________________
JULY, 1884.]
Alexandria in the year 642 of our era, they burnt a vast library. The report of one of these historians, 'Abdu'l Latif, who lived in the 12th century, and therefore more than 500 years after the event he describes, is very brief, and the passage relating to the burning of the library is this:"I believe this building was the portico where Aristotle, and afterwards his disciples, imparted instruction, and that this was the academy built by Alexander when he founded the town, and in which the library burnt by 'Amra ibn u'l 'Asi at the command of 'Omar was situated." One portion of this statement is of course false, because Aristotle had never been in Alexandria, and the museum had not been founded by Alexander but by Ptolemy I. Lagus; and the other portion about the burning of the library is just mentioned incidentally, like any rumour of the credulous and uncritical mediaval travellers about the localities of Jerusalem, and this author having been more of a traveller than a historian, the historical notices here and there inserted by him in his work on Egypt are not deserving of implicit credit.
THE BURNING OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.
After having pretty closely followed Dr Krehl's dissertation on this subject, we terminate it, by giving also the history of the library from its foundation in nearly his own words:
It is well known that the library was founded by Ptotemy I. Lagus, who assembled a circle of scholars around himself in his new residence at Alexandria, which he made one of the most flourishing seats of learning. Only the first beginnings of the library however date from his reign. The extension and increase of the collection and in general of the whole museum took place during the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, about the beginning of the third century before our era, when the museum attained a world-wide fame, and became the habitation of the most celebrated professors of the period. Later times of course also boasted of yet other and similar great academies, as for instance, the large schools of Nisibis and Edessa, which were for a long time centres of Helleno-Syriac science, but none of them could in the magnificence of its institutions, in the magnitude of its endowments, in the celebrity of its professors and in the power of its influence, vie with the Academy of Alexandria. The library and the academy with its rich collections in natural science stood in close connection, and both were augmented from year to year, especially the library. The statements about its contents vary from 40,000 to 700,000 book-rolls, but are derived from later
211
authors, who never adduce any old authority as a voucher for their correctness.
Besides the library of the museum there existed also a number of other collections of books, such as that in the Temple of Serapis, the Serapeum, which still existed, according to the undoubted statement of Tertullian, in the third century of our era; further, there was a library at Sebastium, and some other smaller collections of books. It is not impossible that the number of seven hundred thousand may be referable to the total number of book-rolls which existed in the various libraries of Alexandria.
The real greatness however of the library of the Alexandrian museum cannot have lasted much longer than two centuries, because already in the second half of the second century before our era, the artists and scholars were, during the reign of the cruel Evergetes (114-117 B.C.) expelled from Alexandria, whereby decay was brought upon the museum, which must undoubtedly have suffered considerable losses in its contents also. Evergetes II appears indeed afterwards to have repented of the errors committed by him in the beginning of his reign, because it is expressly stated that he not only devoted himself to the cultivation of the sciences but even became an author, composed a work on zoology, corrected the texts of the songs of Homer, and endeavoured to attract learned men to the museum. Scholars hesitated however to comply with the invitation, and never came. Aristarchus, the great critic and teacher of Evergetes, was, and remained, the last celebrated scholar whose sphere of activity was in Alexandria. After his time the notices about the academy and the library connected therewith become more and more scanty, till at last they cease altogether. During the interval of a century from Evergetes II till Julius Cæsar nothing whatever is known about the condition of the museum. Accordingly the information of the 47th year before our era, in the time of Julius Caesar, becomes the more important that the museum had been consumed by fire, and that therewith by far the largest portion of the library preserved in it likewise perished. Some twenty years afterwards (24 B.C.) Strabo paid a visit to Alexandria, whose beauty he expressly describes, but says not a word about the library. It is probable that in his time the certainly very great gaps had not yet been filled. This appears to have been really done afterwards, because Suetonius clearly narrates in the biography of Diocletian, that the latter had filled the desiderata which existed in the Italian libraries,
Translation of De Sacy, p. 183.
