OF FORMER TiME)^, 



32S 



nt the perfumers, in quest of news, for which they had an insatiable thirst ; 

 indulging their well-known vein of wit and keen satire upon passers and 

 . passing events, or listening to the declamations of sophists, and other 

 noisy disputants. 



A few clubs of wits are occasionally to be met with in the present epoch 

 of the history of this people ; and a few select assemblies for polite litera- 

 ture and elegant conversation : of which last the most remarkable, per- 

 haps, was that held at the house of the celebrated Aspasia ; since it wa^ 

 attended by Socrates and Alcibiades, as well as by almost every other 

 scholar or philosopher of reputation, and by all the most renowned artists 

 of the day. But we meet with no public establishment for a general 

 course of science like that of the universities, or the Institutions (as they 

 are called) of our own times, excepting their schools, nor with any public 

 library of much note, except that of Pisistratus, Avhich was carried away 

 by Xerxes into Persia before the epoch, to which our attention is now di- 

 rected, commenced. 



Private libraries, however, were not uncommon, though seldom exten- 

 sive. Those of Aristotle, of Theophrastus, and of Euclid, the founder 

 of the school of Megara, were perhaps the largest and most valuable. 

 The art of printing being unknown, books were rare, and copied with 

 great difficulty and expense ; sometimes by individuals for their own be- 

 nefit; but more generally by professional transcribers, who formed a dis- 

 tinct trade. The great mass of Athenians, moreover, though of exqui- 

 site taste and elegance, and certainly wealthier than most of the other 

 Grecian states, seldom displayed those splendid fortunes which were so 

 common in Persia. A freehold of the value of fifteen, or twenty talents, 

 (about four or five thousand pounds sterling) raised a man considerably 

 above the middle ranks of fife. The father of Demosthenes was esteemed 

 rich, the whole of w^hose property on his death amounted to not more than 

 fourteen talents, 3150Z. sterling. Plato appears to have given a hundred 

 minae, or 3151. for three small treatises by Philolaus.* But this was a 

 costly purchase : for Aristotle bought the whole library of Speusippus, 

 small indeed, but select, for three talents, or 676Z.1 



Hence the trade of bookselling at Athens was generally upon a limited 

 scale, and usually engaged in by persons of but little property, whose stock 

 consisted mostly of books of mere amusement ; ,a part of which however 

 was often sent to the adjacent countries, and sometim.es as far as to the 

 Greek colonies on the coast of the Euxine.J 



In respect to books, and the possession of public libraries, Rome was 

 far more fortunate than Athens ; and I shall now hasten to a brief survey of 

 its literary and scientific character in what may be regarded as its most 

 classical and cultivated era : not the Augustan age, which has usually 

 been contemplated as such, but that which immediately preceded it, reach- 

 ing from the dictatorship of Sylla to the establishment of Augustus, and 

 of course terminating a few years before the birth of our Saviour. 



The Romans, who had hitherto devoted themselves altogether to arms 

 and agriculture, and who bad even despised eloquence, and paid no at- 

 tention to the improvement of their native tongue, became attached to 

 literature all of a sudden. The Achaeans were accused by the Roman 



* Dinsr. Lacrt. in Plat. lib. ii'i. sec. 9. viii. 85- 



r Dio^. Laort. in Speiis. lib. iv. sec. 5. AuL Gell. in. 17. 



I Xeiioph. Exped. Oyr. lib. vii. p. 412. Travels of Anacharsis (Eegi vffrs.) iii. 130,' 



