Note 27 — Chapter XI · ASCLEPIADES, THE INTRODUCER OF GREEK MEDICINE INTO ROME

After Alexandria first came under Roman rule (about 30 B. C.) membership in the Museum was granted to athletes and other men of no education, and it is said that even before that time Ptolemy Euergetes, who had reopened the schools during the latter part of his reign, bestowed some of the important positions upon men who were simply his favorites. The library of the Museum was seriously damaged by fire at the time when Julius Caesar was being besieged in Alexandria by the inhabitants of that city, and was at last wholly destroyed by Amrou, the Lieutenant of the Caliph Omar, in A. D. 651. The truth of this extraordinary tale regarding the burning of books belonging to the library at Alexandria in the seventh century is seriously doubted by Sismondi (Histoire de la Chute de l’Empire Romain, Vol. II., p. 57). “It was,” he says, “published for the first time, by Abulpharagius, about six centuries after the event is supposed to have occurred. And yet the contemporaneous national historians, Entychius and Elmacin, make no mention of it whatever. An act of this nature, furthermore, would be in direct conflict with the precepts of the Koran and with the profound respect which the Mohammedans habitually entertain for every scrap of paper on which the name of God happens to be written.”

Under the later rule of the Romans, Alexandria regained a good deal of its literary importance and also became a chief seat of Christianity and theological learning; but as a centre of medical influence its glory had long since departed.