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Serious question, did the Library of Alexandria actually burn down all at once?
I was reading this old book last week about ancient libraries, and it said the whole 'burned in a single fire' thing is way overblown. Like, there were multiple fires over centuries, and a lot of stuff was already ruined or taken before the big one. But then I saw a documentary that claims the main fire in 48 BC did wipe out a huge chunk of records. I tried looking up primary sources, but they're all from way later and super biased. So which is it? Did it happen in one dramatic blaze or was it a slow decay? Has anyone else dug into this and found a solid answer?
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king.val2mo ago
Makes you wonder if it even matters at this point though, right? Like whatever's left has probably been rebuilt and rewritten so many times who really knows what's true.
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