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Of Libraries
105
rently originated this idea of placing statues in libraries; that same Asinius who was the first, by founding a free library, to make the wisdom of mankind free to all. Whether the kings at Alexandria and Pergamum, who showed great zeal in the founding of libraries, had done the same before, I find it impossible to learn." So it seems, as I have said, that Asinius was the originator of the idea; and Pliny says that he placed in a library, the first public one opened in the city (not, in the world, as some absurdly render the phrase), the statue of a living man, Marcus Varro, the first person to have that honour. Afterwards the same distinction was shown
