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Of Libraries
85
time before Pollio's day. Plutarch and other writers say that it dated from the time of Tiberius Gracchus, father of the Gracchi. Pollio, it would seem, refitted it and dedicated it to this glorious use. Ovid's words should be noted here, for he says,—his book, Tristia, is supposed to be speaking,—"Liberty did not permit me to enter her hall; that hall in which were first opened to the public the books of the wise." I do not think the words he uses in these lines have reference, as some think, to a gathering of poets. The book—for, as I have said, it is a book which Ovid's verse makes us suppose is speaking—frankly complains that it was not received into the
