Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/60

54 them and to some extent corrupted their text." Plutarch tells the same or a very similar story in his life of Sulla. If it is true, how could the books of Aristotle have come from Neleus to Philadelphus, as Athenaeus says they did in the passage quoted above? Perhaps we can reconcile the two statements, and this is my conclusion, by supposing that Neleus retained Aristotle's own writings, his original manuscripts, as a precious heritage for his own family, and sold the rest of the books, written by others, to Philadelphus.

I do not recall any other matters worth relating about the libraries of Greece. I do not need to say that the Romans, after