If the Great Library was never destroyed?

V-J, do you have the slightest shred of evidence to support that garbage?

There is no evidence nor even a claim made in history that the Library was in decline, failing to produce new copies of existing works or suffering from any shortage of either dedication or manpower throughout the House of Ptolemy, the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire, remaining in a class by itself for over half a millenia.

What part of torching the books and scrolls having the decisive effect in ending the library is too much for you to understand?
 
V-J, do you have the slightest shred of evidence to support that garbage?

Well in the abscence of real evidence, which is the situation we broadly have with the library, all we can really rely on is intelligent guesswork. It's reasonable to suppose that the library declined because such a huge collection would require a huge upkeep. A lot, very likely a majority, of the library's collection wasn't copied in-house, it was formed on the back of donated works, acquistions (and in some notable cases, theft) etc. So probably even under the Ptolemies there wasn't the number of copyists required to support the collection when old works required re-copying. In short, the library would have had to have been expanding in terms of staffing and copying effort as the centuries progressed, when in fact the references to the library in ancient sources seem to diminish as time goes on. By the 4th century there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of them.

If you have a problem with my reasoning, then please provide counters. Or if your sources say differently, please provide them. It would be so much more impressive than your current strategy of simply dismissing my contribution as "garbage" with absolutely no use of either.
 
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V-J, when you make an absurd claim entirely unsupported by evidence it is your job to provide that evidence, not to pretend the claim is valid unless someone else disproves what hasn't been proven in the first place.

Guesswork you may be offering but hardly intelligent. For instance, you now suggest that from the start, under the Ptolemies, there would have been a shortage of the copyists needed. Evidence? Any at all?

You claim the staff of the library was not expanding over the centuries. Again, any evidence at all?
 
You claim the staff of the library was not expanding over the centuries. Again, any evidence at all?

Perhaps you missed it the first time. If so, I'll repeat it. In fact, I'll italicise it for you.

We are not dealing with a situation in which there is a great deal of evidence, as I think would have been pretty obvious from the thread. We are dealing with a situation in which what caused the library to fade is disputed. There are multiple theories precisely because we do not know. And all those well-known theories have been criticised by historians because none of them are entirely satisfactory. The one that you seem to have plumped for (religious unrest) is about as shaky as the rest of them. I have made what I think is a pretty decent argument based on reasonably inferences.

But then maybe you, like the patrons of the library itself, have special access to some higher level of knowledge, Grimm. As you've been so assiduous in demanding it from me, perhaps you could provide us all with the evidence that conclusively proves the fact that you are right, and then we can all go home for tea happy at having been drawn out our ignorance.
 
Curious, would any of these scrolls contain some of Archimedes work? Some believe he was on the brink of particular theorms that were trying to be solved in the 15th century.

If his mathematics were kept at the library and taught... well what would be the outcome then?
 

mowque

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Curious, would any of these scrolls contain some of Archimedes work? Some believe he was on the brink of particular theorms that were trying to be solved in the 15th century.

If his mathematics were kept at the library and taught... well what would be the outcome then?

This might prove useful in stuff like medicine and mathematics. Perhaps if the 'old works' are never lost (then re-discovered and treated like Holy Writ) perhaps people will be more eager to advance and change their ideas?
 
This might prove useful in stuff like medicine and mathematics. Perhaps if the 'old works' are never lost (then re-discovered and treated like Holy Writ) perhaps people will be more eager to advance and change their ideas?

Except that largely speaking that is the opposite of how it works. Preservationist societies are more likely to reject (written and philosophical) innovation that disagrees with the classics.

The Europeans did have a burst of thought following the introduction of the classics of Greek literature from the Roman world, but it would be very wrong to take it that it was because they were taking the new ideas from the classics. The classics arrived in Christian Europe as an educated class was already bootstrapping itself into existence and economies and populations were growing. To the extent that they did have a role, it was in the very fact that they were new. Had they always been there, they would have been taken for granted and assumed correct. Being new, they were tested and attempts made to duplicate or even improve on the logic of the ancients.

Libraries are an important support for innovative societies. What they aren't is an engine.
 
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