appears that by this time the center of learning in Alexandria had moved to the Serapeum. Destruction The last known references to the old Mouseion still functioning occur in the 260s AD. The Brucheion, the complex of palaces and gardens that included the Mouseion, was probably destroyed by fire on the orders of Emperor Aurelian in 272 AD, although we do not know for sure how much of the original buildings still existed at the time. Scattered references in later sources suggest that another mouseion was established in the 4th century at a different location, but little is known about its organisation and it is unlikely to have had the resources of its predecessor. The mathematician Theon of Alexandria (ca. 335– ca. 405), father of the philosopher Hypatia, is described in the 10th century Suda as "the man from the Mouseion," but it is not clear what connection he actually had with it. Zacharias Rhetor and Aeneas of Gaza both speak of a physical space known as the "Mouseion" in the late 5th century. Legacy The Ptolemies founded their Mouseion at a time of transition in Greek history, during the passage from a predominantly oral to a more literary culture. The scholars gathered there included: Callimachus, a poet and the first to publish a comprehensive book catalogue (the Pinakes). Zenodotos, the first head librarian of the Great Library, who laid the foundations for Homeric philology. Apollonius of Rhodes, epic poet and author of the ground-breaking Argonautica. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, head librarian under Ptolemy III Euergetes and a polymath, who worked on literary criticism, philosophy, geography, and mathematics (e.g., his sieve for prime numbers and his measure of the earth’s circumference). Aristarchus of Samothrace, arguably the greatest grammarian of antiquity, who invented conventional signs nowadays used in critical editions. Didymos of Alexandria, known as βιβλιολάθας (“Book-Forgetting”), who composed more than 4,000 commentaries on classical authors. The members of the Mouseion ensured the preservation and production of historical, literary, and scientific works, which would remain part of the Western heritage, and thanks to their efforts today one can still read Homer and the tragedians. As an institution dedicated to the Muses, the name mouseion became the source for the modern word museum. In early modern France, it denoted as much a community of scholars brought together under one roof as it did the collections themselves. French and English writers often referred to