The Library of Alexandria

The Ptolemies establish at their palace the Museum — a residence for scholars at royal expense — and the Library, into which books are brought from all over the Mediterranean: scrolls were taken from ships calling at the port, copied, and the copy returned to the owner. Here Eratosthenes measures the circumference of the earth, Aristarchus proposes that the earth goes around the sun, and the philologists prepare the first critical texts of Homer. Here too, tradition says, the Torah was translated for the Greek reader — so the Septuagint came to be. The Library faded slowly, from the fire of Caesar's wars to the losses of late antiquity, and of its exact end we know nothing.