Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 11 October 2024

Alexandrian Library 

Source:
The Oxford Companion to the Book

Ptolemy I Soter (367/6–282bc) founded the universal library in Alexandria, but the idea was originally conceived by Alexander the Great, who intended to store in one library all the literature of all the peoples in his empire, translated into Greek. Ptolemy, wishing to link the library with Aristotle’s Lyceum, invited Theophrastus to run it, but he refused; Demetrius of Phaleron was appointed instead. The only extant document referring to the purpose of the Library is the so-called ... ...

Access to the complete content on Oxford Reference requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.