[quote="Padishah"]
"It seems a Christian governor actually set out to destroy the Library, but this is glossed over in favour of fairy tales implicatong the Caliph Umar ibn al Khattab. For the Caliph to have undertaken such an action would have directly contradicted an order by the Prophet (PBUH) to 'seek knowlegde, even unto China'. Why destroy it in Egypt?"
Padishah,
First you claimed that a Roman, Julius Caesar unequivocally destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria. I knew your theory was flawed so I provided you with a legitimate article that refuted your absurd claims. It showed that there were two other suspects one being Theophilus, a Christian and a Muslim Caliph Omar.
After being wrong you are now all of a sudden claiming that "Theophilus"was the one who destroyed the Great Library.
Are you confused or something? Would you like me to prove you wrong again?
Here take a look at this article:
Theophilus
Again, the legendary story first:
Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, is also the patron saint of arsonists. As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of classical culture in the fourth century it became more and more difficult to be a pagan. There stood in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the Serapeum and attached to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the wisdom of the ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this knowledge existed people would be less inclined to believe the bible so he set about destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure, high on a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to assault. Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated, gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had no chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved in. The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria.
Theophilus was indeed the Patriarch of Alexandria at the time that the Serapeum was converted into a Christian church although he has never been made a saint! The date for the events recorded is usually given as 391AD when Theodosius was emperor and energetically converting all his subjects to Christianity. The contention made is that there was another library in the Serapeum temple that a Christian mob destroyed during their sacking of the temple. We need to establish if there really was a library there and also if Theophilus destroyed it.
The intervening years
About the library the sources are reasonably silent but this is not a surprise because we know already that we cannot be talking about the Royal Library itself. However, Alexandria remained a centre of scholarship and other libraries existed. The Emperor Claudius set up the eponymous named Claudian to be a centre for the study of history and Hadrian founded a library at the Caesarean temple during his visit. Less reliably, Plutarch informs us that Mark Anthony gave Cleopatra the entire contents - some 200,000 rolls - of the Pergamon library as a gift.
The 12th century Byzantine scholar, John Tzetzes, in his Prolegomena to Aristophanes preserves some details about the catalogue of the poet Callimachus (died after 250BC) who said there were nearly 500,000 scrolls in the Royal Library and another 42,000 odd in the outer or public library. Note that Callimachus is not known to have referred to the Serapeum Library although he is often assumed to be doing so. The fourth century Bishop Epiphanius of Cyprus (died 402AD) in his Weights and Measures (actually a biblical commentary!) says that there were over 50,000 volumes in the 'daughter' library that he places in the Serapeum. Our previous observations about numbers fully apply here even if it seems fair to say that there were many fewer scrolls in the daughter than in the Royal Library. Epiphanius also tells us that by his day the entire Bruchion quarter of Alexandria was laid waste, no doubt due to the actions of Aurelian or Diocletian. There is a detailed report of the acropolis of Alexandria in a Progymnasmata by Aphthonius of Ephesus (died after 400AD) which he presents as an example of how to give a description. He speaks of book repositories open to the public and we can assume this refers to the Serapeum. Unfortunately the date of the description is impossible to determine and nor can we tell if it is an eyewitness account. However, we do have enough evidence in total to assert that there was once a library at the Serapeum even if it is not the same as the 'outer library' attached to the Royal Library.
Despite the continuation of academic activity, Alexandria suffered much in the years up to 391AD. Augustus reduced it, Caracalla massacred many of its citizens over a perceived insult and Aurelian also sacked the city and the palace quarter in which the Museum was situated. Finally, the city was taken with great destruction by Diocletian at the start of the fourth century.
Ammianus Marcellinus - Roman History
In the Roman History, Ammianus waxes lyrical about the Serapeum but he then gets a bit confused and says that the libraries it held were those burnt by Caesar in the Alexandrine War. The point is perhaps vital though because he had visited Alexandria and yet says of the Serapeum "in it have been valuable libraries" in the perfect tense. This was before 391AD when Theophilus and his gang set to work and very strongly suggests there were no books present in the temple at the time of its destruction.
Rufinus Tyrannius - Ecclesiastical History
The earliest description of the sack of the Serapeum was almost certainly one by Sophronius, a Christian scholar, called On the Overthrow of Serapis and now lost. Rufinus (died 410AD) was an orthodox Latin Christian who spent many years of his life in Alexandria. He arrived in 372AD and whether or not he was actually present when the Serapeum was demolished, he was certainly there at around the same time. He rather freely translated Eusebius's History of the Church into Latin and then added his own books X and XI taking the narrative up to his own time. It is in book XI that we find the best source for the events at the Serapeum which he describes in detail. His account largely agrees with the one given above except that he makes no mention of any library or books at all. He seems to regret the passing of the Serapeum but puts the blame squarely on the local pagans for inciting the Christian mob. The only English translation of his work is still very much in copyright so until I have produced another myself the reader will just have to take my word for it.
Eunapius - Lives of the Philosophers
The pagan writer Eunapius of Antioch (died after 400AD) included an account of the sack of the Serapeum in his Life of Antonius who, before he died in 390AD, had prophesied that all the pagan temples in Alexandria would be destroyed (not a desperately surprising contingency at the time). Eunapius wants to show how right he was. As well as being a pagan, Eunapius is vehemently anti-Christian and spares no effort in making Theophilus and his followers look as foolish as possible. His narrative is laced with venom and sarcasm as he describes the sack of the temple as a battle without an enemy. If a great library had been destroyed then Eunapius, the pagan scholar, would surely have mentioned it. He does not.
Socrates Scholasticus, Hermias Sozomen and Theodoret
Socrates (died after 450AD) also wrote a History of the Church that continued on from that of Eusebius. His was more detailed and in Greek rather than Latin. It contains a chapter about the destruction of the Serapeum which acknowledges that the deed was ordered by the Emperor, that the building was demolished and that it was later converted to a church. Again, no mention is made of any books that might have been in the Serapeum or what could have happened to them. His passage about the cross-shaped hieroglyphics found in the temple gives us some idea of how Christianity turned various pagan symbols to its advantage.
The histories of Sozomen (died 443AD) and Theodoret (died after 457AD) cover a similar period. Despite being pleased to report in detail the Serapeum's destruction they also make mention no books at all although Theodoret says that the wooden idols of Serapis were burnt. Both of these histories are heavily dependent on Socrates but do include details from other sources.
Paulus Orosius - History against the Pagans
Orosius (died after 415AD) was a friend of Saint Augustine who wrote a History against the Pagans that was fully intended to paint all non-Christians in a bad light. So as a historian he is useless but when he says something that suggests that his fellow Christians were not whiter than white, that is to say, against the grain of his usual bias, we have to take it seriously. In his aside on the Great Library, he says something of significance which is both an eyewitness detail and suggests that his fellow Christians are in the wrong. He says "…there exist in temples book chests which we ourselves have seen and when these temples were plundered these, we are told, were emptied by our own men in our own time." His statement that there was no other major library in Alexandria at the time of Caesar's expedition is interesting and would seem to count against there being a Serapeum library at that time. However, Orosius is too late a source to carry much weight in this matter.
From Orosius we can deduce that Christians did empty some temples of books but we cannot go much further. We cannot say the books were destroyed as this is not stated nor can we say which temples he is talking about or who was responsible. However, we can be sure he was not talking about the Serapeum as all sources agree it was razed to the ground and the temples Orosius visited are not only still standing but even have their internal furninshings. The most likely explanation is that the books were removed to Christian libraries or sold.
The verdict on Theophilus
It is hard enough to establish beyond doubt that there was a library in the Serapeum at all but if there was, Ammianus makes clear that it was no longer there by the mid-fourth century. This is confirmed by the silence of all the sources, including one that would be keen to report Christian atrocities, for the destruction of the temple in 391AD. Note that this is not an 'argument from silence' because there is no reason at all to expect a mention of books in the Serapeum when it was demolished. An invalid 'argument from silence' is when we claim something that is not mentioned did not happen, even though other evidence suggests it did. There is no positive evidence for the existence of the library and instead near conclusive eye witness evidence against.
The story that Theophilus destroyed a library is clearly a fiction that we can very precisely lay at the door of Edward Gibbon. It is in his monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that we first find the allegation made. Gibbon seems mainly concerned to clear the Arabs of the responsibility of destroying the library and allows his marked anti-Christian prejudice to cloud his better judgement. His excellent footnotes show he had exactly the same sources as we do but drew the wrong conclusions. The story has recently been popularised by Carl Sagan who includes it in Cosmos. He spices the story up with a role for the murdered philosopher Hypatia, even though there is no evidence connecting her to the library at all.
© James Hannam 2003.
Last revised: 17 August, 2006 .
