The survival rate of ancient literature

[john m roberts]

The first mention of such a fire comes from more than 100 years after Caesar's time. I don't have the quote at hand but it reads something like "10,000 books were burned" when the Alexandrian fleet was set afire. Since Alexandria was the ancient world's greatest exporter of books this probably meant that warehouses containing books for export were burned. The destruction of the Alexandrian Library would have been considered an atrocity and surely Caesar's many, many enemies would have mentioned it had it really happened.