Appendix, No. I

Summary

SUPPOSED LIBRARY

This chamber, which is entered from the portico of the inner court or peristyle of the house of the Tragic Poet, and lies on the left of it, is nearly of the same dimensions as those opening into the atrium and the tablinum.

If books had been as numerous in the first century after Christ as they have become since the invention of printing, the supposed library of the Tragic Poet of Pompeii would have been but little calculated to contain an extensive collection, but when, from the difficulty of multiplying the copies, books were scarce and valuable, an inestimable treasure might have occupied only an inconsiderable space. In fact, the Herculanean manuscripts were found in a suburban villa in the year 1753, in a room of very small dimensions, which, it is imagined, had once a vaulted roof, to the strength of which has been attributed the preservation of those precious papyri. Some others are said also to have been found in a corridor or portico of the same habitation, which opened into the garden, but whether this had a vaulted roof or not cannot now be known, and that circumstance seems at least very doubtful in the instance of the library.