The Imperial Library of Constantinople, in the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Long after the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria and the other ancient libraries, it preserved the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans for almost 1,000 years, until it was mostly destroyed during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It was founded by Constantius II (reigned 337-361 AD) who established a Scriptorium so that the surviving works of Greek literature could be copied and so preserved. The Emperor Valens in 372 employed four Greek and three Latin calligraphers.
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Most of the text and literature of Ancient Greece was written on papyrus and as the material making up the text began to deteriorate there was a movement to transfer the text to parchment. Around the 4th century, Constantine the Great began the movement to transfer text (specifically Holy Scripture) from papyrus to parchment. Constantine's heir to the throne Constantius II continued this movement. It was his work that culminated in the first Imperial Library of Constantinople. The library is estimated to have contained some 100,000 volumes of ancient text. The movement was headed by one Themistios, who commanded a group of calligraphers and librarians.
Agathon, was at first Reader, then Librarian, at Constantinople: in 680 AD, during his Readership, he was Notary or Reporter at the 6th General Council, which condemned the Monothelite heresy. He sent copies of the acts, written by himself, to the five Patriarchates. In 712 AD he wrote a short treatise, still extant in Greek, on the attempts of Philippicus Bardanes to revive Monothelitism.[1][2]
A great deal of time and attention was dedicated by those working on the transition of the ancient papyrus text to parchment, to what warranted being actually preserved. Older works like Homer and the Hellenistic history were given priority over Latin works.
Also not prioritized were older works that were no longer spoken like the works of the Attic period. Works like Sophocles and other authors, whose works focused on grammar and text were chosen over least used or contemporary works. Due to this form of selective preservation, many works, which were known to Themistios and that he mentions like the triad of Stoic philosophers are now lost. Some fragments of these lost works have been found at Herculaneum.
For papyrus texts that were not translatable, the group attempted to preserve them from decay by encasing them in parchment.
Over the centuries, several fires in the Library of Constantinople destroyed much of the collection. The library was burnt in the year 473 and about 120,000 volumes were lost. However, the attempts of Themistios and Constantius were not fruitless, as some works were saved and recopied and circulated through other texts. Consequently, modern knowledge of Classical Greek literature is greater than would be the case if not for their efforts.
In 1204, the library became a target of the knights of the Fourth Crusade. The library itself was destroyed and its contents burned or sold. The great part of the library that was saved later became absorbed into the Ottoman Sultan's library after the Muslim forces of Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Turks, captured Constantinople at the end of the siege of 1453.