The public library of Asinius Pollio was, Pliny says, decorated with portraits, but whether the great libraries of Pergamus and Alexandria were ornamented in this way, Pliny is unable to say. Magnificent medallion portraits in gold and silver were fixed round the walls of the two great libraries of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and probably in the other still larger public libraries which were founded by subsequent Emperors. _Recent discovery._ _Authors' busts._ The ordinary private libraries of Rome were decorated in a similar way, but with reliefs of less costly materials. A very interesting example of this has recently been discovered and then destroyed on the Esquiline hill in Rome. The house in which this library was discovered was one of no very exceptional size or splendour. The _bibliotheca_ itself consisted of a handsome room; the lower part of its walls, against which the _armaria_ fitted, was left quite plain. Above that the walls were divided into square panels by small fluted pilasters, and in the centre of each space there was, or had been, a medallion relief-portrait about two feet in diameter enclosed in a moulded frame. All this was executed in fine, hard marble-dust stucco (_opus albarium_ or _marmoreum_). The names of the authors whose portraits had filled the medallions were written in red upon the frames. Only one was legible--APOLLONIVS THYAN.... No doubt the works of Apollonius of Thyana were kept in the _armarium_ below the bust. The library at Herculaneum, which contained the famous papyrus rolls, was a much smaller room. Besides the bookcases all round the walls, it had also an isolated _armarium_ in the centre of the room; and this, no doubt, was a usual arrangement. The room at Herculaneum was so small that there can only have been just enough space to walk between the central bookcase and the _armaria_ ranged all round against the wall. _Closed bookcases._ As the Comm. Lanciani has pointed out (_Ancient Rome_, p. 195), it is interesting to note that the ancient Roman method of arranging books in low, closed cupboards is still preserved in the great library of the Vatican in Rome; which is unlike most existing libraries in the fact that on first entering no one would guess that it was a library, not a single book being visible. Of the ancient _armaria_ themselves no example now exists. They were of wood, and therefore, of course, perishable. But we may, I think, argue from analogy, that the doors of the cupboards were richly ornamented with painted decorations, thus forming an elaborate dado or _podium_ below the row of portrait reliefs which occupied the upper part of the walls. _Booksellers' quarter._ The principal quarter in Rome for the shops of booksellers (_bibliopolae_ or _librarii_) appears to have been the _Argiletum_, which (in Imperial times) was an important street running into the Forum Romanum between the Curia and the Basilica Aemilia; see Mart. I. 3, 117[13].