Theophilus of Alexandria

Rufinus, who had lived in Egypt in the 370s, tells the events about a decade later. The bishop asked the emperor for an old, neglected public basilica; when he set about restoring it, hidden underground chambers were found; the pagans rose and held the Serapeum, and when the emperor's letter was read they fled it; a soldier struck the statue of Sarapis with an axe, and it was hacked apart and burned piece by piece about the city (11.22–23). Socrates and Sozomen make the building a temple, of Mithras or of Dionysus, whose cult objects the bishop paraded in public (Socrates 5.16; Sozomen 7.15). Eunapius, a pagan, mocks the victors as men who made war on statues. Later, Theophilus turned on the monks who followed Origen and drove the Tall Brothers out of Egypt (Socrates 6.7).

Edward Gibbon wrote in 1781 that when the Serapeum fell the library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed, and took the empty book-chests Orosius saw for its remains; later books say Theophilus burned the Library. No account of the destruction mentions books. Rufinus's rooms on the upper level housed the temple's staff; it is Aphthonius who describes rooms in the colonnades used for books, and Ammianus, just before the fall, speaks of the Serapeum's libraries in the past tense. Legend: told story