In 168 BC, the same year that parchment may have been introduced
to Rome by a visiting delegation from Pergamum, L. Aemilius Paulus returned
with the royal library of the King of Macedonia. In 86 BC, Sulla brought from
Athens at least some of Aristotle's own library, and Lucullus, who had fought
under Sulla, claimed as a prize of war the library of Mithridates, the King of
Pontus. Collections such as these, the plundered book rolls of Greece and
Asia Minor, mark the beginning of libraries in Rome, both private and
public.
The greatest of the imperial libraries was part of the Forum of
Trajan, the last and most magnificent of the fora. To provide level ground, the
base of the Quirinal Hill was cut back 125 feet, a figure commemorated in the
height of Trajan's Column. At the end of the forum, opposite its entrance, was
the Basilica Ulpia (the name derives from Trajan's nomen, Ulpius), and, beyond
it, was the Bibliotheca Ulpia. Founded in AD 114, the two libraries faced one
another across a courtyard, the Latin collection on the west and the Greek on
the east, each enclosing two floors that held about 40,000 rolls and
occupied 5000 square feet. Between them rose the Columna Trajani. After
Alexandria and Pergamum, the Bibliotheca Ulpia was the most famous library of
antiquity and, of all the Roman libraries, the only one to have survived at
least until the mid-fifth century AD.
Grout, J. (Ed.). (2002). Scroll and codex. In Encyclopaedia Romana.