s, and
others not less numerous lay underground. There were long rows of rooms
containing above a hundred thousand rolls of books, the famous library
of the Serapeum, with separate apartments for readers and copyists;
there were store-rooms, refectories and assembly-rooms for the
high-priests of the temple, for teachers and disciples; while acrid
odors came up from the laboratories, and the fragrance of cooking from
the kitchen and bake-houses. In the very thickness of the walls of the
basement were cells for penitents and recluses, long since abandoned,
and rooms for the menials and slaves, of whom hundreds were employed
in the precincts; under ground spread the mystical array of halls,
grottoes, galleries and catacombs dedicated to the practice of the
Mysteries and the initiation of neophytes; on the roof stood various
observatories--among them one erected for the study of the heavens by
Eratosthenes, where Claudius Ptolemaeus had watched and worked. Up here
astronomers, star-gazers, horoscopists and Magians spent their nights,
while, far below them, in the temple-courts that were surrounded by
store-houses and stables, the blood of sacrificed beasts was shed and
the entrails of the victims were examined.

The house of Serapis was a whole world in little, and centuries had
enriched it with wealth, beauty, and the noblest treasures of art and
learning. Magic and witchcraft hedged it in with a maze of mystical and
symbolical secrets, and philosophy had woven a tissue of speculation
round the person of the god. The sanctuary was indeed the centre of
Hellenic culture in the city of Alexander; what marvel then, that
the heathen should believe that with the overthrow of Serapis and his
temple, the earth, nay the universe itself must sink into the abyss?

Anxious spirits and throbbing hearts were those that now sought shelter
in the Serapeum, fully prepared to perish with their god, and yet eager
with enthusiasm to avert his fall if possible.

A strange medley indeed of men and women had collected within
these sacred precincts! Grave sages, philosophers, grammarians,
mathematicians, naturalists, and physicians clung to Olympius and obeyed
him in silence. Rhetoricians with shaven faces, Magians and sorcerers,
whose long beards flowed over robes embroidered with strange figures;
students, dressed after the fashion of their forefathers in the palmy
days of Athens; men of every age, who dubbed themselves artists though
they w