Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/48

42 from whom I shall quote shortly, says the same, and Isidore also, if his words be properly emended. "In Alexandria, in the days of Philadelphus, there were," he says, "seventy thousand books." I think that he should have said seven hundred thousand.

A precious treasure! But, alas, though it was the offspring of man's immortal spirit it was not itself immortal! For all this vast store of books, whatever their number may have been, perished in the flames. Caesar, in the civil war with Pompey, fought with the Alexandrians in the city itself. He set fire to the ships for his own protection; from the ships the flames spread to houses near the harbour, then to the library