The Romans at first paid little attention to literature. It is not until the last century of the republic that we hear of a library at Rome, and then it was not a native collection but a spoil of war. It was captured from Perseus of Macedonia and brought to Rome in B. C. 167. So Sulla captured the library of Apellicon, at Athens, in B. C. 86, and brought it to Rome. Lucullus brought to Rome a rich store of literature from his eastern conquests (B. C. 67). Wealthy men and scholars now began to form libraries at Rome, some of which became very large and valuable. It is here we first hear of the dedication of libraries to the public,—a step which made Rome for a time the resort of scholars from other nations, especially Greece. The most famous of the many imperial libraries of Rome was that founded by Ulpius Trajanus. It was called the Ulpian Library, and was at first founded in the forum of Trajan, but afterwards removed to the baths of Diocletian. In the fourth century there are said to have been as many as twenty-eight public libraries in Rome. Great, indeed, must have been their destruction under various vicissitudes, for when the Emperor Constantine moved the Roman capital to Constantinople, and founded his imperial library there, it numbered but a few thousand books. It was, however, greatly enlarged after his death—some say to 100,000 volumes. It was destroyed in A. D. 476, with the close of the Western Empire. With the spread of Christianity there arose a new incentive to write and collect books. The church required both a literature and libraries as part of its organization. Pamphilus is said to have collected a library of 30,000 volumes, chiefly religious, at Cæsarea (A. D. 309), his object being to lend them out to readers. But as book-making and collecting became narrowed to the church, general literature was proscribed and libraries ceased to flourish, except as encouraged by the monastic orders. Such libraries were necessarily small and of a private character. Their books were manuscripts written or copied by the priests, up to the date of the invention of printing. The libraries of this class which grew in importance were those of the Swiss and Irish monasteries, not omitting those in England, as at Canterbury and York. The invasion of the Norsemen, in the ninth and tenth centuries, was generally fatal to the monastic libraries on both sides of the English channel.