Book 7
17
At a later time an enormous quantity of books, nearly seven hundred thousand volumes, was either acquired or written i.e. copied from other manuscripts. in Egypt under the kings known as Ptolemies; but these were all burned during the sack of the city in our first war with Alexandria, In 48 B.C. By no means all of the Alexandrian Library was destroyed at that time, and the losses were made good, at least in part, by Antony in 41 B.C. A part of the library was burned under Aurelian, in A.D. 272, and the destruction seems to have been completed in 391. not intentionally or by anyone's order, but accidentally by the auxiliary soldiers.
