Moonhead
Posts: 16520
Joined: 9/21/2009 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961 quote:
ORIGINAL: Moonhead That's debatable. I'd have a lot more sympathy for this argument that the Ottoman empire was the last repository for the dregs of the Roman Empire if the fuckers hadn't first destroyed the eastern Empire and burned the library at Alexandria. quote:
Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas' attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea.[2] Edward Gibbon describes how the daughter library was also destroyed by Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, who ordered the destruction of the Serapeum in 391. It was a CHRISTIAN Bishop of Alexandria that burned the library the second time it was burned, NOT the Muslims, Ottoman's or any other non-christian group you may want to blame. It is a sad fact that the teaching of history is sorely lacking in American Schools... Unless of course you actually go to college and study history under a prof that believes that the truth should be taught over political correctness. As a matter of fact, four separate dates are suggested for the destruction, and no one account tends to get cited as being definitive. It's quite possible that more than one of the accounts took place as there were at least three libraries in Alexandria and they weren't necessarily all destroyed at the same time. There's that story about Mark Anthony plundering the library at Pergaon as a replacement for the one Caesar supposedly destroyed, for a start. What is clear though, is that pretty much all of the medieval Arabic historians claim responsibility for at least one of the big bonfires. Whether this was purely to endear themselves to Saladin (who was an enthusiastic book burner himself) is unclear, but if Gibbon accepts it as a possibility, then it can't really be ruled out completely, can it? (edited for clarity and to fix a transposition)
< Message edited by Moonhead -- 12/29/2010 5:04:42 AM >
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I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted... (Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)
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