wonderful company of men who performed the feats that are about to
be recorded did not all find their home in Alexandria, to be sure; but
they all came more or less under the Alexandrian influence. We shall see
that there are two other important centres; one out in Sicily, almost
at the confines of the Greek territory in the west; the other in Asia
Minor, notably on the island of Samos--the island which, it will be
recalled, was at an earlier day the birthplace of Pythagoras. But
whereas in the previous century colonists from the confines of the
civilized world came to Athens, now all eyes turned towards Alexandria,
and so improved were the facilities for communication that no doubt the
discoveries of one coterie of workers were known to all the others much
more quickly than had ever been possible before. We learn, for example,
that the studies of Aristarchus of Samos were definitely known to
Archimedes of Syracuse, out in Sicily. Indeed, as we shall see, it
is through a chance reference preserved in one of the writings of
Archimedes that one of the most important speculations of Aristarchus is
made known to us. This illustrates sufficiently the intercommunication
through which the thought of the Alexandrian epoch was brought into a
single channel. We no longer, as in the day of the earlier schools of
Greek philosophy, have isolated groups of thinkers. The scientific drama
is now played out upon a single stage; and if we pass, as we shall in
the present chapter, from Alexandria to Syracuse and from Syracuse to
Samos, the shift of scenes does no violence to the dramatic unities.

Notwithstanding the number of great workers who were not properly
Alexandrians, none the less the epoch is with propriety termed
Alexandrian. Not merely in the third century B.C., but throughout the
lapse of at least four succeeding centuries, the city of Alexander
and the Ptolemies continued to hold its place as the undisputed
culture-centre of the world. During that period Rome 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 int