ALEXANDRIA IN LATE ANTIQUITY. Founded at the western end of the Nile Delta in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria soon replaced Memphis as capital of Egypt and the Ptolemaic empire, thus focusing Egypt more resolutely than ever on the eastern Mediterranean and the Greek world. Alexandria became a center of Hellenistic civilization as the court of the Ptolemies attracted outstanding poets and scholars. It also played a leading role in economy and commerce, draining goods from the Egyptian chora (hinterland), the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and forwarding them to the Mediterranean world. Alexandria must have been the most populous city of that area (one million inhabitants in the first century, by an optimistic estimate), until it had to cede this place to imperial Rome. With the victory of Octavian (later Augustus) and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C., Egypt became a Roman province with Alexandria as its capital. But even then the predominantly Greek city maintained an identity of its own compared with the Egyptian chora, a status acknowledged by a distinct citizenship and reflected in the official designation of Alexandrea ad Aegyptum. We have a good description of the city by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (Geography XVII.1.6-19), who visited Egypt in 25-24 B.C. in the company of Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt. Many of the features that were characteristic of Strabo's Alexandria had disappeared by the time of DIOCLETIAN (284-305) as a consequence of old age and new building activity, but also in the course of destruction due to natural disasters and warfare, particularly in the third century. There is thus a certain discontinuity between Hellenistic and early Roman Alexandria, on the one hand, and the Byzantine town, on the other; several important features remain, however, largely unaltered. As before, the two maritime harbors, the Great Harbor and the Harbor of Eunostus (of Fortunate Return), were in existence, separated by the Heptastadium, which linked the mainland and the island of Pharos, so called after the famous lighthouse of the third century B.C. Whereas these harbors assured the exchange of goods between the Mediterranean and