He founded and maintained a museum, an establishment that corresponded very much to a modern university, for the study of literature, science and the arts.

Under his successors, particularly the third Ptolemy, the museum developed, more especially the library, which contained more than half a million volumes.

The teachers were drawn from all centres, and the names of the great Alexandrians are among the most famous in the history of human knowledge, including such men as Archimedes, Euclid, Strabo and Ptolemy.
In mechanics and physics, astronomy, mathematics and optics, the work of the Alexandrians constitutes the basis of a large part of our modern knowledge.

The school-boy of today--or at any rate of my day--studies the identical problems that were set by Euclid 300 B.C., and the student of physics still turns to Archimedes and Heron, and the astronomer to Eratosthenes and Hipparchus.

To those of you who wish to get a brief review of the state of science in the Alexandrian School I would recommend the chapter in Vol.