ome a
great number which he had amassed in Greece, and which he now
distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla
followed his example. Alter the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire
library in the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he
appears to have been the founder of the first Roman public library.
After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate rewarded the family of
Regulus with the books found in that city. A library was a national
gift, and the most honourable they could bestow. From the intercourse of
the Romans with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly
increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their private
collections.

Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent taste in their _libraries_
has been recorded. Asinius Pollio, Crassus, Caesar, and Cicero, have,
among others, been celebrated for their literary splendor. Lucullus,
whose incredible opulence exhausted itself on more than imperial
luxuries, more honourably distinguished himself by his vast collections
of books, and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he
allowed the learned. "It was a library," says Plutarch, "whose walks,
galleries, and cabinets, were open to all visitors; and the ingenious
Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses to hold
literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." This
library enlarged by others, Julius Caesar once proposed to open for the
public, having chosen the erudite Varro for its librarian; but the
daggers of Brutus and his party prevented the meditated projects of
Caesar. In this museum, Cicero frequently pursued his studies, during the
time his friend Faustus had the charge of it; which he describes to
Atticus in his 4th Book, Epist. 9. Amidst his public occupations and his
private studies, either of them sufficient to have immortalised one man,
we are astonished at the minute attention Cicero paid to the formation
of his libraries and his cabinets of antiquities.

The emperors were ambitious, at length, to give _their names_ to the
_libraries_ they founded; they did not consider the purple as their
chief ornament. Augustus was himself an author; and to one of those
sumptuous buildings, called _Thermae_, ornamented with porticos,
galleries, and statues, with shady walks, and refreshing baths,
testified his love of literature by adding a magnificent library. One of
these libraries he fondly calle