sive offices, regularly and completely fitted up for the business of transcribing books: and it was the practice of foreign princes, who wished for copies of books, to maintain copyists in this city. Some of the libraries of Rome, having been destroyed by fire, the Emperor Domitian sent copyists to Alexandria that he might be able to replace them. This practice continued for some centuries after Domitian, probably till the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens in the middle of the seventh century.
280. The Greek Septuagint was formed about this period. Some say by seventy or seventy-two translators; but Hewlett says in seventy or seventy-two days. This translation was made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, for the Alexandrian library.—Justin Martyr says, that the seventy-two were shut up in thirty-six cells, and that each pair translated the whole; but that, on subsequent comparison, it was found that the thirty-six did not vary by a word or letter.
Much learned controversy has taken place in all ages about the Septuagint and its origin; one party, sustained by Aristeas, Philo, Josephus, Eusebius, &c. maintaining the embassy from Ptolemy Philadelphus, and the miraculous uniformity of the 70; and the other asserting the falsehood of this story, and alleging that it was a translation made for the use of the Hellenist Jews of Alexandria, before the Christian Era.
The Septuagint is in the idiom of Alexandria, generated in two centuries by those Grecian colonists. The peculiar Greek of the New Testament had the same character, and their extensive use vitiated the Greek language. Many words in both are in new senses, or new to the language; in fact, Colonial Greek.—Villoison.
Josephus states, that the copy of the law presented by the 70 elders to Ptolemy Philadelphus, was written upon parchment or vellum, and excited the astonishment of the king by its extraordinary fineness, as well by the artful manner in which the different skins were sewed together, and the exquisite execution of the writing, in letters of gold.
168, June 22. The battle of Pydna[1] and defeat of Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, by the Romans, under Æmylus Paulus, who brought to Rome a great number of books and manuscripts, which he had amassed in Greece, and which he now distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla followed his example. After the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire library in the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he appears to have been the founder of the first Roman public library.
After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate rewarded the family of Regulus with the books found in that city.
The Romans, after six centuries of gradual dominion, must have possessed the vast and diversified collections of the nations they conquered: among the most valued spoils of their victories, we know that manuscripts were considered as more precious than vases of gold. A library was a national gift, and the most honourable they could bestow. From the intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their private collections. Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent taste in their libraries has been recorded. Assinus Pollio, Crassus, Cæsar, Lucullus, and Cicero, have among others, been celebrated for their literary splendour.
The emperors were ambitious to give their names to the libraries they formed; they did not consider the purple as their chief ornament.—Augustus was himself an author; and to one of those sumptuous buildings called Thermes, ornamented with porticos, galleries, and statues, with shady walks, and refreshing baths, testified his love of literature by adding a magnificent library. One of these libraries he fondly called by the name of his sister Octavia; and the other, the temple of Apollo, became the haunt of the poets, as Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, have commemorated.
59. When Julius Caesar entered upon his first consulate, he introduced a new regulation, of committing to writing and publishing daily, all the Acts or state occurrences both of the senate and the people. It is true that newspapers were not unknown to the Romans. In the galleries which Cicero constructed at his villa at Tusculum, in imitation of the schools of Athens, among the amusements of those who frequented them, was that of a daily newspaper, which recorded the chief occurrences of public note and general interest, with the more private intelligence of births, deaths, and marriages, and of fashionable arrivals, in much the same manner as those of more modern date. It was not, indeed, issued for circulation, being merely hung up in some place of usual resort, and published under the sanction of government, for general information; but we may presume that it was copied for the private accommodation of the wealthy.
The Roman newspaper was entitled the Acta Diurna, and was a sort of gazette, containing an authorized narrative of the transactions worthy of notice, which happened at Rome. Petronius has given us a specimen of the Acta Diurna, in his account of Trimalchis; and it is curious to see how nearly a Roman newspaper runs in the style of an English one: the following are three articles of intelligence out of it. Whatever information it contained, was supplied as are the London papers at the present day, by reporters, who were termed actuari.
"On the 26th of July, thirty boys and forty girls were born at Trimalchis's estate at Cuma."
"At the same time, a slave was put to death for uttering disrespectful words against his lord."
"The same day, a fire broke out in Pompey's gardens, which began in the night, in the steward's apartment."
Plutarch notes that the country people were very busy inquiring into their neighbour's affairs. The inhabitants of cities thronged the Court and other public places, as the exchange and quays, to hear the news. Juvenal notices the keenness of
- ↑ This date is settled by the eclipse, which happened the preceding night.
