Capitolo 40
in vain. For a long time, on account of some failure in the regular progress of
the seasons on that coast there were there a famine that became
finally so severe that the people of the city were incited to consent to
you surrender their divinity to the Egyptians in change for a provisioning of corn.
Ptolemy sent the corn and received the idol. He built then the temple,
what, when ended, it almost overcame in the grandeur and the magnificence
every sacred structure in the world.
It was in this temple that the following sums to the Alexandrian
library was deposited, when the apartments of the Museum became full.
In the end they were four hundred thousand rolls or volumes in the
Museum and three hundred thousand in the Serapion. The first one was
called the library of parent and the second, being as is, the
descending of the first one, you/he/she had called his/her daughter.
Ptolemy Philadelphus that it very greatly interested him in to pick up
this library, desired to manufacture him a complete harvest of all the books
in the world. He assumed studious to read and to study, and travellers to
makes wide turns, for the purpose to learn that books existed
among all the surrounding nations; and, when he learned of them
existence, he didn't save any pains or spends in to try of or to get
their originalses or the most perfect and authentic copies of
them. He sent to Athens and it got the jobs of the most famous
Greek historians, and causing then, as in the other cases, more beautiful
transcripts to be done, he sent again the transcripts to Athens and a
very great sum of money with them like an equivalent for the difference of
you appraise between originals and copies in such change.
During the investigations of which Ptolemy did in the literature
the surrounding nations, in his/her search for accessions in his/her library, him
it felt that the Hebrews had the certain sacred writings in their temple to
Jerusalem, understanding one minute and extremely interesting history of
their nation from the more first periods and also many other books of