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发帖数: 38403 | 1 Agora (5/9) Movie CLIP - Overtaking the Library of the Serapeum (2009) HD | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 2 Decree of Theodosius, destruction of the Serapeum in 391
Paganism was made illegal by an edict of the Emperor Theodosius I in 391.
The holdings of the Great Library (both at the Mouseion and at the Serapeum)
were on the precincts of pagan temples. While this had previously lent them
a measure of protection, in the days of the Christian Roman Empire,
whatever protection this had previously afforded them had ceased.The temples
of Alexandria were closed by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in AD 391.
Socrates of Constantinople provides the following account of the destruction
of the temples in Alexandria, in the fifth book of his Historia
Ecclesiastica, written around 440:
At the solicitation of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued
an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city
; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of
Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the
utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt. And to begin with, he
caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out, and exhibited to public view the
tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then he destroyed the Serapeum, and the
bloody rites of the Mithreum he publicly caricatured; the Serapeum also he
showed full of extravagant superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus
carried through the midst of the forum. [...] Thus this disturbance having
been terminated, the governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of
the troops in Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples.
—Socrates; Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James (1885), "Socrates: Book V:
Chapter 16", in Philip Schaff et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, II, II
The Serapeum housed part of the Great Library, but it is not known how many,
if any, books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, the
passage by Socrates makes no clear reference to a library or its contents,
only to religious objects. An earlier text by the historian Ammianus
Marcellinus indicates that, whatever books might earlier have been housed at
the Serapeum, none was there in the last decade of the 4th century. The
pagan author Eunapius of Sardis witnessed the demolition, and though he
detested Christians, and was a scholar, his account of the Serapeum's
destruction makes no mention of any library. When Orosius discusses the
destruction of the Great Library at the time of Caesar in the sixth book of
his History against the Pagans, he writes:
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.
—Paulus Orosius, vi.15.32
Thus Orosius laments the pillaging of libraries within temples in 'his own
time' by 'his own men' and compares it to the destruction of the Great
Library destroyed at the time of Julius Caesar. He is certainly referring to
the destruction of the Pagan temples of Alexandria as these were destroyed
during his lifetime, and seeing as his book entitled "Against the Pagans"
was a defense of Christianity, "our men" must surely refer to the Christians
who were ordered to destroy the Pagan temples. Whilst he admits that the
accusations of plunder are “true enough,” he then suggests that the books
in question were not copies of those that had been housed at the Great
Library, but rather new books "to rival the ancient love of literature."
As for the Museum, Mostafa El-Abbadi writes in Life and Fate of the Ancient
Library of Alexandria (1990):
The Mouseion, being at the same time a 'shrine of the Muses', enjoyed a
degree of sanctity as long as other pagan temples remained unmolested.
Synesius of Cyrene, who studied under Hypatia at the end of the fourth
century, saw the Mouseion and described the images of the philosophers in it
. We have no later reference to its existence in the fifth century. As Theon
, the distinguished mathematician and father of Hypatia, herself a renowned
scholar, was the last recorded scholar-member (c. 380), it is likely that
the Mouseion did not long survive the promulgation of Theodosius' decree in
391 to destroy all pagan temples in the city.
—El-Abbadi, Mostafa (1990), The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of
Alexandria (2, illustrated ed.), Unesco/UNDP, pp. 159, 160, ISBN 92-3-102632
-1
John Julius Norwich, in his work Byzantium: The Early Centuries, places the
destruction of the library's collection during the anti-Arian riots in
Alexandria that transpired after the imperial decree of 391 (p. 314). Edward
Gibbon claimed that the Library of Alexandria was destroyed by Theophilus,
Bishop of Alexandria, who ordered the destruction of the Serapeum in 391 |
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