Heraion of Argos, Reconstruction on a 1902 painting. digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ via Wikimedia
Heraion of Argos, Reconstruction on a 1902 painting. http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ via Wikimedia Commons (X). Public Domain in the United States.Some people are saying the fire at Notre Dame de Paris today is like the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Being the Library contained so much collected knowledge, I think that was probably much worse.I think the fire at Notre Dame is probably more like the fire at the Heraion of Argos in 423 BCE. The circumstances sound similar, too, if indeed the Paris fire was caused by a work crew: Chrysis, the priestess of Hera at Argos, fell asleep inside the temple, and the garlands inside the temple were set aflame by a torch that had been left burning. The temple burned to the ground, its treasures lost.Looking at videos from Paris of people lining bridges across the Seine to view the fire, I can’t help but think of some of the modern scholars who suppose the destruction of traditional temples in Late Antiquity meant little to the semi-Christian populace. The hearts of Parisians today are clearly breaking, whatever their feelings about the Roman Catholic religion, and I imagine many of the inhabitants of ancient Alexandria and other cities of the Roman Empire grieved, despite their religious allegiance, for the beautiful and ancient buildings destroyed at the behest of an Emperor in far-off Constantinople in the name of a new religion. -- source link
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