One of the odder elements of the New Atheist myths about the Great Library is the strange idea that its (supposed) destruction somehow singlehandedly wiped out the (alleged) advanced scientific knowledge of the ancient world in one terrible cataclysm. It doesn’t take much thought, however, to realise this makes absolutely no sense. The idea that there was just one library in the whole of the ancient world is clearly absurd and, as the mentions of other rival libraries above have already made clear, there were of course hundreds of libraries, great and small, across the ancient world. Libraries and the communities of scholars and scribes that serviced them were established by rulers and civic worthies as the kind of prestige project that was seen as part of their role in ancient society and marked their city or territory as cultured and civilised.
The Ptolemies were not the only successors to Alexander who built a Mouseion with a library; their Seleucid rivals in Syria also built one in Antioch in the reigns of Antiochus IX Eusebes (114-95 BC) or Antiochus X Philopater (95-92 BC). Roman aristocrats and rulers also included the establishment of substantial libraries as part of their civic service. Julius Caesar had intended to establish a library next to the Forum in Rome but this was ultimately achieved after his death by Gaius Asinius Pollio (75 BC – 4 AD), a soldier, politician and scholar who retired to a life of study after the tumults of the Civil Wars. Augustus established the Palatine Library in the Temple of Apollo and founded another one in the Portus Octaviae, next to the Theatre of Marcellus at the southern end of the Field of Mars. Vespasian established one in the Temple of Peace in 70 AD, but probably the largest of the Roman libraries was that of Trajan in his new forum beside the famous column that celebrates his Dacian wars. As mentioned above, this large building probably contained around 20,000 scrolls and had two main chambers – one for Greek and the other for Latin authors. Trajan’s library also seems to have established a design and layout that would be the model for libraries for centuries: a hall with desks and tables for readers with books in niches or shelves around the walls and on a mezzanine level. Libraries also came to be established in Roman bath complexes, with a very large one at the Baths of Caracalla and another at the Baths of Diocletian.
Several of these libraries were substantial. The Library of Celsus at Ephesus was built in c. 117 AD by the son of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus in honour of his father, who had been a senator and consul in Rome, and its reconstructed facade is one of the major archaeological features of the site today. It was said to be the third largest library in the ancient world, surpassed only by the great libraries of Pergamon and Alexandria. The Great Library of Pergamon was established by the Attalid rulers of that city state and it was the true rival of the library of the Alexandrian Mouseion. It is said that the Ptolemies were so threatened by its size and the reputation of its scholars that they banned the export of papyrus to Pergamon, causing the Attalids to commission the invention of parchment as a substitute, though this is most likely a legend. What is absolutely clear, however, is that the idea that the Great Library of Alexandria was unique, whether in nature or even in size, is nonsense.
The weird idea that the loss of the Great Library was some kind of singular disaster is at least partially due to the fact that none of the various other great libraries of the ancient world are known to casual readers, so it may be easy for them to assume it was somehow unique. It also seems to stem, again, from the emphasis in popular sources on the mythical immense size of its collection which, as discussed above, is based on a naive acceptance of varied and wildly exaggerated sources. Finally, it seems to stem in no small part from (yet again) Sagan’s influential but fanciful picture of the institution as a distinctively secular hub of scientific research and, by implication, technological innovation.
Tim O’Neill, “The Great Myths 5: The Destruction Of The Great Library Of Alexandria”, History for Atheists, 2017-07-02.
November 27, 2024
QotD: The Great Library and its competitors
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