/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6827233]

What are some good reads about the library of Alexandria? Specifically the burning(s) of it?

Also general cry thread about all the would be great literature that was destroyed.

[Anonymous No.6827677]

>lit

>books

[Anonymous No.6827694]

The Library of Alexandria by Kelly Trumble

[Anonymous No.6827715]

>tfw you'll never read the lost stoic works

[Anonymous No.6827739]

>>6827715
I find it very sad that we lost so many pieces of literal art.

[Anonymous No.6827753]

probably the worst thing that has happened to academia. It literally sent us back 1,000 years

[Anonymous No.6827756]

Which burning are we talking about? I think it was burned once by Christians, the Serapion (seen in Agora) was burned, and then the Arabs burned a rebuilt library for good measure (accidentally, as they claim).

Don't forget the burning of books and burial of scholars OP. They didn't stop at the books. They literally buried academics alive.

If you think about it Alexandria was just one library. It may have been the most important libraryThe (Neo)Platonic school was still going strong at Athens.

The Qin burned every single library in the entire empire, and killed anyone they found with books.

[Anonymous No.6827757]

mankinds greatest tragedy

[Anonymous No.6827759]

It's kind of inevitable that stuff like that happened during all the shitstorms that area of the world endured, still very sad though.

[Anonymous No.6827761]

>>6827756
if /lit/ were a dictatorship I bet we'd do the same as Qin

[Anonymous No.6827766]

What was THE burning? IIRC it was burnt to shit by Julius Caesar, then you stop hearing about it for a while, then it was likely damaged by Christians, then there's an apocryphal tale about Muslims burning it. Both Muslims and Christians have been blamed for destroying it.

[Anonymous No.6827772]

>>6827756


And do you, /lit/, think that it could ever happen again?

[Anonymous No.6827782]

>>6827766
>/lit/ failing at reading comprehension once again.

[Anonymous No.6827785]

>>6827753
Not necessarily true,

http://www.quora.com/How-has-the-burning-of-the-Library-of-Alexandria-affected-the-world-and-where-would-we-be-if-it-never-happened

[Anonymous No.6827795]

>>6827785
Wow hahahahahah

[Anonymous No.6827806]

>>6827785
>basing your opinions on some forum retard

kek

[Anonymous No.6827825]

>>6827233
I used to have a good book for you but I lost it in a fire.

[Anonymous No.6827831]

>>6827785
>http://www.quora.com/How-has-the-burning-of-the-Library-of-Alexandria-affected-the-world-and-where-would-we-be-if-it-never-happened

>Some modern writers have taken these numbers seriously, but there is no way the Library could have housed anything like this number of books

How the fuck do they know this? Slave scribes can be enormously prodigious, and most of the scrolls weren't even /lit/, most them were travel brochures to the Nile, and endless copies of a tourist's guide to Alexander's tomb.

[Anonymous No.6827838]

>>6827785
Atheists BTFO

[Anonymous No.6827842]

>>6827831
Yeah I've heard the vast majority of library was just bullshit records of sales and shit. Or maybe that's what we tell ourselves to feel better about losing god knows what

[Anonymous No.6827858]

>>6827715
>getting mad about not being able to read the stoics

sort of iron

[Anonymous No.6827868]

>>6827842
there are writings that will never be read again. It's a fact.

Just like you're virginity

[Anonymous No.6827870]

More knowledge has probably been lost through the reuse of parchment—scraping off the original text and writing a new text on it—than has ever been lost through the destruction of a single building.

[Anonymous No.6827917]

>>6827870
Why do you think that, anon?

[Anonymous No.6827921]

>>6827870
>>6827917
>inb4 bible shit talk

[Anonymous No.6827933]

Reminder that Julius Caesar drew up schematics for a rocket and stored them in the library with the label "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 391 AD", which was the very year the library was destroyed by Christians.

[Anonymous No.6827976]

>>6827917
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

The burning of the library of Alexandria is a symbolic bang, a big event in which the world changes. That is why it is remembered even though it might not have happened at all. It might have been partially burned but the majority of the texts survived, or it might have burned when there were less works. It is much more likely that the library simply declined in importance. People took the works out over time and put less in. The greek plays that we cherish now might have seemed boring and old-fashioned so they were not thought worthy of preservation, etc. But a dramatic, barbaric ending is more fun than a slow loss.

[Anonymous No.6828077]

>>6827976

I'd say the works gradually left the public libraries and found their way into the villas of the aristocracy. This gradualist hypothesis works well in the West.

The Qin dynasty shenanigans on the other hand, are just insane. A lot of what happened in the west was due to accident, or simple ignorance. In a few short years Qin enacted a deliberate state policy to destroy all written learning, the only real analogue is China under Mao...

While a Greek thinker might be respected in his Polis, a scholar official in Zhou times might control the entire productive capacity of a state with millions of inhabitants. And all they did with this vast potential was mass produce weapons by which their culture was destroyed.

[Anonymous No.6828104]

>>6828077
Ohh
Back to /pol/ with you.

[Anonymous No.6828109]

Literally who cares about that modernist garabe? All we lost was a bunch of old white men telling us how good old white men were.

[Anonymous No.6828114]

I never understood why people consider the burning of the Library to be such a big deal.
Surely the books/scrolls that were destroyed were not unique? I refuse to believe that people just deposited the only copy of their work, without even copying it out onto another scroll, to a library on the other side of the Mediterranean.
The only things I can think of that would be original and uncopied are trade documents, bills of sale, and ship manifests.

[Anonymous No.6828122]

>>6828109
>all we lost was writings that could have accelerated to genius discoveries.

[Anonymous No.6828135]

>>6828109
Fuck off, nigger.

[Anonymous No.6828475]

>>6827756
>>6828077
The story about total destruction of books by the Qin is a exaggerated Han Dynasty legend. Qin libraries were actually destroyed in the revolts that ended the dynasty.

[Anonymous No.6828478]

>>6828114

Actually Greek civilization was the celebration of the unique. Every jar, every sword, every scroll was unique, made out of nonstandard materials, with differing degrees of handwriting, abbreviation, spelling, and content.

For all we know, all we've got are the ancient equivalent of Penguin editions.

[Anonymous No.6828489]

>>6828475

Well somebody did it. It's not farfetched the populace was so riled up. When they did the archeological studies of the great wall, how many dead bodies did they find?

Honestly it doesn't matter at all to me whether Qin Shi Huang burned the books and buried the scholars, or simply killed so many people that the people burned public libraries out of revenge. It all kind of seems like his fault.

[Anonymous No.6828502]

Isn't it ironic?
John Greene hates the patriarchy and talked shit on it in his video about the Odyssey, but he laments the loss of all that work at the Great Library...
Even though, all the stuff there was more patrician books.

[Anonymous No.6828620]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle

Surviving classical literature is filled with fragments of long-lost works, many of which were praised at the time. Who knows what has been lost to history.

[Anonymous No.6828714]

>>6827753
>linear progress of humankind

[Anonymous No.6828938]

>>6828502

Having those books would cast doubt on the Christian claim to be preservers, since we're basically stuck with whatever didn't offend the curia.

[Anonymous No.6829017]

>You'll never go back in time with a solar powered enterprise scanner and scan the library and thus saving countless works

[Anonymous No.6829033]

>>6827753
Academia has never made progress.
The library was barely academic. Reading was a different game back then.

[Anonymous No.6829034]

>>6828475
Source?

[Anonymous No.6829045]

they had ereaders back then, all the tech got burned and the schematics with them, what a waste, literally caused christianity and marxism

[Anonymous No.6829734]

>>6827753
>teleology