Pamphilus the Martyr and His Library

Lastly, take the following from another letter to Marcella: “The blessed martyr Pamphilus, whose life Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, set out in some three volumes, wished to rival Demetrius of Phalerum and Pisistratus in his zeal to establish a library of sacred books. He searched all through the world for the representative works of great minds, which are their true and everlasting monuments. Above all, he acquired at great expense all the books written by Origen, and gave them to the church at Caesarea. “This library was afterward partly destroyed, but Acacius, and later Euzoius, bishops of that church, tried to restore it in volumes of parchment. The last of these recovered a great many works and left us a list of them. But he shows that he could not find the Commentary on the hundred and twenty-sixth Psalm and the Treatise on the Hebrew letter Pe, by the fact that he does not mention them. It is not that so great a man as Adamantius passed over anything. It is that, through the carelessness of those who came after him, these works did not survive to times within our memory.” [a]