It pleased the Greeks to invent traditions about the books of Polycrates at Samos, or those of Pisistratus that were counted among the spoils of Xerxes: and the Athenians thought that the very same volumes found their way home again after the victories of Alexander the Great. Aristotle owned the first private library of which anything is actually recorded; and it is still a matter of interest to follow the fortunes of his books. He left them as a legacy to a pupil, who bequeathed them to his librarian Neleus: and his family long preserved the collection in their home near the ruins of Troy. One portion was bought by the Ptolemies for their great Alexandrian library, and these books, we suppose, must have perished in the war with Rome. The rest remained at home till there was some fear of their being confiscated and carried to Pergamus. They were removed in haste and stowed away in a cave, where they nearly perished in the damp. When the parchments were disinterred they became the property of Apellicon, to whom the saying was first applied that he was 'rather a bibliophile than a lover of learning.' While the collection was at Athens he did much damage to the scrolls by his attempt to restore their worm-eaten paragraphs. Sulla took the city soon afterwards, and carried the books to Rome, and here more damage was done by the careless editing of Tyrannion, who made a trade of copying 'Aristotle's books' for the libraries that were rising on all sides at Rome. The Romans learned to be book-collectors in gathering the spoils of war. When Carthage fell, the books, as some say, were given to native chieftains, the predecessors of King Jugurtha in culture and of King Juba in natural science: others say that they were awarded as a kind of compensation to the family of the murdered Regulus. Their preservation is attested by the fact that the Carthaginian texts were cited centuries afterwards by the writers who described the most ancient voyages in the Atlantic. When the unhappy Perseus was deprived of the kingdom of Macedonia, the royal library was chosen by AEmilius Paullus as the general's share of the plunder. Asinius Pollio furnished a great reading-room with the literary treasures of Dalmatia. A public library was established by Julius Caesar on the Aventine, and two were set up by Augustus within the precinct of the palace of the Caesars; and Octavia built another near the Tiber in memory of the young Marcellus. The gloomy Domitian restored the library at the Capitol, which had been struck and fired by lightning. Trajan ransacked the wealth of the world for his collection in the 'Ulpiana,' which, in accordance with a later fashion, became one of the principal attractions of the Thermae of Diocletian.