Ages of Reed and Lotus [edit]

[Achebe]

This is different - critics usually advise to get rid of filler and superfluous lines; here the consensus seems to favor adding information (for example, that the Romans picked up the Egyptian practice of papyrus record-keeping and became dependent on it, and that commerce with Egypt was halted by quite a diverse lot of barbarians (the Vandals, for example) even before the Muslim conquest of Egypt (which had such dire consequences for the Library of Alexandria).

Thanks for the encouragement, edit to follow after research to get the parties' names right.

Wasn't it Julius Caesar who burned the library first?