AS soon as the desire for foreign and domestic literature became general, and men of letters, or those who affected to be so, began to consider a library in their house indispensable, persons were to be found who gained their livelihood by supplying this want. When Cicero, ad Quint. Fr. iii. 4, writes: De bibliotheca tua Grœca supplenda, libris commutandis, Latinis comparandis valde velim ista confici, — Sed ego mihi ipsi ista per quem agam non habebo, neque enim venalia sunt, quœ quidem placeant, etc., we cannot suppose that any thing else is alluded to than a regular trade in books. He speaks also in like manner of the copies of the laws sold by the librarii. Leg. iii. 20, a librariis petimus; publicis literis consignatam memoriam publicam nullam habemus, and mentions, Philipp. ii. 9, a taberna libraria, in which Clodius took refuge. Under Augustus, we find it already becoming a distinct trade, and Horace himself mentions the brothers, Sosii, by whom his poems were sold. Epist. i. 20, 2, ut prostes Sosiorum pumice levis. Art. Poet. 345. Hic meret œra liber Sosiis (viz. the book, qui miscuit utile dulci.) These librarii transcribed the books themselves, and no doubt kept assistants for the greater and more rapid multiplication of copies of them.