You can also subscribe without commenting. Again, James Hannam has provided a useful table (though I have made a couple of additions): Again, of these scholars, only Eratosthenes is known for doing anything that we would consider “science”, the others were devoted to literary and textual analysis, poetry and grammar. And why do you think Ammianus wrote his work in 398? The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself. In this WERE invaluable libraries” Greenblatt’s account sticks closely to the nineteenth century narrative of “the dark ages” beloved by New Atheists, so it’s hardly surprising that the myths about the Great Library feature prominently in his account. But this was carried out by troops; not some careful committee ready to only remove certain items and leave others untouched. What’s worse is that the site’s moderation isn’t consistent and often very biased. While the Great Library was never as large as some of the more fanciful accounts allege, it is clear that its holdings were large enough that at least some of them were stored outside of the Mouseion. Exactly how this intricate mechanical orrery based on a geocentric model is supposed to indicate some nascent Industrial or Scientific Revolution is never made clear, but not only did it have no connection to the Great Library, it was a kind of instrument known since the third century BC. Diana Delia is much less cautious, stating “Egyptian, Ethiopian, Indian, Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Phoencian, Syrian and Latin masterpieces were probably translated and preserved in Greek as well” (Delia, p. 1457), though her “probably” there is because she is basing this on the very late Christian sources that gave Bagnell pause (i.e. “The term “rival” is not a very exact one. 2. Any boat that docked at Alexandria had their books confiscated and taken to the library. Most modern accounts say that the Great Library of Alexandria was founded at the beginning of the third century BC when Demetrios of Phaleron, a former student of Theophrastos who in turn was the student and successor of Aristotle, went into exile in the fledgling city of Alexandria and proposed a plan for the Library to Ptolemy I Soter. You have a strange habit of overstating things. The first and probably the most significant came in 47 BC when Julius Caesar took the side of Cleopatra in her claim on the Ptolemy’s throne and besieged her younger brother, the boy king Ptolemy XIII, in Alexandria. At any rate, John Chrysostom (First Discourse against the Jews) says that the Serapeum contained books in 386. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images) Plutarch tells us in his 2nd century CE Life of Caesar of the burning of a portion of the library’s holdings, likely dock-side warehouses but possibly the Great Library itself. He points out that most of these writers probably only wrote works that filled a couple of scrolls at most, though a small number of them – like the playwrights – would have had a total corpus that filled many more than that, even up to 100 scrolls. Sagan was drawing on Gibbon’s tradition in his hymn to the Great Library, which means the New Atheists are getting their ideas on the subject third or fourth hand and from sources that are dubious, patently biased and totally outdated. If not, where would these types of historical (even at that time) works have been preserved and held, if anywhere? Many writers seem to equate the Library of Alexandria with the Library of Serapis although technically they were in two different parts of the city. Theodosius made up those losses with new recruits and units transferred from Egypt, exploited the divisions among the Goths after the death of Fritigern, beat the various warbands into submission and, by 382, had done what Valens had originally failed to do – settled the now submissive and co-operative Goths under a foedus that was to hold until at least 395. He’s a youtube channel that reviews historical films and he has done a review of the film Agora 1 year ago. Anyone who lives in, or near, my home town of Geelong and reads the local news papers will come to the same conclusion. Some regard the death of Hypatia as the final destruction of the Library. He does not mention that George took any books from the Serapeum neither in this letter, nor his letters to Ecdicius. Most Greek proto-science was a highly abstract and philosophical affair, based on some observations, but without modern ideas of carefully designed and repeatable experiments with calibrated measurement and attendant mathematics. As already noted, this is probably why Caesar’s burning of the dock area was seen as destroying the library collection and why there were at least two “daughter libraries” in the city – one in the Kaisarion or Temple of Caesar, another in the Serapion or Serapeum, the Temple of Serapis and possibly a third. If you’re not, even the most polite “Please leave me alone” gets you and nobody else the block. 4, Dec. 2002, pp. That great defender of New Atheist bad history, the inevitable Richard Carrier, has attempted to dismiss this silence by Eunapius by blithely claiming that “his account is too brief”. Not unusual for a classical historian. The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, 1876. There certainly is an account from a century later which attributes the founding of the Library to Demetrios in Ptolemy I’s reign, but there are good reasons to be suspicious of its accuracy. It absolutely was one of the biggest or largest and most important libraries in the world. As you know Greek divinities did not have the “absolute truth” connotations of the Judeo-Christian God, therefore thinking about everything was possible. On the whole, however, lofty Greek philosophers didn’t think to soil their hands with something as lowly as inventing and making things. This was one of the reasons there was no direct link between their proto-scientific “science” and technology. (e.g. Plus it seems that Quora, which seemed legit to me originally, like so many Forums currently, just seems like a place where people love to argue – rather than learn. Prevented islam from having an enlightenment There have been many great libraries burned for sure all setting us back, but I personally think the sheer volume makes Alexandria the biggest loss. In its first two centuries the Mouseion’s directors were famous scholars, renowned for their intellects throughout the Greek-speaking world. . You see, there are, unfortunately, a tremendous number of widespread misconceptions about what the Library of Alexandria was and what happened to it. “You Know You’re a New Atheist Bad Historian When …”. I think once my ban gets lifted I’ll be stripping my profile of all my longer answers for reposting elsewhere and then closing down my profile completely. To bring back to its affiliation with the library would contain many non Hellenistic writings SA 4.0 ) Theory:. As another Historian once put it wryly “ there is some discrepancy here ) the information we to! 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