eir ornaments
destroyed, and the statues of the gods melted for the use of the
Alexandrian church. One statue of an Egyptian god was alone saved from
the wreck, and was set up in mockery of those who had worshipped it;
and this ridicule of their religion was a cause of greater anger to the
pagans than even the destruction of the other statues. The great statue
of Serapis, which was made of wood covered with plates of metal, was
knocked to pieces by the axes of the soldiers. The head and limbs were
broken off, and the wooden trunk was burnt in the amphitheatre amid
the shouts and jeers of the bystanders. A conjectured fragment of this
statue is now in the British Museum.

In the plunder of the temple of Serapis, the great library of more
than seven hundred thousand volumes was wholly broken up and scattered.
Orosius, the Spaniard, who visited Alexandria in the next reign, may be
trusted when he says that he saw in the temple the empty shelves, which,
within the memory of men then living, had been plundered of the books
that had formerly been got together after the library of the Bruchium
was burnt by Julius Caesar. In a work of such lawless plunder, carried
on by ignorant zealots, many of these monuments of pagan genius and
learning must have been wilfully or accidentally destroyed, though the
larger number may have been carried off by the Christians for the other
public and private libraries of the city. How many other libraries this
city of science may have possessed we are not told, but there were no
doubt many. Had Alexandria during the next two centuries given birth to
poets and orators, their works, the offspring of native genius, might
perhaps have been written without the help of libraries; but the labours
of the mathematicians and grammarians prove that the city was still well
furnished with books, beside those on the Christian controversies.

When the Christians were persecuted by the pagans, none but men of
unblemished lives and unusual strength of mind stood to their religion
in the day of trial, and suffered the penalties of the law; the weak,
the ignorant, and the vicious readily joined in the superstitions
required of them, and, embracing the religion of the stronger party,
easily escaped punishment. So it was when the pagans of Alexandria were
persecuted by Theophilus; the chief sufferers were the men of learning,
in whose minds paganism was a pure deism, and who saw nothing but
ignorance and superstitio