Nor did Varro merely delight and instruct his fellow-citizens by his writings. By his careful attention, in procuring the most valuable books, and establishing libraries, he provided, perhaps, still more effectually than by his own learned compositions, for the progressive improvement and civilization of his countrymen. The formation of either private or public libraries was late of taking place at Rome, for the Romans were late in attending to literary studies. Tiraboschi quotes a number of writers who have discovered a library in the public records preserved at Rome(85), and in the books of the Sibyls(86). But these, he observes, may be classed with the library which Madero found to have existed before the flood, and that belonging to Adam, of which Hilscherus has made out an exact catalogue(87). From Syracuse and Corinth the Romans brought away the statues and pictures, and other monuments of the fine arts; but we do not learn that they carried to the capital any works of literature or science. Some agricultural books found their way to Rome from Africa, on the destruction of Carthage; but the other treasures of its libraries, though they fell under the power of a conqueror not without pretensions to taste and erudition, were bestowed on the African princes in alliance with the Romans(88).