I have wished to build a new abode for
Archives; and to add columns on the right and left to
preserve the name of Damasus for ever.

These enigmatical verses contain all that we know, or are ever likely to
know, respecting this building, which is called _chartarium ecclesiae
Romanae_ by S. Jerome[106], and unquestionably held the official documents
of the Latin Church until they were removed to the Lateran in the seventh
century. The whole building, or group of buildings, was destroyed in 1486
by Cardinal Raphael Riario, the dissolute nephew of Sixtus IV., to make
room for his new palace, now called Palazzo della Cancelleria, and the
church was rebuilt on a new site. The connexion with Pope Damasus is
maintained by the name, S. Lorenzo in Damaso. No plan of the old
buildings, or contemporary record of their arrangement, appears to exist.
My only reason for drawing attention to a structure which has no real
connexion with my subject is that the illustrious De Rossi considers that
in the second line of the above quotation the word column signifies
colonnades; and that Damasus took as his model one of the great pagan
libraries of Rome which, in its turn, had been derived from the typical
library at Pergamon[107]. According to this view he began by building, in
the centre of the area selected, a basilica, or hall of basilican type,
dedicated to S. Lawrence; and then added, on the north and south sides, a
colonnade or loggia from which the rooms occupied by the records would be
readily accessible. This opinion is also held by Signor Lanciani, who
follows De Rossi without hesitation. I am unwilling to accept a theory
which seems to me to have no facts to support it; and find it safer to
believe that the line in question refers either to the aisles of the
basilica, or to such a portico in front of it as may be seen at San
Clemente and other early churches.

A letter to Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons in A.D. 441, from a correspondent
named Rusticus, gives a charming picture of a library which he had visited
in his young days, say about A.D. 400:

I am reminded of what I read years ago, hastily, as a
boy does, in the library of a man who was learned in
secular literature. There were there portraits of
Orators and also of Poets worked in mosaic, or in wax of
different colours, or in plaster, and under each the
master of the house had placed inscriptions noting their
characteristics; but, when h