The significance of the destruction, as Palladas understood, extended beyond the loss of the single cult image. Whether on this occasion mayhem reached the library is unknown. But libraries, museums, and schools are fragile institutions; they cannot long survive violent assaults. A way of life was dying.
Greenblatt’s suggestion that early Christians were responsible for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is puzzling. It’s not even clear whether the Library even continued to exist at this point; its prominence and influence had already been diminishing for centuries, and it may not have survived an invasion by other forces more than a century prior.
