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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
References
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There were fabulous stories that circulated concerning the lengths to which the Ptolemies would go in their avid hunt for books.
One of the methods was to search every ship sailing into the harbour of Alexandria, if a book was found, it would be taken to the library where the decision would be taken whether to return it, or confiscate it and replace it by a copy made on the spot, with an adequate compensation, to the owner. Books acquired in this manner were designated, according to Galen "from the ships" for identification of the origin (Galen, Comm. in Hippocr. Epidem. III.pp.4-11). Another notorious story that reveals the unscrupulous means to which the Ptolemies would go in order to acquire original texts, is the one told whereby the original manuscripts of the works of the great dramatic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were obtained: The precious texts were safe-guarded in the Athenian state archives and were not allowed to be lent out. Ptolemy III however was able to persuade the governors of Athens to permit him to borrow them in order to have them copied. The enormous sum of fifteen talents of silver was deposited in Athens as a pledge for their safe restitution. The King thereupon kept the originals and sent back copies, willingly forfeiting his pledge (Galen, In Hippocr. De Nat.Hominis, I. pp.44 ff., = Corpus Medis. Graec. V.9.1, p.55). Beside these irregular methods, books were usually purchased from different places, especially from Athens and Rhodes, the largest book marts at the time (Athen. I, 10). Different versions of the same work would occasionally be bought as, for example, those of the Homeric text which came "from Chios", "from Sinope" and "from Massalia".4 |