THAT an extensive library should be found in the house of a learned and celebrated Roman poet, appears quite natural, and we should miss it, if it were not there; but it would be incorrect to argue from the presence of a costly library, the literary tastes of its owner. What in the earlier periods of Roman history was the want merely of a few individuals, who cultivated, or patronized literature, became by degrees an article of luxury and fashion. The more ignorant a man really was, the more learned he wished to appear, and it was considered ton to possess a rich library, even though its owner never took up a Greek poet or philosopher, perhaps never advanced even to read over the titles on the rolls, contenting himself, at the utmost, with enjoying the neatness of their exterior. Seneca de Tranq. An. 9, earnestly rebukes this rage of heaping together a quantity of books in a library: quarum dominus vix tota vita sua indices perlegit. He ridicules those quibus voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique; and concludes: jam enim inter balnearia et thermas bibliotheca quoque ut necessarium domus ornamentum expolitur. Ignoscerem plane, si e studiorum nimia cupidine oriretur; nunc ista exquisita et cum imaginibus suis descripta sacrorum opera ingeniorum in speciem et cultum parietum comparantur.