Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/96

90 Epaphroditus was the one who had among his slaves Epictetus, the very head of the true philosophy. Certainly they were contemporaries. But the rank and occupation of the two men were very different, the book-collector being a grammarian, according to Suidas, while the owner of Epictetus was one of the bodyguards of Nero. Whoever he was, Samonicus Serenus surpassed him in his zeal for book-collecting, for he had a library in which there were sixty-two thousand volumes. When he died he left his books to Gordian the Less, afterwards emperor. The gift is reported by Capitolinus with these words of praise, "This has immortalized Gordian; for