The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

Aeschylus. That the “Cage of the Muses,” as some referred to the library, lacked a complete text of the most revered Athenian dramatist seemed an unforgivable oversight. Obtaining it would provide the perfect demonstration that Ptolemy III had accomplished what Ptolemy II and Ptolemy I had failed to do. Alexandria would have its Aeschylus.
    The Athenians had the only copy of
The Complete Works of Aeschylus
in existence. After, one assumes, protracted negotiations, it was agreed that these revered scrolls might be transported to Alexandria for scholars to make an accurate copy, and then returned to Athens. To ensure that this agreement was honored, Ptolemy III would deposit fifteen silver talents with the Athenians, repayable when the text was brought back intact. This was a phenomenal amount of money: the entire annual Jewish tribute payment amounted to only twenty silver talents, and that had driven them close to rebellion. Following the agreement, the manuscript arrived in Alexandria.
    Did the idea arise in Ptolemy’s own mind? Did a librarian impress upon his pharaoh exactly what they had? This was the sole complete copy of Aeschylus in existence. It was a unicum, a nonpareil, a one and only. It was the Golden Fleece, it was Helen of Troy’s wedding ring, it was the ball of string that Theseus unraveled in the Labyrinth. It was worth losing fifteen silver talents. How could the Athenians protest against the Vanquisher of Syria?
    The scripts stayed in Alexandria, with a strict injunction that no copy should ever be made. And then Ptolemy III died. Later, Ptolemy XIII died. Finally, the empire died. Their religion died. But the original manuscript remained: it, and its singularity, preserved. Since its transcription was forbidden, scholars flocked from around the known world and from every intellectual background to read it: Plotinus the Neo-Platonist, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus of Sicily, Nepotian of Africa, even Aelian, who notoriously hated travel. Some came to marvel at the poetic majesty; others came to ponder whether, in a line from
Prometheus
Bound,
“Nothing will make me reveal the name of the God to come who is greater than Zeus,” Aeschylus had had an out-of-time inkling of Christianity. None of them quibbled with the centuries-old piece of self-important petulance that kept the manuscript there.
    On December 22, 640 C.E., a reader with a very different agenda was in control of Alexandria. His aesthetics were strict: “Those which disagree with the Word of God are blasphemous, those which agree, superfluous.” Amrou ibn el-Ass, on direct orders from the caliph, decreed that the library be burned. The scrolls opened a final time, unfurled before the unscholarly eyes of flame, and
The Complete Works of Aeschylus
became lost forever.
    One of the more astonishing examples of acquired behavior in the animal kingdom occurs in the eagles of southeast Europe. As documented by the ornithologist Grubač, these birds not only have adapted to their habitat, but also make active use of their environment. One of the primary sources of nutrition in harsh, rocky climates, along with hedge-hogs, Boback marmosets, and large-toothed susliks, is the tortoise. The eagles have been observed, gliding at low altitude, to drop suddenly into a plunging attack, and curl their talons around the rim of the tortoise’s shell. They then soar to upwards of one hundred meters, and drop their catch onto round, exposed stones in order to split the shell. With the protective armor of its quarry shattered, the eagle can then eviscerate its prey with relative ease.
    Just such an incident occurred in 456 B.C.E., outside the city of Gela, on the island of Sicily. The eagle would have glimpsed its prey and swooped. Still scanning the terrain, it located a suitable rock on which to crack the casing. As the bird’s claws withdrew, the tortoise would have briefly experienced a hitherto-unimaginable sense of