BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
library history in the fact that the spoils of war laid up by the Persian kings in their treasuries included books and that on a large scale. It is alleged by Aulus Gellius, Athenaeus and Isidore, following no doubt one another, that Xerxes after the sack of Athens put into these treasuries among other things the library which Pisistratus and his successors had built up in Athens. Later it is said, these were returned to Athens by Seleucus Nicator, again the spoils of war. This is called an "absurd story" by Edwards but there is, at most, less ground for counting it absurd than for counting it true. The Persian treasuries did contain immense quantities of literary spoils of war from Egypt as well as from Greece, and it is a reasonable inference, granted that the Persian kings took literary spoils at all, that these libraries were rich in books to a degree parallel with that of their riches in other kinds of movable wealth laid up
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