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CHAPTER XI

Roman libraries in apostolical times

The travels of the apostles in the spreading of Christianity led to most of the great cities of the Roman Empire. All of these cities, as we know now, had many libraries, private and public—and among the public libraries; temple, university, public-literary and archival libraries. Even rather small cities had sometimes rather grand public libraries—Como e.g. which Pliny founded at a cost of 1,000,000 sesterces and endowed with 100,000. The interesting thing is, however, that so many of the cities famous in apostolic history, are famous in library history or are among those which not merely may be inferred to have had libraries, but are now known from litera-

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