The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (11 page)

It is perhaps this that led to the tales that Aristotle determined to put a stop to his protégé’s rise, his unseen hand controlling events in Babylon during Alexander’s last days, bringing him to his death.

But if Aristotle and Alexander grew apart in later years with regard to their views on kingship and rule, Aristotle’s methods were still close to the young king’s heart, and Pliny and others suggest that he remained imbued with a love of practical observation, of the finding and collecting of examples of everything. It was something that Aristotle dreamed of and that Alexander, master of the world, could bring to pass, and it would have a vital role in the creation of Alexandria. Pliny tells us that Alexander gave Aristotle control of all the hunters, fishermen, and fowlers in his empire, and made him overseer of all the royal forests, lakes, ponds, and cattle ranges, as recognition of his tutor’s masterly knowledge of all things natural. It’s also reported that Alexander sent many books and treasures back to Aristotle from the libraries of Babylon, Persia, and India.

Even after Aristotle left the service of the Macedonian state, Alexander continued to feed him with the information and objects that he so desired. Indeed, Alexander had sent out orders to the fishermen, hunters, and farmers of his lands to send all the strange devices they possessed or interesting objects they found to Aristotle for his study and for use in his lectures. At the same time, and for many years previously, Aristotle, who had inherited wealth from his father, had become an avid collector of books. He collected them on any subject and in any language; it didn’t matter what they were about, it just mattered that he had a copy—a copy of everything. It was a passion he had held ever since he entered the Academy—Plato’s nickname for Aristotle was “the Reader.”

These two collections—of objects and books—were, though it seems strange today, something entirely new. Aristotle was the founder of modern empirical science, the first man to attempt to study and systematize the things he observed around him, and the result bore fruit in the philosopher’s own school, which he founded in Athens on the banks of the Ilissus River. Here, in the sanctuary to the Lycian Apollo, he established a school and research institute that was to become the prototype of all subsequent educational institutions: the Lyceum. Today there is little left of the Lyceum to see, just an archaeological site between the Museum of Modern Art and the British embassy, but in Aristotle’s time the sanctuary was surrounded by covered walkways where he strolled as he taught, giving rise to the name “Peripatetic” for his school of philosophy. Here for twelve years he would lecture his students on metaphysics and logic in the mornings (
esoteria
), while in the afternoons he would present public lectures on ethics, politics, and rhetoric (
exoteria
). Here also resided his great collection of objects, which inspired his thoughts and demonstrated his theories. This was the first museum in Western history, a resource for scholars to study and demonstrate as they walked through the stoas—the great halls where the philosophers taught, hence “Stoics”—and gardens of the Lyceum.

Likewise his collection of books, brought from all over the known world, was the first attempt to gather all written knowledge in one place, the first true, if private, library. These were the seeds of the modern world, first planted in the Lyceum, but which would grow to maturity not long after Aristotle’s death, in the soil of Alexandria.

The death of Alexander in Babylon also ushered in the last sad year in Aristotle’s life. After Alexander’s death a wave of hostility against Macedonians swept through Athens, and he was accused of impiety—the same charge that had been brought against Socrates. Placed in an impossible position, with the stark fate of Socrates before him, Aristotle chose to leave Athens and his beloved Lyceum, saying he would rather abandon the city than give the Athenians another chance to sin against philosophy. Aristotle retired to his house at Chalcis in Euboea, where he died within the year from a stomach complaint.

 
 
But if relations between Aristotle and Alexander had been strained and the strange intertwining of their fates had brought an end to both men, both their legacies were being kept alive across the Mediterranean by that other pupil of both—Ptolemy. What level of correspondence existed between Aristotle and Ptolemy is unknown, although Aristotle’s writings against Cleomenes perhaps suggest that the old master was still guiding his pupil’s hand. But regardless of how actively Aristotle was involved in Ptolemy’s plans, it was in Ptolemy’s Egypt that the ideas of philosophy’s great triumvirate—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—would be tested in the real world. If there was ever to be a land of philosopher-kings, it would be here and now.

CHAPTER FIVE

CITY OF THE MIND

D. H. Lawrence,
Fantasia of the Unconscious

 
 
T
here had been nothing in the way Ptolemy came to power to suggest that he intended to behave differently from any of the kings of the ancient Mediterranean. He had gained his kingdom through battles, grave robbing, and murder, yet by the time of Aristotle’s death on March 7, 322 BC, word was already circulating that the great work starting in Egypt was not, unlike her neighbors’, simply directed at building armies and war machines. Instead, the focus was on creating something far more unusual: a vast body of knowledge. In an age when most of the great philosophers and poets frequently moved between cities and countries, looking for new patrons and avoiding the endless wars, here was a place of continuous protection and patronage, a place where the armories were being filled not just with weapons but with the tools of pure reason. And so the greatest minds of the day—indeed some of the greatest minds of all time—began to answer the call.

One of the first to send Ptolemy word of his support for the project was, perhaps not surprisingly, Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum. Theophrastus had been Aristotle’s close friend, both in Macedonia and later in Athens. Indeed, Aristotle had given him that name, meaning “divine speaker,” because of his graceful conversation; when he had first come to study philosophy he was simply Tyrtanius from Lesbos.

Theophrastus had also been a close friend of Aristotle’s nephew, the historian Callisthenes, and must have shared his master’s discomfort at his arbitrary and ultimately fatal treatment at the hands of Alexander. The depth of the friendship between the two scholars of the Lyceum can be seen from Aristotle’s will, in which he appointed Theophrastus as guardian to his children as well as confirmed him as his successor. And Theophrastus did not disappoint his old friend. At the Lyceum he became renowned as a brilliant polymath, and in a lifetime of scholarship he surveyed nearly every branch of knowledge, producing works which were still consulted well into the Middle Ages. Hailed as a “Father of Botany,” Theophrastus developed Aristotle’s empirical approach to the study of nature by means of observation, collection, and classification, making him perhaps history’s first true scientific researcher.

An example of his practical approach to problem solving comes in the story that he invented the “message in a bottle.” He had been considering the problem of where the water in the Mediterranean Sea came from and believed that it must flow into the basin from the Atlantic Ocean. To test this he sealed a message in a bottle, asking its discoverer to send news of where he or she had found it, and threw it into the sea to see where the currents would take it. We do not know if he ever received a reply, if his bottle was lost, or if it is still lying on some forgotten Mediterranean beach awaiting discovery.

At the Lyceum, Theophrastus had become a star, an international scientific celebrity, attracting students from all over the ancient world. At one time he is said to have had two thousand pupils. During his thirty-five-year tenure there he became so popular with the Athenians that when the old charge of impiety was brought against him he, unlike Socrates and Aristotle before him, simply brushed it off and continued teaching. Besides his great works on botany, Theophrastus also wrote treatises with titles like
On Fire, On Sweat, On Swooning, On the Difference of the Voices of Similar Animals,
and
On Signs of Weather.
His book
On Stones
is the oldest known work on geology. When he died he was granted a public funeral, and Diogenes Laertius tells us that “the whole population of Athens, honouring him greatly, followed him to the grave” (Diogenes Laertius,
Life of Theophrastus,
chapter 11, in
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
).

No doubt remembering the privilege of his own education from Aristotle, Ptolemy was quick to invite Theophrastus to become tutor to his own son (also called Ptolemy)—not that that was the only attraction to having the philosopher in the city. For Theophrastus was not simply the inheritor of Aristotle’s philosophical legacy. In his will Aristotle left all his personal library—his collection of books by other authors, his own published works, and, critically, his unpublished lecture notes—to his friend.

But Ptolemy’s hopes of securing both Theophrastus and the collections of Aristotle were to be disappointed. Athens was still the home of the Lyceum, still the great hope of Greek philosophy, despite the terrible treatment many of her finest sons had received at the citizens’ own hands. So the news came back that the great philosopher and the library of Aristotle would not be moving to Alexandria. In his place Theophrastus sent the seeds of a new academy in the form of his most brilliant pupil, Strato of Lampsacus. If anyone could infuse the future Ptolemy II with a love of learning, it would be Strato. Another polymath whose interests spread to all areas of life, he wrote three books on

 
Strato would be to Ptolemy II what Aristotle had been to Alexander, or at least that was his father’s hope. But just as Strato was stepping ashore in the Great Harbor to take up his position at court, another Athenian, albeit a refugee, and another friend of Theophrastus was also making his way toward Alexandria, and he would begin to formalize Ptolemy’s grand plan to make Alexandria the intellectual center of the world. Demetrius of Phalerum understood philosophy from both sides, having walked with Aristotle through the stoas of the Lyceum but also having ruled Athens and attempted to put those theories into practice. His arrival in Alexandria had been fortuitous for Ptolemy, giving him the opportunity to ally a well-known statesman and philosopher to his new cult of Serapis. We do not know if he came from Athens bearing copies of the books of Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. We do not know if he brought some of the strange objects from the museum that Alexander had ordered sent to his old tutor. But what he certainly brought with him was an idea. Demetrius knew that the fame of Athens was not its democracy, but its philosophers. He knew the center of a city, the center of a state, should be more than a palace, a parliament, or an armory. It should be a museum—literally the “place of the Muses,” goddesses of poetry, music, dance, and the liberal arts and sciences, where these subjects should be both taught and extended by observation and experiment, and all manner of knowledge contemplated. Here the greatest minds could come to have their great thoughts, where strange and wonderful things could be studied and considered, and where all the ideas of every thinker who had come before could be consulted in a single collection of books. This was the true key to being master of the world, and if Ptolemy sought greatness then he would have to create the greatest museum.

Ptolemy was inspired. He had probably already been collecting the books he required to write the great history of Alexander he was planning. He still possessed Alexander’s own campaign diary as well as the works of his other historians, including the unfortunate Callisthenes. Now Demetrius challenged him to supplement these with other works, any works, for everything might add some detail or throw light into some dark corner of the tale. Demetrius recommended that the king gather about him all the books about kingship he could muster, along with books on the geography of the lands they had crossed, on their ancient and recent history, and on the customs of the various peoples the Macedonians had encountered in their Asian campaigns.

Soon the shelves of the palace were filling with books (the term
bibliotheka
literally means “bookshelf ”), and by 300 BC they were overflowing.

So the area around the recently completed royal residence had become a building site again, this time for dormitories and assembly halls, laboratories, observatories, and zoological gardens. The city of the mind, like the dream of Alexander, was being turned from an idea into a physical reality. The huge wealth of Egypt, Ptolemy’s wealth, was being focused in a new direction. The museum and library of Alexandria, two of the greatest institutions the world would ever know, were under construction.