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Of Libraries
115
ported at public expense in Egypt the populous, that they may idly browse among books and quarrel over them in the cave of the Muses." Athenaeus, commenting on this passage, says, "Timon spoke of the Museum as a cave or cage, thus making sport of the philosophers maintained there, as if they were so many rare birds."
Athenaeus, we see, calls them philosophers; but Strabo uses the more general phrase, "men of letters and savants;" and no doubt scholars of every sort were admitted. Strabo puts special stress on the word "men," showing that boys and youths and those beginning their studies were not taught in the Museum,
