jpg EGYPTIAN WIG (BRITISH MUSEUM)]

They cared more for the tumble of a favourite charioteer than for the
sinking state of the nation. The ready employment of ridicule in the
place of argument, of wit instead of graver reason, of nicknames
as their most powerful weapon, was one of the worst points in the
Alexandrian character. Frankness and manliness are hardly to be looked
for under a despotic government where men are forbidden to speak their
minds openly; and the Alexandrians made use of such checks upon their
rulers as the law allowed them. They lived under an absolute monarchy
tempered only by ridicule. Though their city was four hundred years old,
they were still colonists and without a mother-country. They had very
little faith in anything great or good, whether human or divine. They
had few cherished prejudices, no honoured traditions, sadly little love
of fame, and they wrote no histories. But in luxury and delicacy they
set the fashion to their conquerors. The wealthy Alexandrian walked
about Rome in a scarlet robe, in summer fanning himself with gold, and
displaying on his fingers rings carefully suited to the season; as his
hands were too delicate to carry his heavier jewels in the warm weather.
At the supper tables of the rich, the Alexandrian singing boys were
much valued; the smart young Roman walked along the Via Sacra humming
an Alexandrian tune; the favourite comic actor, the delight of the
city, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, was an Alexandrian; the
Retiarius, who, with no weapon but a net, fought against an armed
gladiator in the Roman forum, and came off conqueror in twenty-six such
battles, was an Alexandrian; and no breed of fighting-cocks was thought
equal to those reared in the suburbs of Alexandria.

In the reign of Augustus the Roman generals had been defeated in their
attacks on Arabia; but under Trajan, when the Romans were masters of all
the countries which surround Arabia Nabataea, and when Egypt was so
far quiet that the legions could be withdrawn without danger to t