The Great Book-Collectors | Page 2

war and sent as a gift
to Cleopatra.
It pleased the Greeks to invent traditions about the books of Polycrates
at Samos, or those of Pisistratus that were counted among the spoils of
Xerxes: and the Athenians thought that the very same volumes found
their way home again after the victories of Alexander the Great.
Aristotle owned the first private library of which anything is actually
recorded; and it is still a matter of interest to follow the fortunes of his
books. He left them as a legacy to a pupil, who bequeathed them to his
librarian Neleus: and his family long preserved the collection in their
home near the ruins of Troy. One portion was bought by the Ptolemies
for their great Alexandrian library, and these books, we suppose, must
have perished in the war with Rome. The rest remained at home till
there was some fear of their being confiscated and carried to Pergamus.
They were removed in haste and stowed away in a cave, where they
nearly perished in the damp. When the parchments were disinterred
they became the property of Apellicon, to whom the saying was first
applied that he was 'rather a bibliophile than a lover of learning.' While
the collection was at Athens he did much damage to the scrolls by his
attempt to restore their worm-eaten paragraphs. Sulla took the city soon
afterwards, and carried the books to Rome, and here more damage was
done by the careless editing of Tyrannion, who made a trade of copying
'Aristotle's books' for the libraries that were rising on all sides at Rome.
The Romans learned to be book-collectors in gathering the spoils of
war. When Carthage fell, the books, as some say, were given to native

chieftains, the predecessors of King Jugurtha in culture and of King
Juba in natural science: others say that they were awarded as a kind of
compensation to the family of the murdered Regulus. Their
preservation is attested by the fact that the Carthaginian texts were cited
centuries afterwards by the writers who described the most ancient
voyages in the Atlantic. When the unhappy Perseus was deprived of the
kingdom of Macedonia, the royal library was chosen by Æmilius
Paullus as the general's share of the plunder. Asinius Pollio furnished a
great reading-room with the literary treasures of Dalmatia. A public
library was established by Julius Cæsar on the Aventine, and two were
set up by Augustus within the precinct of the palace of the Cæsars; and
Octavia built another near the Tiber in memory of the young Marcellus.
The gloomy Domitian restored the library at the Capitol, which had
been struck and fired by lightning. Trajan ransacked the wealth of the
world for his collection in the 'Ulpiana,' which, in accordance with a
later fashion, became one of the principal attractions of the Thermæ of
Diocletian.
The splendours of the private library began in the days of Lucullus.
Enriched with the treasure of King Mithridates and all the books of
Pontus, he housed his collection in such stately galleries, thronged with
a multitude of philosophers and poets, that it seemed as if there were a
new home for the Muses, and a fresh sanctuary for Hellas. Seneca, a
philosopher and a millionaire himself, inveighed against such useless
pomp. He used to rejoice at the blow that fell on the arrogant
magnificence of Alexandria. 'Our idle book-hunters,' he said, 'know
about nothing but titles and bindings: their chests of cedar and ivory,
and the book-cases that fill the bath-room, are nothing but fashionable
furniture, and have nothing to do with learning.' Lucian was quite as
severe on the book-hunters of the age of the Antonines. The bibliophile
goes book in hand, like the statue of Bellerophon with the letter, but he
only cares for the choice vellum and bosses of gold. 'I cannot conceive,'
said Lucian, 'what you expect to get out of your books; yet you are
always poring over them, and binding and tying them, and rubbing
them with saffron and oil of cedar, as if they could make you eloquent,
when by nature you are as dumb as a fish.' He compares the industrious
dunce to an ass at a music-book, or to a monkey that remains a monkey

still for all the gold on its jacket. 'If books,' he adds, 'have made you
what you are, I am sure that you ought of all things to avoid them.'
After the building of Constantinople a home for literature was found in
the eastern cities; and, as the boundaries of the empire were broken
down by the Saracen advance, learning gradually retired to the colleges
and basilicas of the capital, and to the Greek monasteries of stony
Athos, and Patmos, and the 'green Erebinthus.' Among the Romans of
the East