e argonautics of Jason; the stratagems of Palamedes, and
infinite other secrets of science are believed to have perished at the
time of this conflagration.

Nay, Aristotle would not have missed the quadrature of the circle, if
only baleful conflicts had spared the books of the ancients, who knew
all the methods of nature. He would not have left the problem of the
eternity of the world an open question, nor, as is credibly conceived,
would he have had any doubts of the plurality of human intellects and
of their eternity, if the perfect sciences of the ancients had not been
exposed to the calamities of hateful wars. For by wars we are
scattered into foreign lands, are mutilated, wounded, and shamefully
disfigured, are buried under the earth and overwhelmed in the sea, are
devoured by the flames and destroyed by every kind of death. How much
of our blood was shed by warlike Scipio, when he was eagerly compassing
the overthrow of Carthage, the opponent and rival of the Roman empire!
How many thousands of thousands of us did the ten years' war of Troy
dismiss from the light of day! How many were driven by Anthony, after
the murder of Tully, to seek hiding places in foreign provinces! How
many of us were scattered by Theodoric, while Boethius was in exile,
into the different quarters of the world, like sheep whose shepherd has
been struck down! How many, when Seneca fell a victim to the cruelty
of Nero, and willing yet unwilling passed the gates of death, took
leave of him and retired in tears, not even knowing in what quarter to
seek for shelter!

Happy was that translation of books which Xerxes is said to have made
to Persia from Athens, and which Seleucus brought back again from
Persia to Athens. O glad and joyful return! O wondrous joy, which you
might then see in Athens, when the mother went in triumph to meet her
progeny, and again showed the chambers in which they had been nursed to
her now aging children! Their old homes were restored to their former
inmates, and forthwith boards of cedar with shelves and beams of gopher
wood are most skilfully planed; inscriptions of gold and ivory are
designed for the several compartments, to which the volumes themselves
are reverently brought and pleasantly arranged, so that no one hinders
the entrance of another or injures its brother by excessive crowding.

But in truth infinite are the losses which have been inflicted upon the
race of books by wars and tumults. And as it