The history of libraries in ancient and medieval Rome has not yet been written and can only be learned in a fragmentary manner. Prof. Rossi's recent work on this subject is by far the most important source of information.

Sulla brought to Rome the library of Aristotle which had been enlarged by his disciple Theophrastus. The apartment used for a library must face the East, so that the owner might spend the early morning hours in reading. A private library of seven hundred volumes was discovered at Herculaneum in the end of the eighteenth century.

Gladstone's passion for pocket volumes had its prototype in the Romans of the empire. The first state public library at Rome was the Bibliotheca Octaviana.

Trojan's library was by far the most complete. There is evidence that books might be taken out of the public libraries. Many of these were sooner or later destroyed by fire. Christian lioraries devoted to scriptural writings were very common in the first centuries after Christ.

Books were placed horizontally on the shelves, not perpendicularly as with us. There is no certain evidence of the existence of catalogues. The direct descendants from these ancient libraries can be traced from the time of the Empire to the thirteenth century.