Among the Greeks, as among other nations, the first library consisted merely of archives, deposited, for the sake of preservation, in the temples of the gods. Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, was the first who established a public library in his native city, which, we need not say, always took the lead in every thing relating to science and literature in Greece. Here he deposited the works of Homer, which he had collected together with great difficulty and at a very considerable expense; and the Athenians themselves were at much pains to increase the collection. The fortunes of this library were various and singular. It was transported to Persia by Xerxes, brought back by Seleucus Nicator, plundered by Sylla, and at last restored by the Emperor Hadrian. On the invasion of the Roman Empire by the Goths, Greece was ravaged; and on the sack of Athens, they had collected all the libraries, and were upon the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of ancient learning, when one of their chiefs interposed, and dissuaded them from their design, observing, at the same time, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to that of arms. The first library established at Rome was that founded by Paulus Emilius, in the year B. C. 167. Having subdued Perses, king of Macedonia, he enriched the city of Rome with the library of the conquered monarch, which was subsequently augmented by Sylla. On his return from Asia, where he had successfully terminated the first war against Mithridates, Sylla visited Athens, whence he took with him the library of Apellicon the Teian, in which were the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Lucullus, another conqueror of Mithridates, was not less distinguished by his taste for books. The number of volumes in his library was immense, and they were written in the most distinct and elegant manner. But the use which he made of his collection was still more honorable to that princely Roman than the acquisition or possession of it. "It was a library," says Plutarch, "whose walls, galleries, and cabinets were open to all visitors; and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses, to hold literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." But although both Sylla and Lucullus liberally gave public access to their literary treasures, still their libraries can, in strictness, be considered as only _private_ collections. Among the various projects which Julius Caesar had formed for the embellishment of Rome, was that of a _public_ library, which should contain the largest possible collection of Greek and Latin works; and he had assigned to Varro the duty of selecting and arranging them. But this design was frustrated by the assassination of the dictator, and the establishment of public libraries did not take place in Rome until the reign of Augustus.