The Last Scroll of Alexandria
The year was 48 BCE. The air in Alexandria was thick with the scent of salt from the Mediterranean and the smoke of a city under siege. Inside the Great Library, the world was silent, save for the frantic footsteps of Theon, a young scribe.
While Julius Caesar's ships burned in the harbor, the fire was spreading. Theon didn't care about the politics of emperors or queens; he cared about the ink on the papyrus.
The Great Rescue
The Library was not just a building; it was the "Memory of the World." It held half a million scrolls—works by Aristotle, lost plays by Sophocles, and maps of stars that no one else had ever seen.
"We cannot save it all," his master, an old scholar named Ammon, coughed through the rising haze. "Pick one. Just one."
Theon looked at the towering shelves.
Should he take the medical texts that cured fevers?
The poems that made men weep?
The mathematical proofs of Eratosthenes?
The Choice
He grabbed a cedar box tucked away in a corner. It contained a scroll rumored to be written by an explorer who had sailed past the Pillars of Hercules into the Great Ocean. It was a map of a "New World."
As the wooden beams groaned and sparks showered from the ceiling, Theon tucked the box under his tunic and ran. Behind him, the "Light of Knowledge" was being swallowed by a different kind of light—the orange, hungry glow of destruction.
The Legacy
Theon escaped into the night, watching from the hills as the Great Library turned to ash. History tells us that much of the ancient world's wisdom died that night. But legend says that for generations, a small group of scholars kept a secret box, passed down from a scribe who refused to let the fire have the last word.
What makes this historical?
The Setting: Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the world.
The Event: Julius Caesar did accidentally set fire to parts of the city during his war to help Cleopatra.
The Tragedy: We lost works like the History of the Etruscans and countless scientific discoveries that might have advanced human technology by centuries