ON THE LIBRARIES OF GREECE. 
any of those subjects which would lead us to a 
knowledge of their respective dates. 
There is one Manuscript mentioned in it, 
concerning which it is impossible not to feel 
more than common curiosity: it is one of Dio- 
DORUS SICULUS. By an accurate inspection of 
it, we should learn whether the hopes, which 
have been more than once entertained of the 
existence of the lost books of that historian, 
are in this instance also to be disappointed 1 . 
H. Slepkanus had heard that the forty books of 
Diodorus were in Sicily. This report arose, pro- 
bably, from Constantine Lascaris having said in 
Sicily, that he had seen all these books in the 
Imperial Library at CONSTANTINOPLE. Lascaris 
fled from this city, at the capture of it by the 
Turks. In the turbulence and confusion of that 
period, the entire copy to which he referred 
might have been lost. " Deum immortalem," 
says Scaliger, " quanta jactura historiae facta 
est amissione librorum illius Bibliothecae, prae- 
sertim quinque illorum qui sequebantur post 
quintum '." 
(1) Photius, in the ninth century, perused cutire Diodo>~>u Siculus. 
(2) In Eustb. Chron. cia.iocccci xvii. 
