Page "Education" Paragraph 63

The city of Alexandria in Egypt was founded in 330BC, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of the Western World.

The city hosted such leading lights as the mathematician Euclid and anatomist Herophilus ; constructed the great Library of Alexandria ; and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek ( called the Septuagint for it was the work of 70 translators ).

Greek civilization was subsumed within the Roman Empire.

While the Roman Empire and its new Christian religion survived in an increasingly Hellenised form in the Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople in the East, Western civilization suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in AD 476.