Ptolemy’s Library

A Work in Progress

10

If Glenn Hughes were writing this screenplay

he’d script something that would play well today

in the time of Caesar Crassus and Pompey

a story set in Ptolemy’s library

still a place where beautiful women were found 

in and around the courts of the Ptolemies

because beautiful women like artists and poets

tend to congregate where power is

he might script Donal in the library

sorting through the scroll pile

manuscripts from Greek colonies around the Med

fragments, scrolls, entire libraries

anything Greek or sometimes Sanskrit

he might script Ezra as Apollonius

intent on keeping the story going

pondering those fragments of Homer

not in the version ordered back in the day

many scrolls bought from pirates and polis

that Ptolemy’s buyers had acquired

on expeditions throughout the known world

imagine the worth of old papyri 

unpublished fragments of Sappho's Homer

Homer’s always been good for business 

there’ll be more business in Rome now that…

let's create documentary fiction

make myths matching literary players

such as Lesbia and Catullus, H.D. and Aldington

seen through a lens that travels through time

retell their story as a bard would do

making everything seem as if brand new

like Apollonius writing an epic

Ptolemy’s Argonauts led by Jason

bringing back a tale of a golden fleece

seen from afar from Ptolemy’s library 

before Julius Caesar burned it down 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2025