The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, Revised Edition

209 Pages·2004·7.34 MB·English

by  Roy MacLeod

THE LIBRARY
OF ALEXANDRIA
THE LIBRARY
OF ALEXANDRIA

THE LIBRARY
OF ALEXANDRIA
CENTRE OF LEARNING IN
THE ANCIENT WORLD
Edited by
Roy MACLEOD
I.B.TAURIS
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Revised paperback edition published in 2004 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
Paperback edition published in 2002 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
First published in 2000 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
Copyright © Roy MacLeod, 2000, 2002, 2004
The right of Roy MacLeod to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof,
may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 85043 594 5

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by The Midlands Book Typesetting Co., Loughborough, Leicestershire
Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press India Ltd
Contents
Notes on Contributors VB
Map of Alexandria x
Preface Xl
Introduction: Alexandria in History and Myth
Roy MacLeod
Part I. Alexandria in History and Myth
1. Before Alexandria: Libraries in the Ancient Near East
D.T Potts 19
2. Alexandria: The Umbilicus of the Ancient World
Wendy Brazil 35
3. Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken-Coop of the Muses:
The Ancient Library of Alexandria
Robert Barnes 61
4. Aristotle's Works: The Possible Origins of the
Alexandria Collection
R.G. Tanner 79
Part II. Scholarship in the Alexandrian Manner
5. Doctors in the Library: The Strange T,ile of Apollonius
the Bookworm and Other Stories
John Vallance 95
6. The Theatre of Paphos and the Theatre of Alexandria:
Some First Thoughts
.f.R. Green 115
7. Scholars and Students in the Roman East
Samuel N. C. Lien 127
8. The Neoplatonists and the Mystery Schools
of the Mediterranean
Patricia Cannon Johnson 143
9. Alexandria and its Medieval Legacy:
The Book, the Monk and the Rose
J.O. Ward 163
Bibliography 181
Index 191

Notes on Contributors
Robert Barnes is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at the Australian
National University, with interests in ancient philosophy and religion,
and in bibliography and the history of libraries. He has been much
concerned to arouse public discussion of the recent narrowing of its
collecting policy by the National Library of Australia.
Wendy Brazil took her BA at the University of Sydney, MA degrees
in Classics and Linguistics at the Australian National University, and
a MEd degree at the University of Canberra. She has been a research
officer in Parliament House, a librarian at the National Library of
Australia, a tutor in education at the University of Canberra, a
theatre reviewer, and is currently a Fellow of University House at the
ANU. She also is a teacher of Latin and Greek in secondary schools
and at the Centre for Continuing Education (ANU). She is the author
of articles in the IPA Review and Education Monitor, and has written a
new curriculum for Latin, entitled Fabulous Latin. She is also the
convenor of the Latin Reading Symposium at University House 'in
uino latinitas', and 'Latin with Lunch' at the University of Canberra.
J.R. Green is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of
Sydney and is the author of numerous books and articles on ancient
theatre, including Images of the Greek Theatre (British Museum Press
1995; Greek translation, Crete University Press 1996) and Theatre in
Ancient Greek Society (Routledge 1994, paperback 1996). He is Director
of the University's excavations in Paphos, Cyprus, and a Senior
Research Fellow of the Institute of Classical Studies, London.
Patricia Cannon Johnson was born in England, and studied conserva
tion of antiquities at the University of London Institute of
Archaeology. She then worked for thirteen years in the Egyptian and
Greek and Roman departments of the British Museum. In 1980, after
a period as a freelance, she became Conservator at the Nicholson
Museum of the University of Sydney, from which she retired in 1997.
She now works as a writer, restorer, and teacher of Mystery studies.
Samuel N.C. Lieu is the Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie
University, and co-Director of its Ancient History Documentary
Research Centre. He was previously Professor of Classics and Ancient
History at Warwick University, and Director of its Centre for
Research in East Roman Studies. He read Ancient History at
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THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
Cambridge and took his doctorate at Oxford with a thesis on the
comparative study of Manichaeism in Rome and China. Since 1990,
he has been co-ordinator of the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum
Project - a UNESCO sponsored project which aims to publish 60+
volumes Manichaean texts discovered by archaeologists from sites
along the Silk Road in Central Asia and from sites in Egypt. In 1996
he was awarded a grant by the Australian Research Council for a
project on Manichaean texts. His research interests include the
comparative study of historiography in Rome and Chain, the military
history of Rome's eastern frontier, the conflict of paganism and
Christianity in Late Antiquity, and the use of computers for research
and teaching in ancient history. He is a l<'ellow of the Society of Anti
quaries (London) and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Roy MacLeod is the Professor of History at the University of Sydney.
Educated at Harvard, the London School of Economics, and
Cambridge, he has written extensively on the history of European
science, technology and medicine, and on the history of European
expansion overseas. He has taught in England, France, the Nether
lands and the United States, and has held senior appointments at
several universities. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of
London, and of the Academy for the Social Sciences in Australia. He is
currently writing on the transmission of ideas from Europe to the
'periphery', as seen through the idea, ideology and architecture of the
modern museum.
D.T. Potts is Edwin Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern
Archaeology at the University of Sydney. He has excavated exten
sively in the United Arab Emirates in recent years and has written
extensively on a wide range of topics in the archaeology and early
history of Iran, Mesopotamia and Arabia. He is best known for his
two volume work, The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, published by Oxford
University Press in 1990; for his two volumes on the Pre-Islamic
Coinage of Eastern Arabia, published in Copenhagen in 1991 and
1994; for his recent Mesopotamian Civilization: The Material Founda
tions, co-published by Athlone (London) and Cornell University Press
in 1997; and for The Archaeology of Elam published by Cambridge
University Press in 1999. He is the founder and editor of the interna
tional journal Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy published by
Munksgaard in Denmark, as well as the founder and co-editor of
ABIEL, a monograph series focusing on Arabian archaeology and
epigraphy, published by Brepols in Belgium. He is l<'ellow of the
Society of Antiquaries (London) and the Australian Academy of the
Humanities.
V III
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
R.G. Tanner is Professor Emeritus of Classics and Lecturer in Sanskrit
at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. He graduated from
Cambridge in 1952, and subsequently taught at Melbourne University,
1953-5, and at The King's School Parramatta, 1957-1959, before
moving to Newcastle as a Senior Lecturer in 1960. He was Foundation
Professor of Classics at Newcastle from 1964 to 1993. He was
Commonwealth Fellow at St. John's, Cambridge, 1967-68, and Presi
dent of ASCS, 1992-95. He has published widely in ancient drama,
Latin literature, Greek philosophy, patristic studies and Sanskrit. His
publications on Artistotle include 'Aristotle as a Structural Linguist'
TPS (London, 1969), 94-164, and 'Form and Substance in Aristotle',
Prudentia, Xv, 2, (1983), 87-108.
John Vallance is Head master of Sydney Grammar School. He read
Classics at the University of Sydney, and St. John's College Cambridge.
Between 1986 and 1993, he was a Fellow and Tutor of Gonville and
Caius College, Cambridge, lecturing in Classics and the History of
Science. He is the author of articles on ancient philosophy, science and
medicine, including many in the third edition of the Oxford Classical
Dictionary (1996), and is an editorial adviser and contributor to the
Enciclopedia Italiana. His publications include The Lost Theory ofA sclepi
ades of Bithynia (Oxford, 1990). He is completing a Source Book in Greek
Science for Cambridge University Press.
J.O. Ward is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the
University of Sydney. He has written a number of books and articles on
medieval intellectual life, general medieval history, monastic history,
witchcraft, the crusades and the Templars. He has an international
reputation for his work on Ciceronian rhetoric in the Middle Ages. He
has recently published Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion, and
Commentary (Brepols, 1995)
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