MUSE´UM
MUSE´UM (
Μουσεῖον）
signified in general a place dedicated to the Muses, but was specially the
name given to an institution at Alexandria founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus,
about B.C. 280, or perhaps by his father and predecessor Ptolemy Soter, for
the promotion of learning and the support of learned men. (
Athen. 5.203.) We learn from Strabo (
xviii. p.794) that the museum formed part
of the palace, and that it contained cloisters or porticoes (
περίπατος), a public theatre or lecture-room
(
ἐξέδρα), and a large hall (
οἶκος μέγας), where the learned men dined
together. The museum was supported by a common fund, supplied apparently
from the public treasury; and the whole institution was under the
superintendence of a priest, who was appointed by the king, and, after Egypt
became a province of the Roman empire, by the emperor (Strabo,
l.c.). Botanical and zoological gardens appear to
have been attached to the museum (Philostr.
Apollon. 6.24;
Athen. 14.
654). The Emperor Claudius added another museum to this
institution (
Suet. Cl. 42, with Casaubon's
note). The studies at the Alexandrian Museum had been arranged by Ptolemy
Philadelphus in four faculties,--literature, mathematics, astronomy, and
medicine,--and it is said to have received at one time as many as 14,000
students.
It should be observed that in all probability the original of this
institution was the museum at Athens (similar in its object of encouraging
learning and art and like in form, though on a smaller scale), which was
founded or enlarged in pursuance of the will of Theophrastus to receive the
statue of his great master Aristotle, and to become a school of Aristotelian
philosophy (
D. L. 5.51). The name was the more
appropriate because there was a
Μουσεῖον
at Stagira. (
Plin. Nat. 16.133).
Baumstark (ap. Pauly,
Real Encycl.) argues for the foundation
of the Alexandrian Museum by Ptolemy I. (Soter) from the well-known favour
which Ptolemy Soter showed to men of learning, and especially his regard for
Theophrastus (
D. L. 5.37), who founded or
enlarged the Museum at Athens, and for Demetrius Phalereus, and from the
fact that the manner in which Athenaeus (
l.c.）
speaks of the Museum at the beginning of Ptolemy II.‘s reign we
should imagine that it had been developing for some time. It is easy to
understand how the word
μουσεῖον, losing
religious significance, came to imply solely places of learning and art, so
that we find Athens itself called
τὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος
Μουσεῖον (
Ath. 4.187 d), and
Longinus himself spoken of as “a walking museum” (
ἔμψυχον καὶ περιπατοῦν μουσεῖον, Porphyr.
16).
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