Never found · building

The book stores by the harbour

ἀποθῆκαι

Known · AttestedExistence: AttestedConjectured · Our reconstructionLocation: Never foundConjectured · Our reconstructionForm: Conjecture

Never found.

Cassius Dio says Caesar's fire of 48 BCE burned the dockyards and "the storehouses of grain and of books, said to have been very many and very fine". Orosius has 400,000 books "stored by chance in nearby buildings". These were most likely rolls awaiting export or shelving, not the Library itself.

The evidence: Two later literary sources; their form and place on the quay are unknown.

Within The Great Harbour.

Book stores?
On the plan of the city, in its own line: solid where the position is known, dashed where it is conjectured.

This place through time

  1. late 48 BCE · Caesar's fire in the harbour Known: attested, disputed

In the show

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Sources (4)
  • Cassius Dio, Roman History 42.38.2
  • Orosius, Histories against the Pagans 6.15.31
  • L. Canfora, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, trans. M. Ryle (Berkeley, 1989; Italian 1986)
  • 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