an, they
are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are
pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence of destruction was
executed with blind obedience. The volumes of parchment or papyrus were
distributed as fuel among the five thousand baths of the city; but such
was their incredible number, that it took six months to consume them.
This act of barbarism, recorded by Abulpharagius, is considered somewhat
doubtful by Gibbon, in consequence of its not being mentioned by
Eutychius and Almacin, two of the most ancient chroniclers. It seems
inconsistent, too, with the character of Amrou, as a poet and a man of
superior intelligence; but that the Alexandrian Library was thus
destroyed is a fact generally credited, and deeply deplored by
historians. Amrou, as a man of genius and learning, may have grieved at
the order of the caliph, while, as a loyal subject and faithful soldier,
he felt bound to obey.

Among the Greeks, as among other nations, the first library consisted
merely of archives, deposited, for the sake of preservation, in the
temples of the gods. Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, was the first
who established a public library in his native city, which, we need not
say, always took the lead in every thing relating to science and
literature in Greece. Here he deposited the works of Homer, which he had
collected together with great difficulty and at a very considerable
expense; and the Athenians themselves were at much pains to increase the
collection. The fortunes of this library were various and singular. It
was transported to Persia by Xerxes, brought back by Seleucus Nicator,
plundered by Sylla, and at last restored by the Emperor Hadrian. On the
invasion of the Roman Empire by the Goths, Greece was ravaged; and on
the sack of Athens, they had collected all the libraries, and were upon
the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of ancient learning, when
one of their chiefs interposed, and dissuaded them from their design,
observing, at the same time, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to
the study of books, they would never apply themselves to that of arms.

The first library established at Rome was that founded by Paulus
Emilius, in the year B. C. 167. Having subdued Perses, king of
Macedonia, he enriched the city of Rome with the library of the
conquered monarch, which was subsequently augmented by Sylla. On his
return from Asia, where he had successfully terminated the fi