We have already called attention (p. 62) to the change in literature from the roll book to the book of leaves; and would now note the further change in the roll-book by which the smaller rolls, convenient for handling, were substituted for the enormous and cumbrous ones often encountered. The bulkier manuscript rolls, composed as they were of parchment or papyrus,—chiefly of papyrus at Alexandria—sometimes having the length of one hundred and twenty feet or even longer, came to be divided into smaller rolls as making up a given large work,—the number of which being determined by the size of the respective works, or, somewhat, as in poetry, by the character of the composition. The object of this was to facilitate handling and reference, and, incidentally, the preservation of the manuscript;—the opening portions of the roll, as also the initial pages of a book of leaves, being most frequently handled, were subjected to greatest "wear and tear." Under this change, the History of Herodotus, e. g., was multiplied into nine and the Iliad of Homer into twenty-four "books" or volumes; and the entire Bible which, if contained in one roll would prove unwieldly and almost incapable of use, would require thirty or forty or more rolls. The size of the Medieval Bibles, when made up in a book with leaves instead of the roll form, was immense. They were veritable libraries in themselves—consisting of four or five, in one instance of fourteen, great folio volumes. The Bible, however, being written by many different authors and having a great diversity of themes, would, by reason of this difference in authorship and subject-matter, more readily lend itself to an arrangement into separate rolls or books than many of the early classic writings. Indeed, the Bible, while it is THE BOOK, is, essentially, a large collection of separate books. Not the Bible alone but other large works, as the Iliad and the Odyssey, notwithstanding the unity and continuity of their themes, were also divided into "books" or rolls, and these were numbered or named by the letters of the Greek alphabet:—"Iliad A" would designate the first book of Homer's Iliad, and so on unto the end of the composition. This change to smaller books, and thus to a larger number of separate volumes, came about or was facilitated and expedited in the Library at Alexandria. One, Callimachus, the grammarian, seems to have been greatly instrumental in its furtherance; for, as says Mr. Putnam, "From his time the cumbrous scrolls began to disappear, and as well for the editions of the classics as for the literature of the day, the small rolls came into use."[66]

The method of collecting books (as well as the multiplication of smaller rolls from a single larger roll by transcription) tended also to the enlargement of the Alexandrian Library. We are informed by tradition that, in addition to the purchase of rolls, the books taken by the authorities from Greeks and other foreigners coming into Egypt were sent to the Library and there copied by the scribes in its employ. The copies thus made were delivered to the owners of the books, while the originals from which the copies were made were deposited in the Library. If this tradition is to be credited, then, how absolutely beyond estimate was the importance of the Alexandrian Library as the chief and the almost exclusive depository of original manuscripts of both sacred and classic literature—and for a long period of time. And if this was the fact, then it is highly probable that the original copies of the New Testament, or of books thereof, and of the Old Testament entire, were translated into the Greek during this period of literary activity in Alexandria in order to meet the needs: First, of the Greek-speaking Jews—later, of the Greek-speaking apostles and Christian teachers and disciples; and that these books were among the treasures of this most famous Library of the ancient world, or, indeed, of all time. On the authority of Tertullian, who lived in the first quarter of the third century, and of Chrysostom, who lived in the last half of the fourth century, the original Septuagint Version of the Old Testament scriptures—reputed to have been made near Alexandria in the third century B. C.—and, probably, with it autograph copies of the whole or parts of the New Testament were deposited in the Library at Alexandria.

[It may not be without its interest while referring to the large number of books treasured in the Alexandrian Library to mention, parenthetically, the number of volumes contained in some of the leading libraries of the United States and of the world:

Johns Hopkins University220,000
The University of California240,000
The University of Michigan252,000
Princeton University260,000
The University of Pennsylvania285,000
Cornell University355,000
Columbia University430,000
The University of Chicago480,000
New York State Library (Albany)500,000
Yale University550,000
Harvard University800,000
Boston Public Library, about1,000,000
New York Consolidated Library, about1,400,000
Library of United States Congress, about1,800,000[67]
Strasburg University, France700,000
Royal Library, Berlin1,000,000
Imperial Library, Petrograd1,500,000
British Museum, London2,000,000
Bibliotheca National, Paris3,000,000[68]]

[XVIII]
VARYING FORTUNES OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY

The incomparable Library at Alexandria was exposed to the same vicissitudes as those which beset everything mundane. It was frequently rifled and portions of its contents were often destroyed through disturbances occurring in the period of the Roman domination, but it was as frequently replenished by the literary activity which found home and harborage in Alexandria for hundreds of years after the Christian Era had begun.

Tradition is divided both as to the time and the circumstances under which the Alexandrian Library and Museum, viewed as one institution, came to its end. The tradition which gained large credence that its career terminated at the time of the Saracen conquest of Alexandria in 642 A. D., and under the fanatical frenzy of the Caliph Omar, rests upon very questionable authority. The oft-quoted answer of the Saracen Emperor to the importunate appeal of the Alexandrian scholar (Joannes Grammaticus) to spare the Library, that, "If those books agreed with the Koran they were useless; if they did not agree with the Koran they were pernicious; in either case should be destroyed," rests mainly on the evidence of a stranger who lived six hundred years later, is discredited by the best authorities, and is "overbalanced," as says Gibbon, "by the silence of the early and native annalists." Says a writer in the North American Review: "It may have been destroyed during the great riot between the orthodox and Arian factions in 389, when the Serapeum, which is said to have housed it, was burned. It can hardly have had the wasting fate that perhaps befell its Roman rival, and it is certain that Omar's iconoclasm is a myth. With Gibbon's judgment modern historical scholarship concurs: 'The solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years in the confines of Media is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria.'"[69] The better conclusion, therefore, seems to be that there was little of the famous Alexandrian Library in existence at the time of the Saracen conquest in 642 A. D., owing to the fact of its earlier demolition, which was begun, at least, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, when, under the Emperor's permission, Archbishop Theophilus, at the close of the fourth century, led fanatical Christians in the destruction of heathen temples—not sparing the literary treasures of the Library which had been associated with an antecedent heathen patronage.

But, whatever the agencies of destruction, and whenever it was consummated, there is no difference of opinion among antiquarians, historians, and men of letters as to the world's irreparable loss and literary impoverishment when this far-famed Library and Museum (wherein had been gathered and treasured literature from Egypt, Rome, Greece, and India,—with its extensive departments for the business of transcribing literature, "and with every possible advantage which royal munificence on the one hand and learned assiduity on the other, could insure") was destroyed; and the literary accumulations of centuries, including the immense library from Pergamos and inestimably valuable manuscripts of the Bible, were ruthlessly and irremediably wasted.