Herald of Steel

Chapter 966 Public Library (Part-2)

Prince Perikles scanned the various bookshelves located at the various alcoves, each dedicated to the pursuit of one subject, be they be astronomy, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, literature, history, and even a few books on the natural sciences.

Just the collection on the first floor was breathtaking for the prince, as it included many famous books from both the territories of Adhania and Tibias.

And they were original prints at that!

Prince Perikles could not help but read a few lines from these legendary books just to see the words.

One of which was in the astronomy section, which described the history and use of the astrolabes.

Described in its simplest form, an astrolabe was a metal disc with a pattern of wires, cutouts, and perforations that allowed its user to calculate astronomical positions precisely.

It was used extensively by priests to study the positions of the moon and stars, studying them for various omens and signs, and then making various predictions based on that.

The instrument was so important that the adept use of the astrolabe was one of the core skills a priest needed to master to rise through the ranks.

Also as a side note, it was something that Ophenia was extremely expert at.

Attached to the section of astrology, were also several famous books on astrology that Prince Perikles browsed, finding many, many pages of techniques related to things like palm reading, oneiromancy i.e. the technique of reading dreams, favomancy i.e.- the technique of throwing fava beans into the ground and reading the results, libanomancy, i.e.- the technique of observing the movements of smoke after a fire has been made, to name only a few.

After these books, Prince Perikles read another very famous book on maths, where it proved the Pythagorean theorem but also erroneously stated that all numbers could be presented by a fraction of two whole numbers, i.e. all numbers were rational.

This was clearly false as in reality ‘pie’ existed, which was irrational.

As for the medical section, the various intricately illustrated manuscripts depicting the anatomy of the human body and various medicinal plants used for healing were all very beautiful to look at.

But utterly useless information.

However, Prince Perikles still enjoyed them greatly, his eyes sparkling at being offered the chance to browse them.

Satisfied with this perusal of the first floor, Prince Perikles then took one of the many grand spiraling staircases leading up to the second floor, where there too were many tables and chairs situated next to the numerous bookshelves, and scattered among the many vacant seats, were a few busy men lost in their books.

And by men, yes, I mean only men.

There was literally not a single woman inside these hallowed halls.

There were only priests and clergymen from the Gaia and Ramuh temples maintaining and accessing the halls, along with only a scant, well dressed old man reading the available books.

Well dressed because that pertained to their wealth.

Which explained how they could read and write in the first place.

And old because only old men had the free time in their hands to come read books in the middle of the day.

All working age men were busy… well working.

Prince Perikles found the second floor to be little more than an extension of the first, with the exception there were a few shelves consisting not of books but scrolls, arranged in neat triangular heaps.

And Prince Perikles unfurled them to see that many of them were from Tibias, and some even from his own family’s library, featuring various literature, intimate historical records, and even decades old tax records.

Prince Perikles could not help but have a complicated feeling rise within him as he witnessed this.

But he quickly pushed these bitter thoughts down and took to the third floor, which was a bit different.

For here, the prince noticed that attached to the main library were several lecture halls, where a few sermons and debates were going on, the noise of some arguing men wafting into the prince’s ears.

This was the academic portion of the library, which also doubled as the quarters of some of the priests.

It was also here that Prince Perikles noticed a handful of scripts from Thesos and Sybarsis gracing the shelves as determined by their language.

And seeing such rare volumes here, the prince could not help but open the pages and scan the letters, even though he could not read them, just to see what they looked like.

While Prince Perikles perused all these books, over time one thought could not help but creep up into him.

That was how many of the books looked so new and neat.

And by that he meant that not only the pages were still very sturdy and ‘lively’, meaning they had been made not too long ago, but the alignment of all the sentences were very straight and clean, with there being no crosses or corrections of the written words.

This to a modern audience would seem very natural.

But to someone native like Perikles it was extremely unusual.

Because when writing a book in this time period, it was only inevitable that mistakes happened as the lines becoming misaligned or the scribes making a spelling mistake.

But here, there was none of it.

And to add even more to the mystery, all of the letters were also of the exact shape throughout the entire book.

No human could ever do that.

This discovery was so astonishing that when Prince Perikles first noticed this, he thought he was looking at an enchanted scroll.

And so he immediately rushed to the receptionist to inquire.

“How are these books made? Why do they all look identical! What magic is this?”

The slightly portly priest must have been taken a bit by Prince Perikles’s sudden, hurried appearance and bloodshot eyes as he instinctively jumped off a bit.

But then recognizing who it was, slightly looking up, replied with a light smile, “Oh that! The great pasha has created a way to produce books much more easily and efficiently. I’m afraid I cannot tell anything more sire. It is a secret.”

Even as back as when Alexander had captured Thesalie and taken over Lord Ponticus’s private collection, he had written to Cambyses asking her to enlarge the printing press department and have it go into overdrive, in order to reproduce all the new works.

And alongside that, he had also ordered her to start work on a library, which, after one and a half years of work was in the current state that Prince Perikles found standing inside.

And even this current public library was not even close to being finished, as several more wings were scheduled to be opened in the future, with construction being at the moment halted due to ‘supply’ shortages.

But this time, the supply crunch was not of men or material.

It was of books!

Yes.

For you see, the existing printing press found themselves too slow to fill the rapidly growing number of shelves.

When Alexander moved onto the capture of the capital Parthenigh after Thesalie, which could be said to be the greatest repository of knowledge along the south of Adhania, it caused Zanzan to be flooded with all kinds of brand new literature and also inundated the men at the printing press with a seemingly endless amount of work.

This happened because Alxx demanded at least ten copies be made for all the tens of thousands of books he captured.

Which was a monumental task.

It was so much in fact that it was estimated that at their current speed, the presses might take well over a few decades to copy all the books if Alexander did not open new ones or expand the productions.

And it was so much work because, to give a recap of how printing in this time period worked, a worker had to manually set the iron block letters in the exact format of the page of the book into the mold and then set it to print them.

This initial preparation took a very, very long time to complete, almost as long as it took to just write the page.

And then this page was done, the worker had to do the same thing for the next page all over again.

And then for the entire book.

Thus to make it economically viable, Alexander needed to print hundreds, if not thousands of the book, not just tens. 𝘪𝘦.𝘤𝑜

But clearly, there was no demand to print so many copies of all the tens of thousands of books.

However, he also still wanted a few copies of all the books no matter how obscure they may be.

Just to preserve them if nothing less.

Hence, even though it was a net loss project for him, Alexander ordered this be done.

For now though, he asked his press to concentrate on the most famous books and make hundreds of copies, wishing to sell them on the open market soon enough.

Prince Perikles however was unaware of all this and very hungry for an answer.

But at least the answer let him solve at least one of the mysteries in his heart.

And that was the reason why this public library existed.

Perikles reasoned it was because Alexander had managed to find a way to cheaply produce books and thus he was not afraid to let some of them get destroyed by the general wear and tear.

And although he did not see why Alexander wanted to educate these peasants, for now, this answer was enough to satisfy him.

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