Cleopatra was not insensible to the loss of so great a treasure, and Antony, to console her, presented her with the whole collection of books made by the king of Bithynia at Pergamus, to the number of 200,000 volumes. These books, with the few that had escaped the flames, formed the second library, and were placed in the _Serapeon_, or temple of Serapis, which from that time became the resort of all learned men. In A. D. 390, the fanatic Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, worthy of being the friend of the tyrant Theodosius, took advantage of the protection of that Emperor to disperse the library of the _Serapeon_, and to drive out the savans who assembled there. He overthrew the temple itself and built a church on its ruins which bore the name of the Emperor Arcadius. It would thus appear that the oldest and most extensive libraries of Alexandria ceased to exist before the 5th century of the Christian era. Nevertheless, there is still an opinion maintained among learned men that the immense collection made by the Ptolemies was destroyed by the Arabs in the 7th century.[15] Several writers, with Gibbon at their head, have rejected this notion. Reinhart published at Göttingen in 1792 a special dissertation on the subject. It was Gregorius Bar-Hebræus, better known under the name of Abulpharadje, elected primate of the East in 1264, who gave the earliest account of the burning of the library at Alexandria, in a chronicle he published in Syriac, and afterwards translated into Arabic at the solicitation of his friends. He says: “John the grammarian came to Amrou, who was in possession of Alexandria, and begged that he might be allowed to appropriate a part of the booty. ‘Which part do you wish for,’ asked Amrou. John replied, ‘The books of philosophy which are in the treasury (library) of kings.’ Amrou answered that he could not dispose of these without the permission of the Emir Al-Moumenin Omar. He wrote to the Emir, who replied in these terms: ‘As to the books you speak of, if their contents are in conformity with the Book of God (the Koran) we have no need of them; if, on the contrary, their contents are opposed to it, it is still less desirable to preserve them, so I desire that they may be destroyed.’ Amrou-Ben-Alas in consequence ordered them to be distributed in the various baths in Alexandria, to be burnt in the stoves; and after six months, not a vestige of them remained.”[16] How open is this unlikely story to objection! In the first place, John of Alexandria was dead before the city was taken, on the 21st December 640. D’Herbelot, in his _Bibliothèque Orientale_, tells us that at that period four thousand baths existed in Alexandria. What a multitude of volumes it must have required to supply fuel for them for the space of six months! And then the absurdity of attempting to heat baths with parchment!!!