List of Libraries in The Ancient World - Greece and Rome

Greece and Rome

• The Library of Pergamum at Pergamum (in what is now Turkey), also in the 3rd century BC, the Attalid kings formed the second best Hellenistic library after Alexandria, founded in emulation of the Ptolemies. When the Ptolemies stopped exporting papyrus, partly because of competitors and partly because of shortages, the Pergamenes invented a new substance to use in codices, called pergamum or parchment after the city. This was made of fine calfskin, a predecessor of vellum and paper.
• Libraries of the Forum, consisted of separate libraries founded in the time of Augustus near the Roman Forum that contained both Greek and Latin texts, separately housed, as was the conventional practice. There were libraries in the Porticus Octaviae near the Theatre of Marcellus, in the temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Bibliotheca Ulpiana in the Forum of Trajan.
• Private libraries of Ancient Rome were also considerable: Roman aristocracy saw the library as a point of prestige and many of these were transferred to the monasteries of the medieval years.
• The Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, Italy is the only library known to have survived from classical antiquity. This villa's large private collection may have once belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in the 1st century BC. Buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the town in 79 AD, it was rediscovered in 1752, around 1800 carbonized scrolls were found in the villa's top story. Using modern techniques such as multi-spectral imaging, previously illegible or invisible sections on scrolls that have been unrolled are now being deciphered. It is possible that more scrolls remain to be found in the lower, unexcavated levels of the villa.
• The Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a late 3rd century AD establishment located in present-day Israel, was a great early Christian library. Through Origen of Alexandria and the scholarly priest Pamphilus of Caesarea, the school won a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study there.
• The Imperial Library of Constantinople, founded in 330 AD, was largely destroyed or burned by crusaders during the Fourth Crusade.
• Library of Celsus was a library of antiquity located in the ancient city of Ephesus, western Anatolia.