The Burning of the Library of Alexandria
A 19th-century imagining of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, one of antiquity's greatest centers of learning.
Founded under the early Ptolemies in the 3rd century BC, the Library of Alexandria aimed to gather a copy of every book in the known world and drew scholars such as Eratosthenes, who calculated the Earth's circumference there, and Euclid, who systematized geometry. Contrary to the popular image of a single dramatic fire, its decline was gradual: a blaze during Julius Caesar's civil war in 48 BC damaged part of the collection, and the associated Serapeum temple was destroyed by a Christian mob in 391 AD, the event this later painting depicts. Read more in our piece on the Library of Alexandria.
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