Please note: These papers were prepared for the Greek Science course taught at Tufts University by Prof. Gregory Crane in the spring of 1995. The Perseus Project does not and has not edited these student papers. We assume no responsibility over the content of these papers: we present them as is as a part of the course, not as documents in the Perseus Digital Library . We do not have contact information for the authors. Please keep that in mind while reading these papers. The Library of Alexandria Ellen N. Brundige Look at the comments on this paper. Table of Contents The Legend of the Library Foundation Demetrius of Phaleron Precedents for the Museum ... Bibliography The Legend of the Library "And concerning the number of books, the establishment of libraries, and the collection in the Hall of the the Muses, why need I even speak, since they are all in men's memories?" Athenaeus The library of Alexandria is a legend. Not a myth, but a legend. The destruction of the library of the ancient world has been retold many times and attributed to just as many different factions and rulers, not for the purpose of chronicling that ediface of education, but as political slander. Much ink has been spilled, ancient and modern, over the 40,000 volumes housed in grain depots near the harbor, which were supposedly incinerated when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother and rival monarch. So says Livy, apparently, in one of his lost books, which Seneca quotes. The figure of Hypatia , a fifth-century scholar and mathematician of Alexandria, being dragged from her chariot from an angry Pagan-hating mob of monks who flayed her alive then burned her upon the remnants of the old Library, has found her way into legend as well, thanks to a few contemporary sources which survived. | |
|