RotLBComedy and TragedyThe next building was very much like the first, but at right angles to it. Immediately after entering, Teisias turned down its length. It formed the side of the complex, so the entrance was on the end of the building, to Sandy's left, and rather than their being a single eye-catching frieze on the wall, the walls a series of friezes depicting myths -- history, Sandy corrected himself -- of the Muses. He scanned them as he passed, recording them, but also very interested in which scenes the sculptor chose.
Part way down the building, Sandy stopped in his tracks, as a sense of awed unreality came over him. The frieze he was looking at depicted the singing duel between the Muses and the mortal Peirides, which had been famously ended by Pegasus striking the ground with a forehoof, making the Horse's Spring. The equine image that looked back at him was not a classical one, with Pegasus' wings on his hocks, nor one depicting him as a typical small Thessalian horse, but the very familiar image of a heavy horse, one that Sandy had only previously seen in reflections. Teisias came over to him and joined him in looking up at the image. “I see you're most taken by images depicting our Patrons and mortals. Very appropriate for a scholar. Amazing workmanship, isn't it? Ptolemy II recruited only the best artists for his monuments. The sculptor he chose had a gift for lifelike images, but there was a problem: how to depict the Muses themselves?”
“It's said that he convinced the king to make an immense donation to the cult of the Muses at Helikon, in order to hire away one of their priests whom the Muses had blessed. He could make a sketch in a few minutes of remarkable accuracy and detail, and since he had dedicated himself to the Muses, he could enter their shrine and sketch them for the sculptor. It's written that Kalliope described Pegasus to him, and got him a special dispensation to visit the shades in Elysium to properly depict them.” Teisias apparently read doubt in Sandy's stunned expression, as he hastily added a disclaimer, “But of course, we have only his word for the last. Just because his friezes closely resemble statues of famous mortals doesn't mean he actually saw them.”
Sandy turned back to the frieze in wonder. The story didn't seem entirely implausible: if Kalliope wanted her worshippers immortalized in stone, she could ask Hermes to guide somebody to Hades. And somebody, somehow, made an otherwise impossible relief of Pegasus. But that would imply the Olympians were more active than Deinon's skepticism seemed to allow. Sandy wasn't sure what to believe, or what he believed, or whether he was missing a puzzle piece hiding under his nose.
He followed the group along in daze, no, more in a dream. The Library was historical – real – as were the Muses. He'd never doubted the first, and hadn't doubted the second since he came to the Building. And yet, the Library was a building out of myth, along with its contents: lost in an uncertain way to an unknown fate. And the Muses? Like Pegasus, dismissed as the inventions of primitives, maintained for pro-social reasons, like all religions.
Sandy started looking at the papyrus labels stuck the the bins on one side of the building without purpose. He realized he was looking at names of authors of comedies. More slowly, it dawned on him that they were walking towards the beginning of the alphabet. His label-reading grew purpose: delta, gamma, beta... alpha phi, alpha sigma. He slowed, examining the rows of bins with greater care, heedless of anybody who might be watching him from further down the row.
Alpha rho. Sandy ducked into the aisle, now actively searching. Three shelves in, he found it, and pulled out a bin far enough to check its contents. The scrolls shimmered faintly in his Sight, bearing identical preservation enchantments. He checked tags, and then reverently removed one from the bin, sliding the bin back into place. He stared uncomprehending at his prize: Aristophanes'
Daedalus: legendary, lost. And now he held
the true version, the one Aristophanes wrote, the Athenians kept in their shrine to Dionysos, and Ptolemy III tricked them out of.
Sandy slid off the ribbon holding the scroll rolled up, and held the play at the far-sighted distance he needed for the holocam to record the text. He stood in the aisle reading the comedy with a blissful smile on his face: every sentence he recorded added to what his era knew of the play... and it was funny as hell, too.
Primordial noticed Sandy slink away and scowled slightly. He raised a hand to tug his friend with the first of the All in One but stopped realizing where they were. Instead he walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Later,” he said simply.
Sandy hesitated, looking down at the half-read scroll and then back up at Primordial, unwilling to return
Daedalus to its bin. “And really? Comedies?” It was clear the Baron disapproved of his taste in theater but he smiled as they rejoined the group.
“
What,” retorted Nick, “
You've never wanted to just laugh for a while?” He'd been on the verge of asking Sandy to pass on what he comprehended of his reading.
Deinon shared Primus’ opinion of Sandy’s choice of reading material. “If I’d know all you wanted in return for your teaching was to read a few moldering plays, I’d have agreed to let you in. I’d thought you’d wanted something of
value.” The drew a few chuckles from Council and other scholars staying out of sight, as well as some unhappy muttering.
Sandy finished reading the section of
Daedalus he was looking at, then carefully rerolled the scroll and gently returned it to its bin.
"Deinon’s a fool. It’s already four hundred years old! It already provides detail about Athens thats are otherwise forgotten."History and Natural SciencesTeisias led the group into the next building, and now Sandy was awed by the architecture: the building was immense, longer than the others, and at least twice as wide. It seemed to Sandy that it was at least as wide as the temples to Poseidon and the Muses, and unlike them, the roof was held up by just four rows of columns, the outer two supporting a gallery running around all four walls, about ten feet above the floor.
Where the previous two buildings contained scholars trying to avoid being seen, the ones here seemed not just willing to be seen, but eager to be. Men lined the gallery railing to look down at the visitors, and some of the ones in the reading room – for that's what this end of the building was – got up from their study tables to approach the tour group. Sandy guessed that there were over a hundred people present.
It seemed dozens of people crowded in to greet – or at least get a closer look at – 'Primus' and 'Erythros'. Some even came down from the gallery or came in through doors at the far end of the building to meet the newcomers. There were too many names and short introductions for either man to catch, and Teisias and the rest of the Council tried futilely to get them to let them see the Library in peace. They did, however, manage to escort their guests up a flight of stairs to the gallery, where the gathered crowd was at least stretched out by the narrow corridor between the ends of the bookshelves and railing.
When Baron P, Sandy, the Council, and all of their groupies reached a distant corner of the building, Teisias made a grand sweeping gesture, encompassing not only the panorama they could see of the building they were in, but included views of two other buildings, visible through nearly adjacent doorways at the corner. “This is the very heart of the Library. On this floor is our history collection; below us is natural science. Through this door, law, rhetoric, epics, and mathematics. And in our newest building, all of our foreign works and works on multiple and varied subjects.”
Sandy gazed out over the open space below him, trying to take in all of the books and all of the knowledge they represented. This was home: Greek history as Greeks wrote it, all of it, not just the few works that managed to survive until his age, centuries upon centuries from now. He’d already dedicated years of his life to it, hunched over his desk, teasing out meaning from the fragments they had. Recording even just a few of the scrolls would immeasurably increase his – his era's – understanding of these people. He imagined himself browsing the shelves, walking through the aisles picking up scrolls that caught his eye, each one expanding his knowledge of the the history of this era.
And their sciences, too: how much had they lost over the years? There were tantalizing hints in references to lost works, in torn scrolls, and in palimpsests. He slowly turned, as if in a dream, to look through the doorways into the other buildings; it was like looking into wonderland: all of antiquity's math, their epics, both major and minor... the cultures of many great civilizations, all at his fingertips.
And all of it would burn. The image in his mind’s eye shifted: burning scrolls on burning shelves, his eyes stinging from smoke. Nothing he could – should! – do would change that. But maybe he should aim higher than just a single book of magic. Aristophanes' comedies were worth trying to save both as historical artifacts and for what they said about daily life in Athens four centuries ago. What else? He turned back to the history collection, and slowly ran knowledgeable, wondering eyes over it. What else should he try to save?
Translation and Other OddmentsThe last-mentioned building was next on the tour. It wasn't as long as either of other two big ones, but was probably the most interesting to pass through. Not only were there the by now usual shelves of scroll bins, other sorts of shelving holding different sorts of works; Teisias mentioned in passing both clay tablets and large papyrus sheets containing rubbings of Egyptian inscriptions. There was a greater variety of activity on display: people carefully repaired scrolls while others made fresh copies of ones beyond salvaging. Translators puzzled over books in many languages, trying to select the most correct Greek words for the Library's editions. It was not Teisias, but Pythokeles, who provided most of the description of the building's contents and tasks. In fact, he seemed quite animated about translation and its importance to the Library and scholarship as a whole.
The group briefly passed through the last of the Library's buildings, just long enough for Sandy to catch that they were walking through math books. He marveled – goggled, actually – at a few tags he read: his era knew nothing of the authors nor their works. Minor mathematicians, or just unlucky ones? He had little way of telling without poring over the scrolls.
This was also the section Primordial was most interested in. If any secret sciences of the Great Old Ones existed here he expected to be buried under layers of heretical mathematical symbols and theories. He would need to read deeply so he noted the section and promised to come back and read it deeply later.