Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/81

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Of Libraries
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when he named, in the following quotation, first the Asinian, next the Octavian, and last the Palatine.

From thence we to Apollo's temple went,
To which by steps there is a faire ascent:
Where stand the signs in faire outlandish stone,
of Belus and of Palammed the sonne.
There ancient bookes, and those that are more new,
Doe all lye open to the Reader's view.
I sought my brethren there, excepting them.
Whose haplesse birth my father doth condeme.
And as I sought, the chiefe man of the place,
Bid me be gone out of that holy space.[1]

Here Ovid shows, among other things, that there was a librarian or custodian of the Palatine library. Suetonius tells us he was C. Julius Higinus. In his Celebrated Grammarians he says, " This man presided over the Pa-

  1. W. Saltonstall's translation, 1637.