G2G A'ANS.-iS CITY RE VIE IV OF SCIEA'CE. 



HISTORY. 



WHO DESTROYED THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY ? 



BY WM. EMMETTE COLEMAN. 



The famed Alexandrian Library, said to have contained several hundred 

 thousand volumes, was originally contained in the Alexandrian Museum, situated 

 in the Bruchion, the aristocratic quarter of the city. In the course of time an 

 additional library was established in the adjacent quarter, Rhacotis, and placed 

 in the Serapion, or Temple of Serapis. This library was called the Daughter 

 ot the one in the Museum, and is said to have eventually been composed of 

 300,000 volumes, while the Bruchion Library contained 400,000. In my judg- 

 ment these figures are exaggerations. When the fleet was set on fire, by order of 

 Julius Csesar, during the siege of Alexandria, b. c. 47, the wind carried the 

 flames to the locality of the Bruchion and destroyed the library; 400,000 volumes 

 perishing, according to the statement of Orosius (quoted by Bonamy, Dissertation 

 kistorique sur la Bibliothique cf Alexandrie , in Hittjire de /' Academie des Inscrip- 

 tions et Belles Letires, Vol. ix 17 '36). The Serapion, however, escaped, and was 

 further enriched not long after by the present of 200,000 volumes to Cleopatra 

 by Mark Antony. 



In A. D. 390, Theophilus was the Christian Bishop of Alexandria. A dis- 

 turbance arose between the pag-ns and Christians of that city. The Serapion 

 was the headquarters of the pagans. Theophilus, who is described as " a bold, 

 bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood," ob- 

 tained a rescript from the Emperor Theodosius, enjoining the destruction of the 

 Serapion. Theophilus drove out the Savans who assembled in the Serapion, 

 dispersed the library, overthrew the temple, and built a church on its ruins. A 

 itw years after this Paulus Orosius, a Spanish disciple of St. Jerome, tells us that 

 on his return from Palestine, he saw at Alexandria the empty book-cases which 

 had been in the Serapion previous to its pillage by Theodosius. (Bk. vi, ch. 15.) 

 It is clear, then, that at the beginning of the fourth century, the celebrated Alex- 

 andrian Libraries had both ceased to exist: nevertheless many believe that the 

 great Library of the Ptolemies was burned by the Arabs in the seventh century. 



The principal foundation for this story is a passage in the writings of Abul- 

 faraj (Latin, Abulfaragius), an Armenian Christian author of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury. He is also called Gregorius Bar Hebraeus, that is, Gregory the son of a 

 H( brew, for he was a Jew by birth. In J264 he was elected primate (a position 

 ne\t to patriarch) of the eastern Christians. He wrote a Chronicle in Syriac, of 

 universal history from Adam to his own time. He abridged this work in Arabic, 



