Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

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CITIES OF EGYPT.

CHAPTER XII.
ALEXANDRIA.

Alexandria, the city of Alexander, is his best monu-
ment. His two leading ideas, the extension of commerce
and the fusion of the Greeks and the Orientals, led him
to choose the site of the city and to frame the constitu-
tion. It is equally characteristic of him that Homer
. guided him to the place. Few men can travel without
favourite books, the companions by whom they may be
known. Alexander carried with him Homer. The
famous copy ' of the casket' took its name from the case
for unguents captured in the treasure of Darius, in which
the victor put the most precious work of man's mind
in the costliest work of his hand. Thenceforward the
casket lay, with a dagger, beneath Alexander's pillow
wherever he went. Can we doubt that he knew the
passage in the Odyssey where the poet describes the one
sheltered roadstead of the northern coast of Egypt,
the harbour behind the island of Pharos, a day's voyage