499 ] Museum-History mict Museums of History. 255 
publicly displayed, and that Agrippa placed many costly 
works of art in a hall which he built and bequeathed to the 
Roman people. Constantine gathered together in Constan- 
tinople the paintings and sculptures of the great masters, 
so that the city, before its destruction, became a great mu- 
seum, like Rome. 
The taste for works of art was generally prevalent through- 
out the whole Mediterranean region in the days of the 
ancient civilizations, and there is abundant reason to be- 
lieve that there were prototypes of the modern museum in 
Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, as well as in Rome. 
Collections in natural history also undoubtedly existed, 
though we have no positive descriptions of them. Natural 
curiosities, of course, found their way into the private col- 
lections of monarchs, and were doubtless also in use for 
study among the savants in the Alexandrian museum. 
Aristotle, in the fourth century before Christ, had, it is 
said, an enormous grant of money for use in his scientific 
researches, and Alexander the Great, his patron, took care 
to send to him a great variety of zoological specimens, col- 
lected in the countries which he had subdued,” and also 
“ placed at his disposal several thousand persons, who were 
occupied in hunting, fishing, and making the observations 
which were necessary for completing his ‘ History of 
Animals.’ ” If human nature has not changed more than 
we suppose, Aristotle must have had a great museum of 
natural history. 
When the Roman capital was removed to Byzantium the 
arts and letters of Europe began to decline. The Church 
was unpropitious, and the invasions of the northern bar- 
barians destroyed every thing. In 476, with the close of 
the Western Empire, began a period of intellectual tor- 
pidity which was to last for a thousand years. 
It was in Bagdad and Cordova that science and letters 
were next to be revived, and Africa was to surpass Europe 
in the extent of its libraries. In the Periplus, or “Voyage 
of Hanno,” occurs the following passage in regard to speci- 
mens of Gorillas, or “ Gorgones ” : 
