Such, then, was the end of this noble library; destroyed in the one hundred and eighty-third Olympiad, after enduring scarcely two hundred and twenty-four years. Yet it lived again,--not the same collection, of course, for that were impossible; but a similar one,--and in the same building, the Serapeum. Cleopatra, she who became famous through her amours with Antony, reëstablished the library. She received from him, as the beginning or foundation of the new collection, the Attalic or Pergamene library. She accepted the entire collection as a gift and had it brought to Alexandria; then she again decorated the buildings and increased the collection, with the result that even in the time of the Christian fathers it was widely known and much used. Tertullian says, “To this day are to be found in the library of Ptolemy in the Serapeum books in Hebrew characters.” Note that, according to this remark of Tertullian’s, the library was again installed in the Serapeum, that is, in its porticoes or galleries; and note, further, that Strabo and others tell us that the Serapeum was near the harbour and the ships. Note, once more, that it was called the Ptolemaic library, though it was in fact not the original library, but a similar one; for the original Hebrew texts and the original translation called the Septuagint had perished in the flames. And yet once more note that the reputation and ancient authority of this library were so great that Tertullian uses it as an argument in his exhortation and admonition to the heathen. For my part, I believe that the library existed as long as did the Serapeum itself, which was a temple of massive construction and of great size, and that, as reported by certain ecclesiastical writers, the Christians, during the reign of Theodosius the Great, demolished it utterly, as a monument of superstition. CHAPTER III _Libraries in Greece, especially those of Pisistratus and Aristotle. That at Byzantium._