OF FORMER TIMES. 



S25 



jTdore emptied of its elegancies and ornaments by Buonaparte, than Syra- 

 cuse was by Marcellus, when stratagem and treachery at length gave him 

 an admission into the city. In the forcible words of Livy, " he left nothing 

 to the wretched iinhabitants, but their Walls and houses." Spain and 

 Africa were in the same manner ransacked by the elder Scipio ; Macedon 

 andLacedsemonby Flaminius ; Carthage by Scipio Africanus ; and Corinth, 

 in the very same year, by Mummius. Nothing, however, can afford 

 a stronger proof of the general want of taste for the fine arts among 

 the Romans, even at this period, than the threat given by Mummius 

 to the masters of the transports to whom he committed his invaluable pil- 

 lage of the best pictures and statues of Achaia, that if they lost or in- 

 jured any of them he would obhge them to find others at their own cost. 

 In addition to which I may also observe, that Polybius, who was at this 

 time with the Roman army, found a party of Roman legionaries, shortly 

 after the capture of Corinth, playing at dice on the Bacchus of Aristides ; 

 a picture so exquisitely finished as to be accounted one of the wonders of 

 the world. Not knowing the value of it they were readily persuaded to 

 part with it for a more convenient table ; and when the spoils of Corinth 

 were afterwards put up to sale. Attains, king of Pergamus, a much better 

 ' judge of painting than the Roman soldiers, offered for it six hundred ^ 

 thousand cesterces, or about five thousand pounds sterling. Mummius, 

 the Roman consul and general, disbeheving that a picture of any kind 

 could be so valuable of itself, thought it must contain some magical vir- 

 tue in it ; and hence would not allow it to be parted with, notwithstand- 

 ing the remonstrances of Attalus. He did not, however, appropriate it 

 to his own use, but placed it in the temple of Ceres, where Strabo informs 

 us he had the pleasure of seeing it not long before it was consumed in the 

 fire by which that temple was reduced to ashes.* 



But the library and museum of most importance at this period, and 

 which most attracted the attention of the Romans, was that estabhshed 

 under the patronage and superintendence of the illustrious L. iEmilus 

 Paulus ; and consisted of an immense number of volumes, statues, and 

 paintings, which he had imported from Epirus, upon the general plun- 

 der and destruction of that unfortunate country, in consequence of its 

 adherence to Perses king of Macedon, and which had been accumu- 

 lating ever since the reign of Alexander the Great. This early and valua- 

 able collection was continually augmented by presents of other books 

 from men of letters or warriors, into whose hands they occasionally fell as 

 a part of the public spoil : but was more indebted to Lucullus, who had 

 studied philosophy under Antiochus the Ascalonite, than to any one else ; 

 and who, about the middle of the seventh century of the city, added to it 

 the whole of the royal library he had seized from Mithridates, upon his 

 conquest of Pontus. 



Yet the transplantation into the Roman capital of the extensive and 

 invaluable libraries of Aristotle and Theophrastus contributed, perhaps, 

 tnore than any other circumstance to inflame the Roman people with a 

 love of Grecian literature. This was effected by the conquest of %lla, 

 and anteceded the public present of Lucullus by about fifteen years. 

 These unrivalled libraries were the property of Apellicon of Teia, who had 

 accumulated an immense collection of books of intrinsic value at an in- 

 credible expense. Apellicon does not appear to have been, in any respect. 



* Strab. lib.viii. p. 381. 



