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Loading... The Vanished Libraryby Luciano Canfora
None.  TheCriticalTimes | Feb 26, 2013 |  This is history in the form of investigative narrative. The author presents sixteen narratives about the Library of Alexandria constructed from classical sources including Homer, Plutarch and Diogenes. He goes on to present commentaries on sources of information about the Library ranging from Gibbon to a discussion of the archaeologists knowledge of the construction and plan of the library. The combination is both a fascinating and unique approach to the history of one of the wonders of the ancient world. (  ) jwhenderson | Aug 13, 2012 | I've long been fascinated by the Library of Alexandria, so I expected to like this book a lot. By the end, however, I was mostly just confused. (  ) wanack | Jul 18, 2010 | A somewhat unusual history, in that it consists of a series of rather loosely connected episodes relating to the famous library of Alexandria, starting with a visit by Hecataeus of Abdera to the tomb of Rameses II and ending with the caliph Omar's command to burn the contents of the library on the grounds that if the books contradicted the book of the Prophet, they deserved to be destroyed, and if they were in accordance with the book of the Prophet, they were superfluous and therefore deserved to be destroyed. The final episode in the series, "The Dialogue of John Philoponus with the Emir Amrou Ibn el-Ass while Amrou prepared to burn the Library", could easily have been a story written by Borges. (  ) jburlinson | Mar 21, 2010 | While not overly scholarly, it still presents some valuable information with decent sourcing. (  ) crmass | Apr 10, 2009 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0520072553, Paperback)The Library of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the Ancient World, has haunted Western culture for over 2,000 years. The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt--successors of Alexander the Great--had a staggering ambition: to house all of the books ever written under one roof, and the story of the universal library and its destruction still has the power to move us. But what was the library, and where was it? Did it exist at all? Contemporary descriptions are vague and contradictory. The fate of the precious books themselves is a subject of endless speculation. Canfora resolves these puzzles in one of the most unusual books of classical history ever written. He recreates the world of Egypt and the Greeks in brief chapters that marry the craft of the novelist and the discipline of the historian. Anecdotes, conversations, and reconstructions give The Vanished Library the compulsion of an exotic tale, yet Canfora bases all of them on historical and literary sources, which he discusses with great panache. As the chilling conclusion to this elegant piece of historical detective work he establishes who burned the books. This volume has benefited from the collegial support of The Wake Forest University Studium. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:50:33 -0500) No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Even so, I would highly recommend this short book to anyone learning or teaching about the reality behind the legend of both the library and the city of Alexandria. (