100–44 BCE · Roman dictator
Gaius Julius Caesar
In Alexandria: 48–47 BCE
Followed Pompey to Alexandria in 48 BCE and was besieged in the palace quarter. He burned the Egyptian fleet to keep his access to the sea; the fire spread to the docks and burned books, probably in storage near them. His own account mentions the ships and not the books.
Their life and work
He arrived in October 48 BCE, days after Pompey had been killed on the shore near Pelusium, and stayed to settle the quarrel between Cleopatra and her brother. The Alexandrian War that followed kept him in the palace quarter for months; the Pharos and its island were fought over, and the account that goes under the title Alexandrian War describes the street fighting. Who wrote it was already uncertain in antiquity: Suetonius says some thought Oppius, others Hirtius (Julius 56).
What burned in the harbour is the portal's oldest dispute. Seneca, Plutarch, Gellius, Cassius Dio and Orosius speak of books, with numbers that grow as the writers grow further from the event; Caesar and Strabo, who saw the city twenty years later, speak of none. The witness line for Caesar's fire sets them side by side. Known: probable, disputed
Our device: Their emblem is a burning ship. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
Moments
- late 48 BCE · Caesar's fire in the harbour Known: attested, disputed
In the show
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Sources (7)
- Caesar, Civil War 3.111–112 (opens in a new tab)
- Plutarch, Caesar 49.6 (opens in a new tab)
- Alexandrian War 1–33
- Suetonius, Julius 56.1
- Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 9.5
- Cassius Dio 42.38.2
- M. Hatzimichali, "Ashes to Ashes? The Library of Alexandria after 48 BC", in J. König, K. Oikonomopoulou and G. Woolf (eds.), Ancient Libraries (Cambridge, 2013) 167–182