If one wants to experience a snapshot of life in a bygone era, it is to be found within the pages of a book. If a deeper and more engrossing experience is sought, then it is to be discovered within the shelter of a library.

For most of us plebs, owning our own library is unattainable on a grand scale, but a library does not need to be grand in a physical sense to be satisfying.

Marcus Tullius Cicero is a much-maligned ancient Roman figure mostly because he is not revered in the sense of Julius Caesar’s great military triumphs and glory. But that does not detract from his contribution to the memory of Rome; on the contrary, for without his extant works - which span the breadth of rhetorical and philosophical treatises, orations, and private correspondence - our knowledge of ancient Rome prior to empire would be most scant.

Even the great Caesar himself credited Cicero's contribution, writing that he was the:

"...winner of a greater laurel wreath than that of any triumph, inasmuch as it is a greater thing to have advanced so far the frontiers of the Roman genius than the frontiers of Rome's empire."

Cicero's reputation for the deep love of his own library is revealed through his many private letters to friends. To his good friend, Atticus, he writes:

"Hold on to your books and don't despair of my being able to make them mine. If I manage that, I am richer than Crassus and can afford to despise any man's manors and meadows."

Libraries have the ability to transport us into worlds long forgotten. We owe it to ourselves and those who will come after us to obtain and hold on to as many physical books as we can.

We must continue to uphold the frontiers of genius that have been gifted to us from a world which is currently resting on a precipice.