. An immense loss was
inflicted upon mankind thereby; but when we are told of 700,000, or even
500,000 of such volumes being destroyed we instinctively feel that such
numbers must be a great exaggeration. Equally incredulous must we be
when we read of half a million volumes being burnt at Carthage some
centuries later, and other similar accounts.

Among the earliest records of the wholesale destruction of Books is that
narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul, many of the
Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their books together, and
burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and
found it 50,000 pieces of silver" (Acts xix, 19). Doubtless these books
of idolatrous divination and alchemy, of enchantments and witchcraft,
were righteously destroyed by those to whom they had been and might
again be spiritually injurious; and doubtless had they escaped the fire
then, not one of them would have survived to the present time, no MS. of
that age being now extant. Nevertheless, I must confess to a certain
amount of mental disquietude and uneasiness when I think of books worth
50,000 denarii--or, speaking roughly, say L18,750,[1] of our modern
money being made into bonfires. What curious illustrations of early
heathenism, of Devil worship, of Serpent worship, of Sun worship, and
other archaic forms of religion; of early astrological and chemical
lore, derived from the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks; what
abundance of superstitious observances and what is now termed
"Folklore"; what riches, too, for the philological student, did those
many books contain, and how famous would the library now be that could
boast of possessing but a few of them.

[1] The received opinion is that the "pieces of silver" here mentioned
were Roman denarii, which were the silver pieces then commonly used in
Ephesus. If now we weigh a denarius against modern silver, it is exactly
equal to ninepence, and fifty thousand times ninepence gives L1,875.
It is always a difficult matter to arrive at a just estimate of the
relative value of the same coin in different ages; but reckoning that
money then had at least ten times the purchasing value of money now, we
arrive at what was probably about the value of the magical books burnt,
viz.: L18,750.

The ruins of Ephesus bear unimpeachable evidence that the City was very
extensive and had magnificent buildings. It was one of the free cities,
governing itself. Its tra