Trust to your own wits, and don't go so often
to the library of the British Museum."

Aulus Gellius, who lived A.D. 117-180, speaks of "sitting with a party of
friends in the library of the palace of Tiberius, when a book happened to
be taken down with the title M. Catonis Nepotis," and they began asking
one another who this M. Cato Nepos might be[43]. This library contained
also public records[44].

The same writer tells a story of a grammatical difficulty which was to be
settled by reference to a book _in templo Pacis_, in the forum of
Vespasian; and again, when a particular book was wanted, "we hunted for it
diligently," he says, "and, when we had found it in the temple of Peace,
we read it[45]."

The library in the forum of Trajan, often called _Bibliotheca Ulpia_, was
apparently the Public Record Office of Rome. Aulus Gellius mentions that
some decrees of former praetors had fallen in his way there when he was
looking for something else, and that he had been allowed to read them[46];
and a statement of Vopiscus is still more conclusive as to the nature of
its contents. It tells us, moreover, something about the arrangement. In
his life of the Emperor Tacitus (Sept. A.D. 275--Apr. 276) Vopiscus says:

And lest anybody should think that I have given too
hasty a credence to a Greek or Latin author, the Ulpian
Library has in its sixth press (_armarium_) an ivory
volume (_librum elephantinum_) in which the following
decree of the Senate, signed by Tacitus with his own
hand, is recorded, etc.[47]

Again, in his life of the Emperor Aurelian, the same writer records how
his friend Junius Tiberianus, prefect of the city, had urged him to
undertake the task, and had assured him that: "even the linen-books
(_libri lintei_) shall be brought out of the Ulpian library for your
use[48]."

Books could occasionally be borrowed from a public library, but whether
from one of those in the city of Rome, I cannot say. The scene of the
story which proves this is laid by Aulus Gellius at Tibur (Tivoli), where
the library was in the temple of Hercules--another instance of the care of
a library being entrusted to a temple. Aulus Gellius and some friends of
his were assembled in a rich man's villa there at the hottest season of
the year. They were drinking melted snow, a proceeding against which one
of the party, a peripatetic philosopher, vehemently protested, urging
against the practice the authority of numer