applied by the best writers to the storage of books; and, after a careful
study of the passages in which they occur, I conclude that, so long as
rolls only had to be accommodated, private libraries in Rome were fitted
with rows of shelves standing against the walls (_plutei_), or fixed to
them (_pegmata_). The space between these horizontal shelves was
subdivided by vertical divisions into pigeon-holes (_nidi_, _foruli_,
_loculamenta_), and it may be conjectured that the width of these
pigeon-holes would vary in accordance with the number of rolls included in
a single work. That such receptacles were the common furniture of a
library is proved, I think, by such evidence as the epigram of Martial
quoted above, in which he tells his friend that if he will accept his
poems, he may "put them even in the lowest pigeon-hole (_nido vel imo_),"
as we should say, "on the bottom shelf"; and by the language of Seneca
when he sneers at the "pigeon-holes (_loculamenta_) carried up to the
ceiling."

The height of the woodwork varied, of course, with individual taste. In
the library on the Esquiline the height was only three feet six inches; at
Herculaneum about six feet.

I can find no hint of any doors, or curtains, in front of the
pigeon-holes. That the ends of the rolls (_frontes_) were visible, is, I
think, quite clear from what Cicero says of his own library after the
construction of his shelves (_pegmata_); and the various devices for
making rolls attractive seem to me to prove that they were intended to be
seen.

A representation of rolls arranged on the system which I have attempted to
describe, occurs on a piece of sculpture (fig. 11) found at Neumagen near
Treves in the seventeenth century, among the ruins of a fortified camp
attributed to Constantine the Great[87]. Two divisions, full of rolls, are
shewn, from which a man, presumably the librarian, is selecting one. The
ends of the rolls are furnished with tickets.

[Illustration: Fig. 11. A Roman taking down a roll from its place in a
library.]

The system of pigeon-holes terminated, in all probability, in a cornice.
The explorers of Herculaneum depose to the discovery of such an ornament
there.

The wall-space above the book-cases was decorated with the likenesses of
celebrated authors--either philosophers, if the owner of the library
wished to bring into prominence his adhesion to one of the fashionable
systems--or authors, dead and living, or personal friends. T