Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 77

“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

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS