BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
The public records at Rome were at first kept in the private custody of the officials—kings, magistrates, etc.—who issued or authenticated them, and according to Cicero and others these were at some times less carefully kept than by the Greeks. The common place of publication was in the temples, especially for international matters. The quantity of these set up inscriptions was often great; three thousand were burned with the capitol. These collected tablet inscriptions indeed are themselves sometimes called library. Before 503 B.C., however, P. Valerius Publicola had established a central archive in the treasury of the temple of Saturn and even before this there had been for a time a partial archive in the temple of Ceres. The treasury archive of the Saturn temple was called tabularium or phylacterion (Plutarch). The name archive (archium) was much later. It was in charge, first of the cen-
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