versions of the Greek canon that we know today, from Homer and Hesiod forward, exist in editions that were collated and corrected by the scholars assembled in the Mouseion and the Library of Alexandria. Appearance In the first century AD, the Greek geographer Strabo described the Mouseion as part of a bigger, richly decorated campus of buildings and gardens: The Mouseion is also part of the Brucheion (palace complex), possessing a peripatos (lobby), an exedra (columned hall), and large oikos (dining hall), in which the common table of the philologoi, men who are members of the Mouseion, is located. This synodos (assembly) has property in common and a priest in charge of the Mouseion, formerly appointed by the kings, but now by Caesar. According to this description, the Mouseion featured a roofed walkway, an arcade of seats, and a communal dining room where scholars routinely ate and shared ideas. The building may have also hosted private study rooms, residential quarters, and lecture halls, based on similar structures that were built much later in Alexandria. However, it is unclear if the premises provided accommodations for anatomical research or astronomical observations. In addition to the Great Library, another smaller library was housed in the nearby Serapeum (Temple of Serapis), which may have been open to people other than Mouseion scholars. Decline During the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, at a time of territorial losses and political turmoil in Egypt, most intellectuals were either killed or expelled from the city, including the last recorded head librarian of the Great Library, Aristarchus of Samothrace, who supposedly was forced to resign his position in 145 BC and died in exile a few years later. Johannes Tzetzes and other Byzantine sources do not mention any further directors after him, albeit four obscure 'caretakers' are mentioned in an Oxyrhynchus fragment, and an inscription from the 80s BC speaks of a certain Onesander of Paphos being appointed to the Great Library. Despite the fact that the Mouseion continued as an institution under Roman rule, when Strabo gave his description of it, it never regained its former glory. According to Suetonius, the emperor Claudius added an additional building. Under the emperors, membership of the Mouseion was not limited to prominent scholars but included politicians, athletes, and other people rewarded for their support of the emperor. Emperor Caracalla temporarily suspended membership in the Mouseion in 216 AD, and it