The Ptolemies’ appetite for the classics was voracious. Apart from mandating the copying of texts, the king sent his agents far and wide to borrow and buy more and more books. This appetite created another opening for book-world entrepreneurs. A class of para-literary workers on the fringes of the library produced forgeries, then collaborated with the booksellers to distribute them, and, often, to sell them to the library. Apocryphal Aristotelian treatises were a favorite, and were produced to a convincingly high standard. Only after centuries of subsequent research were they proven to be
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