Myth and History: Galen and the Alexandrian Library[1] [DRAFT]
“The interest which the famous Ptolemy [i.e. Euergetes, 247-222 B.C.] took in collecting ancient books is mentioned as not a small sign of interest for the people of Athens, inasmuch as he gave as a deposit 15 silver talents and received the books of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, but only to copy and return them intact in no time. When he had prepared a magnificent copy on the best of paper, he kept the books which he received from the Athenians and he sent the copies back to them, asking them to keep the 15 talents and accept the new books instead of the old originals which they had given him. Even had he not sent the new books back to the people of Athens and kept the old ones, they could have done nothing since they had accepted the silver on condition that they might keep it if he would keep the books. Therefore they accepted the new books, and kept the money.”[2]
The story is told by Galen in his commentary on the third book of Hippocrates’ Epidemics. This chapter will explore what this anecdote, and others like it, tell us about the Roman-period mythologizing of the Alexandrian Library. The anecdotes examined come from authors writing during the Roman Empire, centuries after the founding of the Alexandrian Library. Nonetheless, these stories constitute what we know about the Library; no contemporary accounts of its founding and early operations exist. Galen’s belief in such a fantastical story is but one example of a process that developed over centuries whenever historians have treated the Alexandrian Library, which Roger Bagnall calls “the library of dreams.” The mythologizing of the Alexandrian Library did not start in the Middle Ages but in antiquity.
I. Background and Context of Galen’s Story.
An official compilation of the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’ plays had apparently been carried out in the fourth century B.C. in accordance with a law proposed by the Athenian statesman, Lycurgus, aimed at ensuring the accuracy of the lines said by actors during performances.[3] These official copies were believed to be closest to what the tragedians actually wrote.[4] The possibility that errors might be introduced when manuscripts were copied explains the Ptolemies desire for the oldest exemplars.[5] It is possible that the official edition created in the time of Lycurgus still existed one hundred years later during the time of Ptolemy III.[6] Ptolemy therefore sought to obtain the originals for the Alexandrian Library.
The Alexandrian Library was founded sometime during the third century B.C.[7] What is certain is that the Library had copies of the plays but, whether or not these copies were indeed the official Athenian copies from the time of Lycurgus is debatable.[8] Galen[9] addresses a controversy over a medical book in the Alexandrian Library: “The case histories in Epidemics III are followed by shorthand symbols, Greek letters that seem to summarize in code the salient factors in the disease. Their meanings and origin has been disputed by the earliest students of the text.”[10] Who added these symbols, Hippocrates or someone else? This created a controversy that lasted, according to Galen, for over a century in early Alexandria. For Galen, clear, understandable writing—his own and Hippocrates—is easily read; symbols or letters are not needed. Such markings, concludes Galen, indicate a forgery by those seeking to promote their own interests in the medical field.[11] Galen then recounts the story told by the physician Zeuxis, whose works in Galen’s time were rare and none of his writings have survived. Zeuxis’ story takes place during the reign of Ptolemy III, about a century earlier.[12] The physician Mnemon from Side in Pamphylia was known to be able to translate these letters found in the margins of the Epidemics III copy in the Alexandrian Library. Galen introduces the story of the Athenian tragedies and Ptolemy III here. He believes the story Zeuxis tells of Mnemon, that he wrote the letters in the margins of Epidemics III. How Mnemon got his copy of the book into the Alexandrian Library would be easy, concludes Galen, because of the bibliomania of the Ptolemies. The story of the official Athenian tragedies illustrates the perceived great lengths that the Ptolemies would go to obtain books for their library, which was believed to have a huge collection of materials. For Galen, there is no question: the story was true.
Galen experienced this protectionist attitude towards medical knowledge firsthand. In Galen’s time, knowledge relating to medicine was carefully guarded. The medical profession was highly competitive. Many works in circulation were inaccurate, having transcription errors or lines altered or missing; in some cases, copies of titled works were completely falsified, as Galen reports.[13] It was not unknown for a practitioner to pass off another’s techniques or written works as his own. This was a way to generate business, especially if the treatment being used was effective. Even Hippocrates’ works were falsified and tampered with by others for their own unscrupulous gains, as Mnemon’s letters in the margins of Epidemics III demonstrates. People seeking medical help would go to people such as Mnemon, believing that he understood the “secret knowledge” of the letters in the margins of Hippocrates’ book. Galen had no use for charlatans like Mnemon who sought to profit from people’s misery. Galen originally visited Alexandria because of its reputation for the study of medicine.[14] He wanted to study the works of Numisianus, the famed anatomist, and he stayed in Alexandria from 4 to 6 years.[15] Unfortunately, most of Numisianus’ works were unavailable. The only existing copies of these works were in the custody of his son, Heraclianus, who was also a physician. Galen was not allowed to examine Numisianus’ works, nor would anyone teach him Numisianus’ ideas, not even his teacher Pelops, who had been a pupil of Numisianus. When Heraclianus died, he left instructions for all of his father’s works to be burned.[16] Thus, all knowledge learned by Numisianus was lost.
Of the works available, there were three ways of obtaining copies. “Public libraries and private book collections make up the terrain where Galen’s research is taking place.”[17] There were also the book markets. Galen made his way through the book markets of Alexandria, conducting his own extensive research and developing strategies to find what he needed. Galen spent his time analyzing works in libraries and correcting his own copies of medical books in an attempt to establish the authentic passages, and even having works he discovered duplicated.[18] He found libraries woefully inadequate, since they also contained corrupted copies of the works in question.[19] This burgeoning fake book industry is blamed on the Ptolemies’ book-collecting as well as that of their rivals, the Attalids of Pergamum; Galen asserts that it did not exist before their bibliomania.[20] If the Ptolemies and the Attalids had not been spending so much money acquiring old books regardless of the pedigree, Galen concludes, then there would have been no forgeries. Therefore, his research would have been much easier by having fewer texts to analyze. Mnemon’s annotated copy of Hippocrates work is but one example of this corruption. The compilation of the official copies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’ works is another, since there would have been a sifting through of many false titles and copies to create the canonical texts.[21]
Galen also disliked libraries because they were impermanent. In Rome alone, 26 to 28 libraries were destroyed by fire.[22] Galen had personal experience with libraries and fire. In 197 A.D., a fire destroyed the Temple of Peace in Rome. This temple, like many others, had storehouses where people kept their valuables. In Galen’s case, he not only archived books by other writers but also many of his own manuscripts. Galen did not have duplicates made of his library collection; the books stored in the temple were the only copies. Years of editing works to identify authentic passages and lines were gone. In the case of his manuscripts, he would try and rewrite some of them. Everything was lost.[23] Most of his library could not be replaced.[24]
For all their limitations, libraries are a part of culture; only advanced civilizations have libraries. The Alexandrian Library functioned, in part, to show the world that the Ptolemies were refined and civilized. For example, the first public library in Athens, the old center of Greek learning and culture, was founded by Pisistratus when he ruled as the city.[25] It was supposedly under him that the first compilation of Homer’s works also took place.[26] One story claims that Ptolemy II rivaled the Athenian tyrant’s library when he established the Alexandrian Library.[27] However, there was more going on in Alexandria than cultural ornamentation and hagiography of the ruler. What was important for Ptolemy I and his successors was to connect their kingdom to Alexander the Great and, through him, to the cultural heritage of Greece. The Museion and, by extension, the Library, helped to create another tradition by which the Ptolemies reinforced the Greek culture in Alexandria. Aristotle’s Lyceum in Athens was used as a model for the Museion and Library in Alexandria, and Aristotle had been Alexander’s tutor—more examples to reinforce the Ptolemaic connection.[28] The story of Pisistratus and Ptolemy II also reinforced Ptolemaic ties with Greece, specifically Athens, the old Greek cultural center.[29] Thus the creation of Alexandria as a Greek city assured the Ptolemies of cultural supremacy through their voracious book-collecting for the Library and the editing of classical texts by members of the Museion. The Ptolemies never militarily dominated the Hellenistic world, but their new Greek cultural and learning center, the city of Alexandria, eclipsed Athens and would dominate the Greek East for centuries; Alexandria was second only to Rome in the early empire.
The idea that the early Ptolemies were bibliomaniacs could have been reinforced during the reigns of the early Roman emperors. The early Caesars founded many libraries and they made sure that they were staffed with slaves, sometimes from their own households.[30] The early emperors were interested in Rome’s libraries and steadily increased their number, as well as adding libraries to public baths.[31] One of the last Roman references to the Alexandrian Library is made by Suetonius, when he reports that Domitian rebuilt one of the libraries in Rome and went to great lengths to restock it; the emperor sent his agents to the Alexandrian Library to verify the authenticity of some of the books.[32] Galen and his readers would have been acquainted with such similar behavior under the Roman emperors, though not for seizing books.[33] The Roman emperors were following a cultural pattern started by the early Ptolemies.
Galen may have failed to realize that the Ptolemies were looking for authentic texts just as he was only they went about it in a different way. The Library and Museion may have been created, in part, as cultural icons, but over time this book-collecting led to textural analysis. The Ptolemies used their vast resources to buy up texts of authors, transferring them to the Library where scholars in the Museion could sift through and analyze the different texts to identify the authentic passages and then bring them together in an official canon of works. In effect, the members of the Museion did what Galen was trying to do with his own copies only on a much larger scale.[34] There is some evidence that medical texts were in the Alexandrian Library and that textural criticism was performed on them.[35] This should have made the copies more accurate and closer to what the author intended. One has to wonder if Galen ever visited the Library. It was not a public library but a royal library, access to which was restricted. Perhaps Galen believed Seneca’s statement about the Ptolemies, that they collected books for no other reason than to display their wealth and power.[36]
II. The Legacy of the Alexandrian Library
If the Alexandrian Library was as grand as the ancient stories led us to believe, then why, as Bagnall rightly asks, do we know so little about its specifics? We do not know who founded the Alexandrian Library or when. We can guess that the library was built somewhere in the middle of the third century B.C. Galen lived around 400 years after the library was founded, in the second century A.D. No contemporary writings exist on its establishment; no one is even sure where it was located.[37] One of the earliest written records about the library is The Letter of Philocrates, dated to the second century B.C.[38] The story tells how the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, was created, which was done under the auspices of the Museion in Alexandria. Much of the information is contradicted by more credible sources; there is no evidence that Ptolemy II commissioned Jewish scholars in Judea to come to Alexandria and create the Septuagint.[39] For example, we are told that that Demetrius of Phalerum was appointed the first librarian and that his efforts resulted in the creation of the Septuagint. Demetrius was a graduate of Aristotle’s Peripatetic School in Athens but was an advisor to Ptolemy I and not his son; he may well have helped to initially organize the library, but he was not the first librarian nor did he ever serve in that capacity.[40] This “letter” served to link the Hellenistic Jews, a substantial minority in Alexandria, with the great Ptolemaic Library and its collection.
Many other stories of Ptolemaic bibliomania have been passed down: the seizing ships and taking the books to copy, then returning to the ships the copies made; how once cataloged, these books’ tags carried the moniker “from the ships;”[41] how newly-acquired books were kept in warehouses by the docks until they were transferred to the library.[42] Strabo states that Aristotle taught the kings of Egypt how to organize libraries.[43] We are told that the libraries in Alexandria and Pergamum were in rivalry with one another;[44] this rivalry grew to the point where the Egyptians stopped exporting papyrus, at which point parchment was invented by the Pergamenes.[45] Even the obviously false story of Mark Antony giving the Pergamene Library to Cleopatra VII to add, presumably, to the holdings of the Alexandrian Library,[46] was another fanciful tale.[47] There are even two stories about the fate of the library of Aristotle. The first is that Aristotle bequeathed his library to Theophrastus, who in turn left his library (which included Aristotle’s works) to Neleus, [48] who took them to Scepsis. Ptolemy II purchased the collection from Neleus,[49] and then moved it to Alexandria. The other story is when Sulla sacked Athens in 68 B.C., he carried off to Rome the library of Apellicon the Teian, which contained the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus; it was in Rome that Tyrannio the grammarian worked on compiling and editing Aristotle’s works.[50] The mythos of the great Library with a huge collection was alive and well during the Roman Empire.
No one knows whether the Alexandrian Library was a separate building or part of the Museion. Excavated Hellenistic and early Roman libraries were part of temples or gymnasia.[51] Ptolemy III built “the daughter library” of the Library in the Serapeum,[52] a temple sacred to the god Serapis. Augustus Caesar built the Palatine Library in the Temple of Apollo. It was not until well into the imperial period that libraries were housed in separate buildings, such as the Library of Pantainos (ca. 100 A.D.) in Athens and the Library of Celsus (second century A.D.) in Ephesus. Library rooms have been identified from the archaeological evidence at Pergamum; they are not elaborate and are part of a complex, which leads to the question: if rivalry did exist between Pergamum and Alexandria, would not the Attalids have tried to imitate the Alexandrian Library in the design of their own library?[53] No remains of the Alexandrian Library and the Museion have been found.
There is no agreement on what was in the collection. The Letter to Philocrates tells us Ptolemy II gave huge sums of money to the Library with the aim of collecting copies of all the books in the world.[54] Ptolemy II supposedly had the Septuagint created for the Library’s collection. Besides the official tragedies compiled by Lycurgus in Athens, the Library was also thought to contain the Egyptian “sacred records” used by Hecataeus of Abdera to write his Aegyptiaca; the Egyptian priest Mentheon’s comprehensive work on Egypt was also included in the collection.[55] Berossos, a Chaldaean priest, wrote the history of Babylonia in Greek.[56] The Alexandrian Library certainly did not hold all the books in the world; it did not even have all the Greek authors.[57] There may have been some Latin literature in the Library added in the time of the Ptolemies.[58] The Library was primarily a Greek language institution, but also housed translations of works from other languages,[59] like the “sacred records” that Hecataeus used to write his history.
The number of volumes housed in the Library is unknown, and what we have are spectacular numbers. The aforementioned The Letter to Philocrates gives the number as 200,000 but was expected to rise to half a million,[60] which agrees with Josephus;[61] John Tzetzes, a Byzantine grammarian who lived in the twelfth century, believed that the Alexandrian Library housed closer to 490,000 volumes;[62] Aulus Gellius and Ammianus Marcellinus, nearly 700,000 volumes.[63] Athenaeus does not even give a number: “And concerning the number of books, the establishing of libraries, and the collection in the Hall of the Muses, why need I even speak, since they are in all men’s memories?”[64] In his analysis, Bagnall uses the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae to estimate how many works in ancient Greek survived as well as how many works were probably written; he concludes that all the numbers given for volumes in the Library are inflated.[65] Just how many volumes the Library held is debatable. Archaeological remains would help in the estimation of the collection’s size.
When was the Library destroyed? We know that Julius Caesar set fire to his enemy Pompey’s ships in the harbor of Alexandria in 48 B.C., which spread to the docks. Did Caesar destroy the library? There are scholars who believe he did,[66] just as there are scholars who refute the claim.[67] Was the Library destroyed in 215, when Caracalla’s troops looted property and slaughtered Alexandrians for an insult done to him? In 273, when Aurelian retook Alexandria from the usurper Zenobia of Palmyra, much of the palace district—where the Library and Museion were supposedly located—was destroyed.[68] In 297, Diocletian brutally crushed a revolt in Egypt and deported half the population of Alexandria.[69] There were earthquakes in 319/20 and 365, which damaged Alexandria. Was the Library destroyed with the Serapeum Library in 391, when Christians sought to enforce Theodosius II’s decree to close all pagan temples? Archaeological techniques might help estimate the date of destruction if the site of the Library is ever located.
Neither the Alexandrian Library nor the Pergamene Library was public; they were royal libraries accessible only to those who were authorized. We have no stories of cooperation between Alexandria and Pergamum—or any other libraries for that matter—only rivalry and one-upmanship. Few scholars worked in both cities.[70] The best-known story is that of Aristophanes of Byzantium, who served as the librarian of the Alexandrian Library. The Attalids asked him to come to Pergamum and work for them, but when Ptolemy V heard of the offer, he promptly imprisoned Aristophanes where he stayed until he died.[71] Did the Ptolemaic avid book-collecting affect Greek literature, making works more accessible, canonizing the written words of authors and thereby assuring the survival of such works, or in the end did it only serve to promote the aims of the two dynasties with no bearing on the survival of Greek literature? In short, did the Alexandrian Library truly make a contribution to Greek literature, or was it an intellectual exercise lost to history? There is evidence that the scholars of Alexandria exerted some influence over the organization of Homer’s Iliad and classical Greek poetry in general, but there is no evidence for other subjects.[72] If the texts housed in the Alexandrian Library were copied and distributed to individuals and to other libraries then the scholars would have had an influence that would be undetectable. There is just no way to know.
Bagnall asserts, “Indeed, no more books would have survived antiquity if the Library had not been destroyed (deliberately or accidentally) than did so anyway. The destruction is simply not important.”[73] All the libraries of antiquity were destroyed. Byzantine and Islamic medieval libraries were also dispersed and torched, many works never to be seen again. Wars destroy cultural artifacts, including libraries. “This is a sobering thought, which must ultimately call in question the wisdom of large concentrations of books, in ancient or modern times. … Human efforts to bring all literature together may ultimately be doomed to frustration, but there is no doubt that large libraries contribute enormously to the advancement of knowledge while they exist and are maintained.”[74] The major difference between Alexandria and the huge, national and academic libraries of today is that there is cooperation and exchange of scholarly works. Before the Internet, many libraries would make copies of their manuscripts available, whether in facsimile reprints, microfilm or microfiche, thereby increasing the survival rate of the text.[75] With digitization initiatives, one can argue that manuscript collections now online are made available to anyone who has access to a computer; if the manuscripts are destroyed, their images exist in cyberspace.
By Roman times, the heyday of the Alexandrian Library was over. The first Ptolemies were the visionaries who built the collection of the library and lured scholars to Alexandria. These monarchs were within walking distance of the Library and had regular contact with the librarian and the Museion scholars. The emperors ruled from Rome, not Alexandria. But over time, the Alexandrian Library came to symbolize all libraries in the ancient world. “In the Western tradition, the romantic lament for the lost wisdom of the ancient world is reserved for the great library at Alexandria.”[76] The legend of the Library even inspired a modern novel about an imaginary, medieval library as great as the ancient one in Alexandria.[77] The more the Library’s fortunes declined, the more stories about the Alexandrian Library were told.[78] Bagnall’s sub-title, “library of dreams” comes from operating under the inflated idea of the Alexandrian Library rather than its reality. The view that the Library was a wondrous place filled with lost manuscripts and knowledge that can never be recovered is rejected by Bagnall. As should be clear by now, there is too much conflicting information on who founded it and who organized the collection. This is complicated by mismatched facts and figures that cannot be substantiated. Bagnall summarizes three reasons why the Alexandrian Library is important: first, the Museion compiled and edited the texts of Greek authors—the first time such an activity was done—and the Library became the repository of their work, from which the texts would have been disseminated throughout the Roman world; two, the Library served as a repository to support other scholarly endeavors; and three, the image of the Library as an all-encompassing center of knowledge.[79]
Regardless of whether or not the Alexandrian Library’s destruction is important in our collective memory or if civilization truly lost priceless works, today’s libraries are greater. The modern libraries of today—the Library of Congress, Harvard and Yale Universities’ Libraries, the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, to name a few—hold far more books in hundreds of languages than the Alexandrian Library ever hoped to have, as well as manuscripts, rare books and materials in formats that Galen never dreamed of: serials, videos, DVDs, CDs, and access to the Internet and digitized materials. Yet we still look to the past, to that library, truly “the library of dreams.” One could rightly ask that, without the stories of the mythical Alexandrian Library, would today’s great national and academic libraries exist? In effect, modern endeavors created today’s great libraries to rival the idea of the Alexandrian Library.
There is a new library in Egypt, a modern construct: “The new Library of Alexandria, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, is dedicated to recapture the spirit of openness and scholarship of the original Bibliotheca Alexandrina.”[80] This library, though, is Egyptian and not Greek; it is not a royal library with restricted access like the ancient library; and its holdings will (hopefully) mirror those of the other great modern libraries. But this library is the most recent example of the mystique of the Alexandrian Library exercising its magic. The Roman stories of the Library—it was a universal library, collecting in languages from all over the world, that it was open for all to use, and that the collection was massively huge—is still exerting power over modern minds. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the latest library built to “rival” the ancient library but will, in reality, exceed its ancient predecessor.
V. Conclusion
Galen’s story of Ptolemy III stealing the official copies of Aeschylus’, Sophocles’, and Euripides’ plays from the Athenians is but one example of the perceived bibliomania of the early Ptolemies and the perceived greatness of the Alexandrian Library. Though Galen was a dedicated library-user, he found contemporary library collections (and those sold by booksellers) problematic in that they contained copies of books with errors; some were even forgeries, which only complicated his research.
Such myths about the Alexandrian Library started in antiquity. The Library was part of the Museion; no writings exist about where it was built, how many books it contained, etc. It was only after the fortunes of the Ptolemies, and those of the Library, waned that interest in the Library peaked in the Roman period. This idea of the Alexandrian Library still haunts us today, truly a “library of dreams.”
End Notes
[1] I would like to thank Dr. Alexei V. Zadorojnyi at the University of Liverpool for his help in locating a more extensive translation of Galen’s story, and Dr. W. Gerald Heverly at New York University for advice and lively discussions on Galen and libraries in the ancient world.
[2] Galen, Comm. II in Hippocratis Epidem. Libri III, 239-240, cited in Platthy (1968) 118-119.
[3] Plutarch, Vitae decm oratorum, 841 F. Ed. G. N. Bernardakis, Lipsiae, 1893, tr. H. N. Fowler, Cambridge, Mass., 1960. Text. Ex ed. Var. compositum, cited in Platthy (1968) 118.
[4] For some background on what the Athenians were looking for in regards to “authentic,” see Wellisch (1991) 42.
[5] Casson (2001) 34.
[6] Bagnall (2002) 358-9. He states that papyrus could “last hundreds of years under good conditions.” However, he concludes “The likelihood is that by the reign of Tiberius relatively little of what had been collected under the first Ptolemies was still useable.”
[7] No one is sure which Ptolemy founded the library. Generally Ptolemy I Soter (ca. 367-ca. 283 B.C., reigned 323-383) is credited with planning and perhaps beginning construction, but it was his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphius (309-246 B.C., reigned 283-246) who is credited with the initial creation of the collection.
[8] Blum (1991) 42 discusses the Alexandrian scholars’ attitudes towards the works attributed to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
[9] For more information on Galen, see Yount (2010), Gill (2009), Mattern (2009), and Hankinson (2008).
[10] Smith (1979) 63.
[11] Valance (2000) 104 believes Mnemon did what college students have done for years: marked up the library copies they used before returning them to the library. Then of course Mnemon would know the meanings of the letters.
[12] Smith (1979) 199.
[13] Zadorojnyi (2011) 9.
[14] Von Staden (2004) 184.
[15] Von Staden (2004) 180.
[16] Von Staden (2004) 199.
[17] Zadorojnyi (2011) 6.
[18] Nutton (2009), 22. For a discussion of Galen’s attitudes towards libraries and his own library, see Zadorojnyi (2011).
[19] Zadorojnyi (2011) 8.
[20] Galen, Comment. In Hippocratis De natura hominis liber I, 127, cited in Platthy (1968) 162. Fraser (1972) I 325 endnote 152 notes that there were forgeries in existence before the Ptolemies and the Attalids began their book-collecting.
[21] Blum (1991) 42 believes that textural criticism was probably not done on the plays in Athens, but some “test of authenticity” was performed, and that Lycurgus’ classmate, Aristotle, was probably involved in the compilation.
[22] Ward (2000) 165.
[23] See Nutton (2009) 19, who lists the citations for Galen where he discusses his loss.
[24] The Peri Alypias (On the Avoidance of Sorrow) was a work of Galen’s where he talks about the loss of his library. Believed lost, the text was recently discovered in a known manuscript, the Vlatadon Codex 14.
[25] Gellius, Noctium Atticarum VII, XVII, 1-2, ed. & tr. John C. Rolfe, Cambridge, Mass. 1960, cited in Platthy (1968) 100; Antologia Pal. XI, 442. Most scholars consider these stories fabrications since no public library earlier than Roman times has been found in Athens.
[26] Cicero, De orat. III, XXIV, 37; Strabo Geographica IX 1, 10; Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio, VII, XXVI, 13.
[27] Tert. Apology, 18. See Platthy (1968) 97-110 for a list of entries dealing with Pisistratus.
[28] For an in-depth analysis of Greek cultural imperialism in Egypt, see Maehler (2004) and Erskine (1995).
[29] Both Ptolemies and Attalids gifted Athens with buildings. One of the Ptolemies gave the city a gymnasium, the Ptolemaion, which contained a library. Attalus II built a stoa in the Athenian agora. The Ptolemaion has not been found, but the rebuilt Stoa of Attalus serves as the agora museum.
[30] See Weiss (2011).
[31] Casson (2001) 92.
[32] Casson (2001) 103.
[33] See Bowie (2011) for a discussion about the Roman emperors and libraries.
[34] Fraser (1972) I 326 states that the Alexandrian scholars worked to counteract forged texts and provide more accurate ones.
[35] For a more detailed analysis, see Valance (2000).
[36] Seneca, De tranquillitate animi 9.5 as mentioned by Delia (1992) 1457.
[37] El-Abbadi (2004) 172 and (1992) 153-156 believes that Strabo’s silence about the Alexandrian Library meant that the fire started by Julius Caesar’s troops in 48 B.C. destroyed the library. See Delia (1992) 1459 footnote 44 for her response. For an assessment of whether or not the library was destroyed during Caesar’s siege of Alexandria, see Hatzimichali (2011).
[38] El-Abbadi (1991) 90-1 believes the letter was written in the second century B.C. and is of “somewhat doubtful historical value.” Fraser (1972) I 84 dates the letter to the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (180-145 B.C.). Hadas (1973) 1-54 discusses the factors involved with the dating. He opts for a date “shortly after 132 BCE.”
[39] Bagnall (2002) 349-50. He calls The Letter “Jewish propaganda.” El-Abbadi (1991) 99 says that the Septuagint was translated piecemeal in the third and second centuries B.C. See also 208 endnote 88.
[40] He was later exiled by Ptolemy II for advising Ptolemy I not to choose Philadelphus as his successor. Zenodotus was the first librarian.
[41] Galen, Commentarii in Hippocratem Epidem., iii, 4-11.
[42] Galen, Commentarii in Hippocratem Epidem., xvii, a 606-7.
[43] Strabo, Geographica XIII, 1, 54-55. El-Abbadi (1992) 97 interprets this as Aristotle being the spiritual father of the Alexandrian Library since it was those from his Peripatetic school who influenced the Library’s early stages. However, the statement taken literally means that Aristotle did organize the library. This belief would only have added to the belief during the Middle Ages that Aristotle taught in Alexandria.
[44] Canfora (1989) 48 states that the story of Ptolemy’s borrowing of the plays was made up in Pergamum to discredit the Egyptians. Because of the special relationship between the Alexandrians and Aristotle’s Peripatetic School in Athens, Canfora says, the copies of these works would have made their way to Alexandria long before the time of Ptolemy III. Barnes (2004) 74 says, “Canfora’s book reads like a detective novel, and parts of it are pure fiction.” MacLeod (2001) 1-2 refers to Canfora’s book as “a non-fiction novel.”
[45] Varro apud Plinium, Naturalis Historia XIII, 70, ed. & tr. H. Rackham, Cambridge, Mass, 1960. Cf. Isid. Hisp. Etymol. VI, ii, 1, cited in Platthy (1968) 163. Erskine (2009) 45-7 thinks the story may be exaggerated. However, he believes that the rivalry between the two cities was real.
[46] Plut. Antony, 58.
[47] Plut. Antony, 59. Plutarch reports that this charge, like most leveled against Antony, was false.
[48] Diogenes Laertius, 5.52; Strabo, 13.1.54.
[49] Ath. 1.3a-b. See Tanner (2000) for the argument that the works Aristotle prepared at Mieza when he was Alexander’s tutor were those deposited in the Alexandrian Library.
[50] Strabo, 13.1.54; Plut. Sull., 24.1-2.
[51] One of the Ptolemies built the Ptolemaion, a gymnasia for the Athenians. There was a library inside the building.
[52] Al-Abbadi (2004) 172 believes that Ptolemy built the Serapeum Library because the Library had run out of room.
[53] Fraser (1972) I 324.
[54] The Letter to Philocrates 9, in Hadas (1973) 97.
[55] El-Abbadi (1991) 98.
[56] Syncellus p. 32 = Manethon, by Waddell (Loeb) fr. 3, cited in El-Abbadi (1991) 208 endnote 84.
[57] Fraser (1972) I 329-30 states that several Greek works were not in the Library’s collection. El-Abbadi (2004) 171 and (1991) 95 believes that the number and range of the Greek works suggests “the whole corpus of Greek literature was amassed.” Maehler (2004) 9 asserts that only selected authors’ complete works were created by the Museion.
[58] Fraser (1972) I 330; II 487 endnote 185.
[59] Ward (2000) 167 calls the Library “principally a Greek language institution.” Fraser (1972) I 330 believes that translations of books into Greek from other languages were probably added.
[60] The Letter to Philocrates 9-10, in Hadas (1973) 97. Maehler (2004) 5 believes that the reference was only for Greek books or books translated into Greek.
[61] Joseph, AJ 12.2.1.
[62] John Tzetzes, Ploutos (Kaibel), 19-20, cited in Dalia (1992) 1458 footnote 38.
[63] Cited in El-Abbadi (1994) 150-151.
[64] Ath. 5.203e.
[65] Bagnall (2002) 352-3.
[66] Fraser (1972) I 335 notes that Roman references were all to the Serapeum Library, which leads him to conclude that the Library was either destroyed or “seriously diminished;” El-Abbadi (1992) 156 believes the library was destroyed. Delia (1992) 1459 and footnote 44 disagrees with El-Abbadi over Strabo’s silence about the Library; Strabo’s silence is a main reason why El-Abbadi believes the Library was destroyed in 48 B.C.
[67] Delia (1992) 1462 states that the Museion “which the main library serviced, flourished into the third century A.D. implies the library’s continued survival.” Delia cites Livy for support. See 1450 footnote 6.
[68] Barnes (2004) 70.
[69] Delia (1992) 1463 believes that some part of the Museion and Library might have survived Aurelian’s sack but whatever was left was definitely destroyed by Diocletian. She cites a Museion monument being inscribed and used by a private citizen at the time of Diocletian’s sack as proof that the Museion and Library were destroyed.
[70] Fraser (1972) I 470 reports that “… there was, no doubt, some intercourse between the two centres … it is likely that such migrations … represent a change in individual scholarly loyalties rather than a general dilution of the hostility between the two schools.”
[71] Erskine (1995) 46.
[72] See Fraser (1972) I 475-9 on texts and the legacy of Alexandrian scholarship.
[73] Bagnall (2002) 352-3.
[74] Barnes (2004) 75.
[75] An argument for the manuscript as a cultural object can be made here, but nothing lasts forever. Many of these manuscripts were copies of copies of copies, so errors and changes in text were, in most cases, made unintentionally, but the original manuscripts have long turned to dust.
[76] Delia (1992) 1464.
[77] See Ward (2000) on analyzing Umberto Eco’s library in The Name of the Rose.
[78] Barnes (2004) 76 says that “The Alexandrian Library became a legend well within its own lifetime.”
[79] Bagnall (2002) 360-1.
[80] Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the New Library of Alexandria, About the Library page (http://www.bibalex.org/aboutus/overview_en.aspx ; viewed 2010 February 20).
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