ALEXANDER III. (1845-1894), emperor of Russia, second son of Alexander II., was born on the 10th of March 1845. In natural disposition he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal minded father, and still less to his refined, philosophic, sentimental, chivalrous, yet cunning grand-uncle Alexander I., who coveted the title of ``the first gentleman of Europe.'' With high culture, exquisite refinement and studied elegance he had no sympathy and never affected to have any. Indeed, he rather gloried in the idea of being of the same rough texture as the great majority of his subjects. His straightforward, abrupt manner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his direct, unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his rough-hewn, immobile features and somewhat sluggish movements. His education was not fitted to soften these peculiarities. During the first twenty years of his life he had no prospect of succeeding to the throne, because he had an elder brother, Nicholas, who seemed of a fairly robust constitution. Even when this elder brother showed symptoms of delicate health it was believed that his life might be indefinitely prolonged by proper care and attention, and precautions had been taken for the succession by his betrothal with Princess Dagmar of Denmark. Under these circumstances the greatest solicitude was devoted to the education of Nicholas as cesarevich, whereas Alexander received only the perfunctory and inadequate training of an ordinary grand- duke of that period, which did not go much beyond primary and secondary instruction, practical acquaintance with French, English and German, and a certain amount of drill. When he became heir-apparent by the death of his elder brother in 1865, he began to study the principles of law and administration under Professor Pobedonostsef, who did not succeed in awakening in his pupil a love of abstract studies or prolonged intellectual exertion, but who influenced the character of his reign by instilling into his mind the belief that zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy ought, as an essential factor of Russian patriotism, to be specially cultivated by every right-minded tsar. His elder brother when on his deathbed had expressed a wish that his affianced bride, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, should marry his successor, and this wish was realized on the 9th of November 1866. The union proved a most happy one and remained unclouded to the end. During those years when he was heir-apparent—1865 to 1881—he did not play a prominent part in public affairs, but he allowed it to become known that he had certain ideas of his own which did not coincide with the principles of the existing government. He deprecated what he considered undue foreign influence in general, and German influence in particular, and he longed to see the adoption of genuine national principles in all spheres of official activity, with a view to realizing his ideal of a homogeneous Russia—homogeneous in language, administration and religion. With such ideas and aspirations he could hardly remain permanently in cordial agreement with his father, who, though a good patriot according to his lights, had strong German sympathies, often used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations and eccentricities of the Slavophils and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-German War, when the tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the cesarevich did not conceal his sympathies with the French. It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years 1875-1879, when the Eastern question produced so much excitement in all ranks of Russian society. At first the cesarevich was more Slavophil than the government, but his phlegmatic nature preserved him from many of the exaggerations indulged in by others, and any of the prevalent popular illusions he may have imbibed were soon dispelled by personal observation in Bulgaria, where he commanded the left wing of the invading army. The Bulgarians had been represented in St Petersburg and Moscow not only as martyrs but also as saints, and a very little personal experience sufficed to correct the error. Like most of his brother officers he could not feel any very great affection for the ``little brothers,'' as the Bulgarians were then commonly called, and he was constrained to admit that the Turks were by no means so black as they had been painted. He did not, however, scandalize the believers by any public expression of his opinions, and did not indeed make himself conspicuous in any way during the campaign. Never consulted on political questions, he confined himself to his military duties and fulfilled them in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many mistakes and disappointments, the army reached Constantinople and the treaty of San Stefano was signed, but much that had been obtained by that important document had to be sacrificed at the congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of him. In return for the Russian support, which had enabled him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would help Russia to solve the Eastern question in accordance with her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of the cabinet of St Petersburg he confined himself to acting the part of ``honest broker'' at the congress, and shortly afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in Eastern Europe. The cesarevich could point to these results as confirming the views he had expressed during the Franco-German War, and he drew from them the practical conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to recover as quickly as possible from her temporary exhaustion and to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of military and naval reorganization. In accordance with this conviction, he suggested that certain reforms should be introduced. During the campaign in Bulgaria he had found by painful experience that grave disorders and gross corruption existed in the military administration, and after his return to St Petersburg he had discovered that similar abuses existed in the naval department. For these abuses, several high-placed personages—among others two of the grand-dukes— were believed to be responsible, and he called his father's attention to the subject. His representations were not favourably received. Alexander II. had lost much of the reforming zeal which distinguished the first decade of his reign, and had no longer the energy required to undertake the task suggested to him. The consequence was that the relations between father and son became more strained. The latter must have felt that there would be no important reforms until he himself succeeded to the direction of affairs. That change was much nearer at hand than was commonly supposed. On the 13th of March 1881 Alexander II. was assassinated by a band of Nihilists, and the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son.
In the last years of his reign, Alexander II. had been much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines and the increasing number of anarchist conspiracies, and for some time he had hesitated between strengthening the hands of the executive and making concessions to the widespread political aspirations of the educated classes. Finally he decided in favour of the latter course, and on the very day of his death he signed a ukaz, creating a number of consultative commissions which might have been easily transformed into an assembly of notables. Alexander III. determined to adopt the opposite policy. He at once cancelled the ukaz before it was published, and in the manifesto announcing his accession to the throne he let it be very clearly understood that he had no intention of limiting or weakening the autocratic power which he had inherited from his ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign, so that he left behind him the reputation of a sovereign of the retrograde type. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical disorders and revolutionary agitation, not by the parliamentary institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by the three principles which the elder generation of the Slavophils systematically recommended—nationality, Eastern Orthodoxy and autocracy. His political ideal was a nation containing only one nationality, one language, one religion and one form of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on his German, Polish and Finnish subjects, by fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions, by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father's reign. For this purpose he clipped the feeble wings of the zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county and parish councils in England, and placed the autonomous administration of the peasant communes under the supervision of landed proprietors appointed by the government. At the same time he sought to strengthen and centralize the imperial administration, and to bring it more under his personal control. In foreign affairs he was emphatically a man of peace, but not at all a partisan of the docrrine of peace at any price, and he followed the principle that the best means of averting war is to be well prepared for it. Though indignant at the conduct of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, he avoided an open rupture with Germany, and even revived for a time the Three Emperors' Alliance. It was only in the last years of his reign, when M. Katkov had acquired a certain influence over him, that he adopted towards the cabinet of Berlin a more hostile attitude, and even then he confined himself to keeping a large quantity of troops near the German frontier, and establishing cordial relations with France. With regard to Bulgaria he exercised similar self-control. The efforts of Prince Alexander and afterwards of Stamboloff to destroy Russian influence in the principality excited his indignation, but he persistently vetoed all proposals to intervene by force of arms. In Central Asian affairs he followed the traditional policy of gradually extending Russian domination without provoking a conflict with Great Britain, and he never allowed the bellicose partisans of a forward policy to get out of hand. As a whole his reign cannot be regarded as one of the eventful periods of Russian history; but it must be admitted that under his hard unsympathetic rule the country made considerable progress. He died at Livadia on the 1st of November 1894, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Nicholas II. (D. M. W.)
ALEXANDER I. (c. 1078-1124), king of Scotland, was the fourth son of Malcolm Canmore by his wife (St) Margaret, grand-niece of Edward the Confessor. On the death of his brother Edgar in 1107 he succeeded to the Scottish crown; but, in accordance with Edgar's instructions, he inherited only a part of its possessions. By a partition, the motive of which is not quite certain, the districts south of the Forth and Clyde were erected into an earldom for Alexander's younger brother, David. Alexander, dissatisfied, sought to obtain the whole, but without success. A curious combination of the fierce warrior and the pious churchman, he manifested the one aspect of his character in his ruthless suppression of an insurrection in his northern dominion (thus gaining for himself the title of ``the Fierce''), the other in his munificent foundation of bishoprics and abbeys. Among the latter were those of Scone and Inchcolm. His strong championship of the independence of the Scottish church involved him in struggles with both the English metropolitan sees. He died on the 27th of April 1124, and was succeeded by his brother, David I.
ALEXANDER II. (1198-1249), king of Scotland, son of William the Lion and Ermengarde of Beaumont, was born at Haddington in 1198, and succeeded to the kingdom on the death of his father in 1214. The year after his accession the clans MacWilliam and MacHeth, inveterate enemies of the Scottish crown, broke into revolt; but the insurrection was speedily quelled. In the same year Alexander joined the English barons in their struggle against John, and led an army into England in support of their cause; but on the conclusion of peace after John's death between his youthful son Henry III. and the French prince Louis, the Scottish king was included in the pacification. The reconciliation thus effected was further strengthened by the marriage of Alexander to Henry's sister Joanna in 1221. The next year was marked by the subjection of the hitherto semi-independent district of Argyll. A revolt in Galloway in 1235 was crushed without difficulty; nor did an invasion attempted soon afterwards by its exiled leaders meet with any better fortune. Soon afterwards a claim for homage from Henry of England drew forth from Alexander a counter-claim to the northern English counties. The dispute, however, was settled by a compromise in 1237. A threat of invasion by Henry in 1243 for a time interrupted the friendly relations between the two countries; but the prompt action of Alexander in anticipating his attack, and the disinclination of the English barons for war, compelled him to make peace next year at Newcastle. Alexander now turned his attention to securing the Western Isles, which still owned a nominal dependence on Norway. Negotiations and purchase were successively tried but without success. Alexander next attempted to seduce Ewen, the son of Duncan, lord of Argyll, from his allegiance to the Norwegian king. Ewen refused his overtures, and Alexander sailed forth to compel him. But on the way he was seized with fever at Kerrera, and died there on the 8th of July 1249.
ALEXANDER III. (1241-1285), king of Scotland, son of Alexander II. by his second wife Mary de Coucy, was born in 1241. At the age of eight years the death of his father called him to the throne. The years of his minority were marked by an embittered struggle for the control of affairs between two rival parties, the one led by Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, the other by Alan Durward, the justiciar. The former was in the ascendant during the early years of the reign. At the marriage of Alexander to Margaret of England in 1251, Henry III. seized the opportunity to demand from his son-in-law homage for the Scottish kingdom, but the claim was refused. In 1255 an interview between the English and Scottish kings at Kelso resulted in the deposition of Menteith and his party in favour of their opponents. But though disgraced, they still retained great influence; and two years later, seizing the person of the king, they compelled their rivals to consent to the erection of a regency representative of both parties. On attaining his majority in 1262, Alexander declared his intention of resuming the projects on the Western Isles which had been cut short by the death of his father thirteen years before. A formal claim was laid before the Norwegian king Haakon. Not only was this unsuccessful, but next year Haakon replied by a formidable invasion. Sailing round the west coast of Scotland he halted off Arran, where negotiations were opened. These were artfully prolonged by Alexander until the autumn storms should begin. At length Haakon, weary of delay, attacked, only to encounter a terrific storm which greatly damaged his ships. The battle of Largs, fought next day, was indecisive. But even so Haakon's position was hopeless. Baffled he turned homewards, but died on the way. The Isles now lay at Alexander's feet, and in 1266 Haakon's successor concluded a treaty by which the Isle of Man and the Western Isles were ceded to Scotland in return for a money payment, Orkney and Shetland alone being retained. Towards the end of Alexander's reign, the death of all his three children within a few years made the question of the succession one of pressing importance. In 1284 he induced the Estates to recognize as his heir-presumptive his grand-daughter Margaret, the ``Maid of Norway''; and next year the desire for a male heir led him to contract a second marriage. But all such hopes were defeated by the sudden death of the king, who was killed by a fall from his horse in the dark while riding to visit the queen at Kinghorn on the 16th of March 1285.
ALEXANDER (ALEXANDER OBRENOVICH) (1876-1903), king of Servia, was born on the 14th of August 1876. On the 6th of March 1889 his father, King Milan, abdicated and proclaimed him king of Servia under a regency until he should attain his majority at eighteen years of age. King Alexander, on the 13th of April 1893, being then in his seventeenth year, made his notable first coup d'etat, proclaimed himself of full age, dismissed the regents and their government, and took the royal authority into his own hands. His action was popular, and was rendered still more so by his appointment of a radical ministry. In May 1894 King Alexander, by another coup d'etat, abolished the liberal constitution of 1889 and restored the conservative one of 1869. His attitude during the Turco-Greek war of 1897 was one of strict neutrality. In 1898 he appointed his father commander-in-chief of the Servian army, and from that time, or rather from his return to Servia in 1894 until 1900, ex-king Milan was regarded as the de facto ruler of the country. But while, during the summer of 1900, Milan was away from Servia taking waters in Carlsbad, and making arrangements to secure the hand of a German princess for his son, and while the premier, Dr Vladan Dyorevich, was visiting the Paris Universal Exhibition, King Alexander suddenly announced to the people of Servia his engagement to Mme Draga Mashin, a widow, formerly a lady-in-waiting to Queen Natalie. The projected union aroused great opposition at first. Ex-King Milan resigned his post; so did the government; and King Alexander had great difficulty in forming a new cabinet. But the opposition subsided somewhat on the publication of Tsar Nicholas's congratulations to the king on his engagement and of his acceptance to act as the principal witness at the wedding. The marriage was then duly celebrated on the 5th of August 1900. Still this union was unpopular and weakened the position of King Alexander in the army and the country. He tried to reconcile political parties by granting from his own initiative a liberal constitution (April 6, 1901), introducing for the first time in the constitutional history of Servia the system of two chambers (skupshtina and senate). This did in a certain measure reconcile the political parties, but did not reconcile the army, which, already dissatisfied with the king's marriage, became still more so at the rumours that one of the two unpopular brothers of Queen Draga, Lieutenant Nicodiye, was to be proclaimed heir- apparent to the throne. Meanwhile the independence of the senate and of the council of state caused growing irritation to King Alexander, which led him to another coup d'etat. He suspended (March 1903) the constitution for half an hour, time enough to publish the decrees by which the old senators and councillors of state were dismissed and replaced by new ones. This arbitrary act naturally increased the dissatisfaction in the country. The general impression was that inasmuch as the senate was packed with men devoted to the royal couple, and inasmuch as the government obtained a large majority at the general elections, King Alexander would not hesitate any longer to proclaim Queen Draga's brother as the heir to the throne. Apparently to prevent this, but in reality to replace Alexander Obrenovich by Peter Karageorgevich, a military conspiracy was organized. The conspirators penetrated into the palace and savagely murdered King Alexander and Queen Draga in the early morning of the 11th of June 1903. (C. MI.)
ALEXANDER, son of Numenius, Greek rhetorician, flourished in the first half of the second century A.D. In addition to general treatises on rhetoric, he wrote a special work Peri ton tes dianoias kai tes lexeos schematon, of which only an abridgment is extant; later epitomes were made in Latin by Aquila Romanus and Julius Rufinianus under the title De Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis. Another epitome was made in the fourth century by a Christian for use in Christian schools, containing additional examples from Gregory of Nazianzus.
Text in Spengel, Rhetores Graeci (1856).
ALEXANDER, ARCHIBALD (1772-1851), American Presbyterian divine, was born, of Scottish-Irish descent, in that part of Augusta county which is now Rockbridge county, Virginia, on the 17th of April 1772. After completing his preliminary education in the little school at Lexington, Virginia, which later developed into Washington and Lee University, he came under the influence of the religious movement known as the ``great revival'' (1789-1790) and devoted himself to the study of theology. Licensed to preach in 1791, he was engaged for several years as an itinerant Presbyterian preacher in his native state, and acquired during this period the facility in extemporaneous speaking for which he was remarkable. He was president of Hampden-Sidney College from 1796 to 1807, with a short intermission (in 1801-1802), and in 1807 became pastor of Pine Street Church, Philadelphia. In 1812 he became first professor in the newly established Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey, where he remained until his death at Princeton on the 22nd of October 1851, filling successively the chairs of didactic and polemic theology (1812-1840), and pastoral and polemic theology (1840-1851). He married, in 1802, Janetta Waddel, the daughter of the celebrated blind preacher, James Waddel (1739-1805), whose eloquence was described in William Wirt's Letters of a British Spy (1803). Dr Alexander wrote a considerable number of theological works, which had a large circulation. Among these may be mentioned his Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion (1825), which passed through several editions, and was translated into various languages; The Canon of the Old and New Testament Ascertained; or the Bible Complete without the Apocrypha and Unwritten Traditions (1826); A History of the Israelitish Nation (1852), and Outlines of Moral Science (1852), the last two being published posthumously.
See the biography (New York, 1854) by his son James W. Alexander.
ALEXANDER, FRANCIS (1800-1881), American portrait- painter, was born in Windham county, Connecticut, in February 1800. Brought up on a farm, he taught himself the use of colours, and in 1820 went to New York City and studied painting with Alexander Robertson. He spent the winters of 1831 and 1832 in Rome, and then for nearly a decade he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had considerable vogue, and where in 1842 he painted a portrait of Charles Dickens. One of his best portraits is that of Mrs Fletcher Webster in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He died in 1881 in Florence.
ALEXANDER, GEORGE (1858- ), English actor, whose family name was Samson, was born in Reading on the 19th of June 1858, the son of a Scottish manufacturer. He went into business in London after leaving school, but having acted as an amateur he determined to make the stage his profession. His first appearance was at Nottingham in 1879, and after some seasons of provincial experience he made his first London appearance as Caleb Deecie in Two Roses in 1881 with Irving at the Lyceum. He was selected by W. S. Gilbert to support Mary Anderson in Comedy and Tragedy, returned for a time to the Lyceum, where he was Irving's principal associate, especially as Faust (1886) and Macduff (1888); and, after starting successfully under his own management at the Avenue Theatre in 1890 with Dr Bill, in 1891 became manager of the St James's Theatre. There he produced a number of successful plays, notably Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of being Earnest, Pinero's Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Princess and the Butterfiy, His House in Order and The Thunderbolt; C. Haddon Chambers's The Idler; H. A. Jones's Masqueraders; Alfred Sutro's John Glayde's Honour and The Builder of Bridges; Carton's Liberty Hall and The Tree of Knowledge; Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau; and Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca, himself playing the leading parts with great distinction. In 1907 he was elected a member of the London County Council as a municipal reformer, but continued to act regularly at the St James's.
ALEXANDER, SIR JAMES EDWARD (1803-1885), British soldier and traveller, was born on the 16th of October 1803. He joined the East India Company's army in 1820, transferring into the British army in 1825. As aide-de-camp to the British envoy to Persia, he was an eye-witness of the fighting in the war between Persia and Russia (1826), and in 1829 was present in the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish war. In 1832-1834 he was in Portugal during the Miguelete war, and in 1835 served in the Kaffir war in South Africa as aide-de-camp to Sir Benjamin D'Urban. Subsequently he conducted an exploring expedition into Namaqualand and Damaraland, and was knighted for his services (1838). From 1841 to 1855 he served in Canada, proceeding thence to the Crimea, and in 1862 held an important command in New Zealand during the Maori war. He retired from the service in 1877, and in 1881 was given the honorary rank of general. He was largely responsible for the preservation and transfer to England of Cleopatra's Needle in 1877. His varied experiences provided material for a large number of books, among which were Travels from India to England (1827); Transatlantic Sketches (1833); An Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa (1838); Passages in the Life of a Soldier (1857); Incidents of the Maori War (1863). He was also the author of a Life of Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington (1840). He died on the 2nd of April 1885.
ALEXANDER, JOHN WHITE (1856- ), American painter, was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on the 7th of October 1836. He was left an orphan when very young, became an illustrator for Harper's Magazine, studied in Europe, became a pupil of the Royal Academy at Munich, and also worked in Venice, in Holland and in Paris, where he attracted much attention by his exhibition at the Salon of two female portraits entitled ``Gris'' and ``Noir.'' He became a member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts (Paris), of the National Academy of Design (New York), of the International Society (London), and of the Vienna and Munich Societies of Painters. In 1901 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He executed decorative panels for the Congressional Library, Washington, D.C., and a large decoration for the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; and his works include numerous portraits and subject pictures.
ALEXANDER, JOSEPH ADDISON (1809-1860), American biblical scholar, the third son of Archibald Alexander, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 24th of April 1809. He graduated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1826, having devoted himself especially to the study of Hebrew and other oriental languages, and from 1830 to 1833 was adjunct professor of ancient languages and literature there. In 1834 he became an assistant to Dr Charles Hodge, professor of oriental and biblical literature in the Princeton Theological Seminary, and in 1838 became associate professor of oriental and biblical literature there, succeeding Dr Hodge in that chair in 1840 and being transferred in 1851 to the chair of biblical and ecclesiastical history, and in 1859 to that of Hellenistic and New Testament literature, which he occupied until his death at Princeton on the 28th of January 1860. Alexander was a remarkable linquist and exegete. He had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1839, and was well known for his pulpit eloquence. He was the author of The Earlier Prophecies of Isaiah (1846), The Later Prophecies of Isaiah (1847), and an abbreviation of these two volumes, Isaiah Illustrated and Explained (2 vols., 1851), The Psalms Translated and Explained (3 vols., 1850), commentaries on Acts (2 vols., 1857), Mark (1858) and Matthew (1860), and two volumes of Sermons (1860).
See The Life of Joseph A. Alexander (2 vols., 2nd ed., New York, 1875) by his nephew, Henry C. Alexander.
His brother, JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER (1804-1859), born in Louisa county, Virginia, on the 13th of March 1804, was a famous Presbyterian preacher. He graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1820, studied theology in the Princeton Seminary, and was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Charlotte county, Virginia, from 1826 to 1828, and of the First Presbyterian church in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1829-1832. From 1833 to 1844 he was professor of belles-lettres and Latin language and literature in the College of New Jersey, from 1844 to 1849 was pastor of the Duane Street Presbyterian church in New York City, from 1849 to 1851 was professor of ecclesiastical history, church government and sacred rhetoric in the Princeton Theological Seminary, and from 1851 until his death, at Red Sweet Springs, Virginia, on the 31st of July 1859, was pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian church in New York City. He wrote numerous magazine articles and published a number of books, including The American Mechanic and Workingman (2 vols., 1847, a coltection of papers to mechanics first printed under the pseudonym of ``Charles Quill''), Thoughts on Family Worship (1847), Sacramental Addresses (1854), The Revival and its Lessons (1859), Thoughts on Preaching (1861), Faith (1862), and many juvenile books for Sunday-school libraries.
See Forty Years' Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander (2 vols.,New York, 1860), edited by Dr John Hall (1806-1894) of Trenton, N. J.
ALEXANDER, WILLIAM (1824- ), Protestant archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, was born at Londonderry on the 13th of April 1824 and educated at Tonbridge Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. After holding several livings in the north of Ireland he was made bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867, and was elevated to the primacy in 1896. He was Bampton lecturer in 1816. An eloquent preacher and the author of numerous theological works, he is best known to literature as a master of dignified and animated verse. His poems were collected in 1887 under the title of St Augustine's Holiday, and other Poems. His wife, Cecil Francis Humphreys (1818-1895), wrote some tracts in connexion with the Oxford movement, but is famous as the author of ``Jesus calls us o'er the tumult,'' ``There is a green hill far away'' and other well-known hymns (nearly four hundred in all). A collection of her verse was published in 1896.
ALEXANDER, WILLIAM LINDSAY (1808-1884), Scottish divine, was born at Leith on the 24th of August 1808. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, where he gained a lasting reputation for classical scholarship. He entered Glasgow Theological Academy under Ralph Wardlaw in September 1827, but in December of the same year he left to become classical tutor at the Blackburn Theological Academy (afterwards the Lancashire Independent College). At Blackburn he stayed till 1831, lecturing on biblical literature, metaphysics, Greek and Latin. After short visits to Germany and London he was invited in November 1834 to become minister of North College Street church (afterwards Argyle Square), Edinburgh, an independent church which had arisen out of the evangelical movement associated with the Haldanes. He deliberately put aside the ambition to become a pulpit orator in favour of the practice of biblical exposition, which he invested with a singular charm and impressiveness. In 1836 he became one of the editors of the Congregational Magazine, to which he contributed articles on biblical literature and theology and on the ``voluntary'' controversy. In 1840 he delivered the Congregational Lecture in London on the ``Connexion and Harmony of the Old and New Testaments.''
Alexander took an active part in the ``voluntary'' controversy which ended in the Disruption, but he also maintained broad and catholic views of the spiritual relations between different sections of the Christian church. In 1845 he visited Switzerland with the special object of inquiring into the religious life of the churches there. He published an account of his journey in a book, Switzerland and the Swiss Churches, which led to an interchange of correspondence between the Swiss and Scottish churches. In 1845 he received the degree of D.D. from the university of St Andrews. In 1861 he undertook the editorship of the third edition of Kitto's Biblical Encyclopaedia with the understanding that the whole work should be thoroughly revised and brought up to date. In January 1870 he became one of the committee of Old Testament revisers, and by his thorough biblical scholarship rendered exceptional service to the board; he enjoyed the work and devoted much time to it for the next fourteen years. In 1877 he became principal of the Edinburgh Theological Hall, a position which he held, in spite of many tempting offers of preferment elsewhere, until his death on the 20th of December 1884.
See his Life and Work by James Ross (1887). (D. Mn.)
ALEXANDER AETOLUS, of Pleuron in Aetolia, Greek poet and man of letters, the only representative of Aetolian poetry, flourished about 280 B.C. When living in Alexandria he was commissioned by Ptolemy Philadelphus to arrange the tragedies and satyric dramas in the library; some ten years later he took up his residence at the court of Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia. His reputation as a tragic poet was so high that he was allotted a place in the Alexandrian tragic Pleiad; we only know the title of one play (Astragalistae.) He also wrote short epics, epigrams and elegies, the considerable fragments of which show learning and eloquence.
Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina (1853); Bergk, PoetaeLyrioi Graeci; Couat, La Poesie alexandrine (1882).
ALEXANDER BALAS (i.e. ``lord''), ruler of the Greek kingdom of Syria 150-146 B.C., was a native of Smyrna of humble origin, but gave himself out to be the son of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes and heir to the Syrian throne. His claims were recognized by the Roman senate, Ptolemy Philometor of Egypt and others. At first unsuccessful, he finally defeated the reigning king Demetrius Soter in 150 B.C. Being now undisputed master of Syria, he abandoned himself to a life of debauchery. Demetrius Soter's son profited by the opportunity to regain the throne. Ptolemy Philometor, who was Alexander's father-in-law, went over to his side, and Alexander was defeated in a pitched battle near Antioch in Syria. He fled for refuge to a Nabataean prince, who murdered him and sent his head to Ptolemy, who had been mortally wounded in the engagement.
See 1 Maccab. 10 ff.; Justin xxxv. 1 and 2; Josephus,Antiq. xiii. 2; Appian, Sir. 67; Polybius xxxiii. 14.
ALEXANDER CORNELIUS, Greek grammarian, surnamed POLYHISTOR from his great learning, born at Miletus or Myndus in Caria, flourished about 70 B.C. He was taken prisoner in the Mithridatic war by Sulla, from whom (or from Cornelius Lentulus) he received his freedom and assumed the name Cornelius. He accompanied Crassus on his Parthian campaigns, and perished at the destruction by fire of his house at Laurentum. He is said to have written ``books without number,'' chiefly on historical and geographical subjects. Of the extant fragments (Muller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iii:) those relating to the Jews are important as containing quotations from lost Jewish authors.
ALEXANDER JANNAEUS, king of the Jews, succeeded his brother Aristobulus in 103 B.C. and died in 76 B.C. His first act was the murder of one of his brothers who claimed the throne, and his reign was disgraced by the cruelties that he perpetrated in order to retain his position. (See JEWS and PHARISEES.)
ALEXANDER NEVSKY, SAINT (1220-1263), grand-duke of Vladimir, was the second son of the grand-duke Yaroslav. His childhood and youth were spent at Great Novgorod, whither his father sent him to rule (1228) with some guardian boyars. In 1239 he married Alexandra, daughter of Prince Bryachislav of Polotsk. At an early age he distinguished himself in constant warfare with the Germans, Swedes and Lithuanians, who tried to wrest Novgorod and Pskov from Russia while she was still suffering from the effects of the terrible Tatar invasion. The most notable of these battles, whereby he won his honorific epithet of Nevsky (i.e. of the Neva), was fought on the banks of the Neva (July 15 1240) against the famous Swedish statesman, Birger Jarl, whom he utterly defeated, besides wounding him with his lance. In the following year the Teutonic Order, in conjunction with the Order of the Sword, succeeded in capturing Pskov; but Alexander recovered it in 1242, advanced into Livonia, and on the 5th of April defeated the knights on the ice of Lake Peipus and compelled them in the ensuing peace to renounce all their conquests. He also prevented the Swedes (in 1256) from settling in South Finland. On the death of his father (1246) Alexander and his younger brother Andrew went on a two years' journey into Mongolia to obtain their yarluiki, or letters of investiture, from the Grand Khan, who then disposed of the fate of all the Russian princes. He returned (1250) as grand-duke of Kiev and Novgorod, while to Andrew was given the far more important grand- duchy of Vladimir. In 1252, however, the Tatars themselves expelled Andrew and placed Alexander on the throne of Vladimir. Alexander henceforth did his best for his country by humbling himself before the Tatars so as to give them no pretext for ravaging the land again. Most of his spare money he devoted to the ransoming of the numerous Russian captives detained at the Golden Horde. But the men of Novgorod, in their semi-independent republic, continued (1255-1257) to give the grand-duke trouble, their chief grievance being the imposition of a Tatar tribute, which they only submitted to in 1259 on the rumour of an impending Tatar invasion. In 1262 the Tatar tribute was felt so grievously all over Russia that preparations were made for a general insurrection, and Alexander, who knew that an abortive rebellion would make the yoke heavier, was obliged to go to the Horde in person to prevent the Tatars from again attacking Russia. He stayed at Sarai, their Volgan capital, all the Winter, and not only succeeded in obtaining a mitigation of the tribute, but also the abolition of the military service previously rendered by the Russians to the Tatars. This was his last service to his country. He died on his way home from the Horde, and in the words of his contemporary, the metropolitan Cyril, ``with him the sun of Russia set.'' The Orthodox Church has canonized the ruler who gave his whole life for Russia and the Orthodox faith. His relics, discovered in 1380, were in 1724 translated by Peter the Great from Vladimir to St Petersburg.
See Sergyei Mikhailovich Solovev, History of Russia(Rus., 2nd ed., St Petersburg, 1897, vol. 3). (R. N. B.)
ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS, pupil of Aristocles of Messene, the most celebrated of the Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle, and styled, by way of pre-eminence, o exegetes (``the expositor''), was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria. He came to Athens towards the end of the 2nd century A.D., became head of the Lyceum and lectured on peripatetic philosophy. The object of his work was to free the doctrine from the syncretism of Ammonius and to reproduce the pure doctrine of Aristotle. Commentaries by Alexander on the following works of Aristotle are still extant:—the Analytica Priora, i.; the Topica; the Meteorologica; the De Sensu; and the Metaphysica, i.-v., together with an abridgment of what he wrote on the remaining books of the Metaphysica. His commentaries were greatly esteemed among the Arabians, who translated many of them. There are also several original writings by Alexander still extant. The most important of these are a work On Fate, in which he argues against the Stoic doctrine of necessity; and one On the Soul, in which he contends that the undeveloped reason in man is material (nous ulikos) and inseparable from the body. He argued strongly against the doctrine of immortality. He identified the active intellect (nous poietikos), through whose agency the potential intellect in man becomes actual, with God. Several of Alexander's works were published in the Aldine edition of Aristotle, Venice, 1495-1498; his De Fato and De Anima were printed along with the works of Themistius at Venice (1534); the former work, which has been translated into Latin by Grotius and also by Schulthess, was edited by J. C. Orelli, Zurich, 1824; and his commentaries on the Metaphysica by H. Bonitz, Berlin, 1847. J. Nourisson has treated of his doctrine of fate (De la liberte et du hazard, Paris, 1870). In the early Renaissance his doctrine of the soul's mortality was adopted by F. Pomponazzi against the Thomists and the Averroists.
See PERIPATETICS (ad fin.); ALEXANDRISTS; POMPONAZZI, PIETRO; also A. Apelt, ``Die Schrift d. Alex. v. Aphr.,'' Philolegus, xlv., 1886: C. Ruelle, ``Alex. d'Aphr. et le pretendu Alex. d'Alexandrie,'' Rev. des etudes grecques, v., 1892; E. Zeller's Outlines of Gk. Phil. (Eng. trans., ed. 1905, p. 296).
ALEXANDER OF HALES (ALEXANDER HALENSIS), surnamed DOCTOR IRREFRAGABILIS, THEOLOGORUM MONARCHA and FONS VITAE, a celebrated English theologian of the 13th century, was born in Gloucestershire. Trained in the monastery of Hales he was early raised to an archdeaconry. He went, like most of the scholars of his day, to study at Paris, where he took the degree of doctor and became celebrated as a teacher. It is generally held that he taught Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, but a comparison of dates makes it clear that the two latter could not have been his pupils and that the statement about Bonaventura is open to doubt. In 1222 (or 1231, see Denifle, Chartul. Univers. Paris, Paris, 1889, i. 135) Alexander entered the order of Minorite Friars and thenceforward lived in strict seclusion. He refused, however, to renounce his degree of doctor, and was the first of his order who continued to bear that title after initiation. He died in 1245 and was buried in the convent of the Cordeliers at Paris. His most celebrated work was the Summa Theologiae (Nuremberg, 1452; Venice, 1576; Cologne, 1611), undertaken by the orders of Pope Innocent IV. and approved by Alexander IV., on the report of seventy learned theologians, as a system of instruction for all the schools in Christendom. The form is that of question and answer, and the method is rigidly scholastic. Of small intrinsic value, it is interesting partly as the first philosophical contribution of the Franciscans who were afterwards to take a prominent part in medieval thought (see SCHOLASTICISM), and partly as the first work based on a knowledge of the whole Aristotelian corpus and the Arabian commentators.
See Wadding, Script. ord. minor. (Rome, 1650); for his method B. Haureau, Hist. de philos. scholast. (Paris, 1880); F. Picavet, ``Abelard et A. de H.'' in the Bibliothieque de l'ecole des hautes-etudes (2nd series, Paris, 1896, pp. 222-230); Schwane, Dogmengesch. (Freiburg, 1882); A. Harnack, Dogmengesch. (1890); J. Endres, ``Des A. von H. Leben und psvchol. Lehre'' in Philos. Jahrb. (i. Fulda, 1888, pp. 24-55, 203-296): also Vacant's Dict. de theologie catholique, vol. i.
ALEXANDER OP TRALLES (ALEXANDER TRALLIANUS), Greek physician, born at Tralles in Lydia, lived probably about the middle of the 6th century and practised medicine with success at Rome. The Greek text of his Biblia iatrika was printed at Paris in 1548 and his De Lumbricis at Venice in 1570.
See E. Milward, Trallianus Reviviscens (London, 1734).
ALEXANDER SEVERUS (MARCUS AURELIUS SEVERUS ALEXAXDER) (208-235), Roman emperor from A.D. 222 to 235, was born at Arca Caesarea in Palestine on the 1st of October 208. His father, Gessius Marcianus, held office more than once as an imperial procurator; his mother, Julia Mamaea, was the daughter of Julia Maesa and the aunt of Heliogabalus. His original name was Bassianus, but he changed it in 221 when his grandmother, Maesa, persuaded the emperor Heliogabalus to adopt his cousin as successor and create him Caesar. In the next year, on the 11th of March, Heliogabalus was murdered, and Alexander was proclaimed emperor by the Praetorians and accepted by the senate. He was then a mere lad, amiable, well-meaning, but entirely under the dominion of his mother, a woman of many virtues, who surrounded him with wise counsellors, watched over the development of his character and improved the tone of the administration, but on the other hand was inordinately jealous, and alienated the army by extreme parsimony, while neither she nor her son had a strong enough hand to keep tight the reins of military discipline. Mutinies became frequent in all parts of the empire; to one of them the life of the jurist and praetorian praefect Ulpian was sacrificed; another compelled the retirement of Dio Cassius from his command) On the whole, however, the reign of Alexander was prosperous till he was summoned to the East to face the new power of the Sassanians (see PERSIA: History.) Of the war that followed we have very various accounts; Mommsen leans to that which is least favourable to the Romans. According to Alexander's own despatch to the senate he gained great victories. At all events, though the Persians were checked for the time, the conduct of the Roman army showed an extraordinary lack of discipline. The emperor returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph (233), but next year he was called to face German invaders in Gaul, where he was slain (on the 18th or 19th of March 235), together with his mother, in a mutiny which was probably led by Maximinus, a Thracian legionary, and at any rate secured him the throne. Alexander was the last of the Syrian princes. During his reign, acting, as he did in most things, under the influence of his mother, he did much to improve the morals and condition of the people. His advisers were men like the famous jurist Ulpian, the historian Dio Cassius and a select board of sixteen senators; a municipal council of fourteen assisted the city praefect in administering the affairs of the fourteen districts of Rome. The luxury and extravagance that had formerly been so prevalent at the court were put down; the standard of the coinage was raised; taxes were lightened; literature, art and science were encouraged; the lot of the soldiers was improved; and, for the convenience of the people, loan offices were instituted for lending money at a moderate rate of interest. In religious matters Alexander preserved an open mind. In his private chapel he had busts of Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana and Jesus Christ. It is said that he was desirous of erecting a temple to the founder of Christianity, but was dissuaded by the pagan priests. There is no doubt that, had Alexander's many excellent qualities been supported by the energy and strength of will necessary for the government of a military empire, he would have been one of the greatest of the Roman emperors.
See Lampridius, Alexander Severus; Dio Cassius lxxviii. 30, lxxix. 17, lxxx. 1; Herodian vi. 1-18; Porrath, Der Kaiser Alex. Sev. (1876); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, ii. 2526 foll. (Groebe); monograph by R. V. Nind Hopkins, Cambridge Historical Essays, No. xiv. (1907).
ALEXANDER THE PAPHLAGONIAN, a celebrated impostor and worker of false oracles, was born at Abonouteichos (see INEBOLI) in Paphlagonia in the early part of the 2nd century A.D. The vivid narrative of his career given by Lucian might be taken as fictitious but for the corroboration of certain coins of the emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius (J. H. Eckhel, Doctrina Nummorum veterum, ii. pp. 383, 384) and of a statue of Alexander, said by Athenagoras (Apology, c. 26) to have stood in the forum of Parium. After a period of instruction in medicine by a doctor who also, according to Lucian, was an impostor, he succeeded in establishing an oracle of Aesculapius at his native town. Having circulated a prophecy that the son of Apollo was to be born again, he contrived that there should be found in the foundations of the temple to Aesculapius, then in course of construction at Abonouteichos, an egg in which a small live snake had been placed. In an age of superstition no people had so great a reputation for credulity as the Paphlagonians, and Alexander had little difficulty in convincing them of the second coming of the god under the name of Glycon. A large tame snake with a false human head, wound round Alexander's body as he sat in a shrine in the temple, gave ``autophones'' or oracles unasked, but the usual methods practised were those of the numerous oracle-mongers of the time, of which Lucian gives a detailed account, the opening of sealed inquiries by heated needles, a neat plan of forging broken seals, and the giving of vague or meaningless replies to difficult questions, coupled with a lucrative blackmailing of those whose inquiries were compromising. The reputation of the oracle, which was in origin medical, spread, and with it grew Alexander's skilled plans of organized deception. He set up an ``intelligence bureau'' in Rome, instituted mysteries like those of Eleusis, from which his particular enemies the Christians and Epicureans were alike excluded as ``profane,'' and celebrated a mystic marriage between himself and the moon. During the plague of A.D. 166 a verse from the oracle was used as an amulet and was inscribed over the doors of houses as a protection, and an oracle was sent, at Marcus Aurelius' request, by Alexander to the Roman army on the Danube during the war with the Marcomanni, declaring that victory would follow on the throwing of two lions alive into the river. The result was a great disaster, and Alexander had recourse to the old quibble of the Delphic oracle to Croesus for an explanation. Lucian's own close investigations into Alexander's methods of fraud led to a serious attempt on his life. The whole account gives a graphic description of the inner working of one among the many new oracles that were springing up at this period. Alexander had remarkable beauty and the striking personality of the successful charlatan, and must have been a man of considerable intellectual abilities and power of organization. His income is said by Lucian to have reached an enormous figure. He died of gangrene of the leg in his seventieth year.
See Lucian, 'Alexandros e pseudomantis; Samuel Dill, RomanSociety from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (1904): and F. Gregorovius,The Emperor Hadrian, trans. by M. E. Robinson (1898).
ALEXANDERS (botanical name, Smyrnium Olusatrum, natural order Umbelliferae), a stout herbaceous plant with a furrowed, much-branched stem 1-3 ft. high, and large compound leaves with broad sheathing stalks, and broad, cut or lobed segments. The small yellow flowers are borne in compound umbels. The plant is a native of the Mediterranean region, and was formerly cultivated as a pot-herb. It is now found apparently wild in Great Britain and Ireland, growing in waste places, especially near the sea and amongst ruins.
In England the plant is sometimes popularly termed ``alisander''; in North America Thaspium aureum is sometimes called ``alexanders.'' ``Alexander's foot,'' botanical name Anacyclus Pyrethrum, is the pellitory of Spain.
ALEXANDERSBAD, a watering-place of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, romantically situated in the Fichtelgebirge, near Wunsiedel, at a height of 1900 ft. above the sea. Pop. 1200. Its waters, which are ferruginous and largely charged with carbonic acid gas, are of use in nervous and rheumatic disorders. In the neighbourhood is the Luisenburg (or Luxburg), so called after a visit paid by Queen Louise of Prussia in 1805, a hill covered by majestic granite rocks, commanding a grand view of the whole range of the Fichtelgebirge.
ALEXANDRE, NOEL (NATALIS ALEXANDER) (1639-1724), French theologian and ecclesiastical historian, was born at Rouen on the 19th of January 1639. In his 15th year he joined the Dominicans, and shortly after his ordination was appointed professor of philosophy at the convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris. The success of his subsequent lectures at the Sorbonne led to his selection by Colbert as tutor to his son, Jacques Nicolas Colbert, afterwards archbishop of Rouen. Alexandre obtained the degree of doctor in divinity from the Sorbonne in 1675 and for twelve years taught philosophy, theology and ecclesiastical law to the members of the Saint-Jacques community. He played a prominent part in ecclesiastical affairs and preached several times before Louis XIV., who granted him an annual pension of 800 livres, and in the general assemblies of the French bishops. He became provincial of his order in 1706, but was banished to Chatellerault in 1709 for having subscribed to the Cas de conscience (1703), and was deprived of his pension in 1713 on account of his opposition to the bull Unigenitus. He died in Paris on the 21st of August 1724, having lost his sight some time before owing to his strenuous literary activity. His numerous works are still much valued by ecclesiastical students.
His best-known work, the Selecta historiae ecclesiasticae capita, et in loca ejusdem insignia dissertationes historicae, chronologicae, dogmaticae (26 vols., Paris, 1676-1686), was placed on the Index by Innocent XI., on account of his bold defence of the Gallican claims. In 1689 he brought out at Paris his history of the Old Testament: Selecta historiae Veteris Testamenti capita, &c., in 6 vols. Of the numerous editions of Alexandre's ecclesiastical history the best is that of P. J. D. Mansi, which contains many valuable notes and additions (11 vols., Lucca, 1749) and has been frequently reprinted. Alexandre's principal contribution to theological literature is his Theologia dogmatica et moralis secundum ordinem catechismi concilii Tridentini (10 vols., Paris, 1694), in which he clearly shows himself a disciple of the Thomist school. His Couformite des ceremonies chinoises avec l'idolatrie grecque et romaine and Sept lettres sur les ceremonies de la Chine (both published at Cologne in 1700) are interesting as they mark him out as a pioneer in the study of comparative religion.
See Catalogue complet des oeuvres du Pere Alexandre (Paris, 1716); Quetif-Echard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum (Paris, 1719-1721), t. ii. p. 810; and full bibliography in A. Vacant, Dict. de theologie (scholarly article by P. Mandounet, cols. 769-772).
ALEXANDRETTA, or ISKANDERUN (med. Scanderoon), a town of N. Syria, situated in the N.E. angle of the Levantine Mediterranean on the S.E. of the gulf to which it gives a title. Pop. about 10,000, two-thirds Moslem. Iskanderun preserves the name, but probably not the exact site, of Alexandria ad Issum, founded by Alexander in 333 B.C., about 23 m. S. of the scene of his victory, to supersede Myriandrus as key of the Syrian Gates (Beilan Pass). The importance of the place ever since has been derived from its relation to this pass, the easiest approach to the open ground of N. Syria of which Antioch and Aleppo have been the successive capitals; and this relation has prevailed over the extreme unhealthiness of the site, which lies on marshy deltaic ground, screened by the horseshoe of Elma Dagh from all purifying influences of N. and E. winds. As the main outlet for the overland trade from Bagdad and India, whose importance was great until the establishment of the Egyptian overland route, the place was a great resort, first of Genoese and Venetian merchants, then of those of West and North European nations. The British Levant (Turkey) Company maintained an agency and factory here for 200 years, till 1825, in spite of appalling mortality among its employes. Alexandretta is still the main port for the Aleppo district, to which a good chaussee leads over the Beilan Pass, and it has a considerable export trade in tobacco, silk, cereals, liquorice, textiles. The health of the place has improved with the draining of the marshes and the provision of a better supply of water, but still leaves much to be desired. The wealthier inhabitants have summer residences at Beilan near the summit of the pass, long a stronghold of freebooting Dere Beys and the scene of the victory won by Ibrahim Pasha in 1832, which opened Cilicia to his advance. There are resident consuls of all the principal powers, and the port is well served by coasting steamers under European and Ottoman flags. The distance by road to Aleppo has been shortened to about 70 m., and Antakia (Antioch) is about 45 m. distant by a branch of the same chaussee. (D. G. H.)
ALEXANDRIA (Arab. Iskenderia), a city and chief seaport of Egypt, and for over a thousand years from its foundation the capital of the country, situated on the Mediterranean in 31 deg. 12' N., 29 deg. 15' E., and 129 m. by rail N.W. of Cairo. The ancient Canopic mouth of the Nile (now dry) was 12 m. E.
I. The Modern City.—The city is built on the strip of land which separates the Mediterranean from Lake Mareotis ( Mariut), and on a T-shaped peninsula which forms harbours east and west. The stem of the T was originally a mole leading to an island (Pharos) which formed the cross-piece. In the course of centuries this mole has been silted up and is now an isthmus half a mile wide. On it a part of the modern city is built. The cape at the western end of the peninsula is Ras et-Tin (Cape of Figs); the eastern cape is known as Pharos or Kait Bey. South of the town—between it and Lake Mareotis—runs the Mahmudiya canal, which enters the western harbour by a series of locks.
The customs house and chief warehouses are by the western harbour, but the principal buildings of the city are in the east and south-east quarters. From the landing-stage, by the customs house, roads lead to the Place Mehemet Ali, the centre of the life of the city and the starting-point of the electric tramways. The place, usually called the Grand Square, is an oblong open space, tree-lined, in the centre of which there is an equestrian statue of the prince after whom it is named. The square is faced with handsome buildings mainly in the Italian style. The most important are the law courts, exchange, Ottoman bank, English church and the Abbas Hilmi theatre. A number of short streets lead from the square to the eastern harbour. Here a sea wall, completed in 1905, provides a magnificent drive and promenade along the shore for a distance of about 3 m. In building this quay a considerable area of foreshore was reclaimed and an evil-smelling beach done away with. From the south end of the square the rue Sherif Pasha—in which are the principal shops—and the rue Tewfik Pasha lead to the boulevard, or rue, de Rosette, a long straight road with a general E. and W. direction. In it are the Zizinia theatre and the municipal palace (containing the public library); the museum lies up a short street to the N. Opened in 1895 this museum possesses an important collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, found not only in the city but in all Lower Egypt and the Fayum. The western end of the boulevard leads to the Place Ibrahim, often called Place Ste Catherine, from the Roman Catholic church at its S.E. side. In a street running S. from the boulevard to the railway station is the mosque of Nebi Daniel, containing the tombs of Said Pasha and other members of the khedivial family. Immediately E. of the mosque is Kom ed-Dik, garrisoned by British troops, one of several forts built for the protection of the city. Except Kom ed-Dik the forts have not been repaired since the bombardment of 1882. Equally obsolete is the old line of fortifications which formerly marked the limits of the city south and east and has now been partly demolished. Throughout the central part of Alexandria the streets are paved with blocks of lava and lighted by electricity.
The north quarter is mainly occupied by natives and Levantines. The narrow winding streets and the Arab bazaars present an Oriental scene contrasting with the European aspect of the district already described. This Arab quarter is traversed by the rue Ras et-Tin, leading to the promontory of than name. Here, overlooking the harbour, is the khedivial yacht club (built 1903) and the palace, also called Ras et-Tin, built by Mehemet Ali, a large but not otherwise noteworthy building. In the district between the Grand Square and the western harbour, one of the poorest quarters of the city, is an open space with Fort Caffareli or Napoleon in the centre. This quarter has been pierced by several straight roads, one of which, crossing the Mahmudiya canal by the Pont Neuf, leads to Gabbari, the most westerly part of the city and an industrial and manufacturing region, possessing asphalt works and oil, rice and paper mills. On either side of the canal are the warehouses of wholesale dealers in cotton, wool, sugar, grain and other commodities. In the southern part of the city are the Arab cemetery, ``Pompey's Pillar'' and the catacombs. ``Pompey's Pillar,'' which stands on the highest spot in Alexandria, is nearly 99 ft. high, including the pedestal. The shaft is of red granite and is beautifully polished. Nine feet in diameter at the base, it tapers to eight feet at the top. The catacombs, a short distance S.W. of the pillar, are hewn out of the rocky slope of a hill, and are an elaborate series of chambers adorned with pillars, statues, religious symbols and traces of painting (see below, Ancient City.) Along the northern side of the Mahmudiya canal, which here passes a little S. of the catacombs, are many fine houses and gardens (Moharrem Bey quarter), stretching eastward for a considerable distance, favourite residences of wealthy citizens. A similar residential quarter has also grown up on the N.E., where the line of the old fortifications has become a boulevard. The district extending outside the E. fortifications, in the direction of Hadra, has been laid out with fine avenues, and contains numerous garden-cafes and pleasure resorts. Thence roads lead to the E. suburb known generally as Ramleh, which stretches along the coast, and is served by a local railway. It begins E. of the racecourse with Sidi Gabr, and does not end till the khedivial estates E. of San Stefano are reached, some 5 m. E. All this space is filled with villas, gardens and hotels, and is a favourite summer resort not only of Alexandrians but also of Cairenes.
The eastern bay is rocky, shallow and exposed, and is now used only by native craft. The harbour is on the W. of Pharos and partly formed by a breakwater (built 1871-1873 and prolonged 1906-1907), 2 m. long. The breakwater starts opposite the promontory of Ras et-Tin, on which is a lighthouse, 180 ft. above the sea, built by Mehemet Ali. Another breakwater starts from the Gabbari side, the opening between the two works being about half a mile. A number of scattered rocks lie across the entrance, but through them two fairways have been made, one 600 ft. wide and 35 ft. deep, the other 300 ft. wide and 30 ft. deep. The enclosed water is divided into an outer and inner harbour by a mole, 1000 yds. long, projecting N.W. from the southern shore. The inner harbour covers 464 acres. It is lined for 2 1/2 m. by quays, affording accommodation for ships drawing up to 28 ft. The outer harbour (1400 acres water area) is furnished with a graving dock, completed in 1905, 520 ft. long, and with quays and jetties along the Gabbari foreshore. Their construction was begun in 1906.
Alexandria is linked by a network of railway and telegraph lines to the other towns of Egypt, and there is a trunk telephone line to Cairo. The city secured in 1906 a new and adequate water-supply, modern drainage works having been completed the previous year. Being the great entrepot for the trade of Egypt, the city is the headquarters of the British chamber of commerce and of most of the merchants and companies engaged in the development of the Delta. About 90% of the total exports and imports of the country pass through the port, though the completion, in 1904, of a broad-gauge railway connecting Cairo and Port Said deflected some of the cotton exports to the Suez Canal route. The staple export is raw cotton, the value of which is about 80% of all the exports. The principal imports are manufactured cotton goods and other textiles, machinery, timber and coal. The value of the trade of the port increased from L. 30,000,000 in 1900 to L. 46,000,000 in 1906. In the same period the tonnage of the ships entering the harbour rose from 2,375,000 to 3,695,000. Of the total trade Great Britain supplies from 35 to 40% of the imports and takes over 50% of the exports. Among the exports sent to England are the great majority of the 80,000,000 eggs annually shipped (see also EGYPT: Commerce.)
The population of the city (1907) was 332,246 or including the suburbs, about 400,000. The foreigners numbered over 90,000. The majority of these were Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Armenians and other Levantines, though almost every European and Oriental nation is represented. The predominant languages spoken, besides the Arabic of the natives, are Greek, French, English and Italian. The labouring population is mainly Egyptian; the Greeks and Levantines are usually shopkeepers or petty traders. In its social life Alexandria is the most progressive and occidental of all the cities of North Africa, with the possible exception of Algiers. (F. R. C.)
II. The Ancient City.—The Greek Alexandria was divided into three regions: (1) the Jews' quarter, forming the north-east portion of the city; (2) Rhacotis, on the west, occupied chiefly by Egyptians; (3) Brucheum, the Royal or Greek quarter, forming the most magnificent portion of the city. In Roman times Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making up the number of four regiones in all. The city was laid out as a gridiron of parallel streets, each of which had an attendant subterranean canal. Two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about 200 ft. wide, intersected in the centre of the city, close to the point where rose the Sema (or Soma) of Alexander (i.e. his Mausoleum). This point is very near the present mosque of Nebi Daniel; and the line of the great east-west ``Canopic'' street only slightly diverged from that of the modern Boulevard de Rosette. Traces of its pavement and canal have been found near the Rosetta Gate; but better remains still of streets and canals were exposed in 1899 by the German excavators outside the E. fortifications, which lie well within the area of the ancient city.
Alexandria consisted originally of little more than the island of Pharos, which was joined to the mainland by a mole nearly a mile long and called the Heptastadium. The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand Square, where rose the ``Moon Gate.'' All that now lies between that point and the modern Ras et-Tin quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras et-Tin quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour.
In Strabo's time, (latter half of 1st century B.C.) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour. (1) The Royal Palaces, filling the N.E. angle of the town and occupying the promontory of Lochias, which shut in the Great Harbouron the east. Lochias, the modern Pharillon, has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, together with the palaces, the ``Private Port'' and the island of Antirrhodus. There has been a land subsidence here, as throughout the N. Delta and indeed all the N.E. coast of Africa; and on calm days the foundations of buildings may be seen, running out far under sea, near the Pharillon. Search was made for relics of these palaces by German explorers in 1898-1899, but without much success. (2) The Great Theatre, on the modern Hospital Hill near the Ramleh station. This was used by Caesar as a fortress, where he stood a siege from the city mob after the battle of Pharsalus. (3)The Poseideion or Temple of the Sea God, close to the theatre and in front of it. (4) The Timonium built by Antony. (5, 6, 7) The Emporium (Exchange), Apostases (Magazines) and Navalia (Docks), lying west of (4), along the sea-front as far as the mole. Behind the Emporium rose (8) the Great Caesareum, by which stood the two great obelisks, later known as ``Cleopatra's Needles,'' and now removed to New York and London. This temple became in time the Patriarchal Church, some remains of which have been discovered: but the actual Caesareum, so far as not eroded by the waves, lies under the houses lining the new sea-wall. (9) The Gymnasium and (10) the Palaestra are both inland, near the great Canopic street (Boulevard de Rosette) in the eastern half of the town, but on sites not determined. (11) The Temple of Saturn: site unknown. (12) The Mausolea of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptolemies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection of the two main streets. (13) The Museum with its library and theatre in the same region; but on a site not identified. (14) The Serapeum, the most famous of all Alexandrian temples Strabo tells us that this stood in the west of the city; and recent discoveries go far to place it near ``Pompey's Pillar'' (see above) which, however, was an independent monument erected to commemorate Diocletian's siege of the city. We know the names of a few other public buildings on the mainland, but nothing as to their position. On the eastern point of the Pharos island stood the Great Lighthouse, one of the ``Seven Wonders,'' reputed to be 400 ft. high. The first Ptolemy began it, and the second completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It is the prototype of all lighthouses (q.v.) in the world. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole. In the Augustan age the population of Alexandria was estimated at 300,000 free folk, in addition to an immense number of slaves.
III. History.—
Ancient and medieval period.
Founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis (q.v.) as a Greek centre in Egypt, and to be the link between Macedonia and the rich Nile Valley. If such a city was to be on the Egyptian coast, there was only one possible site, behind the screen of the Pharos island and removed from the silt thrown out by Nile mouths. An Egyptian townlet, Rhacotis, already stood on the shore and was a resort of fishermen and pirates. Behind it (according to the Alexandrian treatise, known as pseudo-Callisthenes) were five native villages scattered along the strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea. Alexander occupied Pharos, and had a walled city marked out by Deinocrates on the mainland to include Rhacotis. A few months later he left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city; but his corpse was ultimately entombed there. His viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the creation of Alexandria. The Heptastadium, however, and the mainland quarters seem to have been mainly Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a century to be larger than Carthage; and for some centuries more it had to acknowledge no superior but Rome. It was a centre not only of Hellenism but of Semitism, and the greatest Jewish city in the world. There the Septuagint was produced. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Greek university; but they were careful to maintain the distinction of its population into three nations, ``Macedonian'' (i.e. Greek), Jew and Egyptian. From this division arose much of the later turbulence which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater. Nominally a free Greek city, Alexandria retained its senate to Roman times; and indeed the judicial functions of that body were restored by Septimius Severus, after temporary abolition by Augustus. The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 B.C., according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander: but it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years previously. There Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra in 47 B.C. and was mobbed by the rabble; there his example was followed by Antony, for whose favour the city paid dear to Octavian, who placed over it a prefect from the imperial household. Alexandria seems from this time to have regained its old prosperity, commanding, as it did, an important granary of Rome. This latter fact, doubtless, was one of the chief reasons which induced Augustus to place it directly under the imperial power. In A.D. 215 the emperor Caracalla visited the city; and, in order to repay some insulting satires that the inhabitants had made upon him, he commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms. This brutal order seems to have been carried out even beyond the letter, for a general massacre was the result. Notwithstanding this terrible disaster, Alexandria soon recovered its former splendour, and for some time longer was esteemed the first city of the world after Rome. Even as its main historical importance had formerly sprung from pagan learning, so now it acquired fresh importance as a centre of Christian theology and church government. There Arianism was formulated and there Athanasius, the great opponent of both heresy and pagan rcaction, worked and triumphed. As native influences, however, began to reassert themselves in the Nile valley, Alexandria gradually became an alien city, more and more detached from Egypt; and, losing much of its commerce as the peace of the empire broke up during the 3rd century A.D., it declined fast in population and splendour. The Brucheum, and Jewish quarters were desolate in the 5th century, and the central monuments, the Soma and Museum, fallen to ruin. On the mainland life seems to have centred in the vicinity of the Serapeum and Caesareum, both become Christian churches: but the Pharos and Heptastadium quarters remained populous and intact. In 616 it was taken by Chosroes, king of Persia; and in 640 by the Arabians, under `Amr, after a siege that lasted fourteen months, during which Heraclius, the emperor of Constantinople, did not send a single ship to its assistance. Notwithstanding the losses that the city had sustained, `Amr was able to write to his master, the caliph Omar, that he had taken a city containing ``4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 12,000 dealers in fresh oil, 12,000 gardeners, 40,000 Jews who pay tribute, 400 theatres or places of amusement."
The story of the destruction of the library by the Arabs is first told by Bar-hebraeus (Abulfaragius), a Christian writer who lived six centuries later; and it is of very doubtful authority. It is highly improbable that many of the 700,000 volumes collected by the Ptolemies remained at the time of the Arab conquest, when the various calamities of Alexandria from the time of Caesar to that of Diocletian are considered, together with the disgraceful pillage of the library in A.D. 389 under the rule of the Christian bishop, Theophilus, acting on Theodosius' decree concerning pagan monumcnts (see LIBRARIES: Ancient History). The story of Abulfaragius runs as follows:—
John the Grammarian, a famous Peripatetic philosopher, being in Alexandria at the time of its capture, and in high favour with `Amr, begged that he would give him the royal library. `Amr told him that it was not in his power to grant such a request, but promised to write to the caliph for his consent. Omar, on hearing the request of his general, is said to have replied that if those books contained the same doctrine with the Koran, they could be of no use, since the Koran contained all necessary truths; but if they contained anything contrary to that book, they ought to be destroyed; and therefore, whatever their contents were, he ordered them to be burnt. Pursuant to this order, they were distributed among the public baths, of which there was a large number in the city, where, for six months, they served to supply the fires.
Shortly after its capture Alexandria again fell into the hands of the Greeks, who took advantage of `Amr's absence with the greater portion of his army. On hearing what had happened, however, `Amr returned, and quickly regained possession of the city. About the year 646 `Amr was deprived of his government by the caliph Othman. The Egyptians, by whom `Amr was greatly beloved, were so much dissatisfied by this act, and even showed such a tendency to revolt, that the Greek emperor determined to make an effort to reduce Alexandria. The attempt proved perfectly successful. The caliph, perceiving his mistake, immediately restored `Amr, who, on his arrival in Egypt, drove the Greeks within the walls of Alexandria, but was only able to capture the city after a most obstinate resistance by the defenders. This so exasperated him that he completely demolished its fortifications, although he seems to have spared the lives of the inhabitants as far as lay in his power. Alexandria now rapidly declined in importance. The building of Cairo in 969, and, above all, the discovery of the route to the East by the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, nearly ruined its commerce; the canal, which supplied it with Nile water, became blocked; and although it remained a principal Egyptian port, at which most European visitors in the Mameluke and Ottoman periods landed, we hear little of it until about the beginning of the 19th century.