254 Brown Goode s Paper ^ [498 
The Alexandrian museum was destroyed in the days of 
Caesar and Aurelian, and the term museum, as applied to 
a great public institution, dropped out of use from the 
fourth to the seventeenth century. The disappearance of a 
word is an indication that the idea for which it stood has 
also fallen into disfavor ; and such, indeed, was the fact. 
The history of museum and library run in parallel lines. 
It is not until the development of the arts and sciences has 
taken place, until an extensive written literature has grown 
up, and a distinct literary and scientific class has been de- 
veloped, that it is possible for the modern library and 
museum to come into existence. The museum of the pres- 
ent is more dissimilar to its old-time representative than is 
our library to its prototype. 
There were in the remote past galleries of pictures and 
sculpture, as well as so-called museums. Public collections 
of paintings and statuary were founded in Greece and Rome 
at a very early day. There was a gallery of paintings (Pina- 
cotheca) in one of the marble halls of the Propylaeum at 
Athens, and in Rome there were lavish public displays of 
works of art. M. Dezobry, in his “ Rome in the time of 
Augustus,” has described this phase of Latin civilization 
in the first century before Christ : 
“For many years,” remarks one of his characters, “ the taste for paintings 
has been extending in a most extraordinary manner. In former times they 
were only to be found in the temples, where they were placed less for purposes 
of ornament than as an act of homage to the gods ; now they are everywhere, 
not only in temples, in private houses, and in public halls, but also on outside 
walls, exposed freely to air and sunlight. Rome is one great picture-gallery ; 
the Forum of Augustus is gorgeous with paintings, and they may be seen 
also in the Forum of Caesar, in the Roman Forum, under the peristyles of many 
of the temples, and especially in the porticos used for public promenades, 
some of which are literally filled with them. Thus everybody is enabled to 
enjoy them, and to enjoy them at all hours of the day.” 
The public men of Rome, at a later period in its history, 
were no less mindful of the claims of art. They believed 
that the metropolis of a great nation should be adorned 
with all the best products of civilization. We are told by 
Pliny that when Caesar was dictator he purchased, for 300,- 
000 deniers, two Greek paintings, which he caused to be 
