Alexandria

Certain · Egypt

Alexander’s foundation on the Egyptian coast became under the Ptolemies the intellectual capital of the world: the Museum and its Library aimed at every book in existence, and Euclid, Eratosthenes, and the editors of Homer worked in its halls. Here Philo read Moses through Plato; here Plotinus studied under Ammonius before carrying Platonism to Rome; here Hypatia taught and died. Half the later library on these shelves — Philo, Plotinus’s school, the Hermetica — breathes Alexandria.