During Caesar's Alexandrian War, B.C.
48, the larger collection was consumed by fire and again burnt by the
Saracens in A.D. 640. An immense loss was inflicted upon mankind thereby;
but when we are told of 700,000, or even 500,000 of such volumes being
destroyed we instinctively feel that such numbers must be a great
exaggeration. Equally incredulous must we be when we read of half a
million volumes being burnt at Carthage some centuries later, and other
similar accounts.
Among the earliest records of the wholesale destruction of Books
is that narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul,
many of the Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their books
together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price
of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver" (Acts xix, 19).
Doubtless these books of idolatrous divination and alchemy, of
enchantments and witchcraft, were righteously destroyed by those to
whom they had been and might again be spiritually injurious; and
doubtless had they escaped the fire then, not one of them would have
survived to the present time, no MS.of that age being now extant.
Nevertheless, I must confess to a certain amount of mental disquietude
and uneasiness when I think of books worth 50,000 denarii--or, speaking
roughly, say L18,750,[1] of our modern money being made into bonfires.
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