He left them as a legacy to a pupil, who bequeathed them to his librarian
Neleus: and his family long preserved the collection in their home near
the ruins of Troy. One portion was bought by the Ptolemies for their
great Alexandrian library, and these books, we suppose, must have
perished in the war with Rome. The rest remained at home till there was
some fear of their being confiscated and carried to Pergamus. They were
removed in haste and stowed away in a cave, where they nearly perished in
the damp. When the parchments were disinterred they became the property
of Apellicon, to whom the saying was first applied that he was 'rather a
bibliophile than a lover of learning.' While the collection was at Athens
he did much damage to the scrolls by his attempt to restore their
worm-eaten paragraphs. Sulla took the city soon afterwards, and carried
the books to Rome, and here more damage was done by the careless editing
of Tyrannion, who made a trade of copying 'Aristotle's books' for the
libraries that were rising on all sides at Rome.
The Romans learned to be book-collectors in gathering the spoils of war.
When Carthage fell, the books, as some say, were given to native
chieftains, the predecessors of King Jugurtha in culture and of King Juba
in natural science: others say that they were awarded as a kind of
compensation to the family of the murdered Regulus. Their preservation is
attested by the fact that the Carthaginian texts were cited centuries
afterwards by the writers who described the most ancient voyages in the
Atlantic.
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