e site
of the earliest, the foundation of which is ascribed to Ptolemy the Second
(B.C. 285-247), must undoubtedly be sought for within the circuit of the
royal palace, which was in the fashionable quarter of the city called
Brucheion. This palace was a vast enceinte, not a separate building, and,
as Strabo, who visited Alexandria 24 B.C., says,

Within the precincts of the palace is the Museum. It has
a colonnade, a lecture-room, and a vast establishment
where the men of letters who share the use of the Museum
take their meals together. This College has a common
revenue; and is managed by a priest who is over the
Museum, an officer formerly appointed by the kings of
Egypt, but, at the present time, by the Emperor[12].

That the older of the two libraries must have been in some way connected
with these buildings seems to me certain from two considerations. First, a
ruler who took so keen an interest in books as Ptolemy, would assuredly
have kept his treasures under his own eye; and, secondly, he would hardly
have placed them at a distance from the spot where the learned men of
Alexandria held their meetings[13].

At some period subsequent to the foundation of Ptolemy's first library, a
second, called the daughter of the first[14], was established in connexion
with the Temple of Serapis, a magnificent structure in the quarter
Rhacotis, adorned so lavishly with colonnades, statuary, and other
architectural enrichments, that the historian Ammianus Marcellinus
declares that nothing in the world could equal it, except the Roman
Capitol[15].

This brief notice of the libraries of Alexandria shews that the earlier of
the two, besides being in a building dedicated to the Muses, was also
connected in all probability with a palace, and the second with a temple.
If we now turn to Pergamon, we shall find the library associated with the
temple and [Greek: temenos] of Athena.

The founder selected for the site of his city a lofty and precipitous
hill, about a thousand feet above the sea-level. The rocky plateau which
forms the summit is divided into three gigantic steps or terraces. On the
highest, which occupies the northern end of the hill, the royal palace is
believed to have been built. On the next terrace, to the south, was the
temple of Athena; and on the third, the altar of Zeus. External to those
three groups of buildings, partly on the edge of the hill, partly on its
sides, were the rest of