The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture & Society) [Paperback]

Luciano Canfora (Author), Martin Ryle (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 29, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0520072553 | ISBN-13: 978-0520072558

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Canfora, an expert in ancient literature and a professor at the University of Bari (Italy), has created a loving, anecdotal ramble through that fabled store of classical learning, the Library of Alexandria, its history and destruction, probably not, in Canfora's opinion, during Caesar's campaign but some 300 to 400 years later, as the Arab world began to encroach on a crumbling Roman Empire. The author stops along the way to consider some germane (and some tangential) subjects: the fate of Aristotle's writings, the rival library at Pergamum, Ramses II's victory over the Hittites at Kadesh, the creation of the Septuagint. To avoid further distractions on this peripatetic journey, Canfora reserves the exegesis of historical sources to the second half of the book. But this is not without its drawbacks: the sense that one is getting only half the story at any given point and the inevitable redundancies. Whatever the shortcomings of this approach to an admittedly murky subject, Canfora makes clear g the importance of the Library. No matter how much was destroyed, far more was conserved--or created--by the scholars and copyists who worked within its confines.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Canfora guides us through the labyrinth of traditions about the library, reawakening for us the myth of the world's memory safeguarded in a single place for an lite of intellectuals." -- Prfaces, Paris

"The Vanished Library is an extraordinarily innovative work of ancient history. It is not just that the book engages with cultural debates outside the field of Classics. Canfora is also experimenting with new ways of writing the history of the Classical world. . . . [The Vanished Library] is staking a claim for the reintegration of ancient history into the contemporary cultural agenda. . . . In the Anglo-American context such reintegration is definitely overdue." -- Mary Beard, London Review of Books

"This mystery has awaited, for a long time, a historian with the temperament of a writer as well as that of a scholar, and it has found its ideal match in Luciano Canfora." -- La Stampa, Turin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (August 29, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520072553
• ISBN-13: 978-0520072558
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #860,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Introduction to the Great Library, August 24, 2003

By 

D. B. Killings "Dagnabbit!" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture & Society) (Paperback)

Almost certainly, no other ancient institution has caught the modern imagination so much as has The Library of Alexandria. Begun around 300BC, this remarkable establishment became _the_ center of learning and scholarship in the Mediterranean world for hundreds of years thereafter. Our debt to the great library is incalculable; to it we owe the Septuagint (the Greek translations of the Old Testament), the standardization of Homer and Hesiod to their final forms, and the survival of the great Greek thinkers (Plato, Aristotle) to modern times. The beginnings of modern thought -- science, philosophy, mathematics, medicine -- can all be traced to this unique collection and the people who were a part of its scholarly society. It was the home to writers and thinkers that we are familiar with (Polybius, Appollonius Rhodius) and to far more that we are not but should (Theophrastus, Neleus). And its demise ranks as one of the greatest tragedies in Western history.

In The Vanished Library, Luciano Ganfora (translated here by Martin Ryle) gives a popular account of the history of the Library, from its founding and shadowy beginnings, all the way up to its decline and destruction centuries later. But what makes this book interesting is that Ganfora resists the temptation to slip into the academic spouting of facts, figures, and theories at every opportunity. Rather, his aim is to not only show the reader the library, but to give one a feel for what it was like to _be_ there, to work among the thousands of scrolls, and to live the life of the ancient Greek scholar. His research is grounded firmly in the original sources, many of which he discusses at length in the book's appendix and several of which he quotes at length. The book sometime feels like a novel, because Ganfora frequently adopts a storyteller's tone in order to illustrate some aspect he wishes us to explore. Occasionally, Ganfora also digresses into some of the more controversial areas of the Library's history; he argues, for instance, that Caesar's sacking of Alexandria during the Roman Civil Wars did not destroy the library as many scholars insist, but rather destroyed an annex that was used to house finished scrolls meant for export across the Mediterranean (the Library being also a major source for the dissemination of literary works across the known world). But none of this detracts from the book itself. It does a very good job of introducing one to the subject of the Library and what we know about it, and makes for a rather delightful read along the way.

This is not to say that this is the best introductory book on the subject out there; in my opinion, that would have to go to Derek Adie Flower's The Shores of Wisdom. Ganfora does skip over whole areas of the Library's history that Flower does not, and goes more in depth than Ganfora on some of the academic arguments surrounding such subjects as the Library's demise and its impact on Western culture. But Ganfora's book is easier to read for the layperson, and shorter -- one could read it cover-to-cover in literally a single sitting. And I think Ganfora does a better job of evoking the sense of just what the Library was like than Flower. For this reason I would recommend this book _along with_ The Shores of Wisdom; both work as complementary pieces, with the short comings of the one made up in the other.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One thousand years as a temple of learning and wisdom, April 14, 2003

By 

OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture & Society) (Paperback)

I found this book both informative, as well as, a joy to read. That is because most of it reads more like a novel than a formal academic study. This is done to put the reader into the overall cultural mindset of Alexandria and the library at various points in it's almost 1000 year history.

Having done my own research on this topic in college I can vouch for the accuracy and completeness of the author's research. The truth is that there is very little surviving hard data about this institution (and absolutely no surviving archeological evidence.) There is however an original revelation that the layout of the Museum may very well have imitated that of the Ramesseum at Thebes. This is due to the fact that the Greek rulers of the Ptolemaic period adhered closely to classical Egyptian forms- at least in a superficial and material manner.

This book clears up some popular misconceptions. First of all, there was no "library" as a separate institution or structure. It was always an inseparable part of the overall Museum. Secondly, the Museum was in no sense a secular institution. It was truly a temple to the Muses, and Holy Wisdom, with sacred functions. Even under Roman control it continued to be administered by a priest.

Finally, it would seem that the Romans had nothing to do with the burning of the Museum, indeed there was no damage during the Roman conquest. The greatest damage is shown to have been done in late antiquity at the hands of Christian fanatics- like so many simular of cases of the mindless destruction of our classical heritage.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly enjoyable read., February 8, 2000

By 

Robert Eaglestone - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture & Society) (Paperback)

From the beginning of this book, we are treated to historical references [in order of their occurrance] to the famous Library at Alexandria, with an eye toward clearing up the fundamental mysteries surrounding it: where was the Library located? What was its place in ancient culture? And, finally, when and how many times was it really destroyed?

An enjoyable and profound read, part history, part mystery; a refreshing change from the dry texts of collegiate studies. A book that engages the imagination as well as the intellect. An excellent piece of detective work.

I loved it.