. The Spoils of an Empire
. The Spoils of an Empire
In which the collapse of Alexander’s empire sets the stage for the domination of the Mediterranean world by Rome. Ptolemy’s establishment of the great library at Alexandria ensured for the moment a centralized storehouse of early knowledge of natural history and its conveyance into Roman culture. Pliny the Elder becomes the first great “encyclopedist” in his attempt to summarize and catalog learning up to his day, while Galen and Dioscorides developed aspects of botany as applied to medicine. Unfortunately, the fall of Rome froze much of Western natural history into a reliance on the ancients rather than a true experimental science-a condition that lasted for much of the next millennium.
Keywords: Pliny the Elder, Galen, Dioscorides, Ptolemy, library of Alexandria
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