I was struck, one afternoon, with the appearance of a rather spacious hall [it was about 23 feet long by 15 feet broad], the walls of which were plain and unornamented up to a certain height, but beautifully decorated above in stucco-work. The decoration consisted of fluted pilasters, five feet apart from centre to centre, enclosing a plain square surface, in the middle of which there were medallions, also in stucco-work, two feet in diameter. As always happens in these cases, the frame was the only well-preserved portion of the medallions. Of the images surrounded by the frames, of the medallions themselves, absolutely nothing was left _in situ_, except a few fragments piled up at the foot of the wall, which, however, could be identified as having been representations of human faces. My hope that, at last, after fifteen years of excavations, I had succeeded in discovering a library, was confirmed beyond any doubt by a legend, written, or rather painted, in bright red colour on one of the frames. There was but one name POLONIVS THYAN ..., but this name told more plainly the purpose of the apartment than if I had discovered there the actual bookshelves and their contents[52]. When I had the pleasure of meeting Signor Lanciani in Rome in April, 1898, he most kindly gave me his own sketch of the pilasters and medallion, taken at the moment of discovery. I am therefore able to reproduce exactly (fig. 6) one compartment of the wall of the library above described. The height of the blank wall below the stucco-work, against which the furniture containing the books stood, has been laid down as about 3 feet 6 inches, on the authority of Professor Middleton[53]. The remains of the medallion are still to be seen in the Museo del Orto Botanico, Rome. The person commemorated is obviously Apollonius Tyaneus, a Pythagorean philosopher and wonderworker, said to have been born about four years before the Christian era. [Illustration: Fig. 6. Elevation of a single compartment of the wall of the Library discovered in Rome, 1883. From notes and measurements made by Signor Lanciani and Prof. Middleton.] A similar room was discovered at Herculaneum in 1754. A full account of the discovery was drawn up at once by Signor Paderni, keeper of the Herculaneum Museum, and addressed to Thomas Hollis, Esq., by whom it was submitted to the Royal Society. I will extract, from this and subsequent letters, the passages that bear upon my subject. _Naples, 27 April, 1754._ ... The place where they are digging, at present, is under _Il Bosco di Sant' Agostino_.... All the buildings discover'd in this site are noble; ... in one there has been found an entire library, compos'd of volumes of the Egyptian Papyrus, of which there have been taken out about 250....[54] _To the same._