Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/67

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Of Libraries
61

never rivalled the Alexandrian in either resources or age. Plutarch writes to this effect where, mentioning both libraries, he says that Antony the Triumvir, fascinated by the charms of Cleopatra, gave to her the library at Pergamum, in which were two hundred thousand volumes. I use the word "volumes" and not "titles," for I think the word which Plutarch uses refers to several works bound together in one volume, and that these several works are not counted in giving the size of the library.

This Pergamene library ceased to exist, then, soon after the destruction of the first Alexandrian one; but lived again in the latter when it was reëstablished.