Burning Libraries

Officially, Western libraries are said to have begun with the Greeks, around the 6th Century BCE. The Lyceum was established in Athens in 336 BCE. Subsequently, Athenians buried and badly damaged their collection, to prevent its acquisition by rival librarians of Pergamum. Romans took the remnants of it home with them in 40 BCE.

In 40 BCE, Anthony sent his lover Cleopatra in Alexandria the entire library of its archrival, Pergamum (where parchment was invented). In part, he was punishing the Pergamumites for siding with his rivals during the latest Roman civil war. He may also have intended to compensate Cleopatra for Juliusπ unrecorded act of vandalism.

Rome destroyed and rebuilt many cities. It uprooted homegrown cultures and replanted entire populations elsewhere, more or less at random. Rome was an insignificant contributor to Library scholarship. It specialized in villa libraries for the rich. No scholars were assembled when Rome established its first Public Library in 33 BCE, unlike centuries of common practice in the ådecadentπ East. The Romans sacked Thebes in 29 BCE, ending a thousand years of its prosperity.

Dates listed hereafter are Christian Era (CE), unless otherwise noted. The giant library at Antioch burned down in 37, along with its city. Before her defeat, native Queen Boadicea burned down Roman Londinium (London), in 50. Rome conquered Jerusalem in 63, flattened it in 70. It massacred the inhabitants of Caesurae Palestinae, Jotapata and Massada (the Jewsπ last stand fortress) by 73. Subsequent revolts targeted Jewish colonies in the great imperial cities (a lot of ådecadent, cosmopolitan sophisticatesπ, as usual). This massacre cost the Roman Empire hundreds of thousands more lives, and equivalent treasure. Rome conquered the island of Anglesey in 78, the last known refuge of the Druids.

Eighty CE saw the first destruction of one of the greatest Buddhist centers, Anuradhapura in Ceylon. Founded in 437 BCE, it would be annihilated by Tamil invaders, this time for good, during the 8th Century CE.

Meanwhile, almost every book published since the 1800πs is quietly self-destructing. Their cheap, high-acid paper reacts to light, heat and moisture by crumbling to dust. Fahrenheit 451 has reached room temperature these days. The wonderful world of chemistry has relieved Ray Bradburyπs fascistic, science fiction dystopians from the thankless chore of destroying every book. Ephemeral electronic media are even more vulnerable. Any massive breakdown of civilization will see most of them perish. In addition, our recording mediaπs engineered obsolescence affords our literature repeated opportunities to disappear.

Herculean efforts to transfer print media onto digital databases, (mostly meaningless megatons of accounting documents), will only mitigate this devastation. In library after library, reluctant staffers dump truckloads of perfectly fine books and bibliographic materials into the nearest landfill. Meanwhile, their MBA-certified weapon managers crow that theyπve achieved cost-cutting ågoalsπ. In the future, preserving old ideas ≠ especially idiosyncratic and culturally specific ones deviating from the mass media norm ≠ shall become private, oral and website responsibilities much more often than public, paper-published ones. Since the technocrats refuse to do their obvious job, we will require many more bards, witches, griots and shamans, to assume these adult responsibilities.

--Mark Mulligan