(New York, 1883), and Woltmann and Woermann, Geschichte der Malerei (English translation, New York, 1880).
ALEXANDRIAN CO'DEX. See Bible.
ALEXANDRIAN LI'BRARY. The plan for this, the most famous collection of the ancient world, seems to have been formed by Ptolemy I., Soter (died 283 B.C.), perhaps at the suggestion of the Athenian, Demetrius of Phalerum. The development of this plan and the connection of the library with the museum was the work of Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, about 275 B.C., who collected books on a hitherto unknown scale and placed them at the disposal of the learned men gathered in the museum. The management was intrusted to a series of scholars, whose labors led them to a careful study of Greek literary history and the classification of writers, with results of great importance for the transmission of classical texts to our own time. The first librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus, under whom the poets were arranged. The first catalogue seems to have been the work of Callimachus, and included a classification of the authors, according to their principal themes, as historians, orators, etc. Under each author's name was given a brief biographical sketch, a list of his genuine and spurious works, the opening words of each work, a brief table of contents, and the number of lines occupied in the standard MS. Variations in names or titles were carefully noted. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the number of rolls in the main library was 490,000, and in the annex, in the temple of Scrapis, 42,800. At the time of Cæsar's visit, in 47 B.C., the number had risen to 700,000, of which a large part was consumed in a great fire, which spread from the burning fleet. This loss was in part replaced by the library of Pergamus, which Antony gave to Cleopatra. In Roman times, however, the chief literary centre seems to have been the library in the Serapeum which was destroved when the Christians sacked the temple (390 A.D.). The fate of the rest of the library after the loss of its most valuable part is unknown, but it seems likely that much of it had been lost before the surrender of the city to the Arabs. The story of the destruction of the books by order of the Caliph Omar is now universally discredited, as resting on very unreliable sources. Consult: Ritschl, Die alexandrinischen Bibliotheken, in his Opuscula Philologica I. (Leipzig, 1867-79), and Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit (Leipzig, 1891-92).
AL'EXAN'DRIANS, Epistle to the. See Apochrypha, New Testament.
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. A school of theology founded in Alexandria by Pantænus (180-203), taught by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen, and carried on until the end of the fourth century. It presented Christian truth as modified by philosophic speculation. It was well attended and very influential. Many of the great leaders of orthodoxy came from it, as Athanasius, Cyril, the two Gregories, and Basil. In biblical interpretation it stood for the allegorical method. Consult Kingsley, Alexandria and Her Schools (London, 1854).
AL'EXAN'DRINES. Rhyming verses, consisting each of twelve syllables of six measures. The name is most probably derived from an old French poem on Alexander the Great, belonging to the twelfth or thirteenth century, in which this measure was first used; according to others, it was so called from the name of the author of that poem. The Alexandrine has become the regular epic, or heroic, verse of the French, among whom each line is divided in the middle into two hemistichs, the sixth syllable always ending a word. In English, this rule is not always observed, as in the following verse from Spenser:
That all the woods shall answer, and their echo ring.
The only considerable English poem wholly written in Alexandrines is Drayton's Polyolbion; but the Spenserian stanza regularly ends in an Alexandrine, and the measure occurs occasionally in blank verse and in our common heroic verse, as the last verse of a couplet:
When both are full, they feed our blest abode. Like those that watered once the paradise of God. — Dryden.
AL'EXAN'DRISTS. Those Renaissance followers of Aristotle who attached themselves with much zeal to the interpretation of Aristotle given by Alexander of Aphrodisias. They stood in bitter rivalry with the Averroists and the Thomists. The dispute concerned itself chiefly with the relation between the individual soul and the universal reason, and with the consequences of this relation for personal immortality. The Thomists, following Thomas Aquinas, held that Aristotle regarded reason as belonging to the individual soul; the Alexandrists maintained that Aristotle considered the individual soul as a merely animal and mortal function, which during the earthly life alone is rationalized by the informing power of universal reason: the Averroists held the intermediate view, viz., that the universal reason works upon the soul and makes it actual intelligence, and then incorporates this actual intelligence with its own eternal nature. Accordingly, the Thomists believed in individual immortality, the Alexandrists in no individual immortality, and the Averroists in the immortality of what has been the individual, but has lost its individuality, to be taken up as a permanent element in the life of God. The leading Averroists were Nicoletto Vernias (died 1499), Alessandro Achillini (died 1518), and Agostino Nifo (1473-1546); the leading Alexandrists were Ermolao Barbaro (1454-93) and Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1524), the leading Aristotelian of his time; among the Thomists of the Renaissance may be mentioned Francis Suarez (1548-1617). Consult: Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Berlin, 1894-98; English translation by Morris, New York, 1871); E. Renan, Averroès et l'Averroïsme (Paris, 1852).
AL'EXAN'DRITE. See Chrysoberyl.
ALEXANDROPOL, ;i'leks-an-dr0'p61
(Alexander + Gk. πόλις, polis, city), formerly Gumri. A fortified town in the Caucasus, 85 miles southwest of Tiflis, and 30 miles from Kars (Map: Russia, F 6). It is an important strategic point commanding the entrance to Armenia. The fort is 300 feet above the town level, and is large and strong, capable of accommodating 10,000 soldiers. The chief industry of the town is the manufacture of silk. It was the scene of several encounters between the Russians
