[Alexandria figured prominently in the military operations of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798. The French troops stormed the city on the 2nd of July 1798, and it remained in their hands until the arrival of the British expedition of 1801. The battle of Alexandria, fought on the 21st of March of that year, between the French army under General Menou and the British expeditionary corps under Sir Ralph Abercromby, took place near the ruins of Nicopohs, on the narrow spit of land between the sea and Lake Aboukir, along which the British troops had advanced towards Alexandria after the actions of Aboukir on the 8th and Mandora on the 13th.
Battle of 1801.
The British position on the night of the 20th extended across the isthmus, the right resting upon the ruins of Nicopolis and the sea, the left on the lake of Aboukir and the Alexandria canal. The line faced generally south-west towards the city, the reserve division under Major-General (Sir) John Moore on the right, the Guards brigade in the centre, and three other brigades on the left. In second line were two brigades and the cavalry (dismounted). On the 21st the troops were under arms at 3 A.M., and at 3.30 the French attacked and drove in the outposts. The French army now moved forward with great rapidity in their usual formation of columns. The brunt of the attack fell upon the command of Moore, and in particular upon the 28th (Gloucestershire Regiment). The first shock was repulsed, but a French column penetrated in the dark between two regiments of the British and a confused fight ensued in the ruins, in which the 42nd (Black Watch) captured a colour. The front and rear ranks of the 28th were simultaneously engaged, and the conduct of the regiment won for it the distinction of wearing badges both at the front and at the back of their head-dress. Other regiments which assisted in the overthrow of the French column were the 23rd, 40th and 58th. In a second attack the enemy's cavalry inflicted severe losses on the 42nd. Sir Ralph Abercromby was here engaged in personal conflict with some French dragoons, and about this time received a mortal wound, though he remained on the field and in command to the end. The attack on the centre was repulsed by the cool and steady fire of the Guards, and the left wing maintained its position with ease, but the French cavalry for the second time came to close quarters with the reserve. About half-past eight the combat began to wane, and the last shots were fired at ten. The real attack had been pressed home on the British right, and the History of the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment gives no undue praise to the regiments of the reserve in saying that ``the determined attack would have been successful against almost any other troops.'' Technically, the details of the action show that, while not markedly better in a melee than the war-seasoned French, the British infantry had in its volleys a power which no other troops then existing possessed, and it was these volleys that decided the day even more than the individual stubbornness of the men. The 42nd, twice charged by cavalry, had but thirteen men wounded by the sabre. Part of the French losses, which were disproportionately heavy, were caused by the gunboats which lay close inshore and cannonaded the left flank of the French columns, and by a heavy naval gun which was placed in battery near the position of the 28th. The forces engaged on this day mere approximately 14,000 British to about 20,000 French, and the losses were:— British, 1468 killed, wounded and missing, including Abercromby (who died on the 28th), Moore and three other generals wounded; French, 1160 killed and (?) 3000 wounded. The British subsequently advanced upon Alexandria, which surrendered on the 31st of August. (C. F. A.)
Modern city.
During the anarchy which accompanied Ottoman rule in Egypt from first to last, Alexandria sank to a small town of about 4000 inhabitants; and it owed its modern renascence solely to Mehemet Ali, who wanted a deep port and naval station for his viceregal domain. He restored its water communication with the Nile by making the Mahmudiya canal, finished in 1820; and he established at Ras et-Tin his favourite residence. The Old Eunostus harbour became the port, and a flourishing city arose on the old Pharos island and the Heptastadium district, with outlying suburbs and villa residences along the coast eastwards and the Mareotic shore. Being the starting-point of the ``overland route'' to India, and the residence of the chief foreign consuls, it quickly acquired a European character and attracted not only Frank residents, but great numbers of Greeks, Jews and Syrians. There most of the negotiations between the powers and Mehemet All were conducted; thence started the Egyptian naval expeditions to Crete, the Morea and Syria; and thither sailed the betrayed Ottoman fleet in 1839. It was twice threatened by hostile fleets, the Greek in 1827 and the combined British, French and Russian squadrons in 1828. The latter withdrew on the viceroy's promise that Ibrahim should evacuate the Morea. The fortifications were strengthened in 1841, and remained in an antiquated condition until 1882, when they were renovated by Arabi Pasha. Alexandria was connected with Cairo by railway in 1856. Much favoured by the earlier viceroys of Mehemet Ali's house, and removed from the Mameluke troubles, Alexandria was the real capital of Egypt till Said Pasha died there in 1863 and Ismail came into power. Though this prince continued to develop the city, giving it a municipality in 18661 and new harbour works in 1871-1878, he developed Cairo still more; and the centre of gravity definitely shifted to the inland capital.
Bombardment of 1882.
Fate, however, again brought Alexandria to the front. After a mutiny of soldiers there in 1881, the town was greatly excited by the arrival of an Anglo-French fleet in May 1882, and on the 11th of June a terrible riot and massacre took place, resulting in the death of four hundred Europeans. Since satisfaction was not given for this and the forts were being strengthened at the instigation of Arabi Pasha, the war minister, the British admiral, Sir Beauchamp Seymour (afterwards Lord Alcester), sent an ultimatum on the 10th of July and opened fire on the forts the next day. They were demolished, but as no troops were landed immediately a fresh riot and massacre ensued. As Arabi did not submit, a British military expedition landed at Alexandria on the 10th of August, the sequel being the British occupation of the whole country, the history of which is set forth under EGYPT.
Since the restoration of tranquillity and the establishment of sound political and economic conditions in the Nile valley, Alexandria has greatly expanded. As the British consular report for 1904 says, ``Building . . . for residential and other purposes proceeds with almost feverish rapidity. The cost of living has doubled and the price of land has risen enormously.'' On the E. and S.E. a new town of handsome houses, gardens and boulevards has been called into existence, in the arrangement of which the controlling influence of the municipality is evident (see Modern Gity above).
IV. Antiquities.—Persistent efforts have been made to explore the antiquities of Alexandria. Encouragement and help have been given by the local Archaeological Society, and by many individuals, notably Greeks justly proud of a city which is one of the glories of their national story. The past and present directors of the museum have been enabled from time to time to carry out systematic excavations when opportunity offered; Mr D. G. Hogarth made tentative researches on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1895; and a German expedition worked for two years (1898-1899). But two difficulties face the would-be excavator in Alexandria. First, since the great and growing modern city stands right over the ancient one, it is almost impossible to find any considerable space in which to dig, except at enormous cost. Second, the general subsidence of the coast has sunk the lower-lying parts of the ancient town under water. Unfortunately the spaces still most open are the low grounds to N.E. and S.W., where it is practically impossible to get below the Roman strata.
The most important results were those achieved by Dr G. Botti, late director Of the museum, in the neighbourhood of ``Pompey's Pillar,'' where there is a good deal of open ground. Here substructures of a large building or group of buildings have been exposed, which are perhaps part of the Serapeum. Hard by immense catacombs and columbaria have been opened which may have been appendages of the temple. These contain one very remarkable vault with curious painted reliefs, now lighted by electricity and shown to visitors. The objects found in these researches are in the museum, the most notable being a great basalt bull, probably once an object of cult in the Serapeum. Other catacombs and tombs have been opened in Kore es-Shugafa Hadra (Roman) and Ras et-Tin (painted). The Germans found remains of a Ptolemaic colonnade and streets in the north-east of the city, but little else. Mr Hogarth explored part of an immense brick structure under the mound of Kom ed-Dik, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea or a Roman fortress. The making of the new foreshore led to the dredging up of remains of the Patriarchal Church; and the foundations of modern buildings are seldom laid without some objects of antiquity being discovered. The wealth underground is doubtless immense; but, despite all efforts, there is not much for antiquarians to see in Alexandria outside the museum and the neighbourhood of ``Pompey's Pillar.'' The native tomb- robbers, well-sinkers, dredgers and the like, however, come upon valuable objects from time to time, which find their way into private collections.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—(1) Modern City. See latest editions of guidebooks to Lower Egypt (Baedeker, Murray, Macmillan). (2) History. See authorities for history of EGYPT. (3) Ancient City and Antiquities. Mahmud Bey el Fallaki, Memoire sur l'antique Alexandrie (1872); T. D. Neroutsos, L'A ncienne A lexandrie ( I 888) D.G. Hogarth and E. F. Benson, Report on Prospects of Research in Alexandria Egypt Expl. Fund Archaeological Report, 1894-1895); Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique d'Alexandrie(1898 foll.); O. Puchstein in Pauly- Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, s.v. ``Alexandria''; U. Wilcken, Observationes ad historiam Egypti Provinciae Romanae (1885); G. Lumbroso, L'Egitto al tempo dei Greci e dei Romani (1882); H. Kiepert, Zur Topographie des alten Alexandria (1872). (D. G. H.)
1 This municipality was superseded by a new municipal body, with extensive powers, created in 1890.
ALEXANDRIA, a city of Madison county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 46 m. N.E. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1890) 715; (1900) 7221, (1002 foreign-born); (1910) 5096. Alexandria is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Lake Erie & Western railways, and by the Indiana Union Traction System (electric). In the city are a Carnegie library and Beulah Park (24 acres), the latter belonging to the Northern Indiana Holiness Association, which there holds summer camp-meetings. The city is in a rich farming country, which produces Indian corn, oats and wheat; and is in the Indiana natural gas region, to which fact it owes its rapid growth as a manufacturing centre. It is one of the principal seats of the glass industry in Indiana— plate glass, lamp chimneys, mirrors, &c., being manufactured here—and also has mineral wool factories and paper mills. The municipality owns and operates the water-works and the gas-lighting plant. Alexandria was founded in 1836 and was chartered as a city in 1893.
ALEXANDRIA, a city of Louisiana, U.S.A., capital of Rapides Parish, on the S. bank of the Red river in almost the exact geographical centre of the state. Pop. (1890) 2861; (1900) 5648 (3142 negroes); (1910) 11,213. The city is served by the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company, the St Louis, Watkins & Gulf, the Texas & Pacific, the Louisiana & Arkansas, the Southern Pacific, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific railways. The Red river is navigable to Alexandria during the entire year. Alexandria is on a level plain in the centre of the Louisiana long-leaf pine forests, in which pine is interspersed with various hardwoods. The forests stretch on all sides within a radius of 75 m. In the immediate vicinity of the city, on the Red river, cotton, sugar, alfalfa and garden vegetables are cultivated; south of the Red river is a peculiarly rich farming country watered by Bayou Rapides and Bayou Boeuf. Near the city is the Louisiana Asylum for the Insane. The principal industaes are cotton- pressing and the manufacture of lumber and of cotton-seed products; sugar and molasses, artificial ice, mineral waters and brick are other manufactures. The city owns and operates the water-works and electric-lighting plant; the water-supply is derived from artesian wells. Alexandria was named in honour of Alexander Fulton, on whose grant from Spain the first settlement was made in 1785; it was first incorporated as a town in 1818 and received a city charter in 1882. In the spring of 1863 a Union fleet under Admiral David D. Porter, operating on the Red river, co-operated with land forces under General N. P. Banks in pushing the Confederates westward. Alexandria was occupied on the 7th of May 1863, but the troops were soon withdrawn for the Port Hudson attack. On the 19th of March 1864 it was again occupied by the Union forces, who made it the point of concentration for another land and naval expedition against E. Kirby Smith and Shreveport. After the check of this expedition and its abandonment, Alexandria was again vacated on the 12th-13th of May, when the city was almost entirely burned. The Union gunboats, which had passed up the river toward Shreveport at high water, were caught in its decline above the falls at Alexandria, but they were saved by a splendid piece of engineering (a dam at the falls), constructed by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey (1827-1867), who for this service received the thanks of Congress and the brevet of brigadier-general of volunteers.
ALEXANDRIA, a town of Rumania, situated among the rich corn-lands of the Teleorman department, on the right bank of the river Vedea. Pop. (1900) 13,675. Its chief trade is in grain, despatched by rail to the Danubian port of Zimnicea, or by river to Giurgevo. Alexandria was named after its founder, Alexander John Cuza, prince of Rumania from 1859 to 1866.
ALEXANDRIA, a manufacturing town of Dumbartonshire, Scotland, situated on the right bank of the Leven about 3 m. north of Dumbarton, on the North British and Caledonian railways. It owes its origin almost entirely to the cotton printing and bleaching works of the vicinity, for which there is an abundant supply of excellent water, and contains one of the largest of the Turkey-red dyeing establishments in the Vale of Leven. The public buildings include a public hall, the mechanics' institute with library and lecture-hall, an institute for men, with library and recreation rooms, a similar institution for women, banks and other important commercial offices. Pop. (1891) 7796; (1901) 8007. Alexandria is connected with BONHILL, on the opposite bank of the river, by a bridge which replaced in 1898 one bought three years earlier by the county council from the Smollett family, who have been closely associated with the district since the time of Sir James Smollett, the novelist's grandfather. The industries of Bonhill centre in the calico printing, dyeing and bleaching which find their headquarters in the valley. Population (1891) 3843; (1901) 3333. JAMESTOWN, about 1 m. to the north-east of Alexandria, with a station on the Forth & Clyde railway from Balloch to Stirling (North British), contains some of the largest cotton-printing works in Scotland. Population (1891) 1668; (1901) 2080.
ALEXANDRIA, a city and a port of entry of Alexandria county, Virginia, U.S.A., on the W. bank of the Potomac river, 6 m. below Washington, D.C., with which it is connected by a ferry. Pop. (1890) 14,339; (1900) 14,528, of whom 4533 were negroes; (1910, census), 15,329. Alexandria is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Southern and the Washington Southern railways; by the Washington, Alexandria & Mount Vernon electric railway; and by several lines of river and coasting steamboats. It is a quaint, old-fashioned city, with quiet, shady streets, and a number of buildings dating back to the 18th century; of these the most interesting is the old Christ Church in which George Washington and Robert E. Lee worshipped. The city has a public library. About 2 1/2 m. W. of Alexandria is the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, opened here in 1823 and chartered in 1854; in 1906-1907 the Seminary had a faculty of 7 and 46 students. Alexandria is a distributing and jobbing centre for the north-east counties of Virginia. Among its manufactures are fertilizers, bottles, carbonated beverages, flour, beer, shoes, silk thread, aprons, brooms, leather, bricks, and tiling and structural iron. The total value of its factory product in 1905 was $2,186,658. The municipality owns and operates its gas-lighting plant. Alexandria, first known as Belhaven, was named in honour of John Alexander, who in the last quarter of the 17th century had bought the land on which the city now stands from Robert Howison; the first settlement here was made in 1695. Alexandria was laid out in 1749 and was incorporated in 1779. From 1790 until 1846 Alexandria county was a part of the District of Columbia; at present the city, although within the limits of Alexandria county, is not administratively a part of it. The city was re-chartered in 1852. For some time Alexandria seemed destined to become an important commercial centre, but the rise of Washington created a rival that soon outstripped it, and since the Civil War the city's growth has been comparatively slight. At Alexandria in 1755 General Edward Braddock organized his fatal expedition against Fort Duquesne, and here, in April of the same year, the governors of Virginia, Massachusetts, New Yfork, Pennsylvania and Maryland met (in a house still standing) to determine upon concerted action against the French in America. In March 1785 commissioners from Virginia and Maryland met here to discuss the commercial relations of the two states, finishing their business at Mount Vernon on the 28th with an agreement for freedom of trade and freedom of navigation of the Potomac. The Maryland legislature in ratifying this agreement on the 22nd of November proposed a conference between representatives from all the states to consider the adoption of definite commercial regulations. This led to the calling of the Annapolis convention of 1786, which in turn led to the calling of the Federal convention of 1787. In 1814 Alexandria was threatened by a British fleet, but bought immunity from attack by paying about $100,000. At the opening of the Civil War the city was occupied by Federal troops, and great excitement throughout the North was caused by the killing (May 24, 1861) of Colonel E. E. Ellsworth (1837-1861) by Captain James W. Jackson, a hotel proprietor, from whose building Ellsworth had removed a Confederate flag. After the erection of the state of West Virginia (1863), and until the close of the war, Alexandria was the seat of what was known as the ``Alexandria Government'' (see VIRGINIA).
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. Under this title are generally included certain strongly marked tendencies in literature, science and art, which took their rise in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria. That city, founded by Alexander the Great about the time when Greece, in losing her national independence, lost also her intellectual supremacy, was in every way admirably adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and thought. Its situation brought it into commercial relations with all the nations lying around the Mediterranean, and at the same time rendered it the one communicating link with the wealth and civilization of the East. The great natural advantages it thus enjoyed were artificially increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt. Ptolemy Soter (reigned 323-285 B.C.), to whom, in the general distribution of Alexander's conquests, this kingdom had fallen, began to draw around him from various parts of Greece a circle of men eminent in literature and philosophy. To these he gave every facility for the prosecution of their learned researches. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman and philosopher, this Ptolemy laid the foundations of the great Alexandrian library and originated the keen search for all written works, which resulted in the formation of a collection such as the world has seldom seen. He also built, for the convenience of his men of letters, the Museum, in which, maintained by the royal bounty, they resided, studied and taught. This Museum, or academy of science, was in many respects not unlike a modern university. The work thus begun by Ptolemy Soter was carried on vigorously by his descendants, in particular by his two immediate successors, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes. Philadelphus (285-247), whose librarian was the celebrated Callimachus, bought up all Aristotle's collection of books, and also introduced a number of Jewish and Egyptian works. Among these appears to have been a portion pf the Septuagint. Euergetes (247-222) largely increased the library by seizing on the original editions of the dramatists laid up in the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travellers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.
The intellectual movement so originated extended over a long period of years. If we date its rise from the 4th century B.C., at the time of the fall of Greece and the foundation of the Graeco- Macedonian empire, we must look for its final dissolution in the 7th century of the Christian era, at the time of the fall of Alexandria and the rise of the Mahommedan power. But this very long period falls into two divisions. The first, extending from about 306 to 30, includes the time from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to its final subjugation by the Romans; the second extends from 30 to A.D. 642, when Alexandria was destroyed by the Arabs. The characteristic features of these divisions are very clearly marked, and their difference affords an explanation of the variety and vagueness of meaning attaching to the term ``Alexandrian School.'' In the first of the two periods the intellectual activity was of a purely literary and scientific nature. It was an attempt to continue and develop, under new conditions, the old Hellenic culture. This direction of effort was particularly noticeable under the early Ptolemies, Alexandria being then almost the only home in the world for pure literature. During the last century and a half before the Christian era, the school, as it might be called, began to break up and to lose its individuality. This was due partly to the state of government under some of the later Ptolemies, partly to the formation of new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria and elsewhere, whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian peculiarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school. The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual dissolution, was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway. Then the influence of the school was extended over the whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In that city, however, there were new forces in operation which produced a second grand outburst of intellectual life. The new movement was not in the old direction—had, indeed, nothing in common with it. With its character largely determined by Jewish elements, and even more by contact with the dogmas of Christianity, this second Alexandrian school resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.
There appear, therefore, to be at least two definite significations of the title Alexandrian School; or rather, there are two Alexandrian schools, distinct both chronologically and in substance. The one is the Alexandrian school of poetry and science, the other the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The term ``school,'' however, has not the same meaning as when applied to the Academics or Peripatetics, the Stoics or Epicureans. These consisted of a company united by holding in common certain speculative principles, by having the same theory of things. There was nothing at all corresponding to this among the Alexandrians. In literature their activities were directed to the most diverse objects; they have only in common a certain spirit or form. There was among them no definite system of phllosophy. Even in the later schools of philosophy proper there is found a community rather of tendency than of definite result or of fixed principles.
I. Literature.—The general character of the literature of the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state of affairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and independence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been the products of a fresh life of nature and perfect freedom of thought. All their hymns, epics and histories were bound up with their individuality as a free people. But the Macedonian conquest at Chaeroneia brought about a complete dissolution of this Greek life in all its relations, private and political. The full, genial spirit of Greek thought vanished when freedom, with which it was inseparably united, was lost. A substitute for this originality was found at Alexandria in learned research, extended and multifarious knowledge. Amply provided with means for acquiring information, and under the watchful care of a great monarch, the Alexandrians readily took this new direction in literature. With all the great objects removed which could excite a true spirit of poetry, they devoted themselves to minute researches in all sciences subordinate to literature proper. They studied criticism, grammar, prosody and metre, antiquities and mythology. The results of this study constantly appear in their productions. Their works are never national, never addressed to a people, but to a circle of learned men. Moreover, the very fact of being under the protection and, as it were, in the pay of an absolute monarch was damaging to the character of their literature. There was introduced into it a courtjy element, clear traces of which, with all its accompaniments, are found in the extant works of the school. One other fact, not to be forgotten in forming a general estimate of the literary value of their productions, is, that the same writer was frequently or almost always distinguished in several special sciences. The most renowned poets were at the same time men of culture and science, critics, archaeologists, astronomers or physicians. To such writers the poetical form was merely a convenient vehicle for the exposition of science.
The forms of poetical composition chiefly cultivated by the Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics are wanting; but in their place, as might almost have been expected, are found the historical and the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally some of the well-known myths, in the exposition of which the writer could exhibit the full extent of his learning and his perfect command of verse. These poems are in a sense valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is on the whole bad, and infinite patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.
The subjects of didactic epics were very numerous; they seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their information. Some, e.g. the lost poem of Callimachus, called Ai'tia, were on the origin of myths and religious observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria, was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to be with reason included in the school; the one is an essay on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research. They are distinguished by artistic form, purity of expression and strict attention to the laws of metre and prosody, qualities which, however good in themselves, do not compensate for want of originality, freshness and power.
In their lyric and elegiac poetry there is much worthy of admiration. The specimens we possess are not devoid of talent or of a certain happy art of expression. Yet, for the most part, they either relate to objects thoroughly incapable of poetic treatment, where the writer's endeavour is rather to expound the matter fully than to render it poetically beautiful, or else expend themselves on short isolated subjects, generally myths, and are erotic in character. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philetas, the sweet singer of Cos. But the most distinguished was Callimachus, undoubtedly the greatest of the Alexandrian poets. Of his numerous works there remain to us only a few hymns, epigrams and fragments of elegies.1 Other lyric poets were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolla and Lycophron.
Some of the best productions of the school were their epirams. Of these we have several specimens, and the art of composing them seems to have been assiduously cultivated, as might naturally be expected from the court life of the poets, and their constant endeavours after terseness and neatness of expression. Of kindred character were the parodies and satirical poems, of which the best examples were the Silli of Timon and the Cinaedi of Sotades.
Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some extent. There are still extant three or four varying lists of the seven great dramatists who composed the Pleiad of Alexandria. Their works, perhaps not unfortunately, have perished. A ruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or bucolic mime, developed into the only pure stream of genial poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of Theocritus. The name of these poems preserves their original idea; they were pictures of fresh country life.
The most interesting fact connected with this Alexandrian poetry is the powerful influence it exercised on Roman literature. That literature, especially in the Augustan age, is not to be thoroughly understood without due appreciation of the character of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period were numerous and prolific. Many of them, e.g. Cleitarchus, devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.
Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works, their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the world, it must be handed down to posterity in a form capable of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them which at a later date might become obscure. The complete philological examination of any work consisted, according to them, of the following processes:—-diorthosis, arrangement of the text; anagnosis, settlement of accents; tenn??, theory of forms, syntax; lxegnsis, explanation either of words or things; and finally, krisis, judgment on the author and his work, including all questions as to authenticity and integrity. To perform their task adequately required from the critics a wide circle of knowledge; and from this requirement sprang the sciences of grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, confessedly the coryphaeus of criticism. Others were Lycophron, Callimachus, Eratosthenes and many of a later age, for the critical school long survived the literary. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours were of great indirect importance, for they led immediately to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a more accurate knowledge of geography and history. Considerable attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece, and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and cities. A large collection of such curious information is contained in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, a pupil of Aristarchus who flourished in the 2nd century B.C. Eratosthenes was the first to write on mathematical and physical geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria, but they can scarcely be said to have their origin there, or in any strict sense to form a part of the peculiarly Alexandrian literature. The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid (Eucleides); among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemaeus. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a school of mathematics and science long after the Christian era. The science of medicine had distinguished representatives in Herophilus and Erasistratus, the two first great anatomists.
AUTHORITIES.—Muller and Donaldson, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur; Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Empire; Couat, La Poesie alexandrine; and especially Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandninerzeit. Nicolai's Gricchische Literaturgeschichte, though somewhat out of date, is useful for bibliography.
II. Philosophy.—Although it is not possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up, seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the field of pure literature bear the stamp of Rome rather than of Alexandria. But in that city for some time past there had been various forces secretly working, and these, coming in contact with great spiritual changes in the world around, produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The doctrines of this school were a fusion of Eastern and Western thought, and combined in varying proportions the elements of Hellenistic and Jewish philosophy. Traces of this eclectic tendency are discoverable as far back as 280 B.C., but for practical purposes the dates of the school may be given as from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 529. The city of Alexandria had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration in the dry intellectualism into which they had fallen (see NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM). At the same time the Jews of the Dispersion had to some extent shaken off the exclusiveness of their old political relations and were prepared to compare and contrast their old territorial theology with cosmopolitan culture. Further, when the two sides came to consider the results of their intellectual inheritance they found that they had sufficient common ground for the initial compromise. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a complete theology revealed to a special people. The result was the application of a purely philosophical system to the somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism, the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and eclectic Platonism.
The members of the school may be enumerated under three heads. (1) The beginnings of the eclectic spirit are, according to some authorities, discernible in the Septuagint (280 B.C.) (see Frankel, Historisch-kritische Studien zur Septuaginta, 1841), but the first concrete exemplification is found in Aristobulus (e. 160 B.C.). So far as the Jewish succession is concerned, the great name is that of Philo in the first century of our era. He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysic, and may be regarded as representing the climax of Jewish philosophy. (2) The first purely philosophical phenomenon of the Alexandrian school was Neo-Pythagoreanism, the second and last Neo-Platonism. Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in communion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reaches its height in Plotinus, after whom it degenerated into magic and theurgy in its unsuccessful combat with the victorious Christianity. Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when Justinian closed the Athenian schools (A.D. 529). (3) The eddies of Neo-Platonism had a considerable effect on certain Christian thinkers about the beginning of the 3rd century. Among these the most important were Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement, as a scholar and a theologian, proposed to unite the mysticism of Neo- Platonism with the practical spirit of Christianity. He combined the principle of pure living with that of free thinking, and held that instruction must have regard to the mental capacity of the hearer. The compatibility of Christian and later Neo-Platonic ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and though Neo-Platonism eventually succumbed to Christianity, it had the effect, through the writings of Clement and Origen, of modifying the tyrannical fanaticism and ultra- dogmatism of the early Christian writers.
AUTHORITIES.—Matter, Histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie, 2nd ed. (3 vols., 1840-1844); Simon, Histoire de L'ecole d'Ajexandrie (2 vols., 1844-1845); Vacherot, Histoire critique de l'ecole d'Ajexandrie (3 vols., 1846-1851); Kingsley, Alexandria and her Schools (1854); Gfrorer, Philo und die Alexandrinische Theosophie (1835) Dahne, Geschict. Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religionsphilosophie (1834); Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Uberweg, Windelband, &c., and Bibliography of CHURCH HISTORY, &c.
1 A considerable fragment of his epic Hecale has been discovered in the Rainer papyrus.
ALEXANDRIA TROAS (mod. Eski Stambul), an ancient Greek city of the Troad, situated on the west coast at nearly its middle point, a little south of Tenedos. It was built by Antigonus, perhaps about 310 B.C., and was called by him Antigonia Troas. Early in the next century the name was changed by Lysimachus to Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alexander's memory. As the chief port of north-west Asia Minor, the place prospered greatly in Roman times, and the existing remains sufficiently attest its former importance. Thence St Paul sailed for Europe for the first time, and there occurred later the episode of the raising of Eutychus (Acts xx. 5-12). The site is now covered with valonia oaks, and has been much plundered, e.g by Mahommed IV., who took columns to adorn his new Valideh mosque in Stambul; but the circuit of the old walls can be traced, and in several places they are fairly well preserved. They had a circumference of about six English miles, and were fortified with towers at regular intervals. Remains of some ancient buildings, including a bath and gymnasium, can be traced within this area. Trajan built an aqueduct which can still be traced. The harbour had two large basins, now almost choked with sand. A Roman colony was sent to the place, as Strabo mentions, in the reign of Augustus. The abridged name ``Troas'' (Acts xvi. 8) was probably the current one in later Roman times. (D. G. H.)
ALEXANDRINE VERSE, a name given to the leading measure in French poetry. It is the heroic French verse, used in epic narrative, in tragedy and in the higher comedy. There is some doubt as to the origin of the name; but most probably it is derived from a collection of romances, collected in the 12th century, of which Alexander of Macedon was the hero, and in which he was represented, somewhat like the British Arthur, as the pride and crown of chivalry. Before the publication of this work most of the trouvere romances appeared in octosyllabic verse. There is also a theory that the form was invented by a poet named Alexander. The new work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables, but with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly curtailed. The new fashion, however, was not adopted all at once. The metre fell into disuse until the reign of Francis I., when it was revived by Jean Antoine de Baif, one of the seven poets known as the Pleiades. Jodelle mingled episodical Alexandrines with the vers communs of his tragedies and so introduced them into drama. It was Ronsard, however, who made the verse popular, and gave it vogue in France. From his time it became the recognized vehicle for all great poetry, and the regulation of its pauses became more and more strict. The following is an example of the verse as used by Racine— Ou suis-je? qu'ai-je fait? || que dois-je faire encore? Quel transport me saisit? || quel chagrin me devore? Two inexorable laws came to be established with regard to the pauses. The first is, that each line should be divided into two equal parts, the sixth syllable always ending with a word. In the earlier use of this metre, on the contrary, it frequently happened that the sixth and seventh syllables belonged to the same word. The other is that, except under the most stringent conditions, there should be none of what the French critics call enjambement, that is, the overlapping of the sense from one line on to the next. Ronsard completely ignored this rule, which was after his time settled by the authority of Malherbe. The latest school of French prosody has given great attention to the breaking up of the Alexandrine, which no longer possesses the rigidity of authoritative form which it held until about 1880, but is often used with a licence no less than when Ronsard wrote.
Michael Drayton, who was twenty-two years of age when Ronsard died, seemed to think that the Alexandrine might be as pleasing to English as it was to French ears, and in this metre he wrote a long poem in twenty-four books called the Polyolbion. The metre, however, failed to catch the English ear. The principal English measure is a line of ten syllables, and the Alexandrine is used only occasionally to give it variety and weight. In ordinary English heroic verse it is but rarely introduced; but in the favourite narrative metre, known as the Spenserian, it comes in regularly as the concluding line of each stanza. In English usage, moreover, it is to be observed that there is no fixed rule as to the position of the pause, though it is true that most commonly the pause occurs at the end of the sixth syllable. Spenser is very free in shifting the pause about; and though the later poets who have used this stanza are not so free, yet, with the exception of Shenstone and of Byron, they do not scruple to obliterate all pause between the sixth and seventh syllables. Thus Thomson (Castle of Indolenee, i. 42):—
And music lent new gladness to the morning air.
The danger in the use of the Alexandrine is that, in attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of Pope—
A needless Alexandrine ends the song. That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. The Alexandrine was the dominant metre in Dutch poetry from the 16th to the middle of the 19th century, and about the time of its introduction to Holland it was accepted in Germany by the school of Opitz. In the course of the 17th century, after being used without rhyme by Seckendorf and others, it formed a transitional station on the route to German blank verse, and has since then been rarely employed, except occasionally in rhymed comedy.
ALEXANDRISTS, the name given to those philosophers of the Renaissance, who, in the great controversy on the subject of personal immortality, adopted the explanation of the De Anima given by Alexander of Aphrodisias. According to the orthodox Thomism of the Roman Catholic Church, Aristotle rightly regarded reason as a facility of the individual soul. Against this, the Averroists, led by Agostino Nito (q.v.), introduced the modifying theory that universal reason in a sense individualizes itself in each soul and then absorbs the active reason into itself again. These two theories respectively evolved the doctrine of individual and universal immortality, or the absorption of the individual into the eternal One. The Alexandrists, led by Pietro Pomponazzi, boldly assailed these beliefs and denied that either was rightly attributed to Aristotle. They held that Aristotle considered the soul as a material and therefore a mortal entity which operates during life only under the authority of universal reason. Hence the Alexandrists denied the possibillty of immortality in every shape or form. Since the soul is organically connected with the body, the dissolution of the latter involves the extinction of the former.
ALEXANDRITE, a variety of chrysoberyl (q.v.) discovered in the Urals in 1833, on the day set apart for celebrating the majority of the cesarevich, afterwards the tsar, Alexander II., in whose honour the stone was named by Nils Gustaf Nordenskiold, of Helsingfors. It is remarkable for being strongly dichroic, generally appearing dark green by daylight and raspberry-red by candle-light, or by daylight transmitted through the stone. As red and green are the military colours of Russia, the mineral became highly popular as a gem-stone. The dark green crystals are usually cloudy and cracked, and grouped in triplets presenting a pseudo-hexagonal form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka in the southern Urals. Subsequently it was discovered in greater abundance in the gem-gravels of Ceylon. It has been found also in Tasmania. Some of the Ceylon alexandrite exhibits, when suitably cut, the Cat's-eye chatoyance, whence it has been called alexandrite cat's-eye. (F. W. R.*)
ALEXANDROPOL, or ALEXANDRAPOL. (Turk. Gumri), a Russian town and fortified camp in Transcaucasia, government of Erivan, near the junction of the Arpa-chai with the Aras, 48 m. by rail E.N.E. of Kars. Altitude 5080 ft. It has a trade in silk. Here the Russians defeated the Turks in 1853. Pop. (1885) 22,670; (1897) 32,735.
ALEXANDROVSK. (1) A town of N. Russia, in the government of Archangel, on the harbour of Catherine (Ekaterininsk), on the Murman coast, 5 m. from the mouth of Kola Bay. It was opened in 1899 and is a naval station, being free from ice all the year round. It is also called Port Catherine. Pop. (1901) 300. (2) A town of S. Russia, 83 m. S. of Ekaterinoslav, on the railway to the Crimea, near the left bank of the Dnieper, below its rapids. Pop. (1897) 16,393. Opposite it is the island of Khortitsa, upon which was the sich (or syech) or camp of the Zaporozhian cossacks. All its neighbouthood is strewn with kurgans (tumuli).
ALEXIS, Greek comic poet of the Middle Comedy, was born about 394 B.C. at Thurii and taken early to Athens, where he became a citizen. Plutarch says that he lived to the age of 106, and that he died on the stage while being crowned. According to Suidas, who calls him Monander's uncle, he wrote 245 comedies, of which some 130 titles are preserved. The fragments (about 1000 lines) attest the wit and refinement of the author (Koch, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta).
ALEXIS, WILLIBALD, the pseudonym of GEORG WILHELM HEINRICH HARING (1798—1871), German historical novelist. He was born on the 29th of June 1798 at Breslau, where his father, who came of a French refugee family, named Hareng, held a high position in the war department. He attended the Werdersche Gymnasium in Berlin, and then, serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1815, took part in the siege of the Ardenne fortresses. On his return he studied law at the universities of Berlin and Breslau and entered the legal profession, but he soon abandoned this career and devoted himself to literature. Settling in Berlin he edited, 1827-1835, the Berliner Konversationsblatt, in which for the first two years he was assisted by Friedrich Christoph Forster (1791—1868); and in 1828 was created a doctor of philosophy by the university of Halle. In 1852 he retired to Arnstadt in Thuringia, where after many years of broken health he died on the 16th of December 1871.
Haring made his name first known as a writer by an idyll in hexameters, Die Treibjagd (1820), and several short stories in which the influence of Tieck is observable; but his literary reputation was first established by the historical romance Walladmor (1823), which, published as being ``freely translated from the English of Sir Walter Scott, with a preface by Willibald Alexis,'' so closely imitated the style of the famous Scotsman as really to deceive even Scott's admirers. The work became immediately popular and was translated into several languages, including English. It was followed by Schloss Avalon (1827), with regard to which the author adopted the same tactics and with equal success. These historical novels, however, were of considerable literary merit, and would doubtless have achieved popularity even without the borrowed plumage. Soon afterwards Haring published a number of successful short stories (Gesammelte Novellen, 4 vols., 1830-1831), some books of travel, and in the novels Das Haus Dusterweg (1835) and Zwolf Nachte (1838) showed for a while a leaning towards the ``Young German'' school. In Cabanis (1832), however, a story of the time of Frederick the Great, he entered the field of patriotic- historical romance, in which he so far excelled as to have earned the name of ``der Markische Walter Scott'' (Walter Scott of the Mark). From 1840 onwards he published at short intervals a series of romances, each dealing with some epoch in the history of Brandenburg. Among them may be especially noted Der Roland von Berlin (1840), Der falsche Woldemar (1842), Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (1846-1848), Ruhe ist die erste Burgerpflicht (1852), Isegrimm (1854) and Dorothe (1856). In all these the author shows himself as a keen observer of men and things; the characters, situations and natural surroundings are excellently delineated, and the patriotic feeling which pervades them is not overdone. Haring also made a name for himself in the field of criminology by commencing in 1842, in conjunction with the publicist, Julius Eduard Hitzig (1780- 1849), the publication of Der neue Pitaval (continued by A. Vollert, 36 vols., Leipzig, 1842-1865; new edition, 24 vols., Leipzig, 1866-1891), a, collection of criminal anecdotes culled from all nations and all times. This publication attained great popularity, and is to-day of psychological interest and value.
His Gesammelte Werke were published in 20 volumes (Berlin, 1874); the Vaterlandische Romane separately in 8 volumes (Berlin, 1881, 1884), and, since the expiry of the copyright in 1901, in many cheap reprints. Cp. W. Alexis' Erinnerungen, edited by M. Ewert (1900), and essays by Julian Schmidt (Neue Bilaer aus dere geistigen Leben unsrer Zeit, 1873), G. Freytag (Werke, vols. 16 and 23), A. Stern Zur Literatur der Gegenwart, 1880) and T. Fontane (in Bayreuther Blatter, vi., 1883).
ALEXISBAD, a spa of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, lying under the Harz mountains, 1000 ft. above the sea, on the railway from Gernrode to Harzgerode. Pop. 1000. It is celebrated for its medicinal waters, of which the Abexisbrunnen, a ferruginous spring, is used for drinking, while the Selkebrunnen supplies the baths, which are of use in feminine disorders. The place was founded in 1810 by Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg.
ALEXIUS I. (1048-1118), emperor of the East, was the third son of John Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, emperor 1057-1059. His father declined the throne on the abdication of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors of other families between that date and 1081. Under one of these emperors, Romanus Diogenes (1067-1071), he served with distinction against the Seljuk Turks. Under Michael Parapinaces (1071-1078) and Nicephorus Botaniates (1078-1081) he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac, against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace and in Epirus (1071). The success of the Comneni roused the jealousy of Botaniates and his ministers, and the Comneni were almost compelled to take up arms in self- defence. Botaniates was forced to abdicate and retire to a monastery, and Isaac declined the crown in favour of his younger brother Alexius, who then became emperor in the 33rd year of his age. His long reign of nearly 37 years was full of difficulties (see ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER). At the very outset he had to meet the formidable attack of the Normans (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund), who took Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly. The Norman danger ended for the time with Robert Guiscard's death (1085) and the conquests were recovered. He had next to repel the invasions of Patzinaks (Petchenegs) and Kumans in Thrace, with whom the Manichaean sects of the Paulicians and Bogomilians made Common cause; and thirdly, he had to cope with the fast-growing power of the Turks in Asia Minor. Above all he had to meet the difficulties caused by the arrival of the warriors of the First Crusade, which had been in a great degree initiated owing to the representations of his own ambassadors, though the help which he wanted from the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts which arrived to his consternation and embarrassment. The first part, under Peter the Hermit, he got rid of by sending them on to Asia Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks (1096). The second and much more serious host of warriors, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, he conducted also into Asia, promising to supply them with provisions in return for an oath of homage, and by their victories recovered for the Empire a number of important cities and islands—Nicaea, Chics, Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact most of Asia Minor (1097-1099). This is ascribed as a credit to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom he had engaged in a theological controversy), by renewed struggles with the Turks (1110-1117), by anxieties as to the succession, which his wife Irene wished to alter in favour of her daughter Anne's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius for whose benefit the special title panhypersebastos (i.e. as it were dugustissimus si quis ahus) was created. This intrigue disturbed even his dying hours. He deserves the credit of having raised the Empire from a condition of anarchy and decay at a time when it was threatened on all sides by new dangers. No emperor devoted himself more laboriously or with a greater sense of duty to the task of ruling.
AUTHORITIES.—Zonaras xviii. 27-29; Anna Comnena's Life; see also Du Cange, Familiae Byzantinae; Friedrich Wilken, Rerum ab Alexio I., Joanne, Manuele et Alexio II. Comnenis Romanorum, Byzantinorum imperatoribus gestarum, tibri iv. Commentatio (Heidelberg, 1811); Finlay, History of Greece (vol. iii., Oxford, 1877); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited with notes, &c., by Prof. J. B. Bury (London, 1898), where further authorities are cited; F. Chalandon, Essai sur le regne d'Alexis Ier, Comnene (1900). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS II. (COMNENUS) (1167-1183), emperor of the East, was the son of Manuel Comnenus and Maria, daughter of Kaymund, prince of Antioch, and was born at Constantinople on the 10th of September 1167. On Manuel's death, Maria, who hid been immured in a convent under the name of Xene, had herself proclaimed regent (1179-1180), and handing over her son to evil counsellors, who encouraged him in every vice, supported the government of Alexius the protosebastos (nephew of Manuel), who was supposed to be her lover. The young Alexius and his friends now tried to form a party against the empress mother and the protosebastos; and his sister Maria, wife of Caesar John, stirred up riots in the streets of the capital. Their party was defeated (May 2, 1182), but Andronicus Comnenus took advantage of these disorders to aim at the crown, entered Constantinople, where he was received with almost divine honours, and overthrew the regents. His arrival was celebrated by a barbarous massacre of the Latins in Constantinople, which he made no attempt to stop. He allowed Alexius to be crowned, but forced him to consent to the death of all his friends, including his mother, his sister and the Caesar, and refused to allow him the smallest voice in public affairs. The betrothal in 1180 of Alexius with Agnes, daughter of Louis VII. of France, a child of nine, was quashed, and he was married to Irene, daughter of Andronicus. The latter was now formally proclaimed as co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS III. (ANGELUS), emperor of the East, was the second son of Andronicus Angelus, nephew of Alexius I. In 1195, while his brother Isaac II. was away hunting in Thrace, he was proclaimed emperor by the troops; he captured Isaac at Stagira in Macedonia, put out his eyes, and kept him henceforth a close prisoner, though he had been redeemed by him from captivity at Antioch and loaded with honours. To compensate for this crime and to confirm his position as emperor, he had to scatter money so lavishly as to empty his treasury, and to allow such licence to the officers of the army as to leave the Empire practically defenceless. He consummated the financial ruin of the state. The empress Euphrosyne tried in vain to sustain his credit and his court; Vatatzes, the favourite instrument of her attempts at reform, was assassinated by the emperor's orders. Eastward the Empire was overrun by the Turks; from the north Bulgarians and Vlachs descended unchecked to ravage the plains of Macedonia and Thrace; while Alexius squandered the public treasure on his palaces and gardens. Soon he was threatened by a new and yet more formidable danger. In 1202 the Western princes assembled at Venice, bent on a new crusade. To them Alexius, son of the deposed Isaac, made appeal, promising as a crowning bribe to heal the schism of East and West if they would help him to depose his uncle. The crusaders, whose objective had been Egypt, were persuaded to set their course for Constantinople, before which they appeared in June 1203, proclaiming the emperor Alexius IV. and summoning the capital to depose his uncle. Alexius III., sunk in debauchery, took no efficient measures to resist. His son-in-law, Lascaris, who was the only one to do anything, was defeated at Scutari, and the siege of Constantinople began. On the 17th of July the crusaders, the aged doge Dandolo at their head, scaled the walls and took the city by storm. During the fighting and carnage that followed Alexius hid in the palace, and finally, with one of his daughters, Irene, and such treasures as he could collect, got into a boat and escaped to Develton in Thrace, leaving his wife, his other daughters and his Empire to the victors. Isaac, drawn from his prison and robed once more in the imperial purple, received hs son in state.
Shortly afterwards Alexius made an effort in conjunction with Murtzuphlos (Alexius V.) to recover the throne. The attempt was unsuccessful and, after wandering about Greece, he surrendered with Euphrosyne, who had meanwhile joined him, to Boniface of Montferrat, then master of a great part of the Balkan peninsula. Leaving his protection he sought shelter with Michael, despot of Epirus, and then repaired to Asia Minor,where his son-in-law Lascaris was holding his own against the Latins. Alexius, joined by the sultan of Iconium (Konieh), now demanded the crown of Lascaris, and on his refusal marched against him. Lascaris, however, defeated and took him prisoner. Alexius was relegated to a monastery at Nicaea, where he died on some date unknown.
AUTHORITIES.—Nicetas Acominatus, George Acropolites, Nicephorus Gregoras; and the sources for the Fourth Crusade (see CRUSADES). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS V., eastern Roman emperor, was proclaimed emperor on the 5th of February 1204, during the siege of Constantinople by the Latins (Fourth Crusade). His name was Alexius Ducas Murtzuphlos, and he was a connexion of the imperial house of the Angell. His elevation was the result of a revolution in the city against Isaac II. and Alexius IV. He conducted the defence with great bravery till it became hopeless (April 12), whereupon he fled. He would then have made common cause with Alexius III. against the Latins, but was blinded by that ex-monarch and fell into the hands of the crusaders, who put him to death by casting him from the top of the Pillar of Theodosius as the murderer of Alexius IV.
ALEXIUS MIKHAILOVICH (1624-1676), tsar of Muscovy, the son of Tsar Michael Romanov and Eudoxia Stryeshnevaya, was born on the 9th of March 1629. A youth at his father's death (1645), he was committed to the care of the boyarin Boris Ivanovich Morozov, a shrewd and sensible guardian, sufficiently enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no means inaccessible to Western ideas. Morozov's foreign policy was pacificatory. He secured the truce with Poland and carefully avoided complications with the Porte. His domestic policy was severely equitable, and aimed at relieving the public burdens by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On the 17th of January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavshaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later. The Miloslavskis were typical self-seeking 17th century boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the occasion of disquieting disturbances all over the tsardom culminating in dangerous rebellions at Pskov and Great Novgorod, with which the government was so unable to cope that they surrendered, practically granting the malcontents their own terms. One man only had displayed equal tact and courage at Great Novgorod, the metropolitan Nikon (q.v.), who in consequence became in 1651 the tsar's chief minister. In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands. On the 1st of October 1653 a national assembly met at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying it on, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon (now patriarch). The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted triumph, and scores of towns, including the important fortress of Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Muscovites. In January 1655 the rout of Ochmatov arrested their progress; but in the summer of the same year, the sudden invasion by Charles X. of Sweden for the moment swept the Polish state out of existence; the Muscovites, unopposed, quickly appropriated nearly everything which was not already occupied by the Swedes, and when at last the Poles offered to negotiate, the whole grand-duchy of Lithuania was the least of the demands of Alexius. Fortunately for Poland, the tsar and the king of Sweden now quarrelled over the apportionment of the spoil, and at the end of May 1656 Alexius, stimulated by the emperor and the other enemies of Sweden, declared war against her. Great things were expected of the Swedish war, but nothing came of it. Dorpat was taken, but countless multitudes were lost in vain before Riga. In the meantime Poland had so far recovered herself as to become a much more dangerous foe than Sweden, and, as it was impossible to wage war with both simultaneously, the tsar resolved to rid himself of the Swedes first. This he did by the peace of Kardis (July 2, 1661), whereby Muscovy retroceded all her conquests. The Polish war dragged on for six years longer and was then concluded by a truce, nominally for thirteen years, which proved the most durable of treaties. By the truce of Andrussowo (February 11, 1667) Vitebsk, Polotsk and Polish Livonia were restored to Poland, but the infinitely more important Smolensk and Kiev remained in the hands of the Muscovite together with the whole eastern bank of the Dnieper. This truce was the achievement of Athanasy Orduin-Nashchokin, the first Russian chancellor and diplomatist in the modern sense, who after the disgrace of Nikon became the tsar's first minister till 1670, when he was superseded by the equally able Artamon Matvyeev, whose beneficent influence prevailed to the end of the reign. It is the crowning merit of the ever amiable and courteous tsar Alexius that he discovered so many great men (like Nikon, Orduin, Matvyeev, the best of Peter's precursors) and suitably employed them. He was not a man of superior strength of character, or he would never have submitted to the dictation of Nikon. But, on the other hand, he was naturally, if timorously, progressive, or he would never have encouraged the great reforming boyarin Matvyeev. His education was necessarily narrow; yet he was learned in his way, wrote verses, and even began a history of his own times. His last years, notwithstanding the terrible rebellion of Stenka Razin, were deservedly tranquil. By his first consort he had thirteen children, of whom two sickly sons and eight healthy daughters survived him. By his second consort, Natalia Naruishkina, he had two children, the tsarevich Peter and the tsarevna Natalia.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)
ALEXIUS PETROVICH (1600-1718), Russian tsarevich, the sole surviving son of Peter I. and Eudoxia Lopukhina, was horn on the 19th of February 1690. The young tsar married the boyarinya Lopukhina at his mother's command. We know nothing of the bride except that she was beautiful, modest and ``brought up in the fear of the Lord.'' She would, doubtless, have made a model tsaritsa of the pre-Petrine period, but, unfortunately, she was no fit wife for such a vagabond of genius as Peter the Great. From the first her society bored Peter unspeakably, and, after the birth of their second short-lived son Alexander, on the 3rd of October 1691, he practically deserted her. The young Alexius was ignored by his father till he was nine years old. Peter was a rare and unwelcome guest in his own family, and a son who loved his mother could have little affection for a father who had ever been that mother's worst persecutor. From his sixth to his ninth year Alexius was educated by the diffuse and pedantic Vyazemsky, but after the removal of his mother to the Suzdal Prokovsky Monastery he was confided to the care of learned foreigners, who taught him history, geography, mathematics and French. In 1703 Alexius was ordered to follow the army to the field as a private in a bombardier regiment. In 1704 he was present at the capture of Narva. At this period the preceptors of the tsarevich had the highest opinion of his ability; but, unfortunately, it was not the sort of ability that his father could make use of. He was essentially a student, with strong leanings towards archaeology and ecclesiology. A monastic library was the proper place for this gentle emotional dreamer, who clung so fondly to the ancient traditions. To a prince of his temperament the vehement activity of his abnormally energetic father was very offensive. He liked neither the labour itself nor its object. Yet Peter, not unnaturally, wished his heir to dedicate himself to the service of new Russia, and demanded from him unceasing labour in order to maintain the brand-new state at the high level of greatness to which it had been raised. Painful relations between father and son, quite apart from the personal antipathies already existing, were therefore inevitable. It was an additional misfortune for Alexius that his father should have been too busy to attend to him just as he was growing up from boyhood to manhood. He was left in the hands of reactionary boyars and priests, who encouraged him to hate his father and wish for the death of the tsar-antichrist. His confessor, Yakov Ignatiev, whom he promised to obey as ``an angel and apostle of God,'' was his chief counsellor in these days.
In 1708 Peter sent Alexius to Smolensk to collect provender and recruits, and thence to Moscow to fortify it against Charles XII. At the end of 1709 he went to Dresden for twelve months for finishing lessons in French and German, mathematics and fortification, and, his education completed, he was married, greatly against his will, to the princess Charlotte of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel, whose sister espoused, almost simultaneously, the heir to the Austrian throne, the archduke Charles. The wedding was celebrated at Torgau on the 14th of October 1711, in the house of the queen of Poland, and three weeks later the bridegroom was hurried away by his father to Thorn to superintend the provisioning of the Russian troops in Poland. For the next twelve months Alexius was kept constantly on the move. His wife joined him at Thorn in December, but in April 1712 a peremptory ukaz ordered him off to the army in Pomerania, and in the autumn of the same year he was forced to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through Finland. Evidently Peter was determined to tear his son away from a life of indolent ease. Immediately on his return from Finland Alexius was despatched by his father to Staraya Rusya and Ladoga to see to the building of new ships. This was the last commission entrusted to him. On his return to the capital Peter, in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics, asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no more. He no longer pressed him to attend public functions. Alexius rejoiced at this welcome change, but he had cause rather to fear it. It marked the deepening of a hatred which might have been overcome. Alexius was evidently consoling himself with the reflexion that the future belonged to him. He was well aware that the mass of the Russian nation was on his side. Nearly all the prelates were devoted to him. Equally friendly were the great boyar families. All Alexius had to do was to sit still, keep out of his father's way as much as possible and await the natural course of events. But with Peter the present was everything. He could not afford to leave anything to chance. All his life long he had been working incessantly with a single object —the regeneration of Russia. What if his successor refused to tread in his father's footsteps or, still worse, tried to destroy his father's work? By some such process of reasoning as this must the idea of changing the succession to the throne, by setting aside Alexius, have first occurred to the mind of Peter the Great. Nevertheless he made one last effort to reclaim his son. On the 22nd of October 1715 Alexius' consort, the princess Charlotte, died, after giving birth to a son, the grand-duke Peter, afterwards Peter II. On the day of the funeral Peter addressed to Alexius a stern letter of warning and remonstrance, urging him no longer to resemble the slothful servant in the parable, and threatening to cut him off, as though he were a gangrenous swelling, if he did not acquiesce in his father's plans. But it was now that Alexius showed what a poor creature he really was. He wrote a pitiful reply to his father, offering to renounce the succession in favour of his baby half-brother Peter, who had been born the day after the princess Charlotte's funeral. As if this were not enough, in January 1716 he wrote to his father for permission to become a monk. Still Peter did not despair. On the 26th of August 1716 he wrote to Alexius from abroad urging him, if he desired to remain tsarevich, to join him and the army without delay. Rather than face this ordeal Alexius fled to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, the emperor Charles VI., who sent him for safety first to the Tirolean fortress of Ahrenberg, and finally to the castle of San Elmo at Naples. He was accompanied throughout his journey by his mistress, the Finnish girl Afrosina. That the emperor sincerely sympathized with Alexius, and suspected Peter of harbouring murderous designs against his son, is plain from his confidential letter to George I. of England, whom he consulted on this delicate affair. Peter's agitation was extreme. The flight of the tsarevich to a foreign potentate was a reproach and a scandal. He must be recovered and brought back to Russia at all hazards. This difficult task was accomplished by Count Peter Tolstoi, the most subtle and unscrupulous of Peter's servants; but terrorized though he was, Alexius would only consent to return on his father solemnly swearing, ``before God and His judgment seat,'' that if he came back he should not be punished in the least, but cherished as a son and allowed to live quietly on his estates and marry Afrosina. On the 31st of January 1718 the tsarevich reached Moscow. Peter had already determined to institute a most searching inquisition in order to get at the bottom of the mystery of the flight. On the 18th of February a ``confession'' was extorted from Alexius which implicated most of his friends, and he then publicly renounced the succession to the throne in favour of the baby grand-duke Peter Petrovich. A horrible reign of terror ensued, in the course of which the ex-tsaritsa Eudoxia was dragged from her monastery and publicly tried for alleged adultery, while all who had in any way befriended Alexius were impaled, broken on the wheel and otherwise lingeringly done to death. All this was done to terrorize the reactionaries and isolate the tsarevich. In April 1718 fresh confessions were extorted from Alexius, now utterly broken and half idiotic with fright. Yet even now there were no actual facts to go upon. Alexius' ``evil designs'' were still in foro conscientiae, and had not been, perhaps never would be, translated into practice. The worst that could be brought against him was that he had wished his father's death. In the eyes of Peter, his son was now a self-convicted and most dangerous traitor, whose life was forfeit. But there was no getting over the fact that his father had sworn ``before the Almighty and His judgment seat'' to pardon him and let him live in peace if he returned to Russia. From Peter's point of view the question was, did the enormity of the tsarevich's crime absolve the tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of this prodigal son? This question was solemnly submitted to a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers and other dignitaries on the 13th of June 1718. The clergy left the matter to the tsar's own decision. The temporal dignitaries declared the evidence to be insufficient and suggested that Alexius should be examined by torture. Accordingly, on the 19th of June, the weak and ailing tsarevich received twenty-five strokes with the knout (as then administered nobody ever survived thirty), and on the 24th fifteen more. It was hardly possible that he could survive such treatment; the natural inference is that he was not intended to survive it. Anyway, he expired two days later in the guardhouse of the citadel of St Petersburg, two days after the senate had condemned him to death for imagining rebellion against his father, and for hoping for the co-operation of the common people and the armed intervention of his brother-in-law, the emperor. This shameful sentence was the outcome of mingled terror and obsequiousness. Abominable, unnatural as Peter's conduct to his unhappy and innocent son undoubtedly was, there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted it. He argued that a single worthless life stood in the way of the regeneration of Russia, and he therefore deliberately removed it.