Volume 37, Number 10 · June 14, 1990
Lost History of the Lost Library
By Hugh Lloyd-Jones
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World
by Luciano Canfora, translated by Martin Ryle
Hutchinson Radius (distributed by Norton), 205 pp., $22.50
If the United States had a secretary of culture, and if President Reagan had given the job to the late Jayne Mansfield, she could hardly have done a better job than the Greek actress Melina Mercouri in the Socialist government of Andreas Papandreou. In her famous movie Never on Sunday Miss Mercouri made popular the notion of the Greek as the modern equivalent of Rousseau's Noble Savage. But her noble savages are the heirs of the ancient Greeks, and several of her initiatives are calculated to bring this to mind. A few weeks ago she was reported by the newspapers to be supporting a plan to build a vast Greek library to replace the lost library of Alexandria. That library was the chief Greek library of the ancient world, and it is the vanished library of Professor Canfora's title. Despite its undeniable importance, we have very imperfect evidence for what it contained, for its history and the manner in which it ceased to exist.
Review, 3750 words
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