After we’d crossed over a few streets inland from the port we reached the city’s main street, Canopic Street, which stretched east to west as far as the eye could see. It was huge, an impressively broad thoroughfare which ran the whole breadth of the city. If Sema Street had been busy, Canopic Street was frenzied, with its large and imposing colonnades running away on either side of the street crammed with shops, offices, street cafes and small workshops. The cacophony from the metal
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workers beating their bowls and buckets, the furniture makers with their saws and chisels and the shouts of the butchers, the bakers and the other stall holders was deafening.
Right the way down the centre of the street ran a narrow canal which effectively divided it into two separate parallel boulevards and also gave some respite from the clangour and business of the city as well as cooling the already heat-filled air. To the west was the Moon gate. We turned eastwards towards the Sun Gate and the Nile Delta. The double roadway was jammed with carts and wagons, piled high with textiles, timber, building stone, everything imaginable. The drivers were pulling and pushing their mules and horses, their oxen and donkeys, jostling with each other as they careered along the carriageways. There were men bent double with carrying frames on their backs, leather belts tight across their foreheads, piled high with boxes and bales, weaving in and out of the various wheeled transports and there were camels, heads held high in the air, loping along through the middle of it all seemingly indifferent to the uproar, huge burdens roped to their humps. It looked chaotic to me, but everyone seemed to know what they were doing and where they were heading.
A little way along the street, on the left, was what must once have been a truly magnificent Ionic building, but it was now roofless and covered with wooden scaffolding.
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“That was the Biblioteca Alexandrina,” said Polios, “the great royal library of Alexandria I told you about. Can you believe it was built over half a millennium ago by Ptolemy Soter, the first Greek king of Egypt who’d been one of Alexander’s generals?”
We stopped to look at the frontage, its empty shell still impressive even gutted by fire as it clearly had been. Polios explained to me what had happened to it.
“Julius Caesar had a hand in damaging it some three hundred years ago during Rome’s civil war when he set an opposing Roman fleet alight in the harbour and the flames spread to the library. But by far the worst destruction that you see today happened only a few years ago, when it caught fire during the attack on the city by that fool Aurelian when he was emperor. You may remember he had pursued the Palmyrene queen Zenobia’s armies across the Syrian Desert and cornered her forces in Alexandria. She had declared Egypt and some portions of Asia Minor to be a part of her empire and for some reason she’d installed her son Valballathus as the regent here which I suppose must have been like a red rag to a Roman bull. As a result Aurelian rampaged across the Nile Delta and just destroyed everything in sight, irrespective of its importance. It was said he deliberately set fire to the library in retaliation for the Palmyrene insult to Rome. Of course, Aurelian blamed the Greeks for the fire, calling it an act of terrorism, as if they’d do that to their own priceless
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institution. Anyway, it burnt for three days and nights destroying a major part of the collection.”
We stood for a moment in silence staring at the gaunt remains.
“As I said, it was once alleged to have contained half a million books and scrolls,” he continued, “all the books ever written in fact. They had purchased all the original manuscripts of the plays written by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, as well as philosophic works by Aristotle and Plato, from the Athenians. They paid a fortune for them and I suppose they were indeed priceless. They had all manner of scientific treaties as well, works on natural history and a huge medical section with the works of physicians like Galen, the doctor who worked at his centre of healing, the Aesclepion at Pergamon. Most of it went up in smoke, though they did manage to salvage some of the papyri and a few of the parchment books. It was an absolute tragedy. Some scholars say it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to our civilization. Anyhow, they’ve started afresh at the old temple of Serapis. It will never be the same. I’m afraid a lot of the writings were absolutely irreplaceable, but it’s something at least. You should go and see it sometime while you’re here.”
I looked in amazement at the blackened carcase that rose from the broken steps. The bare pillars stood up vertically like accusing fingers raised against the blue morning sky, witnesses to the disaster of human greed and barbarism over culture and
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intelligence. I couldn’t imagine how much human skill and knowledge had been lost, thanks to the vaunting ambition of imperial Rome. Aurelian only lasted a year or two after that, until he was murdered, it was said, by his own staff. Well, he went to his death with this terrible catastrophe to his name.
We carried on up the street, stopping from time to time to admire yet another Greek portico. We were walking eastwards passing some very fine buildings lining the way. There was a magnificent temple to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The marble pillars in front of the porch shone in the sunlight and beyond it, set back from the street, there was an impressive façade of a Greek gymnasium behind which was a huge palaestra, an exercise hall. Athletic young men mostly younger than me were hurrying in and out through the main entrance.
“We’re heading for the Jewish quarter,” Polios mentioned. “I have many friends there. Even from the time the city was built the Jews here were very numerous. They were fiercely independent too, both from the authorities in the city and from their own Sanhedrin. They represented the real intelligentsia of their tribe and they even translated their own holy book, the Torah and the Prophets, into Greek, against the wishes of their leaders in Jerusalem. We Christians use their book now as part of our service, Jesus being originally Jewish. We call it our Old Testament.”
“So what happened to them?” I asked.
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“They were persecuted by Trajan a couple of hundred years ago such that many left of their own accord and went to cities overseas but a large number of them converted to Christianity. We’re going to meet a few of them this morning, if you’d like to.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”
We walked for a while in silence. A patrol of smartly dressed Roman soldiers led by an officer marched down the street towards us, short swords clanking by their sides.
“You might think that they are the hated ones here,” said Polios nodding at them. “No army of occupation could ever really be liked or admired, could they? These raw squaddies are not from here. What would they know of the refinements of Alexandria, brought up as they were on the inhospitable banks of the Dacian Danube or in ignorance in the dark forests in Gaul? Yet would you believe it, they’re joining our church in growing numbers. It’s a really strange thing. They are taught to kill without mercy, yet they want to join our faith which preaches tolerance and passivity. Our way is to love