Now, is not that incident a complete drama? It might be entitled
"Æschylus Lost." Recital, node, and _dénouement._ After Euergetes,
Omar. The action begins with a robber and ends with an incendiary.
Euergetes (this is his excuse) robbed from enthusiasm,--an unpleasant
instance of the admiration of an imbecile.
As for Omar, he is the fanatic. By the way, we must say that strange
historical rehabilitations have been attempted in our time. We do not
speak of Nero, who is the fashion; but an attempt has been made to
exonerate Omar, as well as to bring a verdict of not guilty for Pius V.
Holy Pius V. personifies the Inquisition; to canonize him was enough,
why declare him innocent? We do not lend ourselves to those attempts
at appeal in trials which have received final judgment. We have no
taste for rendering small services to fanaticism, whether it be caliph
or pope, whether it burn books or men. Omar has had many advocates.
A certain class of historians and biographical critics are readily
moved to pity for the sword,--a victim of slander, this poor sword!
Imagine then the tenderness that is felt for a scimitar! The scimitar
is the ideal sword. It is better than brute,--it is Turk. Omar, then,
has been cleaned as much as possible. A first fire in the Bruchion
district, where the Alexandrian library stood, was used as an argument
to prove how easily such accidents happen. That one was the fault of
Julius Cæsar,--another sword. Then a second argument was found in a
second fire, only partial, of the Serapeum, in order to accuse the
Christians, the demagogues of those days. If the fire at the Serapeum
had destroyed the Alexandrian library in the fourth century, Hypatia
would not have been able, in the fifth century, to give, in that same
library, those lessons in philosophy which caused her to be murdered
with broken pieces of earthen pots. About Omar we willingly believe
the Arabs. Abd-Allatif saw at Alexandria, about 1220, "the column of
pillars supporting a cupola," and said, "There stood the library that
Amrou-ben-Alas burned by permission of Omar." Abulfaradge, in 1260,
relates in his "Dynastic History" that by order of Omar they took the
books from the library, and with them heated the baths of Alexandria
for six months. According to Gibbon, there were at Alexandria four
thousand baths. Ebn-Khaldoun, in his "Historical Prolegomena," relates
another wanton destruction,--the annihilation of the library of the
Medes by Saad, Omar's lieutenant. Now, Omar having caused the burning
of the Median library in Persia by Saad, was logical in causing the
destruction of the Egyptian-Greek library in Egypt by Amrou. His
lieutenants have preserved his orders for us: "If these books contain
falsehoods, to the fire with them. If they contain truths, these truths
are in the Koran; to the fire with them." In place of the Koran, put
the Bible, Veda, Edda, Zend-Avesta, Toldos Jeschut, Talmud, Gospel, and
you have the imperturbable and universal formula of all fanaticisms.
This being said, we do not see any reason to reverse the verdict of
history; we award to the caliph the smoke of the seven hundred thousand
volumes of Alexandria, Æschylus included, and we maintain Omar in
possession of his rights as incendiary.
Euergetes, through his wish for exclusive possession, and treating a
library as a seraglio, has robbed us of Æschylus. Imbecile contempt can
have the same effect as imbecile adoration. Shakespeare was very near
having the fate of Æschylus. He has had, too, his fire. Shakespeare
was so little printed, printing existed so little for him, thanks to
the silly indifference of his immediate posterity, that in 1666 there
was still but one edition of the poet of Stratford-on-Avon (Hemynge
and Condell's edition), three hundred copies of which were printed.
Shakespeare, with this obscure and pitiful edition, waiting in vain for
the public, was a sort of poor wretch ashamed to beg for glory. These
three hundred copies were nearly all stored up in London when the fire
of 1666 broke out. It burned London, and nearly burned Shakespeare. The
whole edition of Hemynge and Condell disappeared, with the exception of
forty-four copies, which had been sold in fifty years. Those forty-four
purchasers saved from death the work of Shakespeare.