ut King Seleucus, who was called Nicanor, many
years afterwards, was careful that all of them should be again carried
back to Athens.

A prodigious number of books were in succeeding times collected by the
Ptolemies in Egypt, to the amount of near seven hundred thousand
volumes. But in the first Alexandrine war the whole library, during the
plunder of the city, was destroyed by fire; not by any concerted design,
but accidentally by the auxiliary soldiers.

REALISTIC ACTING

There was an actor in Greece of great celebrity, superior to the rest in
the grace and harmony of his voice and action. His name, it is said, was
Polus, and he acted in the tragedies of the more eminent poets, with
great knowledge and accuracy. This Polus lost by death his only and
beloved son. When he had sufficiently indulged his natural grief, he
returned to his employment. Being at this time to act the 'Electra' of
Sophocles at Athens, it was his part to carry an urn as containing the
bones of Orestes. The argument of the fable is so imagined that Electra,
who is presumed to carry the relics of her brother, laments and
commiserates his end, who is believed to have died a violent death.
Polus, therefore, clad in the mourning habit of Electra, took from the
tomb the bones and urn of his son, and as if embracing Orestes, filled
the place, not with the image and imitation, but with the sighs and
lamentations of unfeigned sorrow. Therefore, when a fable seemed to be
represented, real grief was displayed.

THE ATHLETE'S END

Milo of Crotona, a celebrated wrestler, who as is recorded was crowned
in the fiftieth Olympiad, met with a lamentable and extraordinary death.
When, now an old man, he had desisted from his athletic art and was
journeying alone in the woody parts of Italy, he saw an oak very near
the roadside, gaping in the middle of the trunk, with its branches
extended: willing, I suppose, to try what strength he had left, he put
his fingers into the fissure of the tree, and attempted to pluck aside
and separate the oak, and did actually tear and divide it in the middle;
but when the oak was thus split in two, and he relaxed his hold as
having accomplished his intention, upon a cessation of the force it
returned to its natural position, and left the man, when it united, with
his hands confined, to be torn by wild beasts.

Translation of Rev. W. Beloe.

GESTA ROMANORUM

What are the 'Ge