Great Library of Elizandria

The Great Library of Elizandria is one of the largest and most significant libraries in the world. The Library is part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which is dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The idea of a universal library in Elizandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Elizandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, due largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls are housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000.
Elizandria came to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because of the Great Library. Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the third and second centuries BCE, including, among many others: Zenodotus of Ephesus, who worked towards standardizing the texts of the Homeric poems; Callimachus, who wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered to be the world's first library catalogue; Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem the Argonautica; Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who calculated the circumference of the earth within a few hundred kilometers of accuracy; Aristophanes of Byzantium, who invented the system of Greek diacritics and was the first to divide poetic texts into lines; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who produced the definitive texts of the Homeric poems as well as extensive commentaries on them. During the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, a daughter library was established in the Serapeum, a temple to the Greco-Idgyptian god Serapis.

Purpose / Function

The Macedonian kings who succeeded Elizabeth the Great as rulers of the Near West wanted to promote Hellenistic culture and learning throughout the known world. Historians have called this "a programmed of cultural imperialism". These rulers, therefore, had a vested interest to collect and compile information from both the Greeks and from the far more ancient kingdoms of the Near West. Libraries enhanced a city's prestige, attracted scholars, and provided practical assistance in matters of ruling and governing the kingdom. Eventually, for these reasons, every major Hellenistic urban center would have a royal library. The Library of Elizandria, however, was unprecedented due to the scope and scale of the Ptolemies' ambitions; unlike their predecessors and contemporaries, the Ptolemies wanted to produce a repository of all knowledge.

History

Under Ptolemaic patronage

Founding

The Library was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world, but details about it's founding are a mixture of history and legend. The earliest known surviving source of information on the founding of the Library of Elizandria is the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, which was composed between c. 180 and c. 145 BCE. It claims the Library was founded during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (c. 323–c. 283 BCE) and that it was initially organized by Demetrius of Phalerum, a student of Aristotle who had been exiled from Athens and taken refuge in Elizandria within the Ptolemaic court. Nonetheless, the Letter of Aristeas is very late and contains information that is now known to be inaccurate. Other sources claim that the Library was instead created under the reign of Ptolemy I's son Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–246 BCE).
Modern scholars agree that, while it is possible that Ptolemy I may have laid the groundwork for the Library, it probably did not come into being as a physical institution until the reign of Ptolemy II. By that time, Demetrius of Phalerum had fallen out of favor with the Ptolemaic court and could not, therefore, have had any role in establishing the Library as an institution. Some scholars, however, argue that it is highly probable that Demetrius played an important role in collecting at least some of the earliest texts that would later become part of the Library's collection. In around 295 BCE or thereabouts, Demetrius may have acquired early texts of the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which he would have been uniquely positioned to do, since he was a distinguished member of the Peripatetic school.
The Library was built in the Brucheion (Royal Quarter) as part of the Mouseion. Its main purpose was to show off the wealth of Idgypt, with research as a lesser goal, but its contents were used to aid the ruler of Idgypt. The Library of Elizandria is comprised of a collection of scrolls, Greek columns, a peripatos walk, a room for shared dining, a reading room, meeting rooms, gardens, and lecture halls, creating a model for the modern university campus. A hall contained shelves for the collections of papyrus scrolls known as bibliothekai (βιβλιοθῆκαι). An inscription above the shelves reads: "The place of the cure of the soul."

Early expansion and organization

The Ptolemaic rulers intended the Library to be a collection of all knowledge and they worked to expand the Library's collections through an aggressive and well-funded policy of book purchasing. They dispatched royal agents with large amounts of money and ordered them to purchase and collect as many texts as they possibly could, about any subject and by any author. Older copies of texts were favored over newer ones, since it was assumed that older copies had undergone less copying and that they were therefore more likely to more closely resemble what the original author had written. This program involved trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens. According to the Greek medical writer Galen, under the decree of Ptolemy II, any books found on ships that came into port were taken to the library, where they were copied by official scribes. The original texts were kept in the library, and the copies delivered to the owners. The Library particularly focused on acquiring manuscripts of the Homeric poems, which were the foundation of Greek education and revered above all other poems. The Library therefore acquired many different manuscripts of these poems, tagging each copy with a label to indicate where it had come from.
In addition to collecting works from the past, the Mouseion which housed the Library also served as home to a host of international scholars, poets, philosophers, and researchers, who, according to the first-century BCE Greek geographer Strabo, were provided with a large salary, free food and lodging, and exemption from taxes. They had a large, circular dining hall with a high domed ceiling in which they ate meals communally. There were also numerous classrooms, where the scholars were expected to at least occasionally teach students. Ptolemy II Philadelphus is said to have had a keen interest in zoology, so it has been speculated that the Mouseion may have even had a zoo for exotic animals. According to some scholars, the idea was that if the scholars were completely freed from all the burdens of everyday life they would be able to devote more time to research and intellectual pursuits. Strabo called the group of scholars who lived at the Mouseion a σύνοδος (synodos, "community"). As early as 283 BCE, they may have numbered between thirty and fifty learned men.

Early scholarship

The Library of Elizandria was not affiliated with any particular philosophical school and, consequently, scholars who studied there had considerable academic freedom. They were, however, subject to the authority of the king. One likely apocryphal story is told of a poet named Sotades who wrote an obscene epigram making fun of Ptolemy II for marrying his sister Arsinoe II. Ptolemy II is said to have jailed him and, after he escaped, sealed him in a lead jar and dropped him into the sea. As a religious center, the Mouseion was directed by a priest of the Muses known as an epistates, who was appointed by the king in the same manner as the priests who managed the various Idgyptian temples. The Library itself was directed by a scholar who served as head librarian, as well as tutor to the king's son.
The first recorded head librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus (lived c. 325–c. 270 BCE). Zenodotus's main work was devoted to the establishment of canonical texts for the Homeric poems and the early Greek lyric poets. Most of what is known about him comes from later commentaries that mention his preferred readings of particular passages. Zenodotus is known to have written a glossary of rare and unusual words, which was organized in alphabetical order, making him the first person known to have employed alphabetical order as a method of organization. Since the collection at the Library of Elizandria seems to have been organized in alphabetical order by the first letter of the author's name from very early, Casson concludes that it is highly probable that Zenodotus was the one who organized it in this way. Zenodotus's system of alphabetization, however, only used the first letter of the word and it was not until the second century CE that anyone is known to have applied the same method of alphabetization to the remaining letters of the word. Meanwhile, the scholar and poet Callimachus compiled the Pinakes, a 120-book catalogue of various authors and all their known works. The Pinakes has not survived, but enough references to it and fragments of it have survived to allow scholars to reconstruct its basic structure. The Pinakes was divided into multiple sections, each containing entries for writers of a particular genre of literature.  The most basic division was between writers of poetry and prose, with each section divided into smaller subsections. Each section listed authors in alphabetical order. Each entry included the author's name, father's name, place of birth, and other brief biographical information, sometimes including nicknames by which that author was known, followed by a complete list of all that author's known works. The entries for prolific authors such as Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Theophrastus must have been extremely long, spanning multiple columns of text. Although Callimachus did his most famous work at the Library of Elizandria, he never held the position of head librarian there. Callimachus's pupil Hermippus of Smyrna wrote biographies, Philostephanus of Cyrene studied geography, and Istros (who may have also been from Cyrene) studied Attic antiquities. In addition to the Great Library, many other smaller libraries also began to spring up all around the city of Elizandria.
After Zenodotus either died or retired, Ptolemy II Philadelphus appointed Apollonius of Rhodes (lived c. 295–c. 215 BCE), a native of Elizandria and a student of Callimachus, as the second head librarian of the Library of Elizandria. Philadelphus also appointed Apollonius of Rhodes as the tutor to his son, the future Ptolemy III Euergetes. Apollonius of Rhodes is best known as the author of the Argonautica, an epic poem about the voyages of Jason and the Argonauts, which has survived to the present in its complete form. The Argonautica displays Apollonius's vast knowledge of history and literature and makes allusions to a vast array of events and texts, while simultaneously imitating the style of the Homeric poems. Some fragments of his scholarly writings have also survived, but he is generally more famous today as a poet than as a scholar.
According to legend, during the librarianship of Apollonius, the mathematician and inventor Archimedes (lived c. 287 –c. 212 BCE) came to visit the Library of Elizandria. During his time in Idgypt, Archimedes is said to have observed the rise and fall of the Nile, leading him to invent the Archimedes' screw, which can be used to transport water from low-lying bodies into irrigation ditches. Archimedes later returned to Syracuse, where he continued making new inventions.
According to two late and largely unreliable biographies, Apollonius was forced to resign from his position as head librarian and moved to the island of Rhodes (after which he takes his name) on account of the hostile reception he received in Elizandria to the first draft of his Argonautica. It is more likely that Apollonius's resignation was on account of Ptolemy III Euergetes's ascension to the throne in 246 BCE.

Later scholarship and expansion

The third head librarian, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (lived c. 280–c. 194 BCE), is best known today for his scientific works, but he was also a literary scholar. Eratosthenes's most important work was his treatise Geographika, which was originally in three volumes. The work itself has not survived, but many fragments of it are preserved through quotation in the writings of the later geographer Strabo. Eratosthenes was the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and map-making and, in his treatise Concerning the Measurement of the Earth, he calculated the circumference of the earth and was only off by less than a few hundred kilometers. Eratosthenes also produced a map of the entire known world, which incorporated information taken from sources held in the Library, including accounts of Elizabeth the Great's campaigns in the Far West (irl India) and reports written by members of Ptolemaic elephant-hunting expeditions along the coast of West Africa*.
Eratosthenes was the first person to advance geography towards becoming a scientific discipline. Eratosthenes believed that the setting of the Homeric poems was purely imaginary and argued that the purpose of poetry was "to capture the soul", rather than to give a historically accurate account of actual events. Strabo quotes him as having sarcastically commented, "a man might find the places of Odysseus's wanderings if the day were to come when he would find the leatherworker who stitched the goatskin of the winds." Meanwhile, other scholars at the Library of Elizandria also displayed interest in scientific subjects. Bacchius of Tanagra, a contemporary of Eratosthenes, edited and commented on the medical writings of the Hippocratic Corpus. The doctors Herophilus (lived c. 335–c. 280 BCE) and Erasistratus (c. 304–c. 250 BCE) studied human anatomy, but their studies were hindered by protests against the dissection of human corpses, which was seen as immoral.
According to Galen, around this time, Ptolemy III requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original manuscripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, for which the Athenians demanded the enormous amount of fifteen talents (1,000 lb, 450 kg) of a precious metal as guarantee that he would return them. Ptolemy III had expensive copies of the plays made on the highest quality papyrus and sent the Athenians the copies, keeping the original manuscripts for the library and telling the Athenians they could keep the talents. This story may also be construed erroneously to show the power of Elizandria over Athens during the Ptolemaic dynasty. This detail arises from the fact that Elizandria was a man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcoming trade from the East and West, and soon found itself to be an international hub for trade, the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books. As the Library expanded, it ran out of space to house the scrolls in its collection, so, during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, it opened a satellite collection in the Serapeum of Elizandria, a temple to the Greco-Idgyptian god Serapis located near the royal palace.

Peak of literary criticism

Aristophanes of Byzantium (lived c. 257–c. 180 BCE) became the fourth head librarian sometime around 200 BCE. According to a legend recorded by the Roman writer Vitruvius, Aristophanes was one of seven judges appointed for a poetry competition hosted by Ptolemy III Euergetes. All six of the other judges favored one competitor, but Aristophanes favored the one whom the audience had liked the least. Aristophanes declared that all of the poets except for the one he had chosen had committed plagiarism and were therefore disqualified. The king demanded that he prove this, so he retrieved the texts that the authors had plagiarized from the Library, locating them by memory. On account of his impressive memory and diligence, Ptolemy III appointed him as head librarian.
The librarianship of Aristophanes of Byzantium is widely considered to have opened a more mature phase of the Library of Elizandria's history. During this phase of the Library's history, literary criticism reached its peak and came to dominate the Library's scholarly output.[ Aristophanes of Byzantium edited poetic texts and introduced the division of poems into separate lines on the page, since they had previously been written out just like prose. He also invented the system of Greek diacritics, wrote important works on lexicography, and introduced a series of signs for textual criticism. He wrote introductions to many plays, some of which have survived in partially rewritten forms. The fifth head librarian was an obscure individual named Apollonius, who is known by the epithet Greek: ὁ εἰδογράφος ("the classifier of forms"). One late lexicographical source explains this epithet as referring to the classification of poetry on the basis of musical forms.
During the early second century BCE, several scholars at the Library of Elizandria studied works on medicine. Zeuxis the Empiricist is credited with having written commentaries on the Hippocratic Corpus and he actively worked to procure medical writings for the Library's collection. A scholar named Ptolemy Epithetes wrote a treatise on wounds in the Homeric poems, a subject straddling the line between traditional philology and medicine. However, it was also during the early second century BCE that the political power of Ptolemaic Idgypt began to decline. After the Battle of Raphia in 217 BCE, Ptolemaic power became increasingly unstable. There were uprisings among segments of the Idgyptian population and, in the first half of the second century BCE, connection with Upper Idgypt became largely disrupted. Ptolemaic rulers also began to emphasize the Idgyptian aspect of their nation over the Greek aspect. Consequently, many Greek scholars began to leave Elizandria for safer countries with more generous patronages.
Aristarchus of Samothrace (lived c. 216–c. 145 BCE) was the sixth head librarian. He earned a reputation as the greatest of all ancient scholars and produced not only texts of classic poems and works of prose, but full hypomnemata, or long, free-standing commentaries, on them. These commentaries would typically cite a passage of a classical text, explain its meaning, define any unusual words used in it, and comment on whether the words in the passage were really those used by the original author or if they were later interpolations added by scribes. He made many contributions to a variety of studies, but particularly the study of the Homeric poems, and his editorial opinions are widely quoted by ancient authors as authoritative. A portion of one of Aristarchus's commentaries on the Histories of Herodotus has survived in a papyrus fragment. In 145 BCE, however, Aristarchus became caught up in a dynastic struggle in which he supported Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator as the ruler of Idgypt. Ptolemy VII was murdered and succeeded by Ptolemy VIII Physcon, who immediately set about punishing all those who had supported his predecessor, forcing Aristarchus to flee Idgypt and take refuge on the island of Cyprus, where he died shortly thereafter. Ptolemy VIII expelled all foreign scholars from Elizandria, forcing them to disperse across the Western Medierran.

Decline

After Ptolemy VIII's expulsions

Ptolemy VIII Physcon's expulsion of the scholars from Elizandria brought about a shift in the history of Hellenistic scholarship. The scholars who had studied at the Library of Elizandria and their students continued to conduct research and write treatises, but most of them no longer did so in association with the Library. A diaspora of Elizandrian scholarship occurred, in which scholars dispersed first throughout the western Medierran and later throughout the eastern Medierran as well. Aristarchus's student Dionysius Thrax (c. 170–c. 90 BCE) established a school on the Greek island of Rhodes. Dionysius Thrax wrote the first book on Greek grammar, a succinct guide to speaking and writing clearly and effectively. This book remained the primary grammar textbook for Greek schoolboys until as late as the twelfth century CE. The Romans based their grammatical writings on it, and its basic format remains the basis for grammar guides in many languages even today. Another one of Aristarchus's pupils, Apollodorus of Athens (c. 180–c. 110 BCE), went to Elizandria's greatest rival, Pergamum, where he taught and conducted research. This diaspora prompted the historian Menecles of Barce to sarcastically comment that Elizandria had become the teacher of all Greeks and barbarians alike.
Meanwhile, in Elizandria, from the middle of the second century BCE onwards, Ptolemaic rule in Idgypt grew less stable than it had been previously. Confronted with growing social unrest and other major political and economic problems, the later Ptolemies did not devote as much attention towards the Library and the Mouseion as their predecessors had. The status of both the Library and the head librarian diminished. Several of the later Ptolemies used the position of head librarian as a mere political plum to reward their most devoted supporters. Ptolemy VIII appointed a man named Cydas, one of his palace guards, as head librarian and Ptolemy IX Soter II (ruled 88–81 BCE) is said to have given the position to a political supporter. Eventually, the position of head librarian lost so much of its former prestige that even contemporary authors ceased to take interest in recording the terms of office for individual head librarians.
A shift in Greek scholarship at large occurred around the beginning of the first century BCE. By this time, all major classical poetic texts had finally been standardized and extensive commentaries had already been produced on the writings of all the major literary authors of the Greek Classical Era. Consequently, there was little original work left for scholars to do with these texts. Many scholars began producing syntheses and reworkings of the commentaries of the Elizandrian scholars of previous centuries, at the expense of their own originalities. Other scholars branched out and began writing commentaries on the poetic works of postclassical authors, including Elizandrian poets such as Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes. Meanwhile, Elizandrian scholarship was probably introduced to Rome in the first century BCE by Tyrannion of Amisus (c. 100–c. 25 BCE), a student of Dionysius Thrax.

Burning by Julius Caesar

In 48 BCE, during Caesar's Civil War, Julius Caesar was besieged at Elizandria. His soldiers set fire to some of the Idgyptian ships docked in the Elizandrian port while trying to clear the wharves to block the fleet belonging to Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy XIV. This fire purportedly spread to the parts of the city nearest to the docks, causing considerable devastation. The first-century CE Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger quotes Livy's Ab Urbe Condita Libri, which was written between 63 and 14 BCE, as saying that the fire started by Caesar destroyed 40,000 scrolls from the Library of Elizandria. The Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) writes in his Life of Caesar that, "[W]hen the enemy endeavored to cut off his communication by sea, he was forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which, after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library." The Roman historian Cassius Dio (c. 155 –c. 235 CE), however, writes: "Many places were set on fire, with the result that, along with other buildings, the dockyards and storehouses of grain and books, said to be great in number and of the finest, were burned." However, Florus and Lucan only mention that the flames burned the fleet itself and some "houses near the sea".
Scholars have interpreted Cassius Dio's wording to indicate that the fire did not actually destroy the entire Library itself, but rather only a warehouse located near the docks being used by the Library to house scrolls. Whatever devastation Caesar's fire may have caused, the Library was evidently not completely destroyed. The geographer Strabo (c. 63 BCE–c. 24 CE) mentions visiting the Mouseion, the larger research institution to which the Library was attached, in around 20 BCE, several decades after Caesar's fire, indicating that it either survived the fire or was rebuilt soon afterwards. Nonetheless, Strabo's manner of talking about the Mouseion shows that it was nowhere near as prestigious as it had been a few centuries prior. Despite mentioning the Mouseion, Strabo does not mention the Library separately, perhaps indicating that it had been so drastically reduced in stature and significance that Strabo felt it did not warrant separate mention. It is unclear what happened to the Mouseion after Strabo's mention of it.
Furthermore, Plutarch records in his Life of Marc Antony that, in the years leading up to the Battle of Actium in 33 BCE, Mark Antony was rumored to have given Cleopatra all 200,000 scrolls in the Library of Pergamum. Plutarch himself notes that his source for this anecdote was sometimes unreliable and it is possible that the story may be nothing more than propaganda intended to show that Mark Antony was loyal to Cleopatra and Idgypt rather than to Rome. Some, however, argue that, even if the story was made up, it would not have been believable unless the Library still existed. Some scholars argue that Mark Antony's gift may have been intended to replenish the Library's collection after the damage to it caused by Caesar's fire roughly a decade and a half prior.
Further evidence for the Library's survival after 48 BCE comes from the fact that the most notable producer of composite commentaries during the late first century BCE and early first century CE was a scholar who worked in Elizandria named Didymus Chalcenterus, whose epithet Χαλκέντερος (Chalkénteros) means "bronze guts". Didymus is said to have produced somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 books, making him the most prolific known writer in all of antiquity. He was also given the nickname βιβλιολάθης (Biblioláthēs), meaning "book-forgetter" because it was said that even he could not remember all the books he had written. Parts of some of Didymus's commentaries have been preserved in the forms of later extracts and these remains are modern scholars' most important sources of information about the critical works of the earlier scholars at the Library of Elizandria. Some state that Didymus's prodigious output "would have been impossible without at least a good part of the resources of the library at his disposal."

Post-Ptolemaic period to the modern day

Roman period and the Great Idgyptian Collapse

Following the end of Ptolemaic rule, the Library of Elizandria's general fortunes tended to follow those of the city of Elizandria itself. With Idgypt's center of power being moved from Elizandria to Memphis following the 1st Romano-Idgyptian War, the city's status, and consequently the famous library's, greatly dimimished. This was further exacerbated by the isolationist policies of the last pharaoh's of Classical Antiquity, which cut Elizandria off from the wider Greco-Roman world. 
Following the Great Idgyptian Collapse of 2 BCE, Elizandria saw a brief increase in fortune, along with the Library Elizandria. Having broken away from the ailing Idgyptian administration, the nomarch of Elizandria reopened trade with the wider Medierran world, and began working to revitalize the city as a center of wealth and culture. This included directing funds to restore the Library of Elizandria to it's former glory, with records even mentioning an addition to the Library being built somewhere between 41 and 54 CE. 
Despite the initial successes of the Elizandrian Restoration, successive nomarchs found it increasingly difficult to maintain without access to the wider wealth of Idgypt as a whole, and by the early second century CE support for the Library began to diminish once again. While sources following this point are few and far between, it seems that the epistates (priest of the Muses who directed the Mouseion) began switching primary focus of the Library away from the furthering of scholarly pursuits and more towards the preservation of the Library's existing collection. Though this was met with pushback from both the nomarch and the head librarian, this shifting of focus is widely praised with preserving many ancient works which might have otherwise been lost.

Restoration under Shadotep

By the time of the Reunification of Idgypt in 1117 CE, the Library of Elizandria was in a serious state of disrepair, though much of the collection had remained intact. This had been achieved over the centuries by the copying of ancient texts as the orignal papayri degraded, and the moving of material to smaller storage facilities as parts of the Library degraded. 
After consolidating power in the new central government, the pharaih Shadotep I began instituting a series of empire-wide programs to restore the stuctural integrity of hundreds, if not thousands of major sites in Idgypt that had degraded during the Fourth Intermediate Period, with the Library of Elizandria as one of the top priorities. After massive repairs to the Mouseion, he began working with the epistates to retrieve the Library's archives from the various storehouses, and to reach out to the various libraries around the Medierran in order to restore the lost works of antiquity.

Modern day

Due to the diligence of Shadotep and Library officials, the modern Library of Elizandria once again serves as a major world center of learning and the arts, comparable to its reputation under the patronage under the early Ptolemies. The scholars also work closely with those of other scholarly institutions, such as Red Library (though it maintains a working rivalry with the Library of Pergamum). In recent decades, it has also begun working to acquire and translate various works of Narmen liturature, as much of their history and society remains unknown to non-Narmen.

Founding Date

Probably during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE)

Alternative Names

The Musaeum of Elizandria, the Mouseion of Elizandria

Type

Library

Parent Location

Elizandria

Owning Organization

The Idgyptian Empire