Page:A Brief Outline of the Histories of Libraries.djvu/105

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Of Libraries
99

on the bookcases themselves; whence the phrase, "ivory library," in the Pandects. Seneca mentions bookcases made of cedar and ivory.

Common sense and the general fitness of the thing of course make it plain that there were bookcases in libraries; I would add the fact that the cases were numbered. Vopiscus so indicates when he says, "The Ulpian library has the elephant book in the sixth case." Whether by "elephant" he means made of ivory or of the skin of an elephant, I cannot say. The old scholiast in commenting on this phrase, from Juvenal, "Hic libros dabit et forulos" (This one will furnish you with books and