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The Ancient Library Alexander the Great -- the Conquests as a source of knowledge The Founding of the Library and the Mouseion The Egyptian Section of the Alexandria Library The Papyri: Evidence of Greek and Egyptian Scientific Interchange The Pinakes -- a Bibliographical Survey of the Alexandria Library The Alexandria Library -- " The Memory of Mankind" Appendix 1 -- The Contents of the Alexandria Library Appendix 2 -- The End of the Library
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Considering that modern scholars estimate that surviving classical works do not exceed one tenth of the original legacy, it is inconceivable that one can form even a vague idea of the contents of the ancient library in its entirety . Yet with the help of surviving literary tradition as well as with papyrological finds, one may tentatively suggest the following brief list as a possible indication of the contents of the ancient Alexandria Library:
A. Greek : I Poetry : Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Anakreon, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides, Callymachus, Apollonius, Theocritus, Aratos. II Drama Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Straton (com.). III Criticism Zenodotus, Aristophanes (of Byz.), Aristarchus (of Samothr.), Aristonicus. IV Philosophy Pre-Socratics (e.g. Anaxmander, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Heraclitus), Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Zeno, Epicurus, Pyrrhon, Panaetius, Philon (Alex.), Apollonius (of Tyana), Plotinus. V History Hecataeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Ephorus, Hecataeus (Abdera)… VI Science Original exploration reports, Eudoxus (Cnid.), Euclid, Aristarchus (Samos), Straton (Lampsacus), Eratosthenes, Megasthenes, Patroclus, Archimedes, Apollonius (Perga), Hipparchus (Nicaea), Cl. Ptolemy, Theon, Hypatia. VII Medicine Corpus of Hippocrates, Herophilus (anatomy), Erasistratus (veins), Callimachus (med.), Sarapion, Heracleides (Tarentus), Rufus, Apollonius Mys, Galen. B. Non-Greek : Egyptian sacred records, Manethon, Egyptian manuals on astronomy, instruments, medicine; Berossos (Babylonia), Persian religion, Hebraic scriptures, Buddhist writings…. |