HYPATIA, THE MAIDEN PHILOSOPHER. 361

capital, he founded there a grand state institution,
which became famous as the Museum, and to which
philosophers, scholars, and students flocked from all
parts of the world. This institution, which became
the first university, at one time had no less than
fourteen thousand students within its walls. Here
all learned men could find a retreat from the bustle
and activity of the great metropolis which Alexan-
dria became, and pursue their studies, or teach their
pupils, in peace, and with little hinderance to the
promulgation of the most diverse and heterodox
opinions.

Connected with it were two immense libraries, the
pride and boast of antiquity, and containing among
their seven hundred thousand volumes all that was
worthy of preservation and study in the writings
of the past. In this secure retreat philosophers and
scholars, supported in ease and even in luxury by
the wise liberality of the dynasty of the Ptolemies,
spent their days in mental culture and learned lec-
tures and debates. Here the pursuit of science, which
had been inaugurated by Aristotle, was continned by
a succession of great astronomers, geometers, chem-
ists, and physicians, for whose use were furnished a
botanical garden, a menagerie of animals, all the as-
tronomical instruments then used, and, perhaps most
important of all, facilities for human dissection,—the
first school of anatomy ever known.

Here, in the heart of the great library, battening
on books, flourished a race of learned literary critics,
engaged in the study of Homer and the other already
classical writers of Greece, and supplying new and

Q 81