BOOK XXXV. II. 8-II 



former siirname — in consequence of an act of adop- 

 tion by will creeping into others' preserves, to the 

 discredit of the Scipios called Africanus.'* But the 

 Messala family must excuse me if I say that even to 

 lay a false claim to the portraits of famous men 

 showed some love for their virtues, and was much 

 more honourable than to entail by one's conduct that 

 nobody should seek to obtain one's own portraits ! 



\Ve must not pass over a novelty that has also been portrau- 

 invented, in that Hkenesses made, if not of ffold or ff«'"«f »" 



' ' o libranes. 



silver, yet at ail events oi bronze are set up m the 



libraries in honour of those whose immortal spirits 



'^peak to us in the same places, nay more, even 



imaginary likenesses are modelled and sense of loss 



gives birth to countenances that have not been 



handed down to us, as occurs in the case of Homer. 



At any rate in my view at all events there is 



no greater kind of happiness than that all people 



for all time should desire to know what kind of a man 



a person was. At Rome this practice originated 



with Asinius PolHo, who first by founding a Hbrary After 39 b.c. 



made works of genius the property of the pubHc. 



Whether this practice began earlier, with the Kings 



of Alexandria and of Pergamum,^ between whom 



there had been such a keen competition in founding 



Hbraries, I cannot readily say. The existence of a 



strong passion for portraits in former days is 



evidenced by Atticus the friend of Cicero in the 



volume he pubHshed on the subject and by the most 



benevolent invention of Marcus \ arro, who actually 



by some means inserted in a proHfic output of 



^ Ptolemy I of Egypt (died 283 b.c.) and Attalus I of 

 Pergamum (241-197 b.c.) both founded Hbraries. Two at 

 Alexandria became famous under Ptolemies II and III. 



267 



