The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture and Society)

by Canfora (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $9.03

  The Library of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the Ancient World, and it 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. The idea of the universal library and its destruction still has the power to move us. But what was the library, and where was it? Contemporary descriptions are vague and contradictory. Luciano 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 texture of a novel, yet Canfora bases all of them on historical and literary sources in this elegant piece of historical detective work.