Historia de Grecia y Roma

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  • A current joke 2,000 years old

    Few days ago, in a coffe talk or beer talk, about an informal conversation about the physical resemblance between some people, a good friend, who has lived many years in Latin America, told a joke located in Venezuela:

    A wealthy landowner visited his huge horse farm. He found a humble worker, with downcast eyes. He raised his head and they, employer and worker  were both, surprised by the extraordinary resemblance between them. He asked curious the pattern:
    – Has your mother been ever in Caracas?
    Replied the worker:
    – My mom never, but my dad has been many times.

    The worker answered in all simplicity and playfulness, giving to the pattern a suitable dose of his own medicine because he sought to question the honor of his mother.

    Well, this is a joke today, at least 2100 years old. This is one of the jokes, facetiae, quips, witticisms older apophtegmatha which had have  most successful and have lasted until today.

    s. https://www.antiquitatem.com/en/dicta-aurea-apophthegma-aphorism-axiom

    Macrobius tells us this “facetia” referred to Augustus in his book Saturnalia, II 4 19-20

    Normally, in the case of Augustus, I admire more the jokes he endured than those he made, because greater ring of glory is  patience than  eloquence, especially whenever  he put up  with serenity sarcasm that went beyond simple joke.  A sharp spike by a provincial gained some notoriety.  When the man came to Rome,  the eyes of whole world were turned to him because he was the image of Caesar. Augustus ordered that he is brought to him and after seeing him asked: "Tell me, young man, was ever your mother in Rome?". The young Said no, and without restraint, he added: "But my father many times."

    Soleo in Augusto magis mirari quos pertulit iocos quam ipse quos protulit, qui maior est patientiae quam facundiae laus, maxime cum aequanimiter aliqua etiam iocis mordaciora pertulerit. Cuiusdam provincialis iocus asper innotuit. Intraverat Romam simillimus Caesari et in se omnium ora converterat. Augustus perduci ad se hominem iussit, visumque hoc modo interrogavit: Dic mihi, adolescens, fuit aliquando mater tua Romae? Negavit ille, nec contentus adiecit: Sed pater meus saepe.

    But this joke already told it before the historian s. I B.C. Valerius Maximus in his Memorable Deeds and Sayings,  IX 14.3:

    The man, however, everyone in Sicily was agreed that he was very similar to the governor of the province, was cheeky and insolent. Indeed, as the governor said  he was amazed that this man could resemble him so closely, because his father had never been in Sicily, he replied, "But my father  went to Rome." With this joke he avenged outraged chastity of his mother throwing in turn suspicion on the governor’s mother  instead  with more audacity  than was suitable for  someone who is  subject to the rods and axes.

     Ille uero, quem in Sicilia prouinciae <rect>oris admodum similem fuisse constat, petulantis animi: pro consule enim dicente mirari se quapropter sui tam similis esset, cum pater suus in eam prouinciam numquam accessisset, "at meus" inquit "Romam accessit:" ioco namque lacessitam matris suae pudicitiam inuicem suspicione in matrem eius reiecta audacius quam uirgis et securibus subiecto conueniebat ultus est.

    So we have to assume that the story ran in antiquity, perhaps from the Orient. It was repeated again and again in the Middle Ages and  in the Renaissance following the release of Macrobius, and even after, coming to us and without any difficulty crossing the Atlantic, as we have seen.

    John of Salisbury picks the story from Macrobius in the twelfth century in his Policraticus.  Petrarch also includes the two versions (one of the Valerius Maximus and another one of Macrobius) in his Rerum memorandarum libri III ( Books of  things  to be remembered), Lib. III, 3, 2

    About the sharpness or witticisms. (Examples) from outside (of Rome)
    A certain young
    A certain foreigner young  came to Rome  and he was  so similar in body shape to Augustus than  everyone was surprised; when Augustus heard about it, watching the young man whom he had called and recognizing his image in their  face, made him the following question:
    "Young man, your mother has not ever been in Rome?
    The young man realized what was intended and said: "My mother never, but my father many times. He rejected the sent suspicion with his wit and motivated a new one. This story is told in the "Saturnalia". But  Valerius Maximus tells it not about Augustus but about  an anonymous praetor and not about the mother, but about the two parents, and further  says he was asked and answered not in Rome but in Sicily, where a Roman magistrate asked  a person of that province, very similar in body shape, telling him he was amazed, from where it came much resemblance when his father had never been in  Sicily. But the young man answered, my father went to Rome many times. What is the truest and most faithful version? What faith, as they say, is in the hands of each author!

    De dicacitate sive  facetiis, Externi
    Quidam iuvenis
    Iuvenis alienígena Romam venit, forma corporis tam similis Augusto, ut omnem populum spectaculi admiratione suspenderet: Augustus re audita, ad se iuvenem evocatum cernens, effigiemque suam in illius facie recognoscens, in hanc sententiam interrogavit: Fuit ne unquam o adoescens mater tua Romae?. Sensit ille quo pergeret. Et minime (inquit) mater, at pater meus saepe. Facete et illatam suspitionem repulit, et novam peperit: et haec quidem historia sic in Saturnalibus tradita est. Valerius autem Maximus: non Augusti, sed innominati praetoris,neque matris, sed duorum patrum mentionem facit, praeterea non Romae, sed in Sicilia interrogatum, responsumve commemorat. Percunctante enim magistratu  Romano quendam eius provinciae, sibi forma corporis simillimum, et mirari se dicente, unde haec tanta similitudo cum pater suus numquam in Sicilia fuisset. At ille respondit: Pater meus saepe Romam venit, quaenam sane verior, fideliorque narratio , fides (ut aiunt) apud autores maneat.

    In the fifteenth century the Mensa Philosophica collects it. Mensa Philosophica is an anonymous work first published in 1470, which was a bestseller. The fourth book is an anthology of 241 short facetiae offered as a conversation piece for the banquet. It is a mixture of old jokes and exempla (examples). The same compiler recognizes the debt to  Macrobius  and states that the joke is necessary for relaxation of mind and that good jokes  are needed for the table as well as good wine. In section 5, about  the emperors, it is contained the story that we are considering:

    A certain man, very like Augustus Caesar in appearance, came to Rome. When Augustus saw the young man, he  asked him:”Was your mother ever in Rome?”. “No,” replied the young man, “but my father was, frequently.”

    Intravit quídam Romam simillimus Cesari quem cum vidisset quaesivit a iuvene. Fuit ne mater tua quandoque Romae. Cui adolescens ille.Non sed pater frequenter.

    Johannes Pauli also collects it from Macrobius in his collection of anecdotes called in German "Schimpf (Scherz) und Ernst" (Jokes and seriousness) in the early sixteenth.

    Of course Erasmus of Rotterdam includes it, without acknowledging any source, in its Apophthegmata (IV Augusto, 33):

    As Augustus enjoyed joking with friendly banter at the expense of other, equally he endured with great patience that they were launched against him or they were  returned, and sometimes they were very heavy. A young man from province had come to Rome , with as such wonderfully face as similar to Augustus, than he attracted to itself the eyes of all the people. Hearing this, Caesar ordered bring to his presence, and after contemplating him, he asked so:  “Tell me, young man, was  your mother ever in Rome"; he replied no, and realizing the joke, he returned the joke  adding, "But my father many times." Augustus joking projected  some suspicion to  the boy's mother, suggesting  she  had been dishonored by him; but the young diverted swiftly the suspicion to  Caesar's mother, or to her sister. Well the similarity tasted that  he was the son of Caesar, as it was his brother or nephew.

    Quemadmodum Augustus gaudebat iocis liberalibus in alios ludere, ita in se iactos aut retortos  interdum liberius, patientissime tulit.  Adolescens quídam provincialis Romam venerat,oris similitudine tam mirifice referens Augustum,  ut in se populi totius oculos converteret. Caesar hoc audito iussit ad se perduci, eumque contemplatus, hunc in modum percontatus est;  Dic mihi, adolescens, fuit ne aliquando mater tua Romae? Negavit ille, ac sentiens iocum retorsit, adiiciens; sed patermeus saepe. Augustus ludens suspicionem intendebat in matrem adolescentis, velut ab ipso stupratam: at adolescens protinus eam suspicionem retorsit in matrem Caesaris, aut in sororem. Nam oris similitude non magis arguebat, illum esse Caesaris filium quam fratrem aut nepotem

    In Spanish there are several authors of the time they collect it, such as humanistic and chronicler of Carlos V,  Pedro Mexia (1497-15519) in your “Silva de varia lección” (A Miscellany of Several Lessons)  (1540), Part 1, Chapter XLI:

    It also happened to Octavian Caesar another funny thing with a young man who came to Rome in the time that he reigned in it. It was this: that he came to Rome a young man who looked so much the same Octavian in the gesture, than he was regarded with wonder by all; and being advised of this Octavian, then he had him brought before it, and it  was noted and certified more big similarity between them. The emperor, as he was of sweet conversation and prided by to say sometimes sharp and funny things, seeing that everyone said he looked much, told the young man, "Tell me, brother, your mother came ever  to Rome"; the  boy understood the malice and answered, "My mother, sir, never came to Rome; but my father came many times," applying to him it by what he had been touched.

    “También le pasó a Octaviano César otra graciosa cosa con un mancebo que vino a Roma en el tiempo en que él imperaba en ella. Fue ésta: que vino a Roma un mancebo que parecía tanto al mismo Octaviano en el gesto, que a maravilla era mirado por todos; y siendo avisado de esto Octaviano, luego lo hizo traer ante sí, donde se notó y certificó más la grande similitud que había entre ellos. El emperador, como era de dulce conversación y se preciaba de decir algunas veces cosas agudas y graciosas, viendo que todos decían que le parecía mucho, le dijo al mancebo: “Dime, hermano, ¿vino tu madre alguna vez a Roma?” El mozo entendió la malicia y respondióle: “Mi madre, señor, nunca vino a Roma; pero mi padre vino muchas veces”, motejándole a él de lo que él había sido tocado”.

    Timoneda also collects it with some slight variation in Sobremesa (After dinner), Part 2, tale XLII:

    A king was who advised about that a young man of same  stature and age seemed greatly to him. Wishing the King to see if it was so, ordered to call him , and knowing  to be true, he asked, "Tell me, young man: do you remember  if  your mother for some time was in this my home?" He replied, "Sir, my mother never; but my father was.

    Fue avisado un rey que un mancebo  de su mesma estatura y edad le parescía en grandíssima manera. Deseoso el Rey de ver si era así, mandóle llamar, y conociendo ser verdad, preguntóle: “Dime, mancebo: ¿acuérdaste si por dicha tu madre por algún tiempo estuvo en esta mi casa?” Respondió: “Señor, mi madre no; pero mi padre sí”.

    The story, anecdote or joke is, of course in the collections of classic tales and jokes of any other country. So in Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis Récréations de  Bonaventure des Périers (circa 1510-circa 1544); in Dreihundert gemeyner Sprichwörter (sayings) of Johan Agricola. Ludovico Domenichi in his Universal History, applies it to Pope Boniface VIII and a pilgrim.

    So the joke has been repeated throughout the centuries from the first twenty, as does, for example Freud, who remembers him in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, who  in the English version of James Strachev, New York, 1963 , p. 68-69 says:

    The joke can be found in every century from the fourteenth to the twentieth an is in Freud’s  Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (ch.2). The wittiest rendition are the tersest, like this one which leaves the reader to work out the point.
    “Serenissimus” is touring the provinces. Seeing in the crowd a man who bears a close resemblance to himself, he inquires, “Was your mother at one time in service at the palace?” “No, your Highness”, was the reply, “but my father was”.

    Note: "serenissimus" is a conventional name for the actual characters in the stories in Germany.

    Even the story was also known in Arabic or Persian Oriental literature; we can ask by it if the origin is not precisely in the East. The reference is in the very similar story that Jonathan Scott gives us p. 300 of his "Tales, anecdotes and letters translated from the Arabis and Persian", published in 1800 in London.

    THE FOLLOWING ANECDOTES ARE TRANSLATED FROM A MANUSCRIPT INTITLED  UZZULLEAUT UBBEED ZAKKAUNEE, MENTIONED IN THE ADVERTISEMENT
    A CERTAIN sultaun hearing that a man of wit was reckoned in person very like himself, was curious to see him, and sent for him to court. Upon his introduction, he said, “I remernber your mother well. She  was a handsome woman, and used to  attend the harams of the sultaun and
    nobility with rich goods and jewellery, as a dullalla,  reaping much profit from her honourable calling." The wit, understanding the sultaun's allusion, replied, " Not so; my mother was a secluded woman, who never left her house,   and knew nothing of trade; but my father was an eminent designer,  who was frequently called to  the gardens of the royal and noble  harams, to lay out, sow flowers, and plant trees." The sultaun admired his wit, and made him one of his intimate courtiers.

    Nota: dullalla  =  a brokerefs

    In short, it is a joke with remarkable temporal and geographical success. What my friend, whose account has resulted in this article,  did not say to me is if  the Venezuelan landowner response the worker with the same sportsmanship that Emperor Augustus was taken.
     

  • Library of Alexandria (and 6): The Bible of the Seventies.

    In the populous city of Alexandria there was a very large Jewish community. The Jews were already numerous groups throughout the Greek world, to the point that many of them barely understand Aramaic or Hebrew.

    Greek Macedonian kings of Egypt, the Ptolemies, who ruled from Alexandria, maintained good relations with the very influential Jewish community. They had far less consideration for native Egyptians, who incidentally also did not had good relations with the Jews.

    As I said, there were many Jews who  speaking Greek who increasingly less understood Hebrew, religious language par excellence of the Jews and the Aramaic that was spoken in Judea. This forced them to translate  the Jews religious books into Greek.

    Moreover it is well known the purpose of the famous library of Alexandria to collect "all" books of all existing languages in the world. So in the interest of the Greeks for all books in the world, including the Hebrews, joined to the interest of the Jews  to show that its laws were not inconsistent with the Hellenistic world.

    These two factors made up the right atmosphere to  a fantastic version of the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek should be created by a interested Jew  in century and a half or two centuries after the creation of Alexandria.

    It should be considered that  the text of a holy book, wonderfully conveyed by divinity, has a ritual value in itself and therefore it is reluctant to be translated into any other language.

    Well, the famous "Letter of Aristeas", which chronicles the process by that this translation took place, occurs at this time. This is most likely a Jewish document of the second century BC, attributed to a certain Aristeas, Jews who  presents himself as Greek.

    The goal is certainly to heighten the importance of the Jewish community in the Greek world and explain why it was necessary to translate the Jewish holy books into Greek. The document, obviously false, had remarkable luck in your transmission in the ancient and medieval world.

    In summary it tells how Ptolemy II, on the advice of Demetrios of Falera, instructs 72 wise men, 6 for each of the 12 tribes of Israel, offered by the High Priest of Jerusalem, Eleazar (actually seems almost impossible task to find 6 experts by tribe) for proper Greek translation, the first translation of the Pentateuch into Greek (probably existed some previous translations of some Jewish texts). Translators were locked in pairs in 36 isolated cells. They used exactly 72 days and they coincided absolutely in terms . Notice how the 72 experts  are rounded and down to 70, a figure more in line with the importance of the number 7 in the Semitic tradition in general.

    Note: without doubt, the importance of the number seven is related to the lunar cycle and its phases every seven days precisely.

    Then, this translation of the Seventy (Septuaginta) was promptly adoptaded by Christians as their own.

    Read one of the most significant pieces of this fantastic tale whose  a brief analysis of the contradictions and anachronisms reveals his falsehood, matter that I do not discuss in this occasion:

    The Letter Of Aristeas:

    9)  Demetrius of Phalerum, the president of the king's library, received vast sums of money, for the purpose of collecting together, as far as he possibly could, all the books in the world. By means of purchase and transcription, he carried out, to the best of his ability, the purpose of the king. On one o(ccasion when I was present he was asked, How many thousand books are there in the library? (10) and he replied, 'More than two hundred thousand, O king, and I shall make endeavour in the immediate future to gather together the remainder also, so that the total of five hundred thousand may be reached. I am told that the laws of the Jews are worth transcribing and deserve a place in (11) your library.' 'What is to prevent you from doing this?' replied the king. 'Everything that is necessary has been placed at your disposal.' 'They need to be translated,' answered Demetrius, 'for in the country of the Jews they use a peculiar alphabet (just as the Egyptians, too, have a special form of letters) and speak a peculiar dialect. They are supposed to use the Syriac tongue, but this is not the case; their language is quite different.' And the king when he understood all the facts of the case ordered a letter to be written to the Jewish High Priest that his purpose (which has already been described) might be accomplished.
    …..
    (29)The Memorial of Demetrius to the great king. 'Since you have given me instructions, O king, that the books which are needed to complete your library should be collected together, and that those which are defective should be repaired, I have devoted myself with the utmost care to the fulfilment of your wishes,(30) and I now have the following proposal to lay before you. The books of the law of the Jews (with some few others) are absent from the library. They are written in the Hebrew characters and language and have been carelessly interpreted, and do not represent the original text as I am(31) informed by those who know; for they have never had a king's care to protect them. It is necessary that these should be made accurate for your library since the law which they contain, in as much as it is of divine origin, is full of wisdom and free from all blemish. For this reason literary men and poets and the mass of historical writers have held aloof from referring to these books and the men who have lived and are living in accordance with them, because their (32) conception of life is so sacred and religious, as Hecataeus of Abdera says. If it please you, O king, a letter shall be written to the High Priest in Jerusalem, asking him to send six elders out of every tribe – men who have lived the noblest life and are most skilled in their law – that we may find out the points in which the majority of them are in agreement, and so having obtained an accurate translation may place it in a conspicuous place in a manner worthy of the work itself and your purpose. May continual prosperity be yours!'
    …

    (35) 'King Ptolemy sends greeting and salutation to the High Priest Eleazar
    ….
    Now since I am anxious to show my gratitude to these men and to the Jews throughout the world and to the generations yet to come, I have determined that your law shall be translated from the Hebrew tongue which is in use amongst you (39) into the Greek language, that these books may be added to the other royal books in my library. It will be a kindness on your part and a regard for my zeal if you will select six elders from each of your tribes, men of noble life and skilled in your law and able to interpret it, that in questions of dispute we may be able to discover the verdict in which the majority agree, for the investigation is of the highest possible importance. I hope to win great renown by the accomplishment of this
    …
    (41) To this letter Eleazar replied appropriately as follows:
    'Eleazar the High priest sends greetings to King Ptolemy his true friend. My highest wishes are for your welfare and the welfare of Queen Arsinoe your sister and your children.
    ….
    (46) In the presence of all the people I selected six elders from each tribe, good men and true, and I have sent them to you with a copy of our law. It will be a kindness, O righteous king, if you will give instruction that as soon as the translation of the law is completed, the men shall be restored again to us in safety. Farewell.'
    …..
    (121) The High priest selected men of the finest character and the highest culture, such as one would expect from their noble parentage. They were men who had not only acquired proficiency in Jewish literature, but had studied most (122) carefully that of the Greeks as well.
    ….
    (301) Three days later Demetrius took the men and passing along the sea-wall, seven stadia long, to the island, crossed the bridge and made for the northern districts of Pharos. There he assembled them in a house, which had been built upon the sea-shore, of great beauty and in a secluded situation, and invited them to carry out the work of translation, since everything that they needed for the purpose (302) was placed at their disposal. So they set to work comparing their several results and making them agree, and whatever they agreed upon was suitably copied out under the direction of Demetrius. And the session lasted until the ninth hour; after this they were set free to minister to their physical (304) needs. Everything they wanted was furnished for them on a lavish scale

    ……
    (307) As I have already said, they met together daily in the place which was delightful for its quiet and its brightness and applied themselves to their task. And it so chanced that the work of translation was completed in seventy-two days, just as if this had been arranged of set purpose.
    (308) When the work was completed, Demetrius collected together the Jewish population in the place where the translation had been made, and read it over to all, in the presence of the translators, who met with a great reception also from the people, because of the great benefits which they had (309) conferred upon them. They bestowed warm praise upon Demetrius, too, and urged him to have the whole law transcribed and present a copy to their leaders.  (310) After the books had been read, the priests and the elders of the translators and the Jewish community and the leaders of the people stood up and said, that since so excellent and sacred and accurate a translation had been made, it was only right that it should remain as it was and no  (311)  alteration should be made in it. And when the whole company expressed their approval, they bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon any one who should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way whatever any of the words which had been written or making any omission. This was a very wise precaution to ensure that the book might be preserved for all the future time unchanged. (312) When the matter was reported to the king, he rejoiced greatly, for he felt that the design which he had formed had been safely carried out. The whole book was read over to him and he was greatly astonished at the spirit of the lawgiver. And he said to Demetrius, 'How is it that none of the historians or the poets have ever thought it worth their while to allude to such a wonderful (313) achievement?' And he replied, 'Because the law is sacred and of divine origin. And some of those who formed the intention of dealing with it have been smitten by God and therefore desisted from (314)  their purpose.' He said that he had heard from Theopompus that he had been driven out of his mind for more than thirty days because he intended to insert in his history some of the incidents from the earlier and somewhat unreliable translations of the law. When he had recovered (315) a little, he besought God to make it clear to him why the misfortune had befallen him. And it was revealed to him in a dream, that from idle curiosity he was wishing to communicate sacred truths to common men, and that if he desisted he would recover his health. I have heard, too, from the lips (316) of Theodektes, one of the tragic poets, that when he was about to adapt some of the incidents recorded in the book for one of his plays, he was affected with cataract in both his eyes. And when he perceived the reason why the misfortune had befallen him, he prayed to God for many days and was afterwards restored    .   (R.H. Charles-Editor. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1913)

    It is very interesting the version of Bishop Epiphanius (circa 310-403), basically coinciding but with some input that I avoid reprinted in full. Anyone interested can find the text of Epiphanius on the network, on English; It can be found for example in

    http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/epiphanius_weights_03_text.htm#C2

    Epiphanius from Salamis or Salamina: De mensuris et ponderibus, 9:

    And the first translators  of the divine Scriptures from the Hebrew language into the Greek were seventy-two men in number, those who made the first translation in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus. They were chosen from the twelve tribes of Israel, six men from each tribe, as Aristeas has transmitted it in his work. And their names are these: first, from the tribe of Reuben, Josephus, Hezekiah, Zechariah, Johanan,
    …..
    These are the names, as we have already said, of the seventy-two translators.

    Also Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote in Greek, whose work kept the Romans, also has so interesting question in his Jewish Antiquities, Lib. 12, 2 1 ss:

    When Alexander had reigned twelve years, and after him Ptolemy Soter forty years, Philadelphus then took the kingdom of Egypt, and held it forty years within one. He procured the law to be interpreted, and set free those that were come from Jerusalem into Egypt, and were in slavery there, who were a hundred and twenty thousand. The occasion was this: Demetrius Phalerius, who was library keeper to the king, was now endeavoring, if it were possible, to gather together all the books that were in the habitable earth, and buying whatsoever was any where valuable, or agreeable to the king's inclination, (who was very earnestly set upon collecting of books,) to which inclination of his Demetrius was zealously subservient. And when once Ptolemy asked him how many ten thousands of books he had collected, he replied, that he had already about twenty times ten thousand; but that, in a little time, he should have fifty times ten thousand. But be said he had been informed that there were many books of laws among the Jews worthy of inquiring after, and worthy of the king's library, but which, being written in characters and in a dialect of their own, will cause no small pains in getting them translated into the Greek tongue (Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley.)

    And he keeps  telling us about the episode of Aristeas, that I avoid the reader to be basically already narrated.

    This apology and commendation of the miraculous and fantastic translation was shared by the early Christian fathers who found compatible with the Christian tradition and it is the central issue when they talk about the Library of Alexandria and books in general ..

    So in addition to quoted, Tertullian  in Apology, 18.5:

    Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the most learnedof his race, a man of vast acquaintance with all literature, emulating, I imagine, the book enthusiasm of Pisistratus, among other remains of the past which either their antiquity or something of peculiar interest made famous, at the suggestion of Demetrius Phalereus, who was renowned above all grammarians of this time, and to whom he had committed the management of these things, applied to the Jews for their writings- I mean the writings peculiar to them and in their tongue, which they alone possessed. (Edited by Alexander Robertsand James Donaldsson. Translated by S.Thelwall. Edimburgo,Murray and Gibb.1869)

    Ptolemaeorum eruditissimus, quem Philadelphum supernominant, et omnis litteraturae sagacissimus, cum studio bibliothecarum Pisistratum, opinor, aemularetur, inter cetera memoriarum, quibus aut vetustas aut curiositas aliqua ad famam patrocinabatur, ex suggestu Demetri<i> Phalerei, grammaticorum tunc probatissimi, cui praefecturam mandaverat, libros a Iudaeis quoque postulavit, proprias atque vernaculas litteras, quas soli habebant

    and he goes on to comment the paragraph of the Letter of Aristea).

    But St. Jerome, who translated directly from Hebrew, that he knows, is critical of version of the LXX and so, for example, in the letter XXXIV (to Marcela) he rejects the LXX translation of  "bread of affliction" by  "bread of idols ", as well as other cases.

    Naturally, scientific philology collides with intransigent permanence  of "sacred texts", after all the work of men.

    A belated summary of all this is found in Saint Isidorus in his Etymologies, VI, 3 and 4,  chapters entitled De bibliothecis and  De interpretibus  respectively:

    Lib. VI, cap. 3, 5: (De bibliothecis)

    Then Alexander the Great and his successors were applied with all their soul in providing the libraries with  all books. In particular Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the most knowledgeable about all kinds of literature, trying to emulate  Pisístrato in his love for libraries, endowed his library not only the writings of the Gentiles authors, but also of the Holy Scriptures. So in his time seventy thousand books could be found  in Alexandria.

    Lib. VI, cap. 3, 5: (De bibliothecis)

    Dehinc magnus Alexander, vel succesores eius instruendis ómnium librorum bibliothecis animam intenderunt, maxime Ptolomeus cognomento Philadelphus omnis litteraturae sagacissimus, cum studio bibliothecarum Pisistratum aemularetur, non solum gentium scripturas, sed etiam et divinas literas in bibliothecam suam contulit. Nam septuaginta milia librorum huius temproibus Alexandriae inventa sunt.

    Book VI, Cap. 4, 1-5 (De interpretibus).:

    1. This (Ptolemy Philadelphus), moreover, requested from the priest Eleazar the sacred writings of the Old Testament and saw to it that they were translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy interpreters, and kept them in the Alexandrian library.
    2. Although they were separated each one in individual cells, they interpreted through  the Holy Spirit every texts in such a way that nothing was  found in the book of any of them  something that was different from the rest  or disagreed even on the order of words.
    3. There were also other interpreters who translated the Sacred Scripture from Hebrew into Greek , such as Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion; also there is also that common (Vulgaris) translation (in the vernacular, in Latin), whose author is unknown, and so it is called Fifth Edition, without interpreter name.
    4. Moreover, Origen provide a sixth and seventh edition with an admirable job,  and compared them with the other editions.
    5. Also the presbyter Jerome, expert in all three languages, translated the same Scriptures from Hebrew into the Latin language and rendered them with great perfection. The translation  of this  interpreter  deservedly is preferred over the other, because it is not only the most accurate in words, but also clearer in understanding of sentences.

    Cap. 4 (De interpretibus).:
    1. Hic etiam ab Eleazaro sacro pontífice petens scripturas veteris testamenti, in Graecam vocem ex Hebraica lingua per septuaginta interpretes transferre curavit, quas in Alexandrina biblioteca habuit.
    2. Siquidem singuli in singulis cellis separati ita omnia per Spiritum sanctum interpretati sunt, ut nihil in alicuius eorum codice inventum esset, quod in ceteris vel in verborum ordine discreparet.
    3. Fuerunt et alii interpretes, qui ex Hebraica lingua in Graecam sacra eloquia transtulerunt, sicut Aquila, Symmachus et Theodotion, sicut etiam Vulgaris illa interpretation, cuius auctor non apparet et ob hoc sine nomine interpretis Quinta edition nuncupatur.
    4. Praeterea sextam et septimam editionem Origenes miro labore reperit, et cum caeteris editionibus comparavit.
    5.  Presbyter quoque Hieronymus trium linguarum peritus ex Hebraeo in Latinum eloquium easdem scrpturas convertit, eloquenterque transfudit. Cuis interpretati merito caeteris antgefertur. Nam est et verborum tenacior, et perspicuitate sententiae clarior.

    In any case,  no all Jews celebrated the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. Some considered unsuitable, if not sacrilegious, share the sacred message of a sacred language with all those gentiles or Jews who speak Greek.

    Philo of Alexandria (he lived about 15 BC to 50 AD), tells how in his time a feast to commemorate this translation is celebrated every year on the island of Pharos. But not everyone remembered the fact with the same joy; the Talmud remembers it  as "a day of fasting and mourning, to atone for the sin committed by disclosing the Torah in the language of the Goyim (foreign nations)»

    And in chronic "Megillat Ta'anit" written in Aramaic, we read:

    "In the eighth (V), the seven of Tebet (December-January)  the law was written in Greek in the days of King Ptolemy, and darkness fell over the world for three days."

    So it remains curious that Jews reject the translation and later Christians are those who welcome it wholeheartedly.

    Clearly the translation expropriated the Old Testament as the exclusive property of the Jews and  it was at once evident proof of the division among the Jews who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic and who spoke only Greek.

    The Fathers and Christian writers Justin, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Eusebius, Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose are preparing the  legend which Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (310-403) completely constructed: the translation is the work from divine inspiration.

    Then when Rome is almost omnipresent and omnipotent, the Bible had to be translated into Latin and so Saint Jerome does it with the "Vulgate" (Vulgata),  so called because Latin is the language of the common (vulgaris) people,  opposite to the Greek scholar language.

    In turn, they come  from the Vulgate many other translations to  modern European languages, which later were  produced by the above-stated reason of  the tendency of the sacred texts to their permanence and immutability and to stay as ritual texts which do not  should be available for all mortals. This is another issue, but we can remember the episode concerning San Luis de León, who  suffered persecution by translating books of the Bible or Luther, who first translated it into German to make it available to the faithful and step reaffirm German language with an important written document.

  • Library of Alexandria (5) Did the Library of Alexandria disappeared by a grand fire?

    According to tradition thousand times repeated, the famous Library of Alexandria disappeared in a great fire. It seems that this is the tragic end sooner or later to which all libraries are doomed.

    But the issue of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria has generated much controversy among modern authors, who analyzed the sources, in large part confusing.

    It's certainly no one glorious operation to destroy a library, so no one has claimed. But probably the biggest reason was the decline and cultural apathy that was invading the ancient world from the V century, but also the ideological wars and clashes between Christians and pagans.

    There are numerous texts which  refer to the destruction of the Library generally of questionable historical value by the remoteness of the facts they recount and  sometimes being  mere reproductions and contamination of one or the other, some are even contradictory. If anything it can be interesting  playing some because they are the expression of the attention which was given to the issue in antiquity itself.

    There are two preliminary questions that should be left clear. Firstly there is no free and grandiose building as a place in which the books are collected, stored and read  such as large current libraries are now. The word •bibliotheca”, "library", comes from Latin Bibliotheca, and this from  Greek βιβλιοθήκη composed of βιβλίον, biblion, book, and  θήκη, theke, meaning "box, tank, receptacle, wardrobe …". βιβλίον or βίβλος also means rind or leaf of papyrus, which was used to support writing on it, from which the meaning of "book, writing paper, letter …" comes. So really “bibliotheca”, "library", means a shelf or shelves where volumes are placed.

    Second in Alexandria were actually two libraries, this one  known as the "Royal Library" (real property, the Hebrew writer Aristeas calls them  "royal books" or "books of the King" (Letter of Aristeas, 38)) or large library (μεγάλη βιβλιοθήκη of μέγας, megas, large), which was part of the palace complex and the Museum, without its own building in the neighborhood Bruqión (actually the palace, which was a fortress, occupied the whole neighborhood) and another one library, attached to the Serapeion, in the neighborhood of Rakhotis; some sources, such as Bishop Epiphanius,  IV century, call this small the "daughter" of the  larger library.

    According to the texts, the libraries  of Alexandria suffered several mishaps and fires along the  history.

    Probably the most famous and known fire is what occurred in the year 48 or 47 BC in Caesar's war with Ptolemy XIII, in which a number of books or volumes were burned, but it is not possible to say that they are books of Library that was in the Museum. As the fire occurred in the warehouses of the docks, it is considered that they were prepared packages of books or rolls for export, very important activity in Alexandria.

    The incident apparently occurred in this way: Caesar tried to mediate in the conflict between the brothers children of Ptolemy Auletes, between Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII. During the celebration of a feast in the palace, the general Aquila and tutor of King Potinus  attempted an attack  to Caesar that was discovered. Aquila escaped and prepared  the insurrection of Alexandria, in which Caesar felt backed himself into the palace. That's when the men of Caesar burned the ships of Ptolemy to break the siege by sea. The fire spread from boats to warehouses and then to part of the city. After the war, which Caesar won, he placed Cleopatra and her other brother Ptolemy XIV as her husband on the throne.

    Plutarch(between ca 46 and 120),  tells us In Life of Julius Caesar, 49.6:

    in the second place, when the enemy tried to cut off his fleet, he was forced to repel the danger by using fire, and this spread from the dockyards and destroyed the great library (English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1919)

    And Aulus Gellius, who was born around the year 130,  tells us that Library had 700,000 (in some manuscripts it is read 70,000) volumes; he also tells us that they disappeared in a fire during Caesar's war, but it happened by accident, also blaming it to the auxiliary troops:

    Gelius, Noct. Attic. VII, 17,3:

    but these were all burned during the sack of the city in our first war with Alexandria,  not intentionally or by anyone's order, but accidentally by the auxiliary soldiers. (The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.)

    sed ea omnia bello priore Alexandrino, dum diripitur ea civitas, non sponte neque opera consulta, sed a militibus forte auxiliaris incensa sunt.

    But the poet Lucan, who entertains himself a little in describing the fire, as a good poet, tells us in his Bellum Civile (or Pharsalia), X, 486-505, it was Caesar who ordered the ships burn:

    Held fast the palace as a battlement.
    Nor failed they to attack from ships of war
    The regal dwelling, where its frontage bold
    Made stand apart the waters of the deep:
    There, too, was Caesar's all-protecting arm;
    For these at point of sword, and those with fire
    He forces back, and though besieged he dares
    To storm th' assailants: and as lay the ships
    Joined rank to rank, bids drop upon their sides
    Lamps drenched with reeking tar.  Nor slow the fire
    To seize the hempen cables and the decks
    Oozing with melting pitch; the oarsman's bench
    All in one moment, and the topmost yards
    Burst into flame: half merged the vessels lay
    While swam the foemen, all in arms, the wave;
    Nor fell the blaze upon the ships alone,
    But seized with writhing tongues the neighbouring homes,
    And fanned to fury by the Southern breeze
    Tempestuous, it leaped from roof to roof;
    Not otherwise than on its heavenly track,
    Unfed by matter, glides the ball of light,
    By air alone aflame
    This pest recalled
    Some of the forces to the city's aid
    From the besieged halls
    (Ed. Sir Edward Ridley. London. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1905.)

    nec non et ratibus temptatur regia, qua se
    protulit in medios audaci margine fluctus
    luxuriosa domus. sed adest defensor ubique
    Caesar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet,
    obsessusque gerit, tanta est constantia mentis,                  490
    expugnantis opus. piceo iubet unguine tinctas
    lampadas inmitti iunctis in uela carinis;
    nec piger ignis erat per stuppea uincula perque
    manantis cera tabulas, et tempore eodem
    transtraque nautarum summique arsere ceruchi.                  495
    iam prope semustae merguntur in aequora classes,
    iamque hostes et tela natant. nec puppibus ignis
    incubuit solis; sed quae uicina fuere
    tecta mari longis rapuere uaporibus ignem,
    et cladem fouere Noti, percussaque flamma                  500
    turbine non alio motu per tecta cucurrit
    quam solet aetherio lampas decurrere sulco
    materiaque carens atque ardens aere solo.
    illa lues paulum clausa reuocauit ab aula
    urbis in auxilium populos.

    Ammianus Marcellinus  (325/330-after 391), Roman History, XXII, 16, 12 also gives a figure of 700,000 volumes burned in this war:

    Besides this there are many lofty temples, and especially one to Serapis, which, although no words can adequately describe it, we may yet say, from its splendid halls supported by pillars, and its beautiful statues and other embellishments, is so superbly decorated, that next to the Capitol, of which the ever-venerable Rome boasts, the whole world has nothing worthier of admiration. In it were libraries of inestimable value; and the concurrent testimony of ancient records affirm that 70,000 volumes, which had been collected by the anxious care of the Ptolemies, were burnt in the Alexandrian war when the city was sacked in the time of Caesar the Dictator. (Translated by C.D.YONGE)

    His accedunt altis sufflata fastigiis templa, inter quae eminet Serapeum, quod licet minuatur exilitate verborum, atriis tamen columnatis amplissimus, et spirantibus signorum figmentis, et reliqua operum multitudine ita est exornatum, ut post Capitolium, quo se venerabilis Roma in aeternum attollit, nihil orbis terrarum ambitiosius cernat.   In quo bybliothecae fuerunt inaestimabiles: et loquitur monumentorum veterum concinens fides, septingenta voluminum milia, Ptolomaeis regibus vigiliis intentis composita, bello Alexandrino, dum diripitur civitas, sub dictatore Caesare conflagrasse.

    Cassius Dio,  as  Orosius and  Lucan, the most extensive sources,  seem to be  based on the lost text of Livy.

      Cassius Dio, (155 – after 235), Roman History, XLII, 38, 2.

    After this many battles occurred between the two forces both by day and by night, and many places were set on fire, with the result that the docks and the storehouses of grain among other buildings were burned, and also the library, whose volumes, it is said, were of the greatest number and excellence. Achillas was in possession of the mainland, with the exception of what Caesar had walled off, and the latter of the sea except the harbour. (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1916; Translation by Earnest Cary.)

    This same Cassius Dio  also refers us in LXXVIII 7 the crazy threat of Caracalla of burning the Museum to avenge Alexander the Great, poisoned by Aristotle, as he believed. Caracalla was a crazy fan of Alexander.

    Toward the philosophers who were called Aristotelians he showed bitter hatred in every way, even going so far as to desire to burn their books, and in particular he abolished their common messes in Alexandria and all the privileges that they had enjoyed; his grievance against them was that Aristotle was supposed to have been concerned in the death of Alexander. 4 Such was his behaviour in these matters; any more, he even took about with him numerous elephants, that in this respect, also, he might seem to be imitating Alexander, or rather, perhaps, Dionysus. (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1916; Translation by Earnest Cary.)

    Seneca (4-65), certainly tighter in the number and fanciful yet undoubtedly,   tells us in De tranquillitate animi, 9,9,4 ff.

    Forty thousand books, superb monument of royal opulence, were destroyed by fire in Alexandria. Others apply to boast this library called by Livy masterpiece of taste and care of kings

    Quadraginta milia librorum Alexandriae arserunt ;  pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monimentum alius laudaverit, sicut T. Livius, qui elegantiae regum curaeque egregium id opus ait fuisse

    Note that Seneca quotes  Livius as the source.

    Orosius (c.383-c.420), History Against the Pagans, VI, 15, 31. says “four hundred thousand”(zero plus zero less …)

    During the combat orders were issued to set fire to the royal fleet, which by chance was drawn on shore. The flames spread to part of the city and there burned four hundred thousand books stored in a building which happened to be nearby. So perished that marvelous monument of the literary activity of our ancestors, who had gathered together so many great works of brilliant geniuses. In regard to this, however true it may be that in some of the temples there remain up to the present time book chests, which we ourselves have seen, and that, as we are told, these were emptied by our own men in our own day when these temples were plundered—this statement is true enough—yet it seems fairer to suppose that other collections had later been formed to rival the ancient love of literature, and not that there had once been another library which had books separate from the four hundred thousand volumes mentioned, and for that reason had escaped destruction.

    in ipso proelio regia classis forte subducta iubetur incendi. ea flamma cum partem quoque urbis inuasisset, quadringenta milia librorum proximis forte aedibus condita exussit, singulare profecto monumentum studii curaeque maiorum, qui tot tantaque inlustrium ingeniorum opera congesserant.  unde quamlibet hodieque in templis extent, quae et nos uidimus, armaria librorum, quibus direptis exinanita ea a nostris hominibus nostris temporibus memorent – quod quidem uerum est -, tamen honestius creditur alios libros fuisse quaesitos, qui pristinas studiorum curas aemularentur, quam aliam ullam tunc fuisse bibliothecam, quae extra quadringenta milia librorum fuisse ac per hoc euasisse credatur.

    Interestingly, several authors who agree to give the number of 40.000 burned volumes, as Seneca, Orosius, Lucan, seem to depend from Livius  text, which  has been lost, but the content is kept in Florus: Epitome of Livy, II, 13, 59:

    "And first  he pulled away the projectiles of attackers enemies with fire of nearby buildings and naval stores."

    “ ac primum proximorum aedificorum atque navalium incendio infestorum hostium tela submovit”

    So  the  the details of burning stockpiles or port warehouses, burning rolls which  were goods at the port and were there by chance,  should be doubt to Livy; They do not were therefore Museum books; it should be  also of Livy the  reference to that fire pulled away the enemies from palace and allowed the defense of the people who attended there (Lucan)

    The fire of AD 48. C. by the troops of Julius Caesar was perhaps not as serious as some sources reflect: it was  goods stores which accidentally were there in the port destined to foreign markets (some modern interpreters have interpreted that perhaps the destination outside should be Rome where the rich people created their bulky libraries, as Seneca recounts ). It is the most consistent interpretation according the  texts:

    Then later, in the confrontation between Octavian and Antony became  the concerned  rumor  that Marcus Antonius tried to repair the damage of the fire caused by Caesar giving to Cleopatra 200,000 volumes from  the library of Pergamum; in fact it is a slander, among others, to discredit the ignorant Marcus Antonius.  Plutarch says in  Life of Antony, LVIII:

    Again, Calvisius, who was a companion of Caesar, brought forward against Antony the following charges also regarding his behaviour towards Cleopatra: he had bestowed upon her the libraries from Pergamum in which there were two hundred thousand volumes;( Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1920. 9.)

    because shortly later in  the beginning of ch. LIX Plutarch himself tells us:

    However, most of the charges thus brought by Calvisius were thought to be falsehoods;

    Finally, it remains curious that Caesar who refers to this war in their Civil War, III, 111. Does not mention the burning of the Library or of a certain number of books, about which he will certainly not be very proud.

    As I said earlier, it seems that the fateful end of every library is a fire, that sometimes it is tried  to alleviate with reconstruction measures. Thus, according to Suetonius, Domitian also collaborated in the replacement ofn works of the Library of Alexandria:

    Suetonius (c.70-126), Domi. 20, 1

    In the beginning of his reign, he gave up the study of the liberal sciences, though he took care to restore, at a vast expense, the libraries which had been burnt down; collecting manuscripts from all parts, and sending scribes to Alexandria, (Translated by Alexander Thomson, )

    Liberalia studia imperii initio neglexit, quanquam bibliothecas incendio absumptas impensissime reparare curasset, exemplaribus undique petitis missisque Alexandream qui describerent emendarentque.

    The hardest blow to the Library could take place in the third century, when Aurelian in 272 AD during its war with Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, swept the city and destroyed the Bruquión, where the library was.

    Ammianus tells us in XXII, 16,15:

    Alexandria itself was not, like other cities, gradually embellished, but at its very outset it was adorned with spacious roads. But after having been long torn by violent seditions, at last, when Aurelian was emperor, and when the intestine quarrels of its citizens had proceeded to deadly strife, its walls were destroyed, and it lost the largest half of its territory, which was called Bruchion, and had long been the abode of eminent men. (Roman History. London: Bohn (1862))

    Sed Alexandria ipsa non sensim, ut aliae urbes, sed inter initia prima aucta per spatiosos ambitus, internisque seditionibus diu aspere fatigata, ad ultimum multis post annis Aureliano imperium agente, civilibus iurgiis ad certamina interneciva prolapsis dirutisque moenibus amisit regionis maximam partem, quae Bruchion appellabatur, diuturnum praestantium hominum domicilium.

    In times of Diocletian, in the year 296, the city was sacked again by quelling a revolt. Of course, the Library, housed in Serapeion must have suffered a decisive blow in year 391 when Theodosius ordered the destruction of pagan temples and the Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria  closed then and  many wise leave the city of science and culture. From the time of Theodosius the Library would degrade gradually  and books would disappeared.

    In the year 415 it takes place the murder by the Christians of the daughter of Theon, Hypatia, philosopher, musicologist, mathematician who studied conic curves, astronomer, in the context of the decline of paganism and Christian groups internal struggles.

    Christian Orosius just visited Alexandria in 415 and included in his work the destruction of the library by Christians or what it tarry  as we quoted above. Orosius (c.383-c.420), History Against the Pagans, VI, 15, 31: 

    In regard to this, however true it may be that in some of the temples there remain up to the present time book chests, which we ourselves have seen, and that, as we are told, these were emptied by our own men in our own day when these temples were plundered—this statement is true enough—yet it seems fairer to suppose that other collections had later been formed to rival the ancient love of literature, and not that there had once been another library which had books separate from the four hundred thousand volumes mentioned, and for that reason had escaped destruction.

    unde quamlibet hodieque in templis extent, quae et nos uidimus, armaria librorum, quibus direptis exinanita ea a nostris hominibus nostris temporibus memorent – quod quidem uerum est -, tamen honestius creditur alios libros fuisse quaesitos, qui pristinas studiorum curas aemularentur, quam aliam ullam tunc fuisse bibliothecam, quae extra quadringenta milia librorum fuisse ac per hoc euasisse credatur.

    Among other things, the books have changed  their appearance, so now they are parchments s but  not scrolls, and they are  copied with many mistakes because the Greek was forgotten.

    The fourth century was certainly a bad century for libraries, which were disappearing, some destroyed by fires and  wars or simply closed by  cultural apathy that is spreading.

    Ammianus, several times quoted, (325/330-after 391) (what remains of his work relates to what happened between the years 353 and 378), as reminds us Luciano Cánfora, says in XIV, 6, 18:

    and while the libraries are shut up forever like tombs

    In consequence of this state of things, the few houses that were formerly famed for devotion to serious pursuits now teem with the sports of sluggish indolence, re-echoing to the sound of singing and the tinkling of flutes and lyres. In short, in place of the philosopher the singer is called in, and in place of the orator the teacher of stagecraft, and while the libraries are shut up forever like tombs, water-organs are manufactured and lyres as large as carriages, and flutes and instruments heavy for gesticulating actors. (Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum , John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D., Ed. )

    Quod cum ita sit, paucae domus studiorum seriis cultibus antea celebratae, nunc ludibriis ignaviae torpentis 1 exundant, vocabili sonu, perflabili tinnitu fidium resultantes. Denique pro philosopho cantor, et in locum oratoris doctor artium ludicrarum accitur, et bibliothecis sepulcrorum ritu in perpetuum clausis, organa fabricantur hydraulica, et lyrae ad speciem 2 carpentorum ingentes, tibiaeque et histrionici gestus instrumenta non levia.

    This happened in Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch, Rome, Athens, Byzantium.

    In  Arabic time Library have ceased to exist, but the Arabs met many Greek works, because some of them were known in the medieval West through translations into Arabic and then from Arabic to Latin. In Spain at that time there were some in the famous School of Translators of Toledo and elsewhere.

    Only retained what was stored in monasteries and convents .

    In any case it is still interesting and funny the episode and phrase attributed to Caliph Omar, who was in Constantinople, who ruled between 634 and 644, and answered the question he asked Amr ibn al-As, the conqueror of city of Alexandria in 642, about the fate of the books in the Library.

    Reference to this episode in Eutyches, Annals, II (p. 316 Pococke edition) is made. The core of the dialogue  is in the book  of  Ibn al-Quifti "Ta'rikh al-Hukama (The Chronicle of wise men), of  the thirteenth century.

    The conqueror asked the Caliph to the question put to him by John Philoponus, known as the tireless,  commentator of Aristotle, what to do with library books. The episode, fictional undoubtedly, circulated widely in the east and has even survived until recent times among Egyptian Copts, without  rational and historical foundation. The Caliph replied:

    "If the library contains only what is in the Koran, it is useless and should be burned; if it contains more than the Koran, then it is bad and also must be burned. "

    I reproduce the  translation into Latin made in 1650 by Pococke  of the  work  of Bar Hebraeus, also known as Abu'l Faraj, who wrote in Syriac his Chronicum Syriacum in the thirteenth century.

    So, after having written a letter to Omar, he told him what John had said, and he brought  a letter from Omar, in which (Omar) wrote: "About  the books that you have made me mention: if they contain what is according to God's book, in the book of God is what is sufficient without them, but if they are so repugnant to the book of God, no way we need them and  order  that they  be taken out away. Therefore, Amr ibn al-As ordered  to disperse them among  the baths of Alexandria and  to burn them to heat;. well they were consumed in the space of six months.  Listen to what was done, and marvel.

    Scriptis ergo ad Omarum literis, notum ei fecit, quid dixisset Johannes, perlataeque sunt ad ipsum ab Omaro literae, in quibus scripsit,  “Quod ad libros quorum mentionem fecisti: si in illis contineatur, quod cum libro Dei conveniat, in libro Dei [est] quod sufficiat absque illo; quod si in illis fuerit quod libro Dei repugnet, neutiquam est eo [nobis] opus, jube igitur e medio tolli.”    Jussit ergo Amrus Ebno’lAs dispergi eos per balnea Alexandriae, atque illis calefaciendis comburi;  ita spatio semestri consumpti sunt. Audi quid factum fuerit et mirare.

    The funny thing is that this phrase is a copy of the said above two and half centuries ago by St. Augustine in his "On Christian Doctrine, Book II, chap. XLII:

    Sacred Scripture compared with profane authors
    But just as poor as the store of gold and silver and garments which the people of Israel brought with them out of Egypt was in comparison with the riches which they afterwards attained at Jerusalem, and which reached their height in the reign of King Solomon, so poor is all the useful knowledge which is gathered from the books of the heathen when compared with the knowledge of Holy Scripture. For whatever man may have learnt from other sources, if it is hurtful, it is there condemned; if it is useful, it is therein contained. And while every man may find there all that he has learnt of useful elsewhere, he will find there in much greater abundance things that are to be found nowhere else, but can be learnt only in the wonderful sublimity and wonderful simplicity of the Scriptures.
    When, then, the reader is possessed of the instruction here pointed out, so that unknown signs have ceased to be a hindrance to him; when he is meek and lowly of heart, subject to the easy yoke of Christ, and loaded with His light burden, rooted and grounded and built up in faith, so that knowledge cannot puff him up, let him then approach the consideration and discussion of ambiguous signs in Scripture. And about these I shall now, in a third book, endeavour to say what the Lord shall be pleased to vouchsafe.     (Tr. by  James J. O'Donnell)

    Sacrae Scripturae cum profana scientia comparatio.
    Quantum autem minor est auri, argenti vestisque copia, quam de Aegypto secum ille populus abs tulit, in comparatione divitiarum quas postea Hierosolymae consecutus est, quae maxime in Salomone rege ostenduntur 72, tanta fit cuncta scientia quae quidem est utilis, collecta de libris Gentium, si divinarum Scripturarum scientiae comparetur. Nam quidquid homo extra didicerit, si noxium est ibi damnatur, si utile est, ibi invenitur. Et cum ibi quisque invenerit omnia quae utiliter alibi didicit, multo abundantius ibi inveniet ea quae nusquam omnino alibi, sed in illarum tantummodo Scripturarum mirabili altitudine et mirabili humilitate discuntur. Hac igitur instructione praeditum cum signa incognita lectorem non impedierint, mitem et humilem corde, subiugatum leniter Christo et oneratum sarcina levi, fundatum et radicatum et aedificatum in caritate quem scientia inflare non possit, accedat ad ambigua signa in Scripturis consideranda et discutienda, de quibus iam tertio volumine dicere aggrediar, quod Dominus donare dignabitur.

    But the question really curious and striking is that most of the millennium and a half after St. Augustine and just after  Caliph, there are people, and there are not few who still consider sacred religious books like encyclopedias with the same scientific reasoning: everything is in the Bible, in the Koran or in the Torah or any other book dictated by divinity; and what is not in them is false and unacceptable and the author or owner is deserving of the greatest punishment on earth and in the hereafter …

    Of course the wars and intransigence and fanaticism are the greatest enemies of books. Sometimes the fire is the most effective instrument in their destruction and of course there is some kind of topical tradition that the end  of the libraries is always the fire. In the history of the Christianization of Europe there have been numerous episodes of burning books.

    The paper (I do not know if papyrus also but their parameters will be similar) burns at  an no excessively high temperature at 451 degrees Fahrenheit or 233 degrees Celsius. "Fahrenheit 451" is just the title of a novel by the American Ray Bradbury and of a famous film of François Truffaut 1966.

    The destruction of the Library of Alexandria by fire or successive fires is the most striking symbol of the destruction of culture, the arts and sciences by fanaticism, often religious, that too often seizes men. So in the history of the Christianization of Europe there have been episodes of burning books. Recent episodes of the destruction of the Library of Sarajevo, the destruction of archaeological and historical remains in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Mali … unfortunately  feed the tradition.
     

  • The Library of Alexandria (4) Scholars, sages, bibliographers and librarians

    Every library should be well organized with well cataloged collections. The Library of Alexandria seems that it was organized so and somehow it laid the foundations of the art of librarianship.

    The papyrus rolls or rolled papyri were kept in cabinets or shelves just called βιβλιοθήκαι, bibliothekai. It seems that the rolls or volumes were organized and classified by genre or topics (epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, medicine, rhetoric ...) and within them in alphabetical order of authors and titles. At the upper edge of the roll it was put  a label with the "title" of the work (τίτλος in Greek and Latin titulus meaning precisely  registration, tag, title,) or index (index, from in– and –dico, to say, provider, announce, communicate, point, mean, etc..)

    Callimachus of Cyrene (310-240 BC) was the second official head librarian of the Library and he is considered the "father of the bibliography and librarianship" according as the popular custom of seeking parents for everything.

    Callimachus wrote a work  called Pinakes or Catalogue of  Authors who shone on every single discipline. Pinakes (Greek Πίνακες ) means "table") and is actually a catalog of books in turn consisting of more than 120 books and scrolls. They all volumes of the Library were ranked. From each author it was given a short biography and list of his works with the initials  words and reference length; It is reference of this  technical qualification  in Sumerian, Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians archives. But alphabetical order is not used

    Note: If the library (biblioteka)  is the place where you store and display books, , the Pinacotheca, art gallery, from  Latin  and that from Greek  πινακοθήκη and that from  Πίνακες,pinakes, table will be the place to keep and display tables or paintings.

    He  is who creates the classification by keyword and author. Note that it is still used  the mechanism to use the initial letters of  the author or of title to classify a work. Actually Calímacus does not intended to make an index or catalog of the books in the library, but to create an instrument that would facilitate the work of scholars, given the difficulty of having to unroll papyrus to find its author or its content, because the papyri do not have a front cover  or a startup page with the author or the title of the work.

    If we apply  a broad meaning to “literary genre”, we can consider that they were classified by genres. Six sections for poetry and five for prose were established. Some of the categories were epic, tragic, comic authors, historians, doctors, rhetoricians, laws, miscellaneous; philosophers curiously are missing.

    So  Demetrius from Phaleras was probably the brain that designed the library using the method of the library of Aristotle, although he  not the first official principal.

    The first principal was Zenodotus from Ephesus, to which is due the invention of textual criticism by comparing various manuscripts. In an effort to collect the books in your environment, the Library soon found numerous specimens or copies of a work that diverged from each other or not matched exactly or with errors. Zenodotus saw the need to compare them to determine the original text or the closest text and thus invented the "textual criticism".  Philologists, in their quest for precision and accuracy, spend their endless efforts to this work. Often even they edit or correct the text in a desire for improvement and perfection of the work;  ie the text is considered perfectible but  not a sacred text that does not allow  the slightest modification.

    Another problem which  demanded the philological study is the attribution to the many great authors  the works that were not theirs, so many writings about medicine were atribued to Hippocrates or books of poems that were not the Iliad or Odyssey to Homer.

    Zenodotus prepared critical editions of Hesiod, Pindar and Homer. Each city had its own edition of Homer . It is estimated that Zenodotus could use between 20 and 30 editions of Homer (some are labeled  "from cities" and the other "from Museum", referring to their origin in any city or copies performed at the Museum.

    This specialist considered  that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were the only works of Homer and he is responsible for the division of the Iliad and Odyssey in 24 chants, as many as the Greek alphabet has letters, the uppercase letters for the Iliad and the lowercase for the Odyssey .

    The Alexandrians were generally respectful of the texts and if they had to do some grinding , they did it outside in the scholia  (from Lat. Scholium, and this of gr. Σχόλιον,  scholion, commentary).

    The Alexandrians also divided the work of Herodtus into nine books, each one dedicated to each one  of the nine muses.

    Diogenes Laertius tells us, for example, about Timon  in Book IX, 113:

    It is said that  Aratus  asked him how to get a reliable text of the Homeric poems;  he said, 'you will have to find the old copies, and not those that are already corrected'.

    Vitruvius tells us in VII, praef. 5-7 how Aristophanes of Byzantium, who knew perfectly the library, discovers  the forgers in  a poetry   competition organized by the king, in which he participated as a judge. As he knew very well the order of the books, he got up from jury , went to the right shelf and returned with the original texts of books that participants wanted to pass off as their own.

    See https://www.antiquitatem.com/en/plagiarists-library-of-alexandria-vitruv

    This philological work has been essential since the Renaissance attempts to recover the ancient culture. Manuscripts of the Latin works, "superstites", "survivors",  result of the copy of the copy of a copy,  appear, usually hidden or lost in libraries of monasteries . The errors of copyists, who write by ear, often without understanding what they are transcribing, are accumulated and multiplied. So the criticism of these texts, "textual criticism" is necessary. Otherwise genealogical study of document  sets the origin and the way discoursed by the manuscript, now in way of codex or book leaves of animal skin, more manageable than the old papyrus scroll or volume.

    These eminent early Alexandrian librarians were succeeded by many other eminent scholars. So Apollonius of Rhodes, author of "The Argonautica", then the  mathematician Eratóstones  from Cyrene, who measured the circumference of the Earth with impeccable reasoning trigonometric and small precision error, Apollonius of Alexandria, Aristarchus of Samothrace who was the first who established  that the Earth revolves around the Sun, Aristophanes of Byzantium, who wrote a "lexicon" of old or unusual words.  (Lexicon, from  Greek  Λεξικός, and this of Lexis, λέξις, word, voice, diction) means collection of words). This same Aristophanes was the first to divide the poetry in verses or  kolon (from the Greek κῶλον kolon = member), in stanzas, until he, it is written  so followed  as prose.

    In addition to the scholia or marginal commentaries, they used  the footnote on page and various signs of textual criticism, some of them are still used as a horizontal line to mark a suspect spurious verse, the asterisk, as a star  for  indicate couple or repeated verses, etc.

    The Alexandrians  therefore created Philology as a science.

    Many scholars go through the Library since third century BC to IV century AC , plus the quoted directors said; they are famous, as  mathematicians Euclid, Archimedes, Theon of Alexandria, geographers and historians like Manetho, Diodorus and Strabo, botanist as Theophrastus; philosophers as Didymus, Philo of Alexandria and Plotinus; poets as Callimachus and Theocritus and Licofrón; rhetorician  as Athanaeus , astronomers and geographers as Strabo and Ptolemy; doctors as Herophilus, Erasistratus and Galen. It is curious that no names of philosophers are cited as such.

    How this cast of so many wises should not generate a real attraction and admiration?  What current college or academy would not feel so proud and even explode this payroll?

    Indeed in Alexandria it was the foundation and basis of Western science and culture.
     

  • The library of Alexandria (3): The Library of Alexandria acquired books in a curious way

    The claim of the Ptolemies was to collect “all books of all peoples of the earth” , perhaps following the advice of Demetrios of Falera . Certainly some of the stories that were told in antiquity reveal the passion of the Ptolemies to equip its library of Alexandria with the books which were in the known world. Sources also foreshadow the rivalry between the two great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum.

    The most common method of acquisition would certainly purchase originals or copies. In another article we have cited Athenaeus regarding the purchase of the library of Aristotle and Neleus. See https://www.antiquitatem.com/en/the-library-of-alexandria-prolomaeus

    According to one version, Ptolemy II had purchased the library of Aristotle, which according to other sources ended up finally in Rome. Naturally it is impossible that the library of Aristotle was in two places at the same time: in Alexandria and Rome, but the discrepancy in the fate of the library of Aristotle indicates  the interest of the Romans to  witnessing their participation in the genesis of Western culture, of which the Aristotelian tradition is an essential part:  Alexandria remains the cultural center, but political power is now in Rome.

    In addition to buying original, the most common method, as I said, would be copying texts.

    Indeed, in its attempt to collect all the books in the world, they try also  to translate them into Greek, because they did not learn all other languages but the Ptolemies sought to know the people they conquered (Alexander conquered a huge empire) as a tool more for domain. So naturally they interested them the sacred books of other people (Jews, Zoroaster …, Egyptian …)

    The physician Galen, who lived in the second century AD, gives us some curious information on purchasing books. Galen tells us how, in the rush to get the volumes, the works that were on ships arriving Alexandria  were  requisitioned, were copied and the copies were delivered to their owners, but not the requisitioned originals. 

    He tells us in his "Hippocratis Epidemiorum et Galeni in illum Commentarius I (Book of Hippocrates on epidemics  and Galen comment on it, Volume XVII, Book II (239) (page 606) edition of the complete works  in Greek and Latin by C.G. Kühn, Lipsiae, 1828 I bring the English  version and the Latin text, which is more accessible to more readers than the Greek text:

    Some people say that the king of Egypt Ptolemeus brought them from  Pamphylia (Pergamon) and such was his ambition for the books, as he  ordered that they sould be   carried the books of all names and they sould be copied into new papyri and the written books should give to their owners, that they should be brought to him the books of the ships which  arrived and they should be lied  on the shelves the transported books on ships and it should be put an title on them,  "books (from) boat."

    Nonnuli vero et ipsum ex Pamphylia asportasse et regem Aegypti Ptolemaeum ita libroum ambitionem fuisse, ut appellantium ómnium libros ad se deferre iuberet et hos in novas chartas scriberet daretque scriptos dominis, a quibus appulsis libri ad ipsum asportati essent et naves advectos libros in bibliothecis reponeret, essentque ipsis inscriptiones  “Libri ex navibus”.

    The most striking case of this abusive process was certainly how Athens lent official copies of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides against collateral of 15 talents, the library gave the copies of the copies, ie, it stayed with the original and lost talents, equivalent to 90,000 drachmas or 540,000 obols  (a laborer was earning about two obols a day).

    The same Galen tells us it in the same work  a page later, 607,  of Kühn edition:

    How far the famous Ptolemy is interested in buying old books is no small test what they say he did with the Athenians. He received the works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus to simply copy them and to send back intact them  immediately after against  bail of fifteen talents of silver. However, once he copied superbly them at best papyrus, he rested with which he had received from the Athenians, and he sent to them that he had copied, begging them to stay with the fifteen talents and might receive new books instead of old they had delivered. And so if he had not also sent to the Athenians the new books but had retained the old, nothing they could do, who in any case had received the money with the condition that they would stay with the money if he stayed with books , and well they received new books and kept the money.

    Quod autem Ptolommaeus ille ad antiquorum librorum comparationem ita sollicitus esset non parvum esse testimonium aiunt quod cum Atheniensibus fecit. Dato namque ipsis pignore quindecim talentorum argenti accepit Sophoclis, Euripidis et Aeschyli libros, ut solum scriberet, deinde statim salvos redderet. Ubi autem magnifice in chartis optimis paravit,quos ab Atheniensibus acceperat, retinuit; quos vero ipse paraverat, ad ipsos misit, rogans ut quindecim talenta tenerent, acciperentque novos pro veteribus quos dedissent libris. Atheniensibus itaque si quoque non novos libros misisset, antiquos vero retinuisset, nihil aliud faciendum erat istis, qui utique argentums ex tali conditione acceperant, ut hoc ipsi detinerent, si ille quoque libros detineret; proptereaque novos libros acceperunt et argentum  detinuerunt.

    The demand of many books sharpened wit of some people. Galen discusses how some unscrupulous men take advantage from  the interest of libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum and from prices paid to commit some abuses and forgeries, some with great skill in mixing the authentic and the spurious or mix several works in one self for make one longer work. He tells us it in his "Hioppocratis de natura hominis liber et Galeni in eum commentarius  (Commentary of Galen on book about   the Nature of Man of Hippocrates), Volume XV, Book II (128) (page 109) of the edition of the complete works in Greek and Latin by C.G.Kühn, Lipsiae, 1828. I bring the version in English and Latin text.

    At the time in which  Attalus and Ptolemy kings vied with each other to buy books, it was started to forge titles and classification of books by those who obtained money of kings by writings of the most celebrated authors offered by them . As well as two books, one on the nature of man and the other on the condition of the healthy food, were little, thinking someone by their smallness either would be worth a lot, they  merged the two  into one.

    Quo enim tempore Attalus et Ptolemaeus reges certatim inter se de comparandis sibi libris contendebant: ab his qui ex oblatis celebriorum virorum scriptis pecuniam a regibus reportabant, coepere inscriptiones et digestiones librorum vitiari. Quum itaque uterque liber tum de natura hominis tum de salubri victus ratione parvus extiterit, arbitratus aliquis ob parvitatem neutrum ipsorum multi ducendum ambos in unum et eundem simul contulit.

    Especially striking is the acquisition by the library of Pergamum of a new Philippic of Demosthenes that Library of Alexandria was in charge of showing that it was here on the Alexandrian shelves but as part of the seventh book of Anaximenes of Lampsacus; nevertheless it was continued commenting pseudo-Filípica although warning that was not true. Didymus of Alexandria (Δίδυμος χαλκέντερος, Didymos chalkenteros, Didymus Chalcenterus Latin, meaning 'bronze casings  Didymus' and also as Bibliolathas, (Forget-books)  circa  63 BC-10 AD, even says looping the loop, according to it that  Cánfora indicates in his book "The missing library":

    "Some contend that the discourse is not authentic because it is located as it is in the Philippics of Anaximenes."

    Ptolemy II also wrote  to other colleagues kings  asking for works for their library. Even  Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Jews works from other languages were translated into Greek.  The most prominent example was the translation of the Pentateuch in the version called the Septuagint, as the famous Letter of Aristeas has recounted; it is another issue them we devote a little article.

    It is told  how Ptolemy wrote a letter to all his fellow kings and rulers of the earth with which he begged them to send him any work of any author. The following text of  Epiphanius of Salamis or Salamina (ca 310-20 – 403), bishop …. in his work De mensuris et ponderibus, 9 (On weights and measures) informs us also about the task huge of  translation into Greek:

    Text of Epiphanius: περί μέτρων και σταθμών, De mensuribus et ponderibus, 9, (On weights and measures)

    Note: This work "De mensuris et ponderibus (Περί μέτρων και σταθμών), On weights and measures, which was written in Constantinople in 392, is actually a kind of" Dictionary of the Bible "which is about the translation of the Old Testament, about  weights and measures contained in those books and about geography of Palestine. It has preserved whole in Syriac and  in fragments in Armenian and Greek.

    After the first Ptolemy, the second who reigned over Alexandria, the Ptolemy called Philadelphus, as has already been said was a lover of the beautiful and a lover of learning. He established a library in the same city of Alexander, in the (part) called the Bruchion; this is a quarter of the city today lying waste. And he put in charge of the library a certain Demetrius, from Phaleron, commanding him to collect the books that were in every part of the world. And he wrote letters and made request of every king and prince on earth to take the trouble to send  those that were in his kingdom or principality I mean, those by poets and prose writers and orators and philosophers and physicians and professors of medicine and historians and books by any others. And after the work had progressed {52c} and books had been collected from everywhere, one day the king asked the man who had been placed in charge of the library how many books had already been collected in the library. And he answered the king, saying: "There are already fifty-four thousand eight hundred books, more or less; but we have heard that there is a great multitude in the world, among the Cushites, the Indians, the Persians, the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans, and among the Romans, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Romans in Greece"—-at that time called not Romans but Latins. "But there are also with those in Jerusalem and Judah the divine Scriptures of the prophets, which tell about God and the creation of the world and every other doctrine of general value. If, therefore, it seem good to your majesty, O king, that we send (and) secure them also, write to the teachers in Jerusalem and they will send them to you, that you may place these books also in this library, your grace."  Thereupon {52d} the king wrote the letter, in these words: (Epiphanius of Salamis, Weights and Measures (1935) pp.11-83. English translation BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO)

    It is clear that collectors, moved frequently by a craving, do not repair  nor expenses or in media, especially if they have the necessary resources. But anyway, this hobby of collecting books is not the worst.

    Moreover, the Ptolemaic claim to collect all the books in the world seemed impossible undertaking for its time. Is it even today, in the era of digital globalization? Is not this mythical claim that today pursue projects like "google books" or electronic encyclopedias as "Wikipedia"?

  • Library of Alexandria (2): How many volumes had the Library of Alexandria?

    We know that the Library of Alexandria had pretensions to store all the universal knowledge of the time, but, how many volumes had actually?

    This dream of storing all the knowledge of time dazzles every so often to men, at least some dreamers. In Alexandria it is sought to collect "books of all peoples on the earth" and might think that they needed to collect 500,000 volumes.

    The various sources of very different times, although drinking each from other, give us very different figures.

    We read in the Letter of Aristeas, 9 et seq., work of the third century BC and first text preserved in  which the Library of Alexandria is quoted, famous mainly because it comments  the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek for the Library:

    Demetrius of Phalerum, the president of the king's library, received vast sums of money, for the purpose of collecting together, as far as he possibly could, all the books in the world. By means of purchase and transcription, he carried out, to the best of his ability, the purpose of the king. On one occasion when I was present he was asked, How many thousand books are there in the library?  and he replied, 'More than two hundred thousand, O king, and I shall make endeavour in the immediate future to gather together the remainder also, so that the total of five hundred thousand may be reached. I am told that the laws of the Jews are worth transcribing and deserve a place in  your library.' 'What is to prevent you from doing this?' replied the king. 'Everything that is necessary has been placed at your disposal.' 'They need to be translated,' answered Demetrius, 'for in the country of the Jews they use a peculiar alphabet (just as the Egyptians, too, have a special form of letters) and speak a peculiar dialect. They are supposed to use the Syriac tongue, but this is not the case; their language is quite different.' And the king when he understood all the facts of the case ordered a letter to be written to the Jewish High Priest that his purpose (which has already been described) might be accomplished. (R.H. Charles-Editor. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1913)

    And so we read it also in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 12. 2

    Demetrius Phalerius, who was library keeper to the king, was now endeavoring, if it were possible, to gather together all the books that were in the habitable earth, and buying whatsoever was any where valuable, or agreeable to the king's inclination, (who was very earnestly set upon collecting of books,) to which inclination of his Demetrius was zealously subservient. And when once Ptolemy asked him how many ten thousands of books he had collected, he replied, that he had already about twenty times ten thousand; but that, in a little time, he should have fifty times ten thousand. But be said he had been informed that there were many books of laws among the Jews worthy of inquiring after, and worthy of the king's library, but which, being written in characters and in a dialect of their own, will cause no small pains in getting them translated into the Greek tongue;  that the character in which they are written seems to be like to that which is the proper character of the Syrians, and that its sound, when pronounced, is like theirs also; and that this sound appears to be peculiar to themselves. Wherefore he said that nothing hindered why they might not get those books to be translated also; for while nothing is wanting that is necessary for that purpose, we may have their books also in this library. So the king thought that Demetrius was very zealous to procure him abundance of books, and that he suggested what was exceeding proper for him to do; and therefore he wrote to the Jewish high priest, that he should act accordingly. ( Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews . William Whiston, A.M., Ed. )

    Maybe collecting ideas of Demetrius, it is pretended to create a universal library, but most of the books were Greek, and it will occupied about 500,000 volumes of all subjects. In any case the actual amount should have been so impressive that the Ancients  have given fantastic figures of many thousands of volumes, but it is necessary to keep in mind that a work had several volumes or papyrus rolls, and each roll can be equivalent to current pages 60-70 and its length is usually between 6 and 10 meters, but it can be much higher.

    These  figures should be taken  with many reservations because at first they seem impossible.

    We have already seen in the above letter of Aristeas, 9-10, that it is said  that in the time of Demetrios of Falera the Library had 200,000 volumes, in the early second century it would reach 500,000 and as Gelius says it have reached  700,000 volumes, although we have to take in mind that a work had multiple volumes or rolls of paper.

    Gellius  says in Noctes Atticae VII, 17.3:

    At a later time an enormous quantity of books, nearly seven hundred thousand volumes, was either acquired or written in Egypt under the kings known as Ptolemies;

    Ingens postea numerus librorum in Aegypto ab Ptolemaeis regibus vel conquisitus vel confectus est ad milia ferme voluminum septingenta;

    Ammianus speaks also about  700,000 volumes. But in some manuscripts of Gellius it is said 70,000 but not  700,000 volumes. Interestingly the 200,000  of  the letter of Aristeas plus 500,000 of target of Philadelphus are the  700,000 volumes of Gellius.

    Seneca says that at in Alexandria they are burned 40,000 books, but as we shall see later, these books were not really the bibliographic collection of the library. He says just on a text  in which he criticizes the ostentation of rich Roman citizens who store numerous volumes, which never they read, for  appear they are cults. This behavior is not out of some contemporary .. He says in De tranquillitate animi, 9, 4:

    What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime?   The learner is, not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to wander through many.  Forty thousand books were burned\b at Alexandria; let someone else praise this library as the most noble monument to the wealth of kings, as did Titus Livius, who says\c that it was the most distinguished achievement of the good taste and solicitude of kings.  There was no "good taste" or "solicitude" about it, but only learned luxury – nay, not even "learned," since they had collected the books, not for the sake of learning. But to make a show, just as many who lack even a child's knowledge of letters use books, not as the tools of learning, but as decorations for the diningroom.  Therefore, let just as many books be acquired as are enough, but not for mere show (Translated by John W. Basore. www.stoics.com)

    Quo innumerabiles libros et bibliothecas, quarum dominus uix tota uita indices perlegit? Onerat discentem turba, non instruit, multoque satius est paucis te auctoribus tradere quam errare per multos. 5 Quadraginta milia librorum Alexandriae arserunt. Pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monumentum alius laudauerit, sicut et Liuius, qui elegantiae regum curaeque egregium id opus ait fuisse. Non fuit elegantia illud aut cura, sed studiosa luxuria, immo ne studiosa quidem, quoniam non in studium, sed in spectaculum comparauerant, sicut plerisque ignaris etiam puerilium litterarum libri non studiorum instrumenta, sed cenationum ornamenta sunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in apparatum.

    Orosius, who seems to have drunk in Livy, speaking about  the war of Alexandria, said that 40,000 books were burned, though some manuscripts give 400.

      St. Isidore speaks about just 70,000 rolls.

    The bishop Epiphanius tells us that Serapeion library, called "daughter" would have 54,800 volumes in his "Weights and Measures" in chap. 9 (52c):

    "There are already fifty-four thousand eight hundred books, more or less; but we have heard that there is a great multitude in the world, among the Cushites, the Indians, the Persians, the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans, and among the Romans, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Romans in Greece"—-at that time called not Romans but Latins.

    Juan Tzetzes, Byzantine scholar and writer, who lived between approximately 1110 and 1180, in his Prolegomena to Aristophanes says that the museum had collected 400,000 "mixed books" (symmigeis) and 90,000 "non-mixed" (amygeis), making  difficult to interpret what “mixed”   and “no-mixed” means, perhaps it refers  to a roll with a single work  and rolls with several works. Moreover Tsetzes is based on the letter of Aristeas, and in any case, he should express the idea that the library had a huge number of papyrus rolls.

    Ibn-al Qifti (lived ca. 1172-1248) Arab historian, author of a History of philosophers, also speaks of 54,000 rolls.

    It seems that it is  mixing different aspects: the myth that the library intended to store a copy of every book in the world and therefore its goal of reach 500,000 volumes, the huge amount that it  actually had, which were burned in the famous fire because of the war in Alexandria.

    Modern authors have attempted to calculate more rationality really possible existing volumes.

    Hipólito  Escolar Sobrino,  in his work The Library of Alexandria (Madrid: Gredos, 2001), p. 136-138, estimates  that it could have  some 50,000 volumes or rolls and that would equate to about 12,500 current books.

    There are other even less cheerful calculations. So considering that the 24 songs of Homer's Odyssey  need 24 rolls and now they fit into a modern volume and admitting that Alexandrian Library had 500,000 papyrus rolls,  we would have about 20,000 modern books. But if it  ad 50,000 rolls, it would have  around  2,000 modern books, inadequate number for the mythical assessment that it enjoys.  The “bibliotheke” with its 500,000 papyrus scrolls was therefore much smaller than one might have imagined.

    In any case, they dreamed to collect all the books on the world and translate them into Greek, because not only a merely collector intent  encouraged them , but also the knowledge of men and cultures of the world. But does not this also the dream of contemporary projects as "Google Books", for example? Do not seek other grandiose projects like Wikipedia  to build the actually universal encyclopedia?

  • The library is a Greek creation

    Alexandria was the spiritual and cultural capital of the world from the third century BC to the fifth or sixth century AD. Under the largest library of Antiquity, which sought to retain all the knowledge stored in books systematically with exemplary sense of intellectual freedom, lived and worked a college or community of wise and educated persons and scholars who developed the physics, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, geography, engineering, medicine, philosophy, literature, grammar, rhetoric … They were the basis of Western knowledge.

    The word "library" (“biblioteca” in Spanish) comes from the Latin word bibliothēca, and this last one comes from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη, composed of βιβλίον, biblíon, book (“libro” in Spanish) and θήκη théke, meaning "box, store, receptacle, wardrobe…”. βιβλίον or βίβλος also means bark or leaf of papyrus, support which was used to write on it, from which it comes the meaning of  several words such as "book, writing, paper, document, letter …".

    So actually a "library" can be the place or building where books are kept or preserved to be read; it can also mean the institution that acquires and retains those books or the group of all those books; and it can even be the furniture or shelf where they are kept or stored, furniture that in Spanish is also called library, although in Spanish it also means bookstore or bookshop.

    The "library" in the mentioned sense or senses is a Greek invention and to them we owe such an important creation. Probably the most famous library in History is the "Library of Alexandria", but more important than this "institution" is the finding or discovery of the concept of "library" itself and its concrete realization.

    It is possible that there was an earlier library in Babylon, or the "library of Nineveh", created by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who reigned between the years 668 and 627 BC, in Greek called Sardanapalus, as places or stores where thousands of boards with commercial, religious, legal and even literary annotations were kept, preserved and retained.

    From Egypt, we have very few news, although it is talked about "sacred" libraries in the temples. Diodorus of Sicily, in I, 49, transcribes the story that Hecataeus makes about his visit to the tomb of Ramses in his work "Stories of Egypt", which has not been preserved. There, he says:

    "Next it was the sacred library, on which it was written 'Place of Care of the Soul' ".

    This enigmatic sentence actually seems not to refer exactly to the library and the books, in spite of the interpretation that has often been made of it, but to the space where the soul of Ramses is supposed to be. See you. https://www.antiquitatem.com/en/care-of-the-soul-library-of-alexandria

    But the library as "storage of general knowledge" or as a “store of general knowledge” to be transmitted to other people and, therefore, as a public institution, or as an institution of the State or the monarchy opened to citizens, is a more Greek creation than Egyptian. It's actually another element of the discovery of the concept of "education" or "paideia" itself (from the Greek παιδεία,"education" or "training", and at the same time from the Greek word παις,  "child"), which at another time I will talk about, and which answers to the need to transmit to every children and to the youth the knowledge the society has accumulated. The knowledge gained must be preserved or retained by writing it in books and simultaneously these books must be kept or stored in libraries and made available to people for their education. This is not certainly the least important Greek creation, whose importance is still absolutely current today.

    Ancient sources give us much information, but we must always welcome them with many reservations and a critical sense due to their inaccuracy, sometimes because of their remoteness from the facts, others because of the many contradictions among themselves and their different concept of history, but in the end they are what we have. So I will use them profusely, at least as evidence that any of my statements is not the result of mere speculation or imagination.

    In Greece book collections are very early or ancient, first individual collections, which are opened to the public in some cases, and later public book collections also appeared as well. A fragment (304 K) by Eupolis, playwright of the V century BC, refers to the sale of books in the agora of Athens. And Plato in the Apology or Defense of Socrates, 26e, makes Socrates say that Anaxagoras´ books can be purchased in the agora for one drachma:

    “Do you consider them so illiterate as not to know that Calzomenio Anaxagoras’ books are filled with all these words? And what do you think about the youth of Athens? Don´t they learn from me those things they could easily know by simply buying a book for one drachma, otherwise, in the book market in the square? "

    Despite what Plato says through the mouth of Socrates, books were quite expensive and only citizens with adequate or enough financial resources could afford them, that is, actually at that time books were only available for wealthy citizens, so it is not right to say that it was easy for young people to buy them in order to learn from them as a self-taught person or autodidact.

    Aulus Gellius gives us numerous reports of the first libraries and of the library of Alexandria by following perhaps the lost work of Varro, "De bibliothecis" (About the libraries), but that does not mean his reports respond exactly to reality. So, he admits, without further supports, the story, certainly fabulous, of a very ancient public library in Athens due to Pisistratus. He says in his Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights, III, 17):

    Who was the very first one who offered to the public the opportunity to read books? Which number of public books was there in Athens before the disaster with the Persians?
    It is said that the first in Athens who offered books of liberal disciplines to be read publicly was the tyrant Pisistratus. Then the Athenians themselves increased their number with new interest and concern; but then, Xerxes, when he took Athens, burned the city together with the Acropolis, stole all that amount of books and carried them to Persia. Later, after many vicissitudes, King Seleucus, who was called Nicanor, worried that all of them were returned to Athens.

    Quis omnium primus libros publice praebuerit legendos; quantusque numerus fuerit Athenis ante clades Persicas librorum in bibliothecis publicorum. 1
    Libros Athenis disciplinarum liberalium publice ad legendum praebendos primus posuisse dicitur Pisistratus tyrannus. Deinceps studiosius accuratiusque ipsi Athenienses auxerunt; sed omnem illam postea librorum copiam Xerxes, Athenarum potitus, urbe ipsa praeter arcem incensa, abstulit asportavitque in Persas. Eos porro libros universos multis post tempestatibus Seleucus rex, qui Nicanor appellatus est, referendos Athenas curavit.

    Pisistratus lived between 607-527 BC. But Athens really did not have a public library until Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 BC) and its great public library was the one donated by Hadrian (117-138 AD), being placed in a courtyard or “peripatos” ( lyceum) of  a hundred columns.

    Aulus Gelius, Noctes Atticae, III,17

    About how, according to writers worthy of faith, Plato bought three books written by the Pythagorean Philolaus, and how Aristotle purchased some works written by Speusippus, paying for them huge and incredible amounts.

    Former writers tells us how Plato, although he had only got very little money, bought for ten thousand dinars the three books of the Pythagorean Philolaus, ensuring some authors that this amount was given to him by his friend Dion of Syracuse.

    It also said that Aristotle, after the death of Speusippus, paid three old talents to buy some books written by this philosopher; amount that, assessed in our currency, makes seventy-two thousand sesterces.
    The satirist Timon, in his poem entitled Silos, where he unleashes and lets us see his evilness, apostrophizes Plato with these offensive and false words, who, as we have already said, was very poor, for having bought for too much money a treatise on Pythagorean philosophy, and according to Timon´s false words, taking from it, with numerous kidnappings, his famous dialogue Timaeus (Plato´s well-known dialogue Timaeus). Here are the verses of Timon:
    "And you too, Plato, you have also been dominated by the desire to instruct yourself, and you have purchased for a lot of money a little book with the help of which you've gotten yourself to write    ." (Greek added) (Translation by: Fancisco Navarro y Calvo).

    Id quoque esse a gravissimis viris memoriae mandatum, quod tris libros Plato Philolai Pythagorici et Aristoteles pauculos Speusippi philosophi mercati sunt pretiis fidem non capientibus.
    Memoriae mandatum est Platonem philosophum tenui admodum pecunia familiari fuisse atque eum tamen tris Philolai Pythagorici libros decem milibus denarium mercatum.  Id ei pretium donasse quidam scripserunt amicum eius Dionem Syracosium.
    Aristotelem quoque traditum libros pauculos Speusippi philosophi post mortem eius emisse talentis Atticis tribus; ea summa fit nummi nostri sestertia duo et septuaginta milia.
    τίμων amarulentus librum maledicentissimum conscripsit, qui σίλλος inscribitur. In eo libro Platonem philosophum contumeliose appellat, quod inpenso pretio librum Pythagoricae disciplinae emisset exque eo Timaeum, nobilem illum dialogum, concinnasset. Versus super ea re τίμωνος hi sunt: 
    καὶ σύ, πλάτων, καὶ γάρ σε μαθητείης πόθος ἔσχεν,
    πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀργυρίων ὀλίγην ἠλλάξαο βίβλον,
    ῎ενθεν ἀπαρχόμενος τιμαιογραφεῖν ἐδιδάχθης.

    It also said that at the same time Polycrates (570 a. C.-522 a.), Tyrant of Samos, founded a library. It also seems that in the heyday of Athens, some private people were busy forming their own private good libraries. The most important are those ones belonging to three famous people: Euclid, Euripides and Aristotle.

    Strabo tells us in his Geography, XIII, 1, 55, that Aristotle was the first to be endowed for his knowledge of a book collection and he taught the Egyptians kings how to organize a library. In a coherent passage, apparently based on good sources, and very interesting, he tells us the adventures this library of Aristotle went through:

    Socratic philosophers such as Erastus, Coriscus and Neleus, son of Coriscus, disciple of Aristotle and Theophrastus, were natives of Scepsis. Neleus was who went on with the possession of the library of Theophrastus, containing Aristotle´s. Aristotle gave his library and left his lyceum or school to Theophrastus. Aristotle was the first person we know who made a collection of books and advised the kings of Egypt to form a library. Theophrastus left his library to Neleus, who carried it to Scepsis, and bequeathed it to some ignorant people who kept the books locked up, thrown into a mess. When the citizens of Scepsis knew that the Attalid kings, on whom the city depended, were looking for books with great interest, with which they were trying to provide the  library of Pergamum, they hid the books underground; then, but not before they had suffered damage from the worms, Neleus´ descendants sold the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus for a large sum of money to Apellicon the Teian . Apellicon was more a bookish or book lover than a philosopher; when he tried to restore the parts that had been eaten or corroded by worms, he made many changes into the original text and introduced them into the new copies; but rather than that what he really did was to supply the defective parts erroneously and publish the books full of errors. This was a disgrace for the ancient post Theophrastus Peripatetics who, being fully undersupplied of Aristotle´s books, but a few only, and these ones only of the type of the exoteric books, were completely unable to philosophize according to the principles of the system, and they had to deal with arranging discussions about common places or platitudes only. Their successors, however, since the very first moment these books were published, philosophized and propagated the doctrine of Aristotle more successfully than their predecessors, but they had to deal with many issues not as sure but just as likely, due to the large number of mistakes which  had been made in the copies. Rome also contributed to increase the mistakes; immediately after Apellicon´s death, Sulla, who took Athens, seized for himself the library of Apellicon the Teian. When the library was carried to Rome, Tyrannion the grammarian, who was an admirer of Aristotle, licked the superintendent of the library in order to win his confidence and finally he got its use. Some booksellers, however, employed bad scribes who despised to compare the copies with the original text. This also happened in the case of many other books that were copied for their sale, both here in Rome and in Alexandria.

    Note: This Tyrannion, released war prisoner, was a friend of Atticus and Cicero. He prepared an edition of Aristotle´s works, but other less detailed, precise and cared editions also appeared, as it is reflected in the text. Sulla´s library, with the books of Aristotle, was inherited by the megalomaniac Faustus Sulla, Pompey General; when he was ruined he had to sell everything, even the library, and this is how the books of Aristotle disappeared forever. Plutarch tells us in Life of Sulla, 26.1-2:

    Having put to sea with all his ships from Ephesus, on the third day he came to anchor in Piraeus. He was now initiated into the mysteries, and seized for himself the library of Apellicon the Teian, in which were most of the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastus, at that time not yet well known to the public. But it is said that after the library was carried to Rome, Tyrannio the grammarian arranged most of the works in it, and that Andronicus the Rhodian was furnished by him with copies of them, and published them, and drew up the lists now current.

    The older Peripatetics were evidently of themselves accomplished and learned men, but they seem to have had neither a large nor an exact acquaintance with the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus, because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus bequeathed his books, came into the hands of careless and illiterate people.

    Very probably, Strabo´s bizarre statement that Aristotle helped the Egyptian kings to organize a library is due to the fact that it was his disciple, Demetrius of Falera, who exiled to Alexandria from Athens, was the brain of the Ptolemaic project to create the Museum and the Library in Alexandria, as it will be seen below. Aristotle indirectly helped the Ptolemies from Alexandria to develop their library by the hand and participation of his disciple Demetrius. So the phrase of Strabo is only an apparent anachronism.
     Diogenes Laertius (V, 52) also informs us about the gift to Neleus.

    I cannot resist transcribing another quote confirming most of the statements of Strabo, but contradicting him in something as important as where the books of Aristotle finally ended, regardless of the historical value it may have. Athenaeus, who lived in the second century AD, during the reign of the "philosopher" Emperor Marcus Aurelius, says in his book  Deipnosophistae, which mean "dinner-table philosophers" or  "authorities on banquets",  I, 3A-3B, as he praises scholar Larensius, one of the participant diners:

    "It also said he possessed so many ancient Greek books that surpassed all who were admired for his collections: Polycrates of Samos, Pisistratus who was tyrant of Athens, Euclid, also the Athenian Nycocrates of Cyprus, and even the kings of Pergamum, the poet Euripides, the philosopher Aristotle < Theophrastus >, and the one who kept the books of these two last ones, Neleus. It is said that to him they all were bought by our fellow King Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, who carried them, along with those from Athens and those brought from Rhodes, to the beautiful Alexandria."

    But as I said, certainly the most famous library in History is the "Library of Alexandria", founded by the Ptolemies, rulers indeed enlightened and educated themselves.

    Alexandria is one of the many cities (at least 19 from Egypt to India) founded by Alexander the Great to which he put his name. This one was founded in the year 331 BC in the Nile Delta and grew to nearly a million people or inhabitants, population only surpassed in the ancient times by Rome, so it was the most important of those founded by the Macedonian. Strabo tells us that it has the form of a chlamys, that is, the shape of an almost perfect rectangle (Strabo, XVII, 1, 8):

    εστι δὲ χλαμυδοειδὲς τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ ἐδάφους τῆς πόλεως

    The shape of the site of the city is that of a chlamys or military cloak

    Along with the Egyptians, large groups of Greeks and Jews also lived in Alexandria. It soon became the cultural reference of the ancient world. Its harbor, the largest of Antiquity, opened to the Mediterranean Sea with its famous lighthouse Pharos (one of the wonders of the ancient world), the Museum, the Temple of the Muses, and the Library are the four elements that have given everlasting fame to this city.

    The library was an essential tool serving the Alexandrian ecumenism in the Hellenization process of the whole Mediterranean.

    The fact that Egypt was the country that monopolized the production of papyrus, necessary support for the writing, certainly had also its importance in creating the library.

    In spite of the enormous historical resonance that the Museum and Library of Alexandria have had and still have, the sources on them are slim, both about their founding moments and their last moments before the city of Alexandria disappeared, especially if we consider that many of them are mere repetition of other previous ones, reproducing the same mistakes and causing great confusion. Moreover, archaeological information on this is not relevant either.

    According to the tradition, Ptolemy I Soter started creating the library around the year 295 BC, but who really increased and reorganized it systematically was Ptolemy Philadelphus, who named a fixed librarian and endowed it with the necessary means for its proper functioning. Be it known, however, that the first written reference citing the Library is from the second century AD, in the "Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates", in which a Jewish man talks about the famous and otherwise fictional Greek translation of the Pentateuch, the Torah, known as "the translation of the seventy scribes", “of the seventies”, the " Septuagint ", whose miraculous making or confection I will discuss on another occasion. Actually the sources on the Library are very few and most of the authors are very late. Nor we have special data provided by archeology.

    The brain of the project must be Demetrius of Falera, who came to Alexandria exiled from Athens, where he had ruled as a tyrant and had been a pupil of Aristotle, so he had the Aristotelian idea of an universal knowledge, the working of the Peripato and the library of Aristotle as a model; he transplanted all that to Alexandria and developed it a big way with the royal protection of the Ptolemies. Therefore, he was the first librarian.

    Curiously, about this Demetrius we can say that his intrigues at the royal court probably finished with this curious character. He died bitten by a snake that probably someone may put beside him while he slept. This system of dying from snakebite looks very Egyptian; certainly the famous Cleopatra gave eternal fame to it, no matter whether it is true or not the event of her death by asp bite. Diogenes Laertius tells us in his Book V, 78:

    "Since then (after his arrestment) he lived dejected day after day; while he was asleep, a snake bit him in the hand and so he left this life".

    Episode Cicero also includes in his Pro Rabidio Postumo, 23:

    Demetrium, qui Phalereus vocitatus est, et ex re publica Atheniensi, quam optime gesserat, et ex doctrina nobilem et clarum, in eodem isto Aegyptio regno aspide ad corpus admota vita esse privatum. 

    We know that Demetrius,—he, too, being a citizen of the free republic of Athens, the affairs of which he had conducted with the greatest ability, and being also a man eminent for, and deeply impressed with, learning,—the one, I mean, who was surnamed Phalereus, was deprived of his life in that selfsame kingdom of Egypt having had an asp applied to his body. (Albert Clark, Ed.)

    Actually there were two libraries in Alexandria, the first one known as the "Royal Library" (of royal property; the Hebrew writer Aristeas calls them "royal books" or "books of the King") (this is the Letter of Aristeas, 38:

    "Wanting to do something pleasing to them, to all the Jews of the world and their descendants, we have decided to translate your Law, from the language you call Hebrew, into the Greek, so that you can also find it in our library, with the other royal books." 

    large library (μεγάλη βιβλιοθήκη from μέγας, megas, large, big, great), which was part of the palace complex and The Museum, without its own building, in the neighbourhood of the Bruqión (actually the palace, which was a fortress, filled the whole district) and the other library attached to the Serapeion, in the neighbourhood of Rakhotis, which Bishop Epiphanius of the fourth century called "daughter" of the other library.

    Strabo, who was in Alexandria in the second half of the first century BC, gives us a description of the Museum, though without mentioning the Library as exempt building, in his Geography, XVII, 1, 8.

    “The museum is a part of the royal palace. It consists of a porch to walk, an exedra with seats and a large room in which the scholars belonging to the museum, eat together. This community has common ownership and they have a priest, who chairs and rules the museum, who was formerly named by the kings and now by the Caesar (Augsutus)”.

    These units would correspond to a peripatos or space to walk (from the Greek περίπατος , perépatos , walk, from  πέρι , peri, around and πατεῖν , patein , walking), which would actually be an avenue covered with cavities to hold the shelves or "libraries";  an exedra (from the Greek  ἐξ ex-, from, outside and έδρα, seat ) or space with seats and an oikos (gr. οἶκος house, room ) or great room.

    We deduce, then, from Strabo´s description, apart from other data or sources, that there was not a reading room and therefore that the books and volumes would be in niches placed in the walls of the various agencies, rooms or units and especially in the Peripato, or covered porch in whose sides would be the holes with the shelves for the rolls (βιβλιοθήκαι bibliothekai).

    Annexed to the Serapeion (the Temple of Serapis) or within the enclosure or complex, in the neighbourhood called Rakhotis, it was another auxiliary library or another part of the library founded by Ptolemy III. In it there were copies coming from the Museum. The Bishop Epiphanius of the fourth century calls this library "daughter" of the other in his book "Weights and Measures", which he wrote in Syriac with many parts in Greek, whose full title is "Treaty of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of the city of Constance in Cyprus, about the measures, weights and numbers and other things there are in the divine Scriptures" and which is actually a Bible commentary. In the passage where he talks to us with all credulity about the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, the translation called “of the Seventies” or Septuagint, he says in Syriac in chapter 11 (53c) of his work:

    And this way the Scriptures, as soon as they had been translated into the Greek language, were placed in the first library, which had been built in the Bruchion, as I already said. And it was arisen, besides this, a second library in the Serapeum, called its daughter. And the period between the ten Ptolemaic kings and Cleopatra's death was two hundred and fifty-nine years.

    And in Greek with some variation:

    "But later there was also another library in the Serapeum, smaller than the first, which was also called its daughter, in which translations of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and the rest of translated works were placed, two hundred and fifty years later."

    In it literati and scientists could continue their studies and readings and lectures were given.
    Actually it was therefore an international and cosmopolitan center of the knowledge of the time, in which writers and scientists continued their studies, gave lectures, and madetheir readings. Of course, it was the world book market center, we would say with current macroeconomic terminology.

    Thus, the Museum of Alexandria would be a royal institution created from the model of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum and the Pythagorean community ideal; in fact the museum is chaired by a priest as temple of the Muses (later in the Roman period the Museum will be a public institution and the priest of the Museum will be directly assigned or named by the emperor, as Strabo remembers us). Recall that the Peripatos also had a Museion or temple of the Muses.

    The Museum and Library are meeting places of a community of philosophers, scientists, students, people coming from everywhere, funded or maintained  by the monarch and therefore without the concerns or worries of the material subsistence. There goes the cultural elite of the world to study and live carefree. Some modern English universities or the Spanish Free Institution of Education, remind us to this Alexandrian community. In summary, as Cánfora says, it is

    “a community of scholars isolated from the outside, provided with a complete library and a place to worship the Muses".

    As it always happens, even today, among the members of any community, including the scientific, natural rivalries, jealousies and disputes among its members were usual. The cynic and satirist Timon from  Filunte, for example, presents us the philosophers like birds quarreling among themselves in a cage:

    “In the populous Egypt, many scribblers who scribble on the papyri are fed, while they argue constantly in the cage of the Muses”.

    And Athenaeus, in his "Deipnosophistae" confirms this to us, although interpreting Timon´s words with another sense, and really misunderstanding them, when he says in I, 22D:

    The satirist author Timon of Phlius somewhere calls the Museum (of Alexandria) "bird cage", mocking the wise hosted on it, because, as the most beautiful birds, they are fed in an aviary.

    "In Egypt, rich in races, many scholars armed with quills lived, who keep endless fights in the bird cage of the Muses".

    And who was director of the Library, the great Callimachus, author among other things of a catalog or list of works existing there, tells us that among the members of the Museum the "envy" was very frequently given and he did not refer to mere scientific envy.

    There were other libraries economically funded or maintained by the State in Antioch, Rhodes, Izmir and other Hellenistic capitals, but there was one that rivaled the Library of Alexandria, and it was the Library of Pergamum. There the king Eumenes II, lover of science and literature, created a huge library which remained despite the prohibition to export papyrus from Egypt made by the Ptolomies.

    This prohibition with which Alexandria tried to play dirty forced Pergamum to perfect the art of oriental origin of preparing the skins of animals as a writing support. Precisely from Pergamum comes the word parchment (“pergamino” in Spanish), like skin usually beef, which was used for writing; the skin of the animal non nato (unborn animal) is called "of vitulus" and it is the one of the highest quality to write on it. This support revolutionized the history of the book, giving it the current form of notebook, more durable and more manageable.

    Well, the Library of Pergamum was very important. According an untrue statement, Marcus Antonius gave it to Cleopatra and took to Egypt two hundred thousand volumes to replace those lost during the war with Caesar. Plutarch tells us in Antonius, 58, 5, but this statement seems rather to be the result of the blurb that was put forward in Rome against Marcus Antonius:

    And Calvisio, Caesar's friend, added to Marcus Antonius ´crimes related to his romantic affair with Cleopatra, the following charges: that he had given to her and presented her with the library of Pergamum, in which there were two hundred thousand simple volumes.

    Despite the gaps in the historical sources, despite how little we actually know accurately, the mythic reflections of this great institution arrive until today. In October 2002, it was inaugurated the modern library of Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, as a result of the collaboration between the UNESCO and various countries in the world, whose capacity exceeds twenty million books; it already has more than two hundred thousand books, which is not a bad start, but Egypt and the entire area of North Africa and the Middle East, unfortunately is still today as unstable as it was in Antiquity.

    But an even more powerful reflection can be appreciated in the modern illusion to give everybody free access to all the knowledge that mankind has accumulated for centuries and centuries in all the languages. Is not this the pretense of popular electronic encyclopedias such as Wikipedia or instruments which aims to provide all books that exist in the world in all the languages? Will it be possible this time?

    But all of us must support this great project, because our debt to ancient Alexandria and its library is priceless.
     

  • The accounts of the great Publius Cornelius Scipio African Major

    Known and frequent is the expression “the accounts of the Great Captain ” to refer to a lack of justification or outrageously ridiculous justification of expenditures .

    It is based on the apocryphal story , perhaps real, perhaps possible and probably false , happened to Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (Spanish Grand Capitán) when after the campaign of Naples that put  Italy practically available to the king of Aragon, Ferdinand the  Catholic asked accounts of the enormous expenses.  Some  verses ran soon  glossing  the proud  attitude  of the noble lord , because it was consistent with the Spanish character. The most famous verse of  a long litany of ironic or cocky explanations is :

    in picks, shovels and hoes , one hundred million …

    en picos, palas y azadones, cien millones…

    Well, in the war it thinks that  the important thing is to win , regardless of expense . There in the ancient world a story referred to the great Scipio Africanus, victorious  of Hannibal, not exactly coincident but with some resemblance .

    Aulus Gellius tells us in his Noctes Atticae , lib . IV , 18.7 :

    There is also another celebrated act of his. Certain Petilii, tribunes of the commons, influenced they say by Marcus Cato, Scipio's personal enemy, and instigated to appear against him, insisted most vigorously in the senate 2 on his rendering an account of the money of Antiochus and of the booty taken in that war; for he had been deputy to his brother Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, the commander in that campaign. Thereupon Scipio arose, and taking a roll from the fold of his toga, said that it contained an account of all the money and all the booty; that he had brought it to be publicly read and deposited in the treasury. “But that,” said he, “I shall not do now, nor will I so degrade myself.” And at once, before them all, he tore the roll across with his own hands and rent it into bits, indignant that an account of money taken in war should be required of him, to whose account the salvation of the Roman State and its power ought to be credited.  (An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.)

    Item aliud est factum eius praeclarum. Petilii quidam tribuni plebis a M., ut aiunt, Catone, inimico Scipionis, comparati in eum atque inmissi, desiderabant in senatu instantissime ut pecuniae Antiochinae praedaeque in eo bello captae rationem redderet;  fuerat enim L. Scipioni Asiatico, fratri suo, imperatori in ea provincia legatus.  Ibi Scipio exsurgit et, prolato e sinu togae libro, rationes in eo scriptas esse dixit omnis pecuniae omnisque praedae;  illatum, ut palam recitaretur et ad aerarium deferretur.  “Sed enim id iam non faciam,” inquit, “nec me ipse afficiam contumelia,” eumque librum statim coram discidit suis manibus et concerpsit, aegre passus quod cui salus imperii ac reipublicae accepta ferri deberet rationem pecuniae praedatae posceretur.

    Earlier, this Scipio showed his respect for the clear accounts. Around the year 204 BCE Africa was accompanied by Cato the Elder, Cato the Censor. The sumptuousness and cockiness of Scipio married wrong with frugality and rigidity of censor. Cato  asked to Scipio for accounts and he replied, as Plutarch says in  “Life of Cato the Elder, 3:

    "Scipio answered (…) I did not need as severe quaestor, because of what he had to account to the town for their actions and not the money."

    Cato returned to Rome and he favored an action in the Senate to send a delegation to investigate the costs of Scipio. The "investigation committee" found no evidence of waste general Scipio, who won battles.

    Says the text of Plutarch

    In the same spirit he did not hesitate to oppose the great Scipio, a youthful rival of Fabius, and thought to be envious of him. When he was sent out with Scipio as quaestor for the war in Africa,1 he saw that the man indulged in his wonted extravagance, and lavished money without stint upon his soldiery. He therefore made bold to tell him that the matter of expense was not the greatest evil to be complained of, but the fact that he was corrupting the native simplicity of his soldiers, who resorted to wanton pleasures when their pay exceeded their actual needs. Scipio replied that he had no use for a parsimonious quaestor when the winds were bearing him under full sail to the war; he owed the city an account of his achievements, not of its moneys. Cato therefore left Sicily, and joined Fabius in denouncing before the Senate Scipio's waste of enormous moneys, and his boyish addiction to palaestras and theatres, as though he were not commander of an army, but master of a festival. As a result of these attacks, tribunes were sent to bring Scipio back to Rome, if the charges against him should turn out to be true. Well then, Scipio convinced the tribunes that victory in war depended on the preparations made for it; showed that he could be agreeable in his intercourse with his friends when he had leisure for it, but was never led by his sociability to neglect matters of large and serious import; and sailed off for his war in Africa. Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 2.

    “Ratio et numeri cedant  armis” , "the (clear) accounts yield to arms" seems to be the behavior yesterday and today, judging by darkness and lack of transparency with which usually occur the "war exploits". This famous Scipio lived only 2220 years ago.

  • The

    Few students, heavily loaded with their “textbooks ” will suspect that the word” text ” means “tissue “and that, what they do with that expression, is to continue using an old metaphor.

    The word “text” comes from the Latin word textus,  which literally means knitting, crocheting, network. It is the past participle of the verb "texo, texere" which means to weave, to knit, crochet.

    According to the Royal Spanish Academy it means a 'coherent statement or set of oral or written statements "  and "a quoted passage of written or oral work. "

    However, a fabric, a cloth  is the result of the action of interlocking or weaving a thread or wool filament  or other fiber for building a stable and robust structure. Similarly to weave or to interlace sound is  to produce "words" and contrive or interlacing  words in coherent groups is to made significant structures. In both cases it is a process of "building" from certain elements.

    Then "text" as an oral or written discourse or statement is a metaphor based,  like all metaphors, on the relation of similarity. What happens is that in Spanish and in other languages  the  origin is so remote that the metaphor has been lexicalized, has become a name with his own sense independent of its origin. Moreover, by the existence on Spanish  of the doublet "tejido" / "texto", one has been to refer to interlaced filaments  and the other to interlaced word, ie, a speaker text or tissue.

    It is interesting to note how the language uses  to create many words this procedure of to create a metaphor and then to be lexicalized  or turn it into a name.

    Another interesting question is to see how the semantic field of "textum”, “tissue" has been very productive in the history of Western languages and cultures (also in others no doubt), until  to the extent that we are unable to conceive everything related to the oral or written text or otherwise  and whit other different terms.

    This is probably due to the importance of the "weave" has had in the history of mankind. The task of weaving and the invention of the tissue is one of the greatest creations of man. Originally it appears to be a particularly female labor, so certainly in antiquity, in which one of the exclusive task of women is "to card wool and knit dresses."

    Recall the famous epitaph of Claudia, which  once is commented on this blog: https://www.antiquitatem.com/en/matron-lanam-fecit-epitaph-lapidary

    But the sexist prejudices are at least as old as antiquity itself. Take, for example, what Lucretius says apropos of the origin of weaving in his De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), V, 134 ff.

    And nature forced the men,
    Before the woman kind, to work the wool:
    For all the male kind far excels in skill,
    And cleverer is by much- until at last
    The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks,
    And so were eager soon to give them o'er
    To women's hands, and in more hardy toil
    To harden arms and hands.     (Traslation by William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.)

    Et facere ante viros lanam natura coegit
    quam muliebre genus (nam longe praestat in arte
    et sollertius est multo genus omne virile),
    agricolae donec vitio vertere severi,
    ut muliebribus id manibus concedere vellent
    atque ipse partier durum sufferer laborem
    atque opere in duro durarent membra manusque.

    Some people with unnecessary imagination has seen in the nests of birds the model that women continued to build the cradles of their children. But this is to directly confront the man with nature as a newcomer and ignore the lengthy evolutionary process of Homo sapiens.

    Anyway, as I said, the semantic field of "textum, tissue" has been very productive in defining and naming concepts, many of them relating to the field of oral or written language expression itself.

    The use of "text" in the metaphorical expressed sense is very old.

    The Greek word “rhapsodos” “rhapsody”, "bard", (from ῥαψωδός, of ῥάπτειν, sewing, mending, fixing, concoct, compose, concoct, and ᾠδή, singing) makes us suspect that seniority.

    The RAE dictionary defines “rapsoda, rhapsodos” as "walking Sayer who in ancient Greece sangs epic Homeric poems or other poems " and Greek dictionaries define it as darner or adjuster of epics, reciter …"

    The first written Greek text that we have and in the which the word "text" appears  in this sense is the poem attributed to Simmias of Rhodes (third century BC) entitled "Egg", which is one of the curious "tecnopaignía",  visual poems or caligrama, referenced in Anthology, XV, 27;  in verse 3 he uses the term ἄτριον, atrion structure. Although it is actually more common in other Greek authors the term ὕφος , hýphos, of ὑφάὠ, hyfáo, knit, weave, weave.

    Then Dionysus of Halicarnassus (first century before and after Christ) refers to it in his work De compositione verborum, 23.3:

    From this point of view the style resembles finely woven stuffs, or pictures in which the lights melt insensibly into the shadows (Translation by W. Rhys Roberts)

    ἔοικέ τε κατὰ μέρος εὐητρίοις ὕφεσιν ἢ γραφαῖς συνεφθαρμένα τὰ φωτεινὰ τοῖς σκιεροῖς ἐχούσαις.
    .
    Another example is the use of text wich Longinus makes in his work "On the sublime" 1.4:

    Similarly, we see skill in invention, and due order and arrangement of matter, emerging as the hard-won result not of one thing nor of two, but of the whole texture of the composition, whereas Sublimity flashing forth at the right moment scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt, and at once displays the power of the orator in all its plenitude  (Translation by W. Rhys Robertsn)

    The most interesting example in Latin is certainly  what Quintilian makes precisely in his Institutiones Oratoriae, IX, 4,13:

    But if there is such secret power in rhythm and melody alone, this power is found at its strong est in eloquence, and, however important the selection of words for the expression of our thoughts, the structural art which welds them together in the body (text) of a period or rounds them off at the close, has at least an equal claim to importance.  ( English translation  by H. E. Butler,  1920 1922 for  the Loeb Classical Library).

    Quintiliano. Inst. Or.IX, 4,13 3. Quod si numeris ac modis inest quaedam tacita vis, in oratione ea vehementissima, quantumque interest sensus idem quibus verbis efferatur, tantum verba eadem qua compositione vel in textu iungantur vel in fine cludantur.

    And later, in Inst. Orat. IX, 4, 17

    They may not perhaps have pursued the same ideals as Demosthenes and Plato, and even these latter differed in their methods. For it would never have done to spoil the fine and delicate texture of Lysias by the introduction of richer rhythms, since he would thus have lost all that surpassing grace which he derives from his simple and unaffected tone, while he would also have sacrificed the impression of sincerity which he now creates. (English translation  by H. E. Butler)

    Quintiliano. Inst. Or.IX, 4, 17. Genus fortasse sint secuti non idem quod Demosthenes aut Plato, quamquam et hi ipsi inter se dissimiles fuerunt. Nam neque illud in Lysia dicendi textum tenue atque rasum laetioribus numeris corrumpendum erat: perdidisset enim gratiam, quae in eo maxima est, simplicis atque inadfectati coloris, perdidisset fidem quoque.

    I quote also some passages in Ammianus Marcellinus: Historiae (Translation by John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D., Ed.):

    15,7,6: During the administration of this Leontius, a priest of the Christian religion, Liberius by name, by order of Constantius  was brought before the privy council on the charge of opposing the emperor's commands and the decrees of the majority of his colleagues in an affair which I shall run over briefly (quam brevi textu).

    15,7,6: 6. Hoc administrante Leontio Liberius Christianae legis antistes a Constantio ad comitatum mitti praeceptus est tamquam imperatoriis iussis et plurimorum sui consortium decretis obsistens in re, quam brevi textu percurram.

    15,8, 1 This, then, was the situation at Rome, as the preceding text has shown.

    15,8,1: Et haec quidem Romae, ut ostendit textus superior, agebantur.

    27,12,11 On learning of this course (textu) of events, Sapor was filled with superhuman wrath, and mustering greater forces began to devastate Armenia with open pillage.

    27,12,11: Hoc conperto textu gestorum Sapor ultra hominem efferatus, concitis maioribus copiis Armenias aperta praedatione vastabat.

    From there the use of "textus" in various European languages is over lexicalized to the current situation. It is available in Spanish as texto, in French text, Italian testo, in English text, in German text.

    But this already happened many centuries ago with the Latin word "nihil”, meaning "nothing" and that is also a metaphor related to the world of" weave ", because it comes from ne-hilum, no a thread, nothing. (Another day I will comment on something as interesting as denial, which is nothing but the destruction of reality: rem natam, nada,  res, rien, none, nobody, nothing,  niente, nessuno ..)

    As I said, the semantic field of fabric of tissues (textum) has had huge linguistic success not only to generate meanings referring to oral or written language itself but to other areas of human  creativity.
    And still to weave, text,  has a great creative force, although women do not weave, the fabric is not a home, it is just a residual entertainment at least in the developed world.

    Without being exhaustive, I will cite numerous examples of terms from the world of textile task metaphorically applied to speech or to writing or to other aspects of life. I will rely primarily on the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.

     

    Text,  which is what gave rise to the article.

    It is compound of this  pretext (from Lat. praetextus) or sham reason or apparent cause that is  alleged to do something or to apologize for not having executed.

    Also modern in relation to the digital world it has coined the term hypertext (hyper, over, more and text), text that contains items from which you can access to another information, it is a more-text-or super-text ..
    Weave, Plot, storyline, connection, link, correlation: When it is weaving, the weft, the warp (set of wires placed in parallel and along the loom to pass them the plot and form a tissue) or the shuttle were well known realities. The term weave, in the textile fabric designs the  fixed frame work or  the base yarns in which a warp interlaces. In the speech, or oral or written text the "plot" is the structure of the story on which the details are hatched. To plot  can also mean preparing a plan, an intrigue with caution, as warping.

    Concoct:  Prepare the wires,  the threads, in the loom . / To machine  and cautiously have anything against anyone, or to achieve some purpose.

    Hilo (from Latin filum), thread.  Long, thin strand of a textile / The Continuation or the series of speech.
    The thread of life, life hangs by a thread, thread of death, storyline, in line … get the thread ,lose the thread, refresh the thread, follow the thread, pull the thread, the thread is removed the ball, cut the thread (of the speech), he does not take the thread, (he raves), pull the strings, the threads, not stitching without thread,  keep the thread, hang by a thread.

    Retahila (from recta and hila), string:  Series of many things that are, occur or are mentioned by order. That is, a straight line, or a line or row, or a series of objects or of expressions

    To  hilar, to spin: To reduce yarn flax, hemp, wool, silk, cotton to yarn/ To reason, draw or infer from other; to split hairs.

    Tell me while spinning.

    Baste: Join with basting what will be sewing after / It is said about  a person who speaks or writes: To bind or coordinate ideas, phrases or words, sometimes precipitously.

    Entangle: Tangle, stir something / confuse, entangle an issue getting harder.

    Winding: Go successive turns giving a yarn about an axis, reel, etc.etc. / Develop the plot of an issue.
    Winding the skein,  (try to remember)

    Unwrapping, to develop: Extend the winding / Decrypt, discover or clarify something that was dark and tangled..

    Explain: (from Latin explain and this from plicare = ex and develop, extend, deploy.). Declare, demonstrate, publicize what anyone thinks. To declare or display any material or doctrine  or difficult text, whit very clear words to make them more noticeable. Teaching in the chair. Justify, exculpate words or actions, stating that there was no intention to insult them. Spreading the cause or reason for something.

    Roll: (Lat. Rotulus cylinder.). Subject taking cylindrical shape by rolling or spinning. / Portion of tissue, paper, etc.., which is rolled into a cylindrical / person or thing that is dull, heavy or annoying way. / Papyrus or other laminated material, wrapping, which was the book in antiquity.

    to develop, to go roll

    Entangle: to take  with network; extend  nets or arm them for hunting / Link, weave something  / to put  discord or sow discord; Entertaining, waste the time…..

    Tangle. Complications and tangle that is by bind each other wildly flexible wires or other things, Deception, lie that brings unrest, dissension and strife. Difficult complication to save or remedy in any event or affair of life / Confusion of ideas, lack of clarity in them / In the epic and dramatic poetry and the novel, all the events linked to each other, preceding the catastrophe or denouement.

    cloth for paintings

    Stitch: Garnish with embroideries fabric or other material. Embroidering a tablecloth. / embroider a speech.

    Strand: . Portion of thread, yarn, spun silk or other material, which usually get something to sew through the eye of a needle. / Thread of speech.

    Pin, he takes it all with pins,

    Node: (Lat. nudus  for nodus ). Tie that narrows and closes so troubles can drop by itself, and the more you strip any of the two ends, more tightened. / In the trees and plants, trunk why leave the branches, and in this part where the rods cast. It is usually rounded. / In various literary genres, bond or interlocking of events that precede the outcome.

    A knot is made,

    Unlink: Unleashing ties, disengage and drop what you are tied with them / Resolve the plot of a dramatic narrative or cinematic work, until you reach the end.

    The summary or culmination of all reported can be summarized in the phrase "Plot, weave  and dénouement," three terms in the textile world which explain the structure or skeleton of a novel, a literary work.

    From another point of view, weaving and unraveling has generated important myths and legends from ancient times, the best known of Penelope, but also Ariadne, Philomela, the Fates.

    Ariadne gave Theseus, which was infatuated, the ball of yarn was knitting with which he could leave the Labyrinth of Crete after finishing with the Minotaur. She Theseus fled with Theseus from her own country, but she was abandoned by him.

    The myth of Philomel is told by Ovid in Metamorphoses, 6, 424 ff. During a visit to her sister,  Philomela is raped by her brother in law Tereus, who cuts her  tongue;  so she can not tell his crime. Philomela weaves a tapestry with de crime. Noting her sister Procne, they prepared a terrible revenge: they kill the son of Tereus, cook him and serve him  to his father. The merciful gods make Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale;  so they can escape from the wrath of Tereus.

    Penelope is the wife of Odysseus or Ulysses, whose return she expects faithfully. She entertains suitors weaving by day and unraveling at night a tapestry because she undertook to accept one of the suitors when the work was completed.

    The Fates or the Moirai are goddesses of men’sfate men. Hesiod calls them the "spinners of fate"  who  weave with their spinning wheels and spindles. Cloto handled the distaff, Lachesis rotates the spindle with thread, Atropos cuts the thread with her scissors when he pleases it.

    Catullus says about the Fates in his poem number 64 v. 310:

    while their hands duly plied the eternal task.

    Aeternumque manus carpebant rite laborem

    And soon after, from verse 327 repeats a dozen times:

    Run, run spindles, following  the woof-threads.

    Currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi

  • Was Pericles a Keynesian?

    The majestic buildings of the Acropolis of Athens, which have caused much admiration from antiquity until today, were built by Athenians unemployed people. The beautification of Athens is attributed to Pericles and are quoted the great artists like Ictinos, Callicrates, Phidias …

    Certainly this great program of public construction was due to political and strategic genius of Pericles, but few know that it was possible because Pericles decided to  give work and occupation  to Athenian citizens who live poor and badly. Pericles decided, in what today we would consider a Keynesian economic policy, "social" policy, stimulate the economy and divide the  wealth increasing public works.

    ..should apply her abundance to such works as, by their completion, will bring her everlasting glory, and while in process of completion will bring that abundance into actual service, in that all sorts of activity and diversified demands arise, ..

    Pericles, although from aristocratic origin, led the Democratic Party, the party of the people. All this tells us Plutarch recounting his life, and  as if it were a current chronic, we learned that the aristocratic party of Cimon and Thucydides (not the historian) accused Pericles of trying to win the people's will with gifts and presents  and ultimately wasting public money.

    Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for playing fast and loose with the public moneys and annihilating the revenues.

    How as modern is all this¡ How as disturbing is that 2,400 years later plans of miserable job  in areas especially unprotected still are criticized by the same argument: waste public money to win hearts!

    And if Pericles had not launched its program to combat unemployment, would there been  built the Parthenon, the great "temple of the virgin", (that's what the word means, derived from the Greek Παρθένος, "parthenos", virgin) ? And would been  built the Odeon, from the Greek  Ωδείον and Latin odeum, ὠδεῖον ("Odeion", the place to  sing) and this from  ἀείδω ("aeido" ,sing,  of ᾠδή ("Odé" ode, song) building for concerts? And the Propylaea or porches, of προπύλαια of προ "pro" and πύλιον "pylaion" – Προπυλαιον = "front door"? And there would be the famous statues of Zeus, Venus, Athena … thousand times copied and pricked out to fill the museums of Europe and the cultured salons of rich aristocrats?

    But it will be better to read direct and widely the text of Plutarch, as current and so obvious that it avoids any comment, on the translation by Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1916:

    Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Live of Pericles:
    IX
    …And soon, what with festival-grants and jurors' wages and other fees and largesses, he bribed the multitude by the wholesale, and used them in opposition to the Council of the Areiopagus. Of this body he himself was not a member  …

    XII
    But that which brought most delightful adornment to Athens, and the greatest amazement to the rest of mankind; that which alone now testifies for Hellas that her ancient power and splendor, of which so much is told, was no idle fiction,—I mean his construction of sacred edifices,—this, more than all the public measures of Pericles, his enemies maligned and slandered. They cried out in the assemblies: ‘The people has lost its fair fame and is in ill repute because it has removed the public moneys of the Hellenes from Delos into its own keeping,..

    And it is but meet that the city, when once she is sufficiently equipped with all that is necessary for prosecuting the war, should apply her abundance to such works as, by their completion, will bring her everlasting glory, and while in process of completion will bring that abundance into actual service, in that all sorts of activity and diversified demands arise, which rouse every art and stir every hand, and bring, as it were, the whole city under pay, so that she not only adorns, but supports herself as well from her own resources.’

    And it was true that his military expeditions supplied those who were in the full vigor of manhood with abundant resources from the common funds, and in his desire that the unwarlike throng of common laborers should neither have no share at all in the public receipts, nor yet get fees for laziness and idleness, he boldly suggested to the people projects for great constructions, and designs for works which would call many arts into play and involve long periods of time, in order that the stay-at-homes, no whit less than the sailors and sentinels and soldiers, might have a pretext for getting a beneficial share of the public wealth.

    The materials to be used were stone, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-wood; the arts which should elaborate and work up these materials were those of carpenter, moulder, bronze-smith, stone-cutter, dyer, worker in gold and ivory, painter, embroiderer, embosser, to say nothing of the forwarders and furnishers of the material, such as factors, sailors and pilots by sea, and, by land, wagon-makers, trainers of yoked beasts, and drivers. There were also rope-makers, weavers, leather-workers, road-builders, and miners. And since each particular art, like a general with the army under his separate command, kept its own throng of unskilled and untrained laborers in compact array, to be as instrument unto player and as body unto soul in subordinate service, it came to pass that for every age, almost, and every capacity the city's great abundance was distributed and scattered abroad by such demands.

    XIII

    So then the works arose, no less towering in their grandeur than inimitable in the grace of their outlines, since the workmen eagerly strove to surpass themselves in the beauty of their handicraft. And yet the most wonderful thing about them was the speed with which they rose. Each one of them, men thought, would require many successive generations to complete it, but all of them were fully completed in the heyday of a single administration.
    …
    For this reason are the works of Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for all time. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigor it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit had been infused into them. His general manager and general overseer was Pheidias, although the several works had great architects and artists besides. Of the Parthenon, for instance, with its cella of a hundred feet in length, Callicrates and Ictinus were the architects; it was Coroebus who began to build the sanctuary of the mysteries at Eleusis,
    …
    The Propylaea of the acropolis were brought to completion in the space of five years, Mnesicles being their architect.
    …
    But it was Pheidias who produced the great golden image of the goddess, and he is duly inscribed on the tablet as the workman who made it.
    …

    Plutarch also tells us how all kinds of slander and falsehoods about Pericles and his family, which at another time perhaps remark had been spread,   and laments how difficult it is to find the truth.

    He tells us in this chapter XIII:

    To such degree, it seems, is truth hedged about with difficulty and hard to capture by research, since those who come after the events in question find that lapse of time is an obstacle to their proper perception of them; while the research of their contemporaries into men's deeds and lives, partly through envious hatred and partly through fawning flattery, defiles and distorts the truth.

    And Plutarch continues at the beginning of Chapter XIV:

    Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for playing fast and loose with the public moneys and annihilating the revenues.

    And so I just end this long quotation referred to an Athenian leader who lived from 495 BC ., and 429, ie nearly 2500 years ago in the world's first democracy, ephemeral existence, it is true, because immediately it had to suffer attacks of the aristocracy and owners armies dictators, but set a goal and example to get for many men for two millennia, virtually until to  present.

    Well, as Pericles did not know Keynes, we can ask if  Keynes had read Plutarch and his life of Pericles? I do not know in sufficient detail the biography of Keynes, but it is likely to he know the text of Plutarch, because he has studied at Eton College and then at King's College, Cambridge,  where he went to study mathematics and precisely the "classical ". Keynes is also very interested in philosophical questions and their contribution in this field, less well-known economist, no less important.

    Dostaler Gilles, Professor of Economics at the University of Quebec and Montreal, who wrote the play Keynes and His Battles, confirms this reading.  The Chapter 9, "Art: theoretician, Consumer and Patron of the Arts", is dedicated to some philosophical reflections on the nature of beauty and offers a vision of Pericles of a civilization in which art is valued for its own sake and not as an means.

    The famous economist Stuart Mill, certainly eighty years earlier but who have decisively influenced on the ethical and moral conception of Keynes, began studying Greek at age three and read the Greeks, including Plutarch, on Greek language.

    In any case, the text is of extraordinary interest, by  its resemblance to modern times, although the difference is big too: now we are not building  Parthenon, nor Propylaea or odeons,  or …