ROMAN LIBRARY BUILDINGS
scription, both interesting for introducing the technical terms for library and the ordering of books and care of the library.
The question whether the passage-way in the wall might not have served also for book stack has been dismissed on account of its narrowness, but as a matter of fact, 1⅕ meters (49 inches) is rather more than the space allowed in a modern stack for one series of shelves and a passage-way. Even if the full 50 cm. of the niches in the reading room were allowed, there would still remain a passage-way more than 2 feet wide which is more than the average in the modern stack.
The Library of Timgad in North Africa was probably not built much before 250 A.D. Although after New Testament times it is not too long after to keep it from being a valuable key to the libraries of those times and it brings the story
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