Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/340

 328 The Library. lifetime to his particular study, it was unlikely that more feli- citous phrases could have been invented by a casual foreigner, whose only claim to be heard consists in his interest in the subject. I am gratefully bound to mention, at this early stage, the name of my friend, the Rev. Franz Ehrle, S.J., of the Vatican Library, whose own work in connection with its history will be mentioned in its right place. Without his assistance the follow- ing pages would not have been written. THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES OF OLD ROME. Dr. Lanciani remarks truly that the history of the public libraries in ancient and mediaeval Rome has not yet been written, and is only to be gathered in a fragmentary and imperfect way from isolated passages of the classics and from inscriptions. He himself, however, has done something in this direction, for in his Ancient Rome he devotes a chapter to the subject; 1 and to this in the first place I would direct attention. The essays on ancient libraries, he says, published between 1606 and 1876, by Lipsius, Saint-Charles, Lomeier, Struve, Liirsen, Petit-Radel, Michaud, and others, are not only incomplete, but almost worth- less, because we have gained more knowledge on this subject within the last few years, by the results of the excavations at Pergamon, Pompeii, and Rome, than the authors above-named could gather in the space of two centuries and a half. He devotes considerable space to the discussion of the form of these early libraries, into which I have no occasion here to enter. But a few lines may be devoted to recording the actual libraries, especially inasmuch as I shall only name those which can be designated as public ones. Records of libraries indeed at Rome we find as early as B.C. 1 68, when ^Emilius Paulus brought back the library of Perseus, king of Macedonia, after his conquest. This was, however, not made a public one, nor is its site now to be traced. The library 1 Ancient Rome in the light of Recent Discoveries, London, 1888, chapter vii. pp. (178-205).