History Will Teach Us Everything

Gabriellebirchak/ July 2, 2018/ Classical Antiquity

It is in his­to­ry that we under­stand who we are as a col­lec­tive and who we are as indi­vid­u­als, it is whom we seek to be and whom we become. What val­ue do we place on his­to­ry? I could not think of a bet­ter time to hon­or the impor­tance of his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion than in July, the month that hon­ors Julius Caesar.

For the past year, I have been con­duct­ing Hel­lenis­tic research, which has led my stud­ies down the cor­ri­dors of the great Alexan­dri­an Library. As many may know, this library and muse­um once held between 400,000 and 700,000 scrolls. Many indi­vid­u­als often equate the destruc­tion of the library with Hypatia’s mur­der in 415 A.D. How­ev­er, this tremen­dous source of knowl­edge began its decay in 48 B.C., over four hun­dred years before the reli­gious upris­ings, because of Julius Cae­sar. In a civ­il war with Ptole­my XIII, Cae­sar start­ed a fire in the docks, which spread to the library.

Cae­sar was a man of pro­pa­gan­da and sto­ries, which could explain why the sto­ries of this great fire are incon­sis­tent with oth­ers. Regard­less, one won­ders that if it wasn’t for Cae­sar, who knows how much might have remained of the orig­i­nal library before it saw fur­ther decay.

A long while after Caesar’s death, his nephew, Augus­tus Cae­sar, rose to pow­er. By the time Augus­tus ruled Alexan­dria, and it fell under Roman province, the Tem­ple of Cesare­an became a pub­lic library. The cit­i­zens of Alexan­dria wit­nessed decay dur­ing the destruc­tion of the Kitos War in 115 A.D., and for over 100 years, there was peace. How­ev­er, in 270 A.D., the Attack of the Aure­lians destroyed much more of the muse­um. In 365 A.D., an earth­quake in Crete caused a tsuna­mi in Alexan­dria. Efforts to pre­serve the library con­tin­ued as schol­ars and aca­d­e­mics moved as many scrolls as they could away from the library and into the Tem­ple of Ser­apis. How­ev­er, despite these efforts to pre­serve the great Library of Alexan­dria, along with its oth­er pub­lic libraries, intel­lec­tu­al­ism decayed.

When Alexan­dria fell under the rule of Chris­t­ian Patri­arch Theophilus in 391 A.D., he ordered the mil­i­tary and peo­ple of Alexan­dria to destroy the Tem­ple of Ser­apis and con­vert it into a church. In 412 A.D., Alexandria’s ruler, Chris­t­ian Patri­arch Cyril ordered his peo­ple to con­vert the Tem­ple of Cae­sareum, which was also a library, into his head­quar­ters. It was here in 415 A.D., at the Tem­ple of Cae­sareum, that a Chris­t­ian mob vio­lent­ly mur­dered Hypa­tia, the University’s first female pro­fes­sor, and female math­e­mati­cian. The tim­ing of her death is sig­nif­i­cant, because, though many believe that the destruc­tion of the library came around Hypatia’s death, clear­ly the library fell under destruc­tive con­di­tions for 300 years prior.

For two hun­dred years after Hypatia’s death, Alexan­dria fell into the hands of the var­i­ous oppo­si­tion, who con­tin­ued their destruc­tion upon the libraries. Final­ly, in 642 A.D., Alexan­dria fell under Arab-Mus­lim Caliph Omar’s rule. In its con­quest, Omar stat­ed that if the scrolls con­tra­dict­ed the Islam­ic faith, then his mil­i­tary was to burn the scrolls. Omar then stat­ed if the scrolls sup­port­ed the Islam­ic faith, the books were unnec­es­sary, and his men should burn them. As such, Islam­ic mil­i­tary burned all the remain­ing scrolls in the great Alexan­dri­an library.

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His­to­ry teach­es us where the flags of dan­ger are plant­ed. It all began with Cae­sar. Had it not been for years of fight­ing and wars, would we still have a library today? Would we have more traces of our math­e­mat­i­cal ori­gins had Alexandria’s great library with­stood the fires, tsuna­mi, and reli­gious upris­ings? More­over, would we have had more to rely on when anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism began its upris­ing in 400 A.D.? Most impor­tant­ly, what can we learn from this today? How can we pre­serve knowl­edge with­out see­ing any traces of intel­lect fal­ter? Insight builds upon insight. His­to­ry teach­es us every­thing. His­to­ry teach­es us where the flags of dan­ger are plant­ed. His­to­ry teach­es us how not to repeat past mis­takes. More­over, his­to­ry guides us away from immi­nent destruc­tion. It is up to us to let his­to­ry be our guide.

Yes, Julius Cae­sar was a tremen­dous mil­i­tary man. How­ev­er, he was also clever with pro­pa­gan­da. He was also very adept at accu­sa­tions, false­hoods, and manip­u­la­tions, all for polit­i­cal gain. The more his king­dom was under threat, the more pro­pa­gan­da he cre­at­ed. Whether it was true or not he used that to his advan­tage. July is the per­fect time to look at his­to­ry and use Julius Cae­sar as a ref­er­ence as we enter into a new age of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism and viral falsehoods.

As pro­pa­gan­da sur­rounds us every­where and seeps out of every cor­ner of social media, what are we using as footholds to ensure that our truths and our forefather’s truths are still self-evi­dent? I think that Amer­i­ca, and the world, is fac­ing intel­lec­tu­al regres­sion. I would like to think that, as a soci­ety, we will have an advan­tage over the future and anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism if we pro­tect and per­sis­tent­ly uti­lize our libraries, our muse­ums, our arts, our knowl­edge, our infor­ma­tion, our insights, and our histories.

That said, to what extent will we go to pre­serve and pro­tect our past knowl­edge and the foun­da­tions to our future insights?