Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/647

 MUSEUMS AND RAREE SHOWS IN ANTIQUITY.

Most people believe that museums and collections of antiquities are quite a modern invention, and that they were instituted to meet the needs of a growing spirit of enquiry and a more intelligent interest in the habits and customs, the arts and pastimes of our ancestors. But that is quite a mistake, for the ancients were just as interested in rarities as we are, just as eager to see or hear any new thing, although they were, perhaps, somewhat more credulous and gazed upon the marvels shown them with a faith as un- critical as that with which the most devout mediaeval pilgrim contemplated the relics offered to his view. Yet even in those days there were a few more enlightened souls who from time to time had the hardihood to utter some sceptical comment or even to try to analyse the phenomena and to give some rational explanation.

Longinus, we are informed, was a living library and a perambulating museum, words evidently intended to convey an almost reverent admiration, but to our ears rather doubtful praise.^ The word Museion or Museum was originally applied to the place where a philosophical school assembled, and in it they not only cultivated those studies over which the Muses presided, but the building also served as an art gallery where images of the Muses themselves or statues dedicated to them were set up. The most cele- brated Museion was the one at Alexandria founded by the Ptolemies, which contained, besides the Library, a pro- menade, an exedra and a large hall where the philosophers

1 Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers, 445.