OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 199 stitious Egypt.^'- The first of the Ptolemies had been com- manded, by a dream, to import the mysterious stranger from the coast of Pontus, where he had been long adored by the inhabitants of Sinope ; but his attributes and his reign were so imperfectly understood that it became a subject of dispute, whether he represented the bright orb of day or the gloomy monarch of the subterraneous regions."^-^ The Egyptians, who were obstinately devoted to the religion of their fathers, refused to admit this foreign deity within the walls of their cities.^* But the obsequious priests, who were seduced by the liberality of the Ptolemies, submitted, without resistance, to the power of the god of Pontus ; an honourable and domestic genealogy was provided ; and this fortunate usurper was introduced into the throne and bed of Osiris,*^ the husband of Isis, and the celestial monarch of Egypt. Alexandria, which claimed his peculiar protection, gloried in the name of the city of Serapis. His temple,^*^ which rivalled the pride and magni- ficence of the Capitol, was erected on the spacious summit of an artificial mount, raised one hundred steps above the level of the adjacent parts of the city ; and the interior cavity was strongly supported by arches, and distributed into vaults and subterran- eous apartments. The consecrated buildings were surrounded by a quadrangular portico ; the stately halls, and exquisite statues, displayed the triumph of the arts ; and the treasures of ancient learning were preserved in the famous Alexandrian library, which had arisen with new splendour from its ashes. ^^ ^ Gerard Vossius (Opera, torn. v. p. 80, and de Idololatria, 1. i. c. 29) strives to support the strange notion of the Fathers ; that the patriarch Joseph was adored in Egypt as the bull Apis and the god Serapis.
- 3 Origo dei nondum nostris celebrata. ^gyptiorum antistites sic memorant,
&c. Tacit. Hist. iv. 83. The Greeks, who had travelled into Egypt, were alike ignorant of this new deity. [Cp. Mahaffy, Empire of the Ptolemies, p. 72-74.]
- Macrobius, Saturnal. 1. i. c. 7. Such a living fact decisively proves his
foreign extraction. ^ At Rome Isis and Serapis were united in the same temple. The precedency which the queen assumed may seem to betray her unequal alliance with the stranger of Pontus. But the superiority of the female sex was established in Egypt as a civil and religious institution (Diodor. Sicul. torn. i. 1. i, p. 31, edit. Wesseling), and the same order is observed in Plutarch's Treatise of Isis and Osiris ; whom he identifies with Serapis. ■^ Ammianus (xxii. 16). The Expositio totius Mundi (p. 8, in Hudson's Geograph. Minor, tom. iii.) and Rufinus (1. ii. c. 22) celebrate the Sei-apeum, as one of the wonders of the world. •* See M^moires de I'Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. ix. p. 397-416. The old library of the Ptolemies was totally consumed in Caesar's Alexandrian war. Marc Antony gave the whole collection of Pergamus (200,000 volumes) to Cleopatra, as the foundation of the new library of Alexandria. [See Appendix 11.]
