Alexandria, school of

Group of writers and scholars of Alexandria, Egypt, who made the city the chief centre of culture in the Western world from about 331 BC to AD 642. They include the poets Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Theocritus; Euclid, pioneer of geometry; Eratosthenes, a geographer; Hipparchus, who developed a system of trigonometry; Ptolemy, whose system of astronomy endured for over 1,000 years; and the Jewish philosopher Philo. The Gnostics and Neo-Platonists also flourished in Alexandria.

Coming in the wake of Aristotle and his disciples, the Alexandrians devoted themselves principally to science, mathematics, and scholarship, in which fields their achievement is impressive. In their writings, however, there is a lack of invention, together with an undue emphasis on the ingenious, or display of learning for its own sake, and a deliberate imitation of an archaic style and vocabulary. Within these limitations they produced works of great virtuosity and charm, but nothing to rival the great works of the 5th-century Greek writers.

The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron are some of the chief examples of the mythical works. Of the didactic epics the chief are Callimachus' Hecate, fragments of which are extant; Nicander of Colophon's two medical works, entitled Theriaca and Alexipharmaca; and the Phaenomena of Aratus, a work on astronomy. Other epic poets were Dionysius, Euphorion, Rhianus, Dicaearchus, and Oppian. Of the elegiac poets Philetas of Cos, the tutor of Ptolemy II, was the earliest; and Callimachus, of whose works only a few hymns, epigrams, and elegies remain, was the greatest. Among the lyric poets were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolia, and Lycophron. Epigrams were also written by the Alexandrians and Timon the philosopher was the author of three books of lampoons. Tragedy, too, played an important part, but none of the works of the seven great dramatists who were known as the Alexandrian Pleiades has been preserved. Theocritus was a celebrated bucolic poet, and his Idylls, which are pictures of the country life of the ordinary people, greatly influenced Roman poets, especially Virgil.

Besides the poets there were the critics and grammarians of the Alexandrian school, who gave to the world the ancient Greek writings in a perfectly intelligible form, for they devoted their time to criticism, the explanation of words, and the arrangement of the texts. Amongst these great critics were Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus of Samos, Alexander of Aetolia, Lycophron, Callimachus, and Eratosthenes.

Of the mathematical school Euclid was the founder; and his pupils included Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, the author of a work on conic sections; Hipparchus, the celebrated astronomer, whose catalogue of the stars is preserved by Ptolemy; and Eratosthenes, who wrote on astronomy, geometry, geography, and history.