Very interesting history. Thanks for posting.
Chemistry........................
The destruction of the Alexandrian library likely happened in stages, with some public spaces being destroyed as early as under Julius Caesar.
But there is a difference between destroying a public building and destroying the books.
It should be noted though that many Muslims themselves hold that the destruction of scrolls that occurred under Umar starting in 641 had them being used as fuel for fires for the baths years.
The fanatical Christians that burned books were led by Girolamo Savonarola, 1452-1498 who later became Pope.
Whatever survived until 620 AD was destroyed by the Muslims because it either contradicted the koran, or was already mentioned in it. What was preserved by a few muslims were works that interested them. All else they destroyed.
The muslims are single handily responsible for the destruction of Classical Western Civilization, Classical Christianity and the majority of written works that survived until the 620-661 AD period.
The Roman Diocletian 284 - 305 AD book burning was long preceded by burning of the Library of Alexandria of which various people are blamed from Julius Caesar in 48 BC to Mark Antony to Theophilus to the muslims in 640 AD.
Personally I think much of the library would have been destroyed by the great Earthquake and Tidal Wave that covered Alexandria about 35 years before the library was “burnt”.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tsunami-hits-alexandria-egypt
Islam killed the Hellenic world.
I was doing just fine until the Muslims came along.
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So the Romans were not in favor of alchemy.
Diocletian was the Facebook and Twitter Google and Apple of his time.
Diocletian’s reign was a time of runaway inflation, which he sought to control through price controls. It didn’t work. It is easy to see why he would have been hostile to an artificial expansion of the money supply. For the record, it was the Christian favoring Constantine who stabilized the economy through introduction of the gold solidus.
Fall of the Roman Empire ping!
Alchemy or al-chema means, "the black", as in the black arts.