Because
mind is the lord of matter; because the Greek being the cultivated man,
is the only true man; the rest are [Greek text: barbaroi], mere things,
clods, tools for the wise Greeks' use, in spite of all their material
phantom-strength of elephants, and treasures, and tributaries by the
million. Mind was the secret of Greek power; and for that Ptolemy would
work. He would have an aristocracy of intellect; he would gather round
him the wise men of the world (glad enough most of them to leave that
miserable Greece, where every man's life was in his hand from hour to
hour), and he would develop to its highest the conception of Philip,
when he made Aristotle the tutor of his son Alexander. The consequences
of that attempt were written in letters of blood, over half the world;
Ptolemy would attempt it once more, with gentler results. For though he
fought long, and often, and well, as Despot of Egypt, no less than as
general of Alexander, he was not at heart a man of blood, and made peace
the end of all his wars.
So he begins. Aristotle is gone: but in Aristotle's place Philetas the
sweet singer of Cos, and Zenodotus the grammarian of Ephesus, shall
educate his favourite son, and he will have a literary court, and a
literary age.
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