Alexandrian School

Alexandrian School, designation of tendencies in literature, philosophy, and art that arose in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, especially in the first few centuries of the Christian Era (begun in ad 1). A number of highly influential thinkers are associated with the innovative and fertile atmosphere of the Alexandrian School.

Differing philosophies abounded in Alexandria at this time. Many thinkers, having been guaranteed religious freedom, settled in the city to avail themselves of the great advantages of study at Alexandria’s museum and library. Here they came into contact with deteriorating schools of thought, such as Platonism and Stoicism, as well as those that were more accepted. Monotheism, or the belief in one God and the unity of the Godhead, was highly acceptable in this intellectual climate, and Judaism flourished. It was in Alexandria that Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus attempted to combine Greek philosophy with Hebrew theology. The religious movement Gnosticism, which rejected many elements of the Christian gospels, arose in Alexandria as well. Neoplatonism, an attempt to synthesize the teachings of the philosopher Plato, was developed here by Roman philosopher Ammonius Saccas and his great pupil, Plotinus. Alexandria was also the seat of a flourishing Christian school, of which the early Christian scholar Origen was a leader. A later group of theologians in the 4th and 5th centuries, headed by Saint Cyril of Alexandria, was also well known as an Alexandrian school, although one that differed widely from its predecessors in its intolerance of other beliefs.

The Alexandrian schools also produced a great body of work in various literary forms, historical prose, and the sciences. Among the most important writers of the school were the poets Apollonius of Rhodes, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, and the historian Polybius. The work of Alexandrian grammarians and philologists (specialists in the study of written works) was of high quality as well. These included Aristarchus of Samothrace, Zenodotus of Ephesus, and Dionysius Thrax, who was the first Greek grammarian. Also in Alexandria were the astronomer Ptolemy; Erasistratus, who founded a school of anatomy there; and mathematicians Archimedes and Euclid.