{ "title": "Alexandria: selected reading collection", "era": "Alexandria, c. 250 BCE", "warning": "This is not a recovered inventory of the Alexandrian Library.", "works": [ { "id": "iliad", "title": "Iliad", "author": "Homeric tradition", "date": "Late eighth or early seventh century BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "The wrath of Achilles, the grief of Priam, and a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War. All 24 books.", "alexandriaConnection": "Early Alexandrian scholars, especially Zenodotus, studied and edited Homer. Their work is evidence for a local scholarly tradition, but it does not identify a surviving physical copy, shelf, or exact reading in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/iliad.txt", "translator": "Samuel Butler", "edition": "Prose translation, 1898", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2199", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 2199", "sourceNote": "Complete historical English translation of the surviving text, with the original Project Gutenberg notices and licence retained. The translator’s introduction and notes are modern scholarship, not ancient testimony. Older translations can contain outdated interpretations and transcription errors; consult the linked edition for scholarly use.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1348, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I.", "readingEnd": 904393, "wordCount": 152687, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I.", "offset": 1348, "anchor": "BOOK I." }, { "title": "BOOK II.", "offset": 35713, "anchor": "BOOK II." }, { "title": "BOOK III.", "offset": 84042, "anchor": "BOOK III." }, { "title": "BOOK IV.", "offset": 108252, "anchor": "BOOK IV." }, { "title": "BOOK V.", "offset": 138331, "anchor": "BOOK V." }, { "title": "BOOK VI.", "offset": 189380, "anchor": "BOOK VI." }, { "title": "BOOK VII.", "offset": 218871, "anchor": "BOOK VII." }, { "title": "BOOK VIII.", "offset": 245158, "anchor": "BOOK VIII." }, { "title": "BOOK IX.", "offset": 276847, "anchor": "BOOK IX." }, { "title": "BOOK X.", "offset": 316713, "anchor": "BOOK X." }, { "title": "BOOK XI.", "offset": 349080, "anchor": "BOOK XI." }, { "title": "BOOK XII.", "offset": 399590, "anchor": "BOOK XII." }, { "title": "BOOK XIII.", "offset": 427615, "anchor": "BOOK XIII." }, { "title": "BOOK XIV.", "offset": 477706, "anchor": "BOOK XIV." }, { "title": "BOOK XV.", "offset": 508540, "anchor": "BOOK XV." }, { "title": "BOOK XVI.", "offset": 552017, "anchor": "BOOK XVI." }, { "title": "BOOK XVII.", "offset": 604845, "anchor": "BOOK XVII." }, { "title": "BOOK XVIII.", "offset": 647605, "anchor": "BOOK XVIII." }, { "title": "BOOK XIX.", "offset": 682942, "anchor": "BOOK XIX." }, { "title": "BOOK XX.", "offset": 706416, "anchor": "BOOK XX." }, { "title": "BOOK XXI.", "offset": 736148, "anchor": "BOOK XXI." }, { "title": "BOOK XXII.", "offset": 772313, "anchor": "BOOK XXII." }, { "title": "BOOK XXIII.", "offset": 803807, "anchor": "BOOK XXIII." }, { "title": "BOOK XXIV.", "offset": 856495, "anchor": "BOOK XXIV." } ] }, { "id": "odyssey", "title": "Odyssey", "author": "Homeric tradition", "date": "Late eighth or seventh century BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "Odysseus returns to Ithaca through stories of shipwreck, hospitality, disguise and recognition. All 24 books.", "alexandriaConnection": "Early Alexandrian scholars, especially Zenodotus, studied and edited Homer. Their work is evidence for a local scholarly tradition, but it does not identify a surviving physical copy, shelf, or exact reading in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/odyssey.txt", "translator": "Samuel Butler", "edition": "Prose translation, 1900", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 1727", "sourceNote": "Complete historical English translation of the surviving text, with the original Project Gutenberg notices and licence retained. The translator’s introduction and notes are modern scholarship, not ancient testimony. Older translations can contain outdated interpretations and transcription errors; consult the linked edition for scholarly use.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 17306, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I", "readingEnd": 691569, "wordCount": 126737, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I", "offset": 17306, "anchor": "BOOK I" }, { "title": "BOOK II", "offset": 39117, "anchor": "BOOK II" }, { "title": "BOOK III", "offset": 61436, "anchor": "BOOK III" }, { "title": "BOOK IV", "offset": 86967, "anchor": "BOOK IV" }, { "title": "BOOK V", "offset": 129640, "anchor": "BOOK V" }, { "title": "BOOK VI", "offset": 154144, "anchor": "BOOK VI" }, { "title": "BOOK VII", "offset": 172239, "anchor": "BOOK VII" }, { "title": "BOOK VIII", "offset": 190260, "anchor": "BOOK VIII" }, { "title": "BOOK IX", "offset": 220450, "anchor": "BOOK IX" }, { "title": "BOOK X", "offset": 250471, "anchor": "BOOK X" }, { "title": "BOOK XI", "offset": 280032, "anchor": "BOOK XI" }, { "title": "BOOK XII", "offset": 311705, "anchor": "BOOK XII" }, { "title": "BOOK XIII", "offset": 335673, "anchor": "BOOK XIII" }, { "title": "BOOK XIV", "offset": 358094, "anchor": "BOOK XIV" }, { "title": "BOOK XV", "offset": 386025, "anchor": "BOOK XV" }, { "title": "BOOK XVI", "offset": 414585, "anchor": "BOOK XVI" }, { "title": "BOOK XVII", "offset": 438457, "anchor": "BOOK XVII" }, { "title": "BOOK XVIII", "offset": 469579, "anchor": "BOOK XVIII" }, { "title": "BOOK XIX", "offset": 491729, "anchor": "BOOK XIX" }, { "title": "BOOK XX", "offset": 523601, "anchor": "BOOK XX" }, { "title": "BOOK XXI", "offset": 544300, "anchor": "BOOK XXI" }, { "title": "BOOK XXII", "offset": 566724, "anchor": "BOOK XXII" }, { "title": "BOOK XXIII", "offset": 591222, "anchor": "BOOK XXIII" }, { "title": "BOOK XXIV", "offset": 610757, "anchor": "BOOK XXIV" } ] }, { "id": "works-and-days", "title": "Works and Days", "author": "Hesiod", "date": "About 700 BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "A poem of work, justice, seasons and precarious livelihood, addressed to the poet’s brother Perses.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/works-and-days.txt", "translator": "Hugh G. Evelyn-White", "edition": "Loeb Classical Library, 1914", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/348", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 348", "sourceNote": "Complete poem, selected from the 1914 anthology. Original line references, the anthology’s endnotes, source notices and licence are retained. The anthology contains other and later material; that material is not presented as part of this work.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1285, "readingStartAnchor": "HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS", "readingEnd": 85147, "wordCount": 8834 }, { "id": "theogony", "title": "Theogony", "author": "Hesiod", "date": "About 700 BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "The origins and succession of the gods, from Chaos to Zeus. A poem about cosmic order and the authority of song.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/theogony.txt", "translator": "Hugh G. Evelyn-White", "edition": "Loeb Classical Library, 1914", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/348", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 348", "sourceNote": "Complete surviving poem, selected from the 1914 anthology. Its final section has long raised questions of composition and transmission. Original line references, endnotes and licence are retained; no lost lines have been supplied.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1279, "readingStartAnchor": "THE THEOGONY", "readingEnd": 94390, "wordCount": 9981 }, { "id": "theocritus-idyll-i", "title": "Idyll I · Thyrsis", "author": "Theocritus", "date": "First half of the third century BCE; exact dates debated", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "A goatherd asks Thyrsis to sing the death of Daphnis; an elaborately carved cup becomes the promised reward.", "alexandriaConnection": "Theocritus wrote poetry connected with Ptolemy II’s court and, in Idyll XV, Alexandria itself. These complete poems fit the cultural setting; possession of a particular copy is not attested.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/theocritus-idyll-i.txt", "translator": "C. S. Calverley", "edition": "Theocritus, translated into English Verse, third edition", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11533", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 11533", "sourceNote": "One complete Idyll, selected from Calverley’s public-domain collection. The entire transmitted Theocritean anthology is not staged as a securely dated 250 BCE collection: it contains disputed and later material.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." }, "readingStart": 1361, "readingStartAnchor": "IDYLL I.", "readingEnd": 9267, "wordCount": 1255 }, { "id": "theocritus-idyll-vii", "title": "Idyll VII · The Harvest Home", "author": "Theocritus", "date": "First half of the third century BCE; exact dates debated", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "A walk to a harvest festival becomes an exchange of songs and a meditation on a poet’s craft.", "alexandriaConnection": "Theocritus wrote poetry connected with Ptolemy II’s court and, in Idyll XV, Alexandria itself. These complete poems fit the cultural setting; possession of a particular copy is not attested.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/theocritus-idyll-vii.txt", "translator": "C. S. Calverley", "edition": "Theocritus, translated into English Verse, third edition", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11533", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 11533", "sourceNote": "One complete Idyll, selected from Calverley’s public-domain collection. The entire transmitted Theocritean anthology is not staged as a securely dated 250 BCE collection: it contains disputed and later material.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." }, "readingStart": 1346, "readingStartAnchor": "IDYLL VII.", "readingEnd": 9755, "wordCount": 1358 }, { "id": "theocritus-idyll-xv", "title": "Idyll XV · The Women at the Adonis Festival", "author": "Theocritus", "date": "First half of the third century BCE; exact dates debated", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "Two Syracusan women make their way through the crowd in Alexandria to an Adonis festival associated with Queen Arsinoe.", "alexandriaConnection": "Theocritus wrote poetry connected with Ptolemy II’s court and, in Idyll XV, Alexandria itself. These complete poems fit the cultural setting; possession of a particular copy is not attested.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/theocritus-idyll-xv.txt", "translator": "C. S. Calverley", "edition": "Theocritus, translated into English Verse, third edition", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11533", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 11533", "sourceNote": "One complete Idyll, selected from Calverley’s public-domain collection. The entire transmitted Theocritean anthology is not staged as a securely dated 250 BCE collection: it contains disputed and later material.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." }, "readingStart": 1361, "readingStartAnchor": "IDYLL XV.", "readingEnd": 10279, "wordCount": 1308 }, { "id": "theocritus-idyll-xvii", "title": "Idyll XVII · The Praise of Ptolemy", "author": "Theocritus", "date": "First half of the third century BCE; exact dates debated", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "A court encomium to Ptolemy II. Read it as praise shaped by patronage, not as a neutral report on the kingdom.", "alexandriaConnection": "Theocritus wrote poetry connected with Ptolemy II’s court and, in Idyll XV, Alexandria itself. These complete poems fit the cultural setting; possession of a particular copy is not attested.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/theocritus-idyll-xvii.txt", "translator": "C. S. Calverley", "edition": "Theocritus, translated into English Verse, third edition", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11533", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 11533", "sourceNote": "One complete Idyll, selected from Calverley’s public-domain collection. The entire transmitted Theocritean anthology is not staged as a securely dated 250 BCE collection: it contains disputed and later material.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." }, "readingStart": 1352, "readingStartAnchor": "IDYLL XVII.", "readingEnd": 8135, "wordCount": 1075 }, { "id": "callimachus-zeus", "title": "Hymn to Zeus", "author": "Callimachus", "date": "Early third century BCE; precise date disputed", "category": "Poetry", "status": "surviving", "description": "Zeus’s birth and kingship lead to praise of a contemporary ruler, conventionally identified as Ptolemy II.", "alexandriaConnection": "Callimachus is closely associated with Alexandrian scholarship and Ptolemaic patronage. The hymn’s precise occasion and date are debated; it is not a transcript of a known performance in this building.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/callimachus-zeus.txt", "translator": "A. W. Mair", "edition": "Loeb Classical Library 129, 1921", "sourceUrl": "https://www.theoi.com/Text/CallimachusHymns1.html", "sourceLabel": "A. W. Mair’s 1921 translation · Theoi transcription", "sourceNote": "Complete Hymn I, corresponding to 96 Greek lines. Translator’s footnotes are omitted; source and line references are preserved. Thirteen transcription repairs, including a sentence omitted by the web transcription, were verified against the printed 1921 edition and logged in the source manifest. No later Callimachean poems, such as the Lock of Berenice, are included.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." }, "readingStart": 740, "readingStartAnchor": "HYMN I. TO ZEUS", "readingEnd": 6519, "wordCount": 1039 }, { "id": "aratus-phaenomena", "title": "Phaenomena", "author": "Aratus of Soli", "date": "About 275 BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "A hexameter guide to constellations, seasonal signs and weather. The complete astronomical poem and its weather-sign section.", "alexandriaConnection": "Aratus wrote at the Macedonian court of Antigonus II, not as a documented resident of this Library. His poem belongs to the same Hellenistic scholarly world and draws on Eudoxus’s earlier astronomy.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/aratus-phaenomena.txt", "translator": "G. R. Mair", "edition": "Loeb Classical Library 129, 1921", "sourceUrl": "https://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.html", "sourceLabel": "G. R. Mair’s 1921 translation · Theoi transcription", "sourceNote": "Complete surviving poem, corresponding to 1,154 Greek lines. Ten transcription repairs were checked against the printed 1921 edition and logged in the source manifest; this targeted check is not a complete critical collation. Line numbers and section headings aid navigation. Ancient weather lore is presented historically, not as scientific or navigational advice.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 692, "readingStartAnchor": "PHAENOMENA, TRANSLATED BY G. R. MAIR", "readingEnd": 61250, "wordCount": 11279, "sections": [ { "title": "A) CONSTELLATIONS NORTH OF THE ECLIPTIC", "offset": 1783, "anchor": "A) CONSTELLATIONS NORTH OF THE ECLIPTIC" }, { "title": "B) CONSTELLATIONS SOUTH OF THE ECLIPTIC", "offset": 17941, "anchor": "B) CONSTELLATIONS SOUTH OF THE ECLIPTIC" }, { "title": "C) THE FIVE PLANETS", "offset": 25201, "anchor": "C) THE FIVE PLANETS" }, { "title": "D) CIRCLES OF THE CELESTIAL SPHERE", "offset": 25725, "anchor": "D) CIRCLES OF THE CELESTIAL SPHERE" }, { "title": "E) THE ZODIAC RISINGS", "offset": 31025, "anchor": "E) THE ZODIAC RISINGS" }, { "title": "F) THE WEATHER SIGNS", "offset": 40092, "anchor": "F) THE WEATHER SIGNS" } ] }, { "id": "histories", "title": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "date": "Later fifth century BCE", "category": "History", "status": "surviving", "description": "Investigations of peoples, customs and the Persian Wars, including the long account of Egypt. All nine books.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/histories.txt", "translator": "G. C. Macaulay", "edition": "Two-volume translation, 1890", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 2707", "sourceNote": "Both complete Macaulay volumes are bundled: Project Gutenberg 2707 (Books I–IV) and 2456 (Books V–IX). Herodotus’s reports are ancient testimony, not automatic confirmation that each reported custom or event occurred as described.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "sourceParts": [ { "label": "Volume I · Books I–IV", "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707", "textPath": "/texts/editions/herodotus-volume-1.txt" }, { "label": "Volume II · Books V–IX", "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2456", "textPath": "/texts/editions/herodotus-volume-2.txt" } ], "readingStart": 9210, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I. THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED CLIO", "readingEnd": 1704525, "wordCount": 309520, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I. THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED CLIO", "offset": 9210, "anchor": "BOOK I. THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED CLIO" }, { "title": "BOOK II. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED EUTERPE", "offset": 272901, "anchor": "BOOK II. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED EUTERPE" }, { "title": "BOOK III. THE THIRD BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED THALEIA", "offset": 491160, "anchor": "BOOK III. THE THIRD BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED THALEIA" }, { "title": "BOOK IV. THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED MELPOMENE", "offset": 683469, "anchor": "BOOK IV. THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED MELPOMENE" }, { "title": "BOOK V. THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED TERPSICHORE", "offset": 882954, "anchor": "BOOK V. THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED TERPSICHORE" }, { "title": "BOOK VI. THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED ERATO", "offset": 1021980, "anchor": "BOOK VI. THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED ERATO" }, { "title": "BOOK VII. THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED POLYMNIA", "offset": 1164995, "anchor": "BOOK VII. THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED POLYMNIA" }, { "title": "BOOK VIII. THE EIGHTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED URANIA", "offset": 1419512, "anchor": "BOOK VIII. THE EIGHTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED URANIA" }, { "title": "BOOK IX. THE NINTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED CALLIOPE", "offset": 1566018, "anchor": "BOOK IX. THE NINTH BOOK OF THE HISTORIES, CALLED CALLIOPE" } ] }, { "id": "peloponnesian-war", "title": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "date": "Late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE", "category": "History", "status": "surviving", "description": "The war between Athens and Sparta, with accounts of plague, civil conflict, power and public speech. All eight surviving books.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/peloponnesian-war.txt", "translator": "Richard Crawley", "edition": "Translation, 1874", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7142", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 7142", "sourceNote": "Complete translation of the surviving, unfinished history, which breaks off in 411 BCE. It does not narrate the war to its end. Speeches are Thucydides’s literary-historical presentations, not modern transcripts.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1715, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I", "readingEnd": 1196863, "wordCount": 204547, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I", "offset": 1715, "anchor": "BOOK I" }, { "title": "BOOK II", "offset": 190946, "anchor": "BOOK II" }, { "title": "BOOK III", "offset": 337860, "anchor": "BOOK III" }, { "title": "BOOK IV", "offset": 482449, "anchor": "BOOK IV" }, { "title": "BOOK V", "offset": 653205, "anchor": "BOOK V" }, { "title": "BOOK VI", "offset": 781976, "anchor": "BOOK VI" }, { "title": "BOOK VII", "offset": 926182, "anchor": "BOOK VII" }, { "title": "BOOK VIII", "offset": 1052539, "anchor": "BOOK VIII" } ] }, { "id": "anabasis", "title": "Anabasis", "author": "Xenophon", "date": "Fourth century BCE", "category": "History", "status": "surviving", "description": "Greek mercenaries retreat from Mesopotamia after the failure of Cyrus the Younger’s campaign. All seven books.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/anabasis.txt", "translator": "H. G. Dakyns", "edition": "The Works of Xenophon, 1890–1897", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1170", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 1170", "sourceNote": "Complete historical English translation of the surviving text, with the original Project Gutenberg notices and licence retained. The translator’s introduction and notes are modern scholarship, not ancient testimony. Older translations can contain outdated interpretations and transcription errors; consult the linked edition for scholarly use.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 3137, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I", "readingEnd": 539685, "wordCount": 94636, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I", "offset": 3137, "anchor": "BOOK I" }, { "title": "BOOK II", "offset": 87375, "anchor": "BOOK II" }, { "title": "BOOK III", "offset": 148167, "anchor": "BOOK III" }, { "title": "BOOK IV", "offset": 214795, "anchor": "BOOK IV" }, { "title": "BOOK V", "offset": 293185, "anchor": "BOOK V" }, { "title": "BOOK VI", "offset": 371564, "anchor": "BOOK VI" }, { "title": "BOOK VII", "offset": 436336, "anchor": "BOOK VII" } ] }, { "id": "hellenica", "title": "Hellenica", "author": "Xenophon", "date": "Fourth century BCE", "category": "History", "status": "surviving", "description": "Greek affairs from 411 to 362 BCE, continuing beyond the point where Thucydides’s narrative stops. All seven books.", "alexandriaConnection": "A Greek work composed before the reconstruction’s date, included as a plausible part of the literary world that Alexandrian scholars collected and studied. No surviving inventory proves this particular title was on a shelf here in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/hellenica.txt", "translator": "H. G. Dakyns", "edition": "The Works of Xenophon, 1890–1897", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1174", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 1174", "sourceNote": "Complete historical English translation of the surviving text, with the original Project Gutenberg notices and licence retained. The translator’s introduction and notes are modern scholarship, not ancient testimony. Older translations can contain outdated interpretations and transcription errors; consult the linked edition for scholarly use.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 2757, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I", "readingEnd": 759410, "wordCount": 127813, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I", "offset": 2757, "anchor": "BOOK I" }, { "title": "BOOK II", "offset": 91085, "anchor": "BOOK II" }, { "title": "BOOK III", "offset": 182320, "anchor": "BOOK III" }, { "title": "BOOK IV", "offset": 274306, "anchor": "BOOK IV" }, { "title": "BOOK V", "offset": 395105, "anchor": "BOOK V" }, { "title": "BOOK VI", "offset": 509314, "anchor": "BOOK VI" }, { "title": "BOOK VII", "offset": 625872, "anchor": "BOOK VII" } ] }, { "id": "agamemnon", "title": "Agamemnon", "author": "Aeschylus", "date": "458 BCE", "category": "Drama", "status": "surviving", "description": "The king returns from Troy to a household shaped by sacrifice, war and revenge.", "alexandriaConnection": "Classical Athenian drama was studied by Alexandrian scholars. 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Butcher’s marked textual difficulties and source notices are retained.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 3500, "readingStartAnchor": "I propose to treat of Poetry", "readingEnd": 89603, "wordCount": 14827 }, { "id": "nicomachean-ethics", "title": "Nicomachean Ethics", "author": "Aristotle", "date": "Fourth century BCE", "category": "Philosophy", "status": "surviving", "description": "An inquiry into flourishing, character, practical judgement, friendship and contemplation. All ten books.", "alexandriaConnection": "Included as a pre-existing philosophical work, not as a documented Alexandrian holding. The transmission and early circulation of the philosophical schools’ writings are unevenly attested; later collection stories do not establish a copy in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/nicomachean-ethics.txt", "translator": "D. P. Chase", "edition": "Public-domain translation with an introduction by J. A. Smith", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8438", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 8438", "sourceNote": "Complete translation of the surviving work. The plain-text Gutenberg header omits the translator, but its HTML edition identifies D. P. Chase. J. A. Smith wrote the introduction, not this translation.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 51693, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I", "readingEnd": 649629, "wordCount": 104887, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I", "offset": 51693, "anchor": "BOOK I" }, { "title": "BOOK II", "offset": 101713, "anchor": "BOOK II" }, { "title": "BOOK III", "offset": 137603, "anchor": "BOOK III" }, { "title": "BOOK IV", "offset": 196404, "anchor": "BOOK IV" }, { "title": "BOOK V", "offset": 249842, "anchor": "BOOK V" }, { "title": "BOOK VI", "offset": 308191, "anchor": "BOOK VI" }, { "title": "BOOK VII", "offset": 352161, "anchor": "BOOK VII" }, { "title": "BOOK VIII", "offset": 413785, "anchor": "BOOK VIII" }, { "title": "BOOK IX", "offset": 468709, "anchor": "BOOK IX" }, { "title": "BOOK X", "offset": 520233, "anchor": "BOOK X" } ] }, { "id": "history-of-animals", "title": "History of Animals", "author": "Aristotle and the transmitted Aristotelian corpus", "date": "Fourth-century BCE core; composition of some books disputed", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "A wide-ranging inquiry into animals, their bodies, reproduction and ways of life.", "alexandriaConnection": "Included as a pre-existing philosophical work, not as a documented Alexandrian holding. The transmission and early circulation of the philosophical schools’ writings are unevenly attested; later collection stories do not establish a copy in 250 BCE.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/history-of-animals.txt", "translator": "Richard Cresswell", "edition": "1862 translation, George Bell & Sons edition of 1887", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59058", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 59058", "sourceNote": "Cresswell’s complete ten-book transmitted edition. Book X is generally considered non-Aristotelian, and the formation of parts of the collection is debated. This modern reading edition includes that appendix for completeness, not as a securely attested 250 BCE Library text. Its ancient biology is not medical advice.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 13064, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK THE FIRST.", "readingEnd": 769398, "wordCount": 131871, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK THE FIRST.", "offset": 13064, "anchor": "BOOK THE FIRST." }, { "title": "BOOK THE SECOND.", "offset": 66098, "anchor": "BOOK THE SECOND." }, { "title": "BOOK THE THIRD.", "offset": 117817, "anchor": "BOOK THE THIRD." }, { "title": "BOOK THE FOURTH.", "offset": 178783, "anchor": "BOOK THE FOURTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE FIFTH.", "offset": 242838, "anchor": "BOOK THE FIFTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE SIXTH.", "offset": 325133, "anchor": "BOOK THE SIXTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE SEVENTH.", "offset": 418733, "anchor": "BOOK THE SEVENTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE EIGHTH.", "offset": 451344, "anchor": "BOOK THE EIGHTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE NINTH.", "offset": 531174, "anchor": "BOOK THE NINTH." }, { "title": "BOOK THE TENTH.", "offset": 643145, "anchor": "BOOK THE TENTH." } ] }, { "id": "ancient-medicine", "title": "On Ancient Medicine", "author": "An author of the Hippocratic corpus", "date": "Late fifth or early fourth century BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "An argument that medicine should learn from diet, experience and individual differences, rather than a single simplifying hypothesis.", "alexandriaConnection": "Alexandria became an important centre of medical inquiry, but the Hippocratic collection is multi-author and took shape over time. Inclusion here is contextual: neither attribution to Hippocrates himself nor possession of this exact treatise in the Library is certain.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/ancient-medicine.txt", "translator": "Francis Adams", "edition": "1849 translation, reprinted by William Wood in 1886", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72583", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 72583", "sourceNote": "Complete treatise selected from Adams’s volume I, without his prefatory argument. Authorship by Hippocrates is not established. The nineteenth-century title “Genuine Works” reflects Adams’s judgement, not a modern consensus. The source volume contains the editorial footnotes. Historical medicine, not health advice.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1610, "readingStartAnchor": "ON ANCIENT MEDICINE.", "readingEnd": 41952, "wordCount": 7261 }, { "id": "airs-waters-places", "title": "On Airs, Waters, and Places", "author": "An author of the Hippocratic corpus", "date": "Later fifth century BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "A physician’s account of environment, seasons, water and human health, including ancient generalizations about peoples.", "alexandriaConnection": "Alexandria became an important centre of medical inquiry, but the Hippocratic collection is multi-author and took shape over time. Inclusion here is contextual: neither attribution to Hippocrates himself nor possession of this exact treatise in the Library is certain.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/airs-waters-places.txt", "translator": "Francis Adams", "edition": "1849 translation, reprinted by William Wood in 1886", "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72583", "sourceLabel": "Project Gutenberg · ebook 72583", "sourceNote": "Complete surviving treatise selected from Adams’s volume I, without his prefatory argument. Neither individual authorship nor every transmitted passage’s history is certain. Ancient environmental and ethnic theories are presented for historical study, not endorsed as factual or medical guidance.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "readingStart": 1618, "readingStartAnchor": "ON AIRS, WATERS, AND PLACES.", "readingEnd": 53901, "wordCount": 9222 }, { "id": "greek-pentateuch", "title": "The Greek Pentateuch", "author": "Anonymous Jewish translators of the Torah", "date": "Third century BCE; completion by 250 BCE uncertain", "category": "History", "status": "surviving", "description": "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy: the five books of the Torah in an English translation of their Greek text. Religious narrative and law, not the entire later Septuagint.", "alexandriaConnection": "The Greek Pentateuch is generally associated with third-century BCE Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas tells a later story of a commission under Ptolemy II, but is not a contemporary library record. The exact date and institutional circumstances remain debated; a complete copy on these shelves in 250 BCE is not established.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "text", "textPath": "/texts/greek-pentateuch.txt", "translator": "Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton", "edition": "English Septuagint, 1851; eBible.org verse-per-line transcription", "sourceUrl": "https://ebible.org/find/details.php?all=1&id=eng-Brenton", "sourceLabel": "Brenton’s English Septuagint · eBible.org", "sourceNote": "All verses of these five books, in 187 chapters, are included from the public-domain Brenton source; nineteenth-century introductions, variants and footnotes are omitted. This is a translation of a later transmitted Greek text, not a recovered third-century BCE exemplar. Other biblical books were translated at different, often later dates and are deliberately excluded. The History shelf is a modern grouping, not a claim that every narrative is independently verified history.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures", "witness": { "label": "Leonard J. Greenspoon and William A. Ross, Septuagint · Oxford Bibliographies", "url": "https://academic.oup.com/reference/62341/reference-article-abstract/561720572", "note": "Dates the Greek Pentateuch to the middle or later third century BCE in Ptolemaic Egypt, probably Alexandria. This is an explicitly borderline selection: completion of all five books by exactly 250 BCE is not asserted, and the circumstances remain disputed." }, "readingStart": 921, "readingStartAnchor": "BOOK I — GENESIS", "readingEnd": 859647, "wordCount": 163467, "sections": [ { "title": "BOOK I — GENESIS", "offset": 921, "anchor": "BOOK I — GENESIS" }, { "title": "BOOK II — EXODUS", "offset": 212495, "anchor": "BOOK II — EXODUS" }, { "title": "BOOK III — LEVITICUS", "offset": 385056, "anchor": "BOOK III — LEVITICUS" }, { "title": "BOOK IV — NUMBERS", "offset": 520528, "anchor": "BOOK IV — NUMBERS" }, { "title": "BOOK V — DEUTERONOMY", "offset": 705054, "anchor": "BOOK V — DEUTERONOMY" } ] }, { "id": "enquiry-into-plants", "title": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "date": "Late fourth and early third centuries BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "A systematic investigation of plant forms, growth, habitats and uses. All nine surviving books are available in two complete bilingual scanned volumes.", "alexandriaConnection": "The botanical work of Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum belongs to the scientific literature available before 250 BCE. Its inclusion is contextual; neither Theophrastus’s presence in this building nor a particular Library copy is documented.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "scan", "textPath": null, "translator": "Arthur Hort", "edition": "Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs, Loeb Classical Library, 1916", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/enquiryintoplant01theouoft", "sourceLabel": "Hort’s 1916 translation · Internet Archive scans", "sourceNote": "The nine surviving books of Enquiry into Plants are complete in these two scanned volumes; Greek faces English. The work appears to have been continually revised and left unfinished, so a complete surviving text is not a completed authorial plan. Volume II also includes the separate works On Odours and On Weather Signs, whose attribution and textual histories require separate consideration. Their presence in the modern binding is not evidence for a single ancient roll or an exact 250 BCE edition. Ancient botanical and medicinal claims are presented historically, not as health advice.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Theophrastus · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "url": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theophrastus/", "note": "Scholarly account of the philosopher, his works and their transmission; Enquiry into Plants has nine surviving books and is distinct from the six surviving books of Plant Explanations." }, "editions": [ { "label": "Volume I · Books I–V", "pdfPath": "/texts/theophrastus-volume-1.pdf", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/enquiryintoplant01theouoft", "byteLength": 21374540 }, { "label": "Volume II · Books VI–IX and separate minor works", "pdfPath": "/texts/theophrastus-volume-2.pdf", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/enquiryintoplant02theouoft", "byteLength": 29539492 } ] }, { "id": "euclid-elements", "title": "Elements", "author": "Euclid", "date": "About 300 BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "surviving", "description": "The thirteen books of geometry, proportion, number and solid figures. A complete historical English edition with the essential diagrams.", "alexandriaConnection": "Euclid’s work is traditionally placed in early Ptolemaic Alexandria, chiefly on the testimony of the much later Proclus. A specific teaching room, appointment in the Mouseion, or Library copy is not documented.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "scan", "textPath": null, "translator": "Thomas L. Heath", "edition": "The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, Cambridge University Press, 1908", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/thirteenbookseu02heibgoog", "sourceLabel": "Heath’s 1908 edition · Internet Archive scans", "sourceNote": "All thirteen books are available in three complete scanned volumes. Read the page images: the accompanying machine OCR is not reliable enough for mathematical notation. Heath’s commentary is modern. Volume III also contains an appendix on the later Books XIV–XV; those are not Euclid’s thirteen books and are not part of the 250 BCE setting.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "url": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "note": "Surveys the surviving and lost works, including evidence from the later writers Pappus and Proclus. Euclid’s biography is only sparsely documented." }, "editions": [ { "label": "Volume I · Introduction and Books I–II", "pdfPath": "/texts/euclid-volume-1.pdf", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/thirteenbookseu02heibgoog", "byteLength": 16777247 }, { "label": "Volume II · Books III–IX", "pdfPath": "/texts/euclid-volume-2.pdf", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/thirteenbookseu00heibgoog", "byteLength": 8442899 }, { "label": "Volume III · Books X–XIII and later appendices", "pdfPath": "/texts/euclid-volume-3.pdf", "sourceUrl": "https://archive.org/details/thirteenbookseu01heibgoog", "byteLength": 8998878 } ] }, { "id": "pinakes", "title": "Pinakes", "author": "Callimachus", "date": "Third century BCE; precise date uncertain", "category": "History", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A large classified bibliography of writers and their works, reported as 120 books. It is lost as a continuous work and known through later references and fragments; its relation to a shelf-by-shelf Library catalogue is debated.", "alexandriaConnection": "Callimachus’s bibliographical scholarship is closely associated with Alexandria. Neither a full list of its entries nor its exact form as an institutional catalogue survives. The number 120 is an ancient report about books or rolls, not 120 modern printed volumes.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://cs.uky.edu/~raphael/sol/sol-cgi-bin/search.cgi?db=REAL&enlogin=&field=adlerhw_gr&login=&searchstr=kappa%2C227", "sourceLabel": "Suda, kappa 227 · Suda On Line, University of Kentucky", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Suda, kappa 227 · Suda On Line, University of Kentucky", "url": "https://cs.uky.edu/~raphael/sol/sol-cgi-bin/search.cgi?db=REAL&enlogin=&field=adlerhw_gr&login=&searchstr=kappa%2C227", "note": "A tenth-century CE compilation preserving earlier biographical and bibliographical traditions; not a contemporary inventory." } }, { "id": "aetia", "title": "Aetia · the earlier books", "author": "Callimachus", "date": "Earlier phase possibly about 270 BCE; chronology debated", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Stories explaining the origins of rituals, names and customs. The earlier material of Books I–II is the part plausibly relevant here; the poem survives in quotations and papyrus fragments.", "alexandriaConnection": "An Alexandrian poet’s major work, but not all of its eventual four-book form belongs in this scene. Books III–IV, including the Lock of Berenice, contain material later than 250 BCE and are explicitly excluded.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/introduction", "sourceLabel": "Susan A. Stephens, Introduction to the Aetia · Dickinson College Commentaries", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Introduction to the Aetia · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/introduction", "note": "Discusses the fragmentary text and its phases of composition. Books III–IV and the Lock of Berenice belong after 246 BCE and are excluded from this setting." } }, { "id": "hecale", "title": "Hecale", "author": "Callimachus", "date": "Third century BCE; exact date disputed", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A narrative poem that gives an aged woman’s hospitality to Theseus a central place in heroic myth. Its text must be pieced together from quotations and papyri.", "alexandriaConnection": "A work of Callimachus’s Alexandrian literary world. Its exact date relative to 250 BCE is not secure; this record marks the uncertainty rather than pretending to place an original roll.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "sourceLabel": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus of Cyrene · Dickinson College Commentaries", "url": "https://dcc.dickinson.edu/callimachus-aetia/callimachus", "note": "Modern scholarly introduction; biographies and the exact institutional role of Callimachus require caution." } }, { "id": "sappho-songs", "title": "Songs", "author": "Sappho", "date": "Late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Sappho’s poetry survives unevenly: some poems or substantial passages can be read, including the Ode to Aphrodite, while much of the collection is fragmentary or lost. This is not a claim that all her poetry vanished.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www-current.chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/sappho-sb/", "sourceLabel": "Selections from Sappho · Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Selections from Sappho · Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University", "url": "https://www-current.chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/sappho-sb/", "note": "A scholarly selection, not the complete ancient collection. Later Alexandrian book divisions must not be projected with certainty back into 250 BCE. The modern copyrighted translations are linked, not reproduced." } }, { "id": "alcaeus-songs", "title": "Songs", "author": "Alcaeus of Mytilene", "date": "Late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Lyric songs of politics, drinking, desire and exile survive in ancient quotations and pieces of papyrus. “Songs” is a descriptive collection label, not the title of a securely reconstructed Alexandrian roll.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL142/1982/volume.xml", "sourceLabel": "Greek Lyric I: Sappho and Alcaeus · Loeb Classical Library", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Greek Lyric I: Sappho and Alcaeus · Loeb Classical Library", "url": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL142/1982/volume.xml", "note": "D. A. Campbell’s modern scholarly edition assembles the testimonia and fragments; the modern copyrighted translation is not reproduced here." } }, { "id": "cypria", "title": "Cypria", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Stasinus; authorship disputed", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Events before the Iliad: the origins of the war, the gathering of the Greeks and the early campaigns. Only fragments and later summaries remain.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "aethiopis", "title": "Aethiopis", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Arctinus of Miletus", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The arrival of Penthesilea and Memnon, the death of Achilles, and the contest over his armour are known from a summary and sparse fragments.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "little-iliad", "title": "Little Iliad", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Lesches; attribution uncertain", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The later siege of Troy, including the armour judgement and the wooden horse, survives only through fragments and later accounts.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "iliupersis", "title": "Iliupersis · The Sack of Troy", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Arctinus of Miletus", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The fall of Troy was the subject of its own epic. A later summary and a few fragments are not enough to reconstruct its full language.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "nostoi", "title": "Nostoi · The Returns", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Agias of Troezen", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The homecomings of Greek heroes other than the Odyssey’s principal narrative. Its surviving fragments and summaries are only a small part of the original poem.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "telegony", "title": "Telegony", "author": "Traditionally attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene", "date": "Archaic period; individual dates and attributions uncertain", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A continuation of the Odyssean story, including Odysseus’s death at the hands of Telegonus, survives through sparse fragments and summary.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "sourceLabel": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Proclus, Chrestomathy · Living Poets, Durham University", "url": "https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/index.php/Proclus%2C_Chrestomathy", "note": "Ancient summaries transmitted through later witnesses preserve plots and attributions. Their survival is not the survival of the poems themselves, and authorship attributions are uncertain." } }, { "id": "catalogue-of-women", "title": "Catalogue of Women · Ehoiai", "author": "Hesiodic tradition", "date": "Archaic period; often placed in the sixth century BCE", "category": "Poetry", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Genealogical poetry about mortal women, divine unions and heroic families. Papyri preserve substantial pieces, but no continuous complete copy survives; attribution to Hesiod himself is disputed.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/348", "sourceLabel": "Hesiodic fragments · Evelyn-White’s 1914 Loeb edition", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Hesiodic fragments · Evelyn-White’s 1914 Loeb edition", "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/348", "note": "Public-domain translation of testimonia and fragments; the attribution of the Catalogue and other Hesiodic poems differs from that of the Theogony and Works and Days." } }, { "id": "trackers", "title": "Ichneutae · The Trackers", "author": "Sophocles", "date": "Fifth century BCE; exact date unknown", "category": "Drama", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A satyr play in which trackers search for Apollo’s stolen cattle and discover the young Hermes and his lyre. A major papyrus preserves a substantial but incomplete portion.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-surveys-in-the-classics/article/introduction/B74A6CC866CDD4D3B94D9ED23E3FF223", "sourceLabel": "P. J. Finglass, Sophocles: Introduction · Cambridge New Surveys in the Classics", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "P. J. Finglass, Sophocles: Introduction · Cambridge New Surveys in the Classics", "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-surveys-in-the-classics/article/introduction/B74A6CC866CDD4D3B94D9ED23E3FF223", "note": "Modern survey discussing papyrus discoveries and the fragmentary plays, including Trackers and Tereus." } }, { "id": "tereus", "title": "Tereus", "author": "Sophocles", "date": "Fifth century BCE", "category": "Drama", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The story of Procne and Philomela survives through quotations, papyri and ancient discussion. Reconstructions of a full script go beyond that evidence.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://university.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs/2007/fitzpatrick", "sourceLabel": "David Fitzpatrick, Sophocles’ Tereus · Open University", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "David Fitzpatrick, Sophocles’ Tereus · Open University", "url": "https://university.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs/2007/fitzpatrick", "note": "Discusses the testimonia, fragments and reconstruction of the lost play; Aristotle’s Poetics 1454b is an early witness." } }, { "id": "hypsipyle", "title": "Hypsipyle", "author": "Euripides", "date": "About 410–407 BCE", "category": "Drama", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A nurse, a child’s death, and the arrival of the Seven against Thebes are part of a play substantially recovered from papyri, but not preserved complete.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL504/2008/volume.xml", "sourceLabel": "Euripides, Fragments: Aegeus–Meleager · Loeb Classical Library", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Euripides, Fragments: Aegeus–Meleager · Loeb Classical Library", "url": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL504/2008/volume.xml", "note": "Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp’s scholarly collection gives the fragmentary plays and testimonia. No modern copyrighted translation is reproduced." } }, { "id": "phaethon", "title": "Phaethon", "author": "Euripides", "date": "Fifth century BCE; exact date disputed", "category": "Drama", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "Phaethon’s attempted drive of the sun chariot belongs to a tragedy known from a palimpsest, papyri and quotations. The surviving pieces do not constitute a complete play.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL506/2009/volume.xml", "sourceLabel": "Euripides, Fragments: Oedipus–Chrysippus · Loeb Classical Library", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Euripides, Fragments: Oedipus–Chrysippus · Loeb Classical Library", "url": "https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL506/2009/volume.xml", "note": "Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp’s scholarly edition distinguishes extant fragments from reconstruction. The modern translation is not reproduced." } }, { "id": "protrepticus", "title": "Protrepticus", "author": "Aristotle", "date": "Fourth century BCE", "category": "Philosophy", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "An exhortation to philosophy. Later quotations and possible reuse, especially in Iamblichus, support attempts at reconstruction, but the boundaries and wording of the original remain disputed.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.protrepticus.info/", "sourceLabel": "Aristotle’s Protrepticus · scholarly reconstruction project", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Aristotle’s Protrepticus · scholarly reconstruction project", "url": "https://www.protrepticus.info/", "note": "D. S. Hutchinson and Monte Ransome Johnson’s research project documents the evidential and editorial problems of reconstructing this work." } }, { "id": "on-piety", "title": "On Piety", "author": "Theophrastus", "date": "Late fourth or early third century BCE", "category": "Philosophy", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A discussion of religious practices and sacrifice, known in considerable part through much later quotation and reuse in Porphyry. It is not preserved as a complete independent work.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theophrastus/", "sourceLabel": "Theophrastus · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Theophrastus · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "url": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theophrastus/", "note": "Modern scholarly overview of Theophrastus’s works and their transmission, including ethical and religious writings." } }, { "id": "on-cheerfulness", "title": "On Cheerfulness", "author": "Democritus", "date": "Fifth or fourth century BCE", "category": "Philosophy", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "The title is attested in the ancient catalogue of Democritus’s writings. Ethical sayings survive under his name, but their authenticity and precise assignment to this book are not always secure.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D9%3Achapter%3D7", "sourceLabel": "Diogenes Laertius 9.46–49 · Perseus Digital Library", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Diogenes Laertius 9.46–49 · Perseus Digital Library", "url": "https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D9%3Achapter%3D7", "note": "A much later catalogue of writings attributed to Democritus. Its arrangement is not evidence for an Alexandrian shelf arrangement in 250 BCE." } }, { "id": "eudoxus-phaenomena", "title": "Phaenomena · prose account of the sky", "author": "Eudoxus of Cnidus", "date": "Fourth century BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "An earlier prose description of the constellations, distinct from Aratus’s surviving poem. Quotations and criticism in Hipparchus help recover parts of Eudoxus’s astronomy, not a complete text.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eudoxus/", "sourceLabel": "Eudoxus of Cnidus · MacTutor, University of St Andrews", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Eudoxus of Cnidus · MacTutor, University of St Andrews", "url": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eudoxus/", "note": "Scholarly historical overview of the lost works and the later witnesses for his astronomy. Hipparchus himself belongs after this reconstruction’s date." } }, { "id": "herophilus-anatomy", "title": "On Anatomy · Anatomika", "author": "Herophilus", "date": "Early third century BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "An anatomical work known from fragments and later medical discussion. It cannot be read as a recovered complete treatise; even the organization of its books is reconstructed from witnesses.", "alexandriaConnection": "Herophilus’s medical work is strongly associated with early Ptolemaic Alexandria. That is evidence of a local scholarly practice, not proof of a particular medical room or Library roll.", "holdingEvidence": "plausible", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Herophilus_The_Art_of_Medicine_in_Early.html?id=rGhlIfJZkVoC", "sourceLabel": "Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus · Cambridge University Press, 1989", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus · Cambridge University Press, 1989", "url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Herophilus_The_Art_of_Medicine_in_Early.html?id=rGhlIfJZkVoC", "note": "The modern edition gathers ancient testimonia and fragments concerning Herophilus and early Hellenistic medicine; no modern translation is reproduced." } }, { "id": "erasistratus-fevers", "title": "On Fevers", "author": "Erasistratus", "date": "Third century BCE; exact date uncertain", "category": "Science", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A medical work named by Galen. The original treatise does not survive complete, and a precise date relative to 250 BCE cannot be established.", "alexandriaConnection": "Erasistratus belongs to early Hellenistic medicine. The extent and timing of his own activity at Alexandria are disputed, so neither his personal presence nor this treatise is staged as a documented fact.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://www.aroonchande.com/files/am/Erasistratus.pdf", "sourceLabel": "Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 396.3–33 · Erasistratus fr. 201 Garofalo", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 396.3–33 · Erasistratus fr. 201 Garofalo", "url": "https://www.aroonchande.com/files/am/Erasistratus.pdf", "note": "Galen explicitly names On Fevers while reporting a dispute over the genuineness of a passage about heart valves. This is title testimony transmitted in the second century CE, not an intact original work; the modern translation is linked, not reproduced." } }, { "id": "aegyptiaca", "title": "Aegyptiaca · History of Egypt", "author": "Manetho", "date": "Early Ptolemaic period; exact date debated", "category": "History", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "An Egyptian priest’s Greek-language history, known through quotations, epitomes and difficult layers of transmission. Later authors preserve king lists and narratives but not the complete work.", "alexandriaConnection": "The work belongs to the early Ptolemaic encounter between Egyptian historical traditions and Greek readers. Its commissioning, original contents and presence in the royal Library should not be inferred from later legends.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/apion-1.html", "sourceLabel": "Josephus, Against Apion I · University of Chicago", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Josephus, Against Apion I · University of Chicago", "url": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/apion-1.html", "note": "First-century CE quotations and polemical discussion preserve material attributed to Manetho and Berossus. They do not establish royal-library holdings." } }, { "id": "babyloniaca", "title": "Babyloniaca · History of Babylonia", "author": "Berossus", "date": "Early third century BCE", "category": "History", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A Babylonian priest’s Greek account of the past, known through later quotations and epitomes, including material transmitted by Josephus and Eusebius.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/apion-1.html", "sourceLabel": "Josephus, Against Apion I · University of Chicago", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Josephus, Against Apion I · University of Chicago", "url": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/apion-1.html", "note": "First-century CE quotations and polemical discussion preserve material attributed to Manetho and Berossus. They do not establish royal-library holdings." } }, { "id": "periegesis", "title": "Periodos Ges · Circuit of the Earth", "author": "Hecataeus of Miletus", "date": "About 500 BCE", "category": "History", "status": "fragmentary", "description": "A geographical work conventionally divided into Europe and Asia, known mainly through later geographical quotations. Its author is Hecataeus of Miletus, not the later Hecataeus of Abdera.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/bnjo/development/", "sourceLabel": "Hecataeus and the Circuit of the Earth · Jacoby Online, Brill", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Hecataeus and the Circuit of the Earth · Jacoby Online, Brill", "url": "https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/bnjo/development/", "note": "Brill’s scholarly discussion identifies the Periodos Ges and its fragmentary character. Hecataeus is historian no. 1 in Jacoby. “Periegesis” is another conventional name for the work." } }, { "id": "euclid-porisms", "title": "Porisms", "author": "Euclid", "date": "About 300 BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "lost", "description": "A three-book geometrical work described by Pappus. Later attempts to reconstruct its propositions are hypotheses, not a rediscovered text of Euclid.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "sourceLabel": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "url": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "note": "Surveys the surviving and lost works, including evidence from the later writers Pappus and Proclus. Euclid’s biography is only sparsely documented." } }, { "id": "euclid-conics", "title": "Conics", "author": "Euclid", "date": "About 300 BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "lost", "description": "A work on conic sections known from later testimony. It must not be confused with the surviving Conics of Apollonius of Perga, composed after this setting.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "sourceLabel": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "url": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "note": "Surveys the surviving and lost works, including evidence from the later writers Pappus and Proclus. Euclid’s biography is only sparsely documented." } }, { "id": "euclid-pseudaria", "title": "Pseudaria · Fallacies", "author": "Euclid", "date": "About 300 BCE", "category": "Science", "status": "lost", "description": "Proclus describes a work that trained beginners to detect fallacious reasoning in geometry. No continuous text survives; no example here is presented as an authentic quotation from it.", "alexandriaConnection": "An attested ancient work included to show what survives only in part, or not at all. No surviving inventory establishes a copy in the Library in 250 BCE, and the cause and date of its loss are unknown.", "holdingEvidence": "contextual", "readerType": "witness", "textPath": null, "translator": null, "edition": null, "sourceUrl": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "sourceLabel": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "sourceNote": "This is a record of a work, not an invented reconstruction of its text. The linked witness or scholarly edition explains what can actually be known.", "language": "English", "originalLanguage": "Ancient Greek", "witness": { "label": "Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, Euclid · Dictionary of Scientific Biography, hosted by St Andrews", "url": "https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Euclid.pdf", "note": "Surveys the surviving and lost works, including evidence from the later writers Pappus and Proclus. Euclid’s biography is only sparsely documented." } } ] }