Quid mihi Celsus agit? monitus multumque monendus
Privatas ut quærat opes, et tangere vitet
Scripta Palatinus quæcunque recepit Apollo[42].
What is my friend Celsus about? he who has been reminded, and must still be reminded again and again, that he should draw upon his own resources, and be careful to avoid the multifarious writings which Palatine Apollo has taken under his charge.
A man might say now-a-days, "Trust to your own wits, and don't go so often to the library of the British Museum."
Aulus Gellius, who lived a.d. 117-180, speaks of "sitting with a party of friends in the library of the palace of Tiberius, when a book happened to be taken down with the title M. Catonis Nepotis," and they began asking one another who this M. Cato Nepos might be[43]. This library contained also public records[44].
The same writer tells a story of a grammatical difficulty which was to be settled by reference to a book in templo Pacis, in the forum of Vespasian; and again, when a particular book was wanted, "we hunted for it diligently," he says, "and, when we had found it in the temple of Peace, we read it[45]."
The library in the forum of Trajan, often called Bibliotheca Ulpia, was apparently the Public Record Office of Rome. Aulus Gellius mentions that some decrees of former prætors had fallen in his way there when he was looking for something else, and that he had been allowed to read them[46]; and a statement of Vopiscus is still more conclusive as to the nature of its contents. It tells us, moreover, something about the arrangement. In his life of the Emperor Tacitus (Sept. a.d. 275—Apr. 276) Vopiscus says:
And lest anybody should think that I have given too hasty a credence to a Greek or Latin author, the Ulpian Library has in its sixth press (armarium) an ivory volume (librum elephantinum) in which the following decree of the Senate, signed by Tacitus with his own hand, is recorded, etc.[47]
Again, in his life of the Emperor Aurelian, the same writer records how his friend Junius Tiberianus, prefect of the city, had urged him to undertake the task, and had assured him that: "even the linen-books (libri lintei) shall be brought out of the Ulpian library for your use[48]."
Books could occasionally be borrowed from a public library, but whether from one of those in the city of Rome, I cannot say. The scene of the story which proves this is laid by Aulus Gellius at Tibur (Tivoli), where the library was in the temple of Hercules—another instance of the care of a library being entrusted to a temple. Aulus Gellius and some friends of his were assembled in a rich man's villa there at the hottest season of the year. They were drinking melted snow, a proceeding against which one of the party, a peripatetic philosopher, vehemently protested, urging against the practice the authority of numerous physicians and of Aristotle himself. But none the less the party went on drinking snow-water. Whereupon "he fetched a treatise by Aristotle out of the library of Tibur, which was then very conveniently accommodated in the temple of Hercules, and brought it to us, saying——[49]." But I need not finish the quotation, as it has no bearing on my special subject.
It is probable that numerous collections of books had been got together by individuals in Rome, before it occurred to Augustus and his friends to erect public libraries. One such library, that belonging to the rich and luxurious Lucullus, has been noticed as follows by Plutarch[50]: