The Rise and Fall of Alexandria

by Justin Pollard

  To provide water for the city, another canal stretched from the Nile near the town of Canopus to great underground communal cisterns in the city. For those fortunate to be living in the wealthier sections of the city, the larger private houses were fitted with their own cisterns giving their owners the unique advantage in a desert land of having fresh water “on tap.” Nor were the inhabitants of Pharos forgotten, and an aqueduct carried water for the island from the Nile canal, through the city, and across the heptastadion.

  Within these boundaries it was Dinocrates’ task to fit this perfect city, and the results were spectacular. Imagine the traveler whose ship puts in at Alexandria’s Great Harbor in these early days. He would walk along the new wharves and pass south through the Gate of the Moon into the city itself. Ahead lies a 101-foot-wide boulevard known later as the Street of the Soma, or “body,” after the mausoleum of Alexander and the Ptolemaic kings that stood on its flank. Down each side the dazzling white of marble colonnades leads the eye to the southern gate of the city—the Gate of the Sun—and, glittering beyond it, the waters of Lake Mareotis. Here Nile transports laden with Egyptian grain might be seen tying up alongside the marsh harbor, while distant sails carry Greek treasures away to the Nile Valley. Walking down the granite-paved street, our visitor eventually comes to the major crossroads where the great east- west Canopic Way intersects the Street of the Soma. In years to come this will be the chaotic, noisy heart of the city, filled with street philosophers, tradesmen, and hawkers, but for now it is still quiet. To the left along the way, in the far distance, stands the Canopic Gate, beyond which a dusty road leads east toward the Nile and “old” Egypt. To the right the colonnades stretch out to the Necropic Gate at the threshold of the City of the Dead. Beyond lie the gardens and embalming houses in which the inhabitants of this city will be buried in centuries to come, a silent other-world of incense-laden air and voiceless mausolea. Along both these streets and the grid of smaller roads that spread out from them, plots are already being divided up. There will be a theater and a stadium, a riding track, a gymnasium, and a host of temples and shrines. The large space needed for the hippodrome will have to be found outside the city limits, beyond the Canopic Gate, while the royal quarter will quickly fill with ever more lavish palaces and lodges.

  Other wonders too would soon come to Alexandria, but with the building of the heptastadion and the laying out of the main roads, the fundamental plan of the greatest city in the ancient world was complete. Plutarch in his Life of Alexander commented that the overall shape was, appropriately enough, like that of a military Macedonian chlamys, the Macedonian short cloak—gathered in the middle between the Mediterranean and Mareotis and splaying out to east and west. Long before the lighthouse shone out from Pharos, before the foundation of the library or museum, before even Alexander’s body was entombed in its marble-and-rock-crystal vault, his city was already a miracle. The flour and sand had become marble and granite.

  The people who gazed out from their new marble porticoes in the nascent city were as varied in origin and wealth as the peoples Alexander had conquered. The city had been laid out not in three “classes,” as Hippodamus had suggested, but in three main ethnic districts: the original village site of Rhakotis became the native Egyptian quarter, the Brucheum was home to both Greek immigrants and the Greek rulers of the city, and a Jewish quarter was populated with both local Jewish residents and traders and a large population (some report it as one hundred thousand people) of captives, brought here by Ptolemy after he had conquered Jerusalem. Later other districts would follow, but already this blend of European, African, and Near Eastern peoples was unique.

  We have no contemporary description of the early city, but later travelers visited and described what this seed would become. Strabo, a Greek geographer, whose name is actually an insulting Roman term meaning “squinty,” visited the city during Julius Caesar’s lifetime and recorded how by his time, every space within the plan laid out by Dinocrates had been filled with buildings:

  The city contains most beautiful public precincts and also the royal palaces, which constitute one-fourth or even one-third of the whole circuit of the city; for just as each of the kings, from love of splendour, was wont to add some adornment to the public monuments, so also he would invest himself at his own expense with a residence, in addition to those already built, so that now, to quote the words of the poet, “there is building upon building.” All, however, are connected with one another and the harbour, even those that lie outside the harbour.

  Strabo, Geography, book 17, chapter 8

  But if it was the whim of Alexander that had founded the city and the will of Ptolemy that made it his capital, it was something more powerful than both of them that made it a success from the start. The reason people from across the ancient world were settling here was trade. Alexandria was rapidly becoming the entrepôt of the world. Sited between two harbors, the city stood at the crossroads of the ancient world, where the fine art and technology of the Greek city-states could be traded for the vast food resources of the Nile Valley, the treasures of Africa, and the luxuries of Asia. By the time Diodorus visited sometime around the middle of the first century BC it was unsurpassed:

  The city in general has grown so much in later times that many reckon it to be the first city of the civilized world, and it is certainly far ahead of all the rest in elegance and extent and riches and luxury. The number of its inhabitants surpasses that of those in other cities. At the time when we were in Egypt, those who kept the census returns of the population said that its free residents were more than three hundred thousand, and that the king received from the revenues of the country more than six thousand talents.

  Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, book 17, chapter 52

  Alexandria was a commercial success, and once the body of the hero himself was installed as its centerpiece it would gain an electrifying additional significance. It would become a city of God.

  While Alexander’s great plan seemed to be coming together, Ptolemy’s place in succeeding to this patrimony was by no means yet certain. Ptolemy’s retiring to Egypt with the body of Alexander sent out a clear message to any Macedonian generals who might dispute the succession. If Perdiccas or anyone else wanted to reintegrate Egypt into that empire, he would now have to fight Ptolemy for it. Egypt was hence the first fragment to fall away from the Macedonian Empire, beginning a sequence of collapse that would lead to years of internecine warfare.

  But in the last remaining days of peace there was one other problem in Egypt to clear up. It was time for Ptolemy to turn to that other festering sore, that other dangerous reminder of the old times. Cleomenes of Naucratis was still a powerful official in Egypt, and still the man in charge of funding the building of Ptolemy’s new city. But as that dream came to fruition, so the potentially dangerous Cleomenes’ usefulness was coming to an end.

  It was perhaps an old face from Ptolemy’s childhood, Aristotle, who suggested the solution. Cleomenes had somehow come to Aristotle’s attention, and in the great man’s economic treatise Oeconomica he describes at length some of the hyparchos’s more “unusual” methods of raising funds. In one instance he threatened to attack the sacred crocodiles who ate one of his servants, forcing their priests to produce a large quantity of gold in order to buy off his wrath and so protect the sanctity of the reptiles.

  In particular Aristotle reports the unique approach he took to funding and filling the new city of Alexandria by persuading the inhabitants of the nearby market town of Canopus to move to the city: “Sailing therefore to Canopus he informed the priests and the men of property there that he was come to remove them. The priests and residents thereupon contributed money to induce him to leave their market where it was” (Aristotle, Oeconomica, book 2, 1352a).

  Cleomenes was not about to forgo a substantial bribe, so he took the money and left the inhabitants of Canopus in peace, at least for a little while. But in fact the residents of the city had just bought some
time while the finishing touches were put to Alexandria. Then Cleomenes returned “and proceeded to demand an excessive sum; which represented, he said, the difference the change of site would make to him. They however declared themselves unable to pay it, and were accordingly removed” (Aristotle, Oeconomica, book 2, 1352a).

  Aristotle went on to list numerous other cons, tricks, and elaborate extortions by which this rather faithless financial adviser lined the imperial pocket and his own. Whether this information had come to Aristotle from Ptolemy, or whether it was common knowledge, is unknown. Perhaps Cleomenes felt invulnerable enough even to boast of his financial “achievements.” If he did so, however, he was a fool, for Aristotle was writing his death warrant.

  Perhaps, standing in front of the beautiful city now growing up around him, Cleomenes thought his work, his reputation, or even his money could protect him. He was quite mistaken. In fact, making money—his great talent—would be his undoing. His sharp financial practices had been overlooked for years by rulers eager to line their own coffers, but Ptolemy now turned with righteous indignation on the man who had built Alexandria for him. The financial wizard who, more than any other person, had actually turned Alexander’s orders into architectural reality was charged with embezzling the staggering sum of eight thousand Egyptian talents. To put that into the context of the day, it was enough money to have paid one of the laborers building the city for over sixty-six thousand years. It was also of course a charge which undoubtedly had a certain ring of truth to it, even if Ptolemy had massaged the exact figures. As a result Cleomenes was tried, found guilty, and promptly executed.

  It was another astute move on Ptolemy’s part. He had removed a dangerous and wealthy rival and at the same time made himself hugely popular in Egypt for bringing “justice” to bear on a man who had bled the country dry. But Ptolemy had no intention of returning the money. Alexandria was built, the population was moved, and the money in the state (and Cleomenes’) coffers would now be at his command. It was a most fortunate situation for Ptolemy, and he needed good fortune, for war was coming.

  Alexander would have wept to see what followed his death. Perdiccas, his old friend, could not stand by quietly while provoked by Ptolemy. Ptolemy had Alexander’s body and was clearly carving out a piece of his empire for his sole use. And so, in a vain attempt to hold together the whole idea of a unified empire, the regent attacked Egypt with the full might of the Macedonian army—Indian elephants, mahouts, and all. But his high-handed arrogance and his failure to appreciate the impossibility of ruling this vast, messy collection of conquests alone would prove his downfall. Although others of the friends and companions of Alexander marched through Sinai into Egypt with Perdiccas, not all of them still believed that the empire could be maintained. Fewer still believed, or wanted to believe, that it should be maintained by Perdiccas. Thus, the army that burst into the eastern delta was not the happy, all-conquering band of brothers that had only recently fought its way across Asia to India.

  On reaching the Nile, Perdiccas ordered his army across, the elephants in the front, then the shield bearers and ladder carriers who were to be the vanguard of his attack on a fort known as the Fort of Camels. However, Ptolemy was not far away, and he and his army dashed to the fort and quickly took up positions, prepared to repel the assault: “At once the shield bearers set up the scaling ladders and began to mount them while the elephant borne troops were tearing the palisades to pieces and throwing down the parapets” (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, book 18, chapter 34).

  According to Diodorus, who describes the scene, Perdiccas did not use his war elephants with the tactical brilliance of his old master, and seeing a weakness, Ptolemy personally seized the initiative:

  Ptolemy, however, who had the best soldiers near himself and wished to encourage the other commanders and friends to face the dangers, taking his long spear and posting himself on the top of the outwork, put out the eyes of the leading elephant, since he occupied a higher position, and wounded its Indian mahout. Then with utter contempt of the danger, striking and disabling those who were coming up the ladders, he sent them rolling down, in their armour into the river.

  Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, book 18, chapter 34

  His men followed suit and began targeting the Indian mahouts, leaving the elephants out of control and useless, although Perdiccas sent wave after wave of attackers, having the advantage of numbers. The battle (and Ptolemy’s personal heroics) lasted all day, but in the end Perdiccas was forced to call off the assault and retreat to his former camp. Ptolemy was victorious.

  We don’t know Diodorus’s source for this episode, but the wild heroics of Ptolemy himself suggest it was somewhat biased. In fact Ptolemy had delayed Perdiccas long enough for something far more powerful to come to the rescue—doubt.

  Perdiccas had failed to cross the Nile, and now the whispering campaign began. Ptolemy had secured a jewel for himself—something manageable, defendable. Why shouldn’t Alexander’s other old friends do the same for themselves? Forget the greater empire, forget Perdiccas, and seize something tangible for their own. And so they did. In the late spring of 321 BC a mutiny broke out among those same Macedonian troops who had once conquered the world, and Perdiccas’s own officers assassinated him.

  This would not bring an end to the wars among Alexander’s heirs, but it did mark the end of the idea that any of them could rule everything their old master had. By the end of the fighting, which lasted until nearly the end of the century, Alexander’s dreams lay in ruins—his mother, wife, half brother, and infant son all murdered. In their place stood three families. In Greece and Macedon, the Antigonids would rule the old homeland; in the Asian satrapies, the descendants of Seleucus (who had been one of the assassins of Perdiccas) would govern this part of the former Persian Empire; while in Egypt, Ptolemy intended to found his own dynasty.

  Ptolemy had set the tone for the new order in Egypt and, fired by the same drive that had taken him and his master to the Indian subcontinent, set about subduing the city-states of North Africa.

  By 321 BC the wealthy but isolated city of Cyrene, lying between Egypt and Tunisia, had fallen to him. As one of Alexander’s conquests it was a state Ptolemy rightfully felt was his for the taking, having only recently come under the rule of a Spartan adventurer in the chaos following Alexander’s death. But in retaking the city he showed himself to have learned from his master’s diplomatic mistakes. He did not replace tyrant Spartan rule with a dictatorship of his own but with a liberal constitution. Under the “Ptolemaic constitution” the state was to be ruled by ten thousand privileged citizens arranged into two councils and a popular court, in a plan not dissimilar to that proposed by Hippodamus. He did not go so far as to let the Cyrenians think they could rule themselves alone, of course, appointing himself as their guardian in perpetuity.

  In an age which celebrated outright conquest, this defensive imperialism was not only novel, it was successful and sustainable. Ptolemy pushed on farther west beyond Cyrene to take control of the profitable trans-Saharan trade routes bringing gold, ivory, and slaves from Central and West Africa. To the east and north he seized Palestine and parts of Syria, as well as Cyprus and the Aegean islands of the Cyclades. This gave him control of lucrative trade routes but, more important, created a buffer zone where he could contest disputes with his Persian and Macedonian rivals, leaving the Egyptian heartland stable and free from warfare for generations to come. Ptolemy had been the only successor to Alexander not to want to inherit that whole empire. He did not want new territories, just enough friendly or subject states around him to protect the core of his plan—Egypt. He had taken a dependent satrapy and forged it into an independent nation. The physical structure for the Ptolemaic age was now in place; it simply needed to be brought to life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  EGYPT REBORN

  Egypt has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any
other place.

  Herodotus, The Histories

  During Ptolemy’s lifetime, the body of Alexander was not the only god resting in Memphis. Apis, the bull god of the city, was, at least to the native Egyptians, easily as important as the mummified remains of the conqueror of the world, and the representation of this deity was a living bull kept in its own temple and treated with the respect due to the earthly manifestation of a god.

  It was a peculiarly Egyptian idea. The Apis bull had been a powerful symbol in Egypt since the very first dynasties well over two thousand years earlier. Originally it had represented the power and will of the pharaoh himself, later being thought to represent the god Ptah, whose center of worship was at Memphis. By Ptolemy’s day, however, the animal had come to represent the incarnation of Osiris, the lord of the dead, who was usually depicted in human form, wrapped and mummified for burial. According to Plutarch, the bull was then the living aspect of this dead god or, as he put it, “the beautiful image of the soul of Osiris” (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, chapter 20, in Moralia).