Draft:Fire of Rome (192)

In 192 AD, a fire destroyed a large portion of central Rome, including numerous warehouses and at least three libraries on the Palatine Hill and Trajan's Forum. Libraries destroyed included the Palatine library, the Domus Tiberiana library, and the Templum Pacis library. The fire burned for days and spread throughout many sections of the city until it was extinguished by rain. The fire was memorialized by the Roman historian Dio Cassius and by Galen in his text Peri Alupias, which was lost and then rediscovered in 2005 in a monastery in Thessaloniki; Galen's text illuminated the full intellectual loss and destruction due to the fire. Other authors and contemporaries of Galen recorded immense losses from the fire, such as the grammarian Philides who lost so many books and manuscripts in the fire that he wasted away from grief and died.