A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

Even though only a tiny proportion of the original written texts of the ancient
world survive, we have enough evidence to know that there was a small but
highly literate group of readers, and that a mass of different, and often
sophisticated, approaches to knowledge continued into the Roman centuries. An
analysis of the great papyrus heap at Oxyrynchus in Egypt, which has offered up
500,000 fragments of texts, shows how the classics such as Homer and Plato
were read and reread over centuries, but it is the sheer variety, breadth and
quality of intellectual life in other areas that impresses. The tools of reason
formulated by Aristotle were used to stunning effect by mathematicians,
astronomers and other scientists so that the leading schools of philosophy - those
inspired by Plato, Aristotle or the Stoics - continued to evolve in original and
unexpected directions. In the second and third centuries AD, the physician
Galen, the spiritual thinker Plotinus, and the astronomer and geographer Ptolemy
produced groundbreaking works that drew heavily on earlier thinkers - Plotinus
on Plato; Galen on the father of scientific medicine, Hippocrates; Ptolemy on
earlier workers in his field, including Aristotle. This sense of intellectual
progress was typical of a society where rational argument was more valued than
acquiescence in ancient authorities. The second century AD philosopher and
historian Plutarch expected an educated man to be as much at home with the
works of mathematicians and astronomers as with those of the great poets. The
very longevity of this tradition, over 900 years between the philosophers of the
sixth century BC and Themistius, is testimony to its vitality.
Texts were widely available for the literate minority, with libraries a feature of
any self-respecting city or cultured household. That in Alexandria, the greatest,
is recorded as having 490,000 rolls of papyrus - the catalogue drawn up by the
scholar Callimachus filled 120 of them. In the second or third century AD one
scholar, Diogenes Laertes, was able to compile a list of some 350 works of
philosophy with 250 named authors. The so-called Villa of the Papyri in
Herculaneum held around 1,100 rolls, many still surviving, though charred by
the eruption of Vesuvius that buried them in AD 79. A first century AD poet,
Perseus, is recorded as having 700 rolls of the works of the Stoic Chrysippus in
his collection. (Sadly, not one full work by Chrysippus now survives intact.) The
library of another poet, the third-century Serenus Sammonicus, contained 62,000
papyrus rolls when he bequeathed it to the emperor Gordian. The Stoic
philosopher Seneca complained of social climbers who filled their houses so full
of rolls that it would have taken them a lifetime just to read the titles.
It was comparatively easy for searchers after knowledge to join the ‘school’ of