(My book) my monument shall it be, and raise its head over royal pyramids . . . and the long lapse of immemorial time. I shall not wholly die.”
—Horace, Odes (Carmina), 3.30
The scraps, scrolls, and pages of papyrus paper that were conserved and analyzed in the Western world in modern times now show a clear historical progression of literature from 3100 B.C. until the tenth century A.D. But when this story originally unfolded, it was more like watching a movie played backward, since before modern times, say back in the 1700s, anyone looking at this same history would have the impression that the early book trade and the history of papyrus paper began and ended with Rome, which was far from the case. The impression was created because the oldest examples of papyrus paper dating from earlier centuries resided in the archives of the Catholic Church and almost all were written in Latin. In fact, the Romans appeared late on the literary scene. Their world turned on military arts and agriculture. It was not until 240 B.C. when the playwright Livius Andronicus produced what is generally regarded as the first known works in Latin, two plays adapted from the Greeks, that Roman literature began.1
Meanwhile, in life and education, the Greeks before them could draw on a literary tradition that went back to the early writings of Homer, Hesiod, Aesop, and the lyric poets, which would have been written down on papyrus paper. It seems to have come as a surprise when some charred papyrus scrolls were dug up in Herculaneum in Italy in 1752 were found to be mostly written in Greek. This offered a clue that the Greek writing world had been built on papyrus paper, a picture that became clearer when more Greek-inscribed scrolls and fragments were uncovered in Egypt in 1778 by early travelers. Now came the realization that there must have been a healthy export trade in papyrus books over the years. Loveday Alexander, emeritus professor at the University of Sheffield, noted that there was evidence as far back as Xenophon’s Anabasis (370 B.C.) of scavengers finding cases of books washed up on the Black Sea coast, clear testimony to the existence of a papyrus paper book trade.
Even after the Roman takeover of Greece (146 B.C.) Roman literature remained in many ways a continuation of Greek literature and many educated Romans still read and wrote in Greek. It took several centuries before Latin became a dominant factor in the literature of ancient Rome, but when it did, the Roman golden age of classical literature blossomed. Said to have begun with the first known speech of Cicero, it ended with the death of Ovid (81 B.C.–17 A.D.) From the thousands of papyrus fragments that have survived we can assume that millions of books existed during this period. Also, assuming the Romans would have organized and managed the recording, production and distribution of these books, and assuming they would have operated along the same lines as in the modern world, several authors suggested an extensive publishing industry existed. However, publisher, editor, and journalist Rex Winsbury feels they have it all wrong.2 It was just wishful thinking.
He set out a good argument that there was no publishing industry as we know it today, no distribution, promotion, or sales driving a process based on making money. He notes that the market for written material in Rome was just too small. Many people still could not read. As a result, Roman authors were more apt to have written a book but only so that it could be read aloud. Some writers, called “Euphonists,” cherished the sound of poetry over prose. Professor Alexander also points to the lively tradition of oral performance in the early circulation of books. He noted that in the second century A.D., Lucian speaks of an audience hearing the latest histories read. Here we hark back to Alma-Tadema’s A Reading from Homer that showed this in such a dramatic way.
Thus, in Roman times the audible book was favored over the written text because it was cheap, if not free; only a few copies were needed and it allowed listeners to be educated without ever learning how to read or write! As a result, there was little money to be made from writing; most likely authors in those days looked at their creations as a means of gaining status in this life and the next, which meant they had to make a living elsewhere. Meanwhile their books would serve them as memorials, cheaper perhaps than a tombstone or statue in a public square, but it portended a mean life at best.
Is this any different from today? Alison Flood tells us in the Guardian that the median income for a book author in the tweny-first century is $16,200, which is well below the salary required to achieve a minimum acceptable living standard in the United Kingdom.3 The best advice to an author then as now would be, “Don’t quit your day job.”
In Roman times books were thought of as great gifts, either to a friend or a library where they would perhaps be read out for the entertainment of others. The size of the audience would become the measure of your immortality, and in this way Homer, though not a Roman, would rank as the model for all eternity.
With the distribution of the content of books done aurally, and not for commercial gain, the production of physical books in Roman times centered around libraries. Libraries had copyists, the ubiquitous Greek slaves, who could faithfully copy out a book. The alternative was to buy a scroll from a shop or a peddler, in which case you had to have your wits about you because the scrolls so offered were often of poor quality. Anyone interested in a good read would be better advised to exchange book scrolls with friends or library staff who had access to authenticated scrolls. This reliance on the real thing brought the libraries and their staff and patrons into exchange programs where lists of holdings were traded, and copies organized among the literate elite.4, 5
Professor Alexander illustrated how this production of books went on among social circles of like-minded intellectuals, who were themselves often the main vehicle for the transmission of texts. In the process, once the desired papyrus scrolls had been located, copying went forward. The role of the bookseller in all this was almost incidental. He was clearly useful as an extra potential source for scholarly books, but, as Alexander pointed out, what was central, and primary, was the expectation that books were for sharing.
All this is well illustrated in the example she gives taken from a papyrus letter from Oxyrhynchus. This letter, sent towards the end of the second century A.D., describes a circle of literati exchanging notes on how to procure originals and get copies made. Some of their comments and instructions were made in two footnotes in different hands. Footnote One reads: “Make and send me copies of Books Six and Seven of Hypsicrates’ Komodoumenoi, Men Made Fun of in Comedy. For Harpocration says that they are among Polion’s books. But it is likely that others, too, have got them. He also has his prose epitomes of Thersagoras’s works On the Myths of Tragedy.”
Footnote Two instructs the reader of the letter further, in that (also according to the writer’s source Harpocration, a Greek author and grammarian), “Demetrius the bookseller has got them. I have instructed Apollonides to send me certain of my own books, which you will hear of in good time from Seleucus himself. Should you find any, apart from those which I possess, make copies and send them to me. Diodorus and his friends also have some which I haven’t got.”
What was interesting to Alexander was the way in which this scholarly elite intersected and interacted with each other and with patrons, wealthy people who could provide a social framework for scholarly communication. The opportunity provided to an author was important; in this way he gained an entrée into different social networks within the great houses of republican and imperial Rome. In addition, he could promote his work by giving oral performances to the patron’s own peers, or by handing out presentation copies of his books. The author’s work would thus find a permanent place in his patron’s private library where it would be available to anyone who wished to read or copy it.
As the exchanges between libraries widened, and as the opportunities for travel presented themselves, the book trade extended throughout the empire. This process of production and acquisition of books between libraries was self-perpetuating in that the book lists and bibliographies circulated by librarians served as advertisements. Copyists were then charged with searching out the listed scrolls and copying the texts.
As the Christian era loomed, books increasingly became a symbol of cultural power and were thought of as strengthening the Christian movement,6 which caused leaders like Valens, an earnest Christian emperor of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 372 A.D., to attach four Greek and three Latin copyists to the library staff at Constantinople,7 a cost-effective move to strengthen the library, since the cost of producing book scrolls using copyists could not have been much. And the cost of papyrus paper, which did not change during thousands of years, was not excessive. As Skeat showed, one scroll was worth about two drachmae. Obviously, the cartel was still keeping things well in hand.
At about this point papyrus scrolls were being converted to parchment codices, a transition that the Romans did not find easy since, as Winsbury pointed out, the scroll was treasured by the Romans in preference to the codex.
The scroll was treated as a prestige item in Roman society that would be difficult to replace entirely with the new codex format. It would be hundreds of years before the changeover was complete.
An empire-wide trade in papyrus books now developed between libraries (as shown in the diagram on the next page) along with a parallel commercial market for literary scrolls. All of which encouraged scribes to ply their trade privately and sell their products to bookshops.
Papyrus book trade—pagan and polytheist (mostly scrolls).
Book stores were known from the early days when Socrates mentioned that books were available in the market in Athens in 399 B.C. By the second century B.C. Alexandria, Rhodes, Brindisi, Carthage, and Athens had all become renowned for the production and export of book scrolls.8 The most famous booksellers of the day were those located in the large shopping centers of old Rome. In the Forum, for example, Romans could buy books on the Argiletum, opposite Caesar’s Forum where you could find Martial’s favorite bookseller, Atrectus. His shop could be recognized, says Winsbury, by the doorposts which were covered with the names of poets so that you could work out quickly whose works or books were to be found inside as ready-made copies on the shelves of the store, that is, “a sort of shop-window point-of-sale advertising.” Deluxe editions of Martial’s own works were available there, “in good presentation copies,” for only five denarii each.9 Need more books by Martial? Try Secundus down the street:
Lest you wonder, reader, where my book is sold,
Or waste time looking, I’ll be your trusty guide:
Go to the shop of Secundus, the freedman of learned Lucensis,
Behind the Temple of Peace and the Forum of Minerva.
—(Martial, Epigrams, 1.2.5–8)
Martial was one of the few writers who could live by his pen. His publishers in Rome owned large numbers of slaves who were trained to be neat and rapid scribes. Fifty or a hundred of these slaves could write from the dictation of one reader, and thus an edition of a new volume of his Epigrams could be produced with great rapidity and at very small cost.10 But, as successful as he was, he hardly made enough to live on.
Galen, one of the greatest physicians of antiquity, commented in the second century A.D. on the fact that the Sandalarium district near Vespasian’s Temple of Peace contained the largest concentration of booksellers, but he questioned whether the copies they sold of his work (on papyrus scrolls) were accurate and true. A prolific writer, he prepared a register of titles of his authentic works in order to ensure that medical students of his day or anyone interested could check titles offered against his detailed list, a list that in his case numbered more than fifty titles.
It was considered wise when dealing with the likes of Atrectus and Secundus to bring someone with you who could judge the quality of the copy. Consider the famous door-to-door book salesman that Dius described,11 who in 150 A.D. stopped by Julius Placidus’s place to offer him six scrolls for sale. Julius rejected the lot, buying only some separate pages. Better perhaps to buy from a reliable dealer such as Pomponius Atticus. This was the wealthy friend of Cicero who decided to compete with the Roman booksellers by maintaining a staff of Greek slaves who would copy manuscripts and sell their work, presumably at a cheap price. In this way he could provide the public with trustworthy copies at reasonable cost.
Once acquired, and assuming the right climate prevailed and that the librarians controlled insects and physical damage, papyrus book scrolls could last for hundreds of years. Most of the rolls in the library of the Villa dei Papiri in southern Italy were 120–160 years old at the time the Villa was destroyed. The collection also contained a significant number of scrolls about 200 years old and even a few 350 years old,12 the equivalent of today owning books dating back to the 1600s.
Looking back over the Roman period, in addition to a great void created by the paucity of surviving literary texts, there was also a lack of knowledge about what must have been an extensive use of industrial paper. We cannot therefore know the exact role of paper at the time, but, like the Roman army and the supply of grain, paper must have been one of the important items holding the empire together. No matter what the leadership and command qualities were of the leaders in Rome, Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna, no matter how much the denarius was worth, or how many new ones were produced, or the nature of laws passed that affected the outlying provinces, they were as nothing if the leaders could not communicate their wishes to the far-flung regions of imperial rule and record births, deaths, and other vital statistics.
Perhaps the first newspaper, the Acta Diurna, served this purpose. Carved originally on metal or stone, it was later recorded by scribes on papyrus paper. It was said to be a record of the proceedings of the Senate and is mentioned by contemporary writers as a regular official medium for transmitting news. Cicero, for example, thought of it as a source of city news and gossip about marriages and divorces; and it was sent to subscribers in distant cities and sometimes read out to an assembled army.
One consequence of papyrus paper becoming so widespread was that as more and more documents arrived in cities throughout the Empire, archives had to be created. Many of the incoming documents were of a standard nature; for example, census forms that were completed at village or provincial level that included information on land ownership, animal or human counts, or anything of interest to a Roman prefect. Since they were standard forms, sheets could simply be pasted, one after another, into the appropriate roll. Each form would be marked as a separate item and numbered in the top margin with a file reference of say, “roll 10, sheet 19.”13 This was especially useful for keeping track of data that came in on a regular basis. A single roll could then run to 400 items and more; and could build to a length of at least twenty-three feet. Such files could be tightly rolled so that a thirty-foot roll would have a diameter of about three inches. But, as Parsons has pointed out, it would have required a brisk wrist to check item number 300, and any repeated process of scrolling through would put a strain on the pasted paper joins within the rolls.
And so the official archives grew into a mountain of papyrus paper that rose right in the heart of Rome. The extent of the archives is appreciated in Suetonius’s description of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D. when many of the books held in Rome’s libraries were destroyed. But, as related by the Australian historical author, Stephen Dando-Collins, a number of the records held in the Tabularium, the massive 140-year-old state archive on the lower slope of the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Forum, were removed to safety by the city fathers.14
These rescued records, all handwritten papyrus scrolls, ranged from the Acta Senatus, the verbatim record of every word spoken in every single session of the Senate since the late Republic (made possible by the invention of shorthand by Cicero’s secretary, Tiro), copies of every edition of the government newspaper the Acta Diurna, the private, unpublished letters and memoirs of Augustus, and the memoirs of Nero’s mother, Agrippina.
All of this would be of great use to Suetonius when he came to write his biographies of the twelve Caesars half a century later. Which all goes to show that papyrus was doing its job providing the medium that allowed life to go on; a function that only worked if it was kept away from fire, a lesson that the Roman emperors seemed incapable of learning.