In order to appreciate the impact of papyrus paper on the daily life of the Romans in a more familiar setting, we could take a trip to my favorite library. This is a library that no longer exists, but when it did it was a bit different from the ordinary community or regional public library that many of us are used to. Not only was it located in Rome; it was situated on the south of the Coliseum inside the compound of the Baths of Caracalla. Another odd thing is that it lies mostly in the open space of the ruins.
On my way to Africa years ago, where I would begin my work on the ecology of the papyrus plant, I stopped over in Rome, where I saw a performance of Verdi’s Aida, a production that used to be staged in the Baths of Caracalla. The original opera had been commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869; so I thought this would be a great introduction to the early days of Africa and Egypt. It was first performed in Cairo and played for years in Rome where the ruins of the Baths evoked the ancient temples of Egypt. Little did I know as I watched the live elephant and dromedaries trooping across the stage that I was within a stone’s throw of a place where, at the height of Rome’s glory, hundreds of scrolls were kept, all inscribed on papyrus paper made originally in Egypt.
Plan of the Baths of Caracalla showing the two libraries. (after Giuseppe Ripostelli, The Thermae of Caracalla. Rome, 1914).
I have since returned to Rome and on occasion walked by the most southwestern end of the ruins to gaze fondly on the remains of the walls of this library, trying to recapture the mood of those days.
Dedicated in 217 A.D. in the last year of the reign of the notorious Caracalla, the baths were the largest in Rome at that time. A trip to my library meant you had to gain entrance to the baths. Even so, visiting the library back then would have been a notably different task than visiting any library today. In ancient days, when you were tired of reading you could take a quick dip in a cold or hot bath, or work out in two gyms, take a run around the sports field, or have a snack, a massage, or a nap—or all three—in a private room. Lockers, food, drink, even the occasional lecture and other entertainments were available. There were two reading rooms, one for Greek and another for Latin scrolls, both were roomy places that occupied the southern ends of the bath complex.
A Roman library with book scrolls, readers and a caretaker (after Wikipedia).
On a visit there we would pass by the columns of the courtyard and perhaps enter the Latin room first where we would see statues in niches. At a minimum there would be one of Minerva the goddess of poetry, wisdom, and virginity. Lining the walls would be more niches or wooden cases with hundreds of scrolls stacked inside. Jacalyn Spoon, publications assistant at Cornell University, tells us that niches did not appear in Greek libraries and their appearance in Roman libraries might be traced to Caesar being influenced by the library at Alexandria in Egypt. In Egypt the niches served as shelves, wood being scarce and costly, it was cheaper to leave spaces between or simply cut a niche in the thick local limestone blocks that made up the walls. She found that in Rome the niches averaged twenty-four inches deep, more than enough to accommodate the longest roll.1 On the other hand, George Houston, professor emeritus of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is having none of this; he argues that wooden cases must have been present, if not in every library, at least in the large imperial collections. Such cases or, armaria, would present an impressive display of cabinetry as befitting such buildings.2
Papyrus scrolls “books” being stacked in an ancient library (note each scroll has a label). (after Fourth century A.D. Roman relief).
Casson likewise sees armaria taking up the spaces designed for them in Trajan’s Ulpian Library.3 He suggests the wooden nature of the cases would have protected the book rolls from moisture that would have been inevitable in walls of stone. The cabinets in that library would have contained something like 20,000 books. Assuming armaria were used in the library dedicated to the Roman Senator Celsus in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus (now in Turkey), Houston estimated that that library held up to 10,500 scrolls.4 He also made the point that some of the book cabinets must have been substantial, as we are told that one Fannius Caepio (not our Fannius of honeyeater fame) hid in one during an assassination attempt on Augustus. Caepio was subsequently caught and executed.
The most popular scrolls, those used daily, would be stored conveniently in capsa, a book container that looked like a large hat-box (as shown at the feet of Clio in the frontispiece). Capsa also served as scroll carriers for travel. For the most part such scrolls would be simply rolled up without handles. Carla Schodde, historian and Latin scholar in Melbourne, Australia, found most scrolls of the Roman period lacked wooden handles from a quick survey of Roman sculpture, frescos, and the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum. Perhaps they were reserved for the more elaborate, high-end editions created in order to occupy a permanent place in an elegant private library. Schodde concluded that wooden handles would be too cumbersome for scrolls that had to be brought with you on a long voyage. When it came time to pack, wooden handles would be a nuisance if you were stuffing scrolls into a capsa.5
In our case, if we were using my favorite library, we’d write out the titles on ostraca, the shards of pottery mentioned earlier, which would be passed to the library staff, who were well-versed and well-trained Greek slaves. While they searched out our volumes, we’d find a place to sit and wait or go about our business at the baths. In private homes, book scrolls were simply stored loose on open shelves or left in earthenware jugs. When they were on the shelf in a library, they would be kept in a scroll box, or scrinium. Several scrolls could be stored together with a title tag at the end of each and possibly a handle or center stick, called an umbicus.
Private libraries became fashionable in the more sophisticated Roman villas and palatial manor houses where a room or two would be set aside just for papyrus scrolls in magnificent cabinets. And what scrolls! Beautifully finished connoisseurs’ editions, inscribed on the finest quality papyrus paper, smoothed with pumice, rolled onto center sticks that had been anointed with cedar oil to discourage insect pests, and fitted with cornuta, ivory, or ebony handles. The whole would be wrapped in a red-dyed parchment sleeve tied with red leather thongs and perhaps silver labels attached.
Such ostentatious trappings were missed by Ovid, who would send his poetry home on plain scrolls from his place of exile outside Rome, lamenting that the rolls were “unadorned, as becomes the book of an exile. In your misfortune wear the garb that befits these days of mine.”
Imperial and Private Libraries
In addition to standardizing papyrus paper, privatizing the industry, and vastly increasing papyrus paper’s use, the Romans also set up “public” libraries to accommodate new holdings and archives. These impressive institutions were erected toward the end of the republic during the expanded program of building that accompanied the beginning of the empire.
As we saw earlier, it was Julius Caesar who broached the idea of the first library in Rome. Some say he did this in a fit of remorse, since it was his fault that the Great Library in Alexandria had burned down. But because of his execution by Brutus, et al., the honor of building the first public library fell to one of his allies, Gaius Asinius Pollio in 39 B.C., who in the words of Pliny was “the first to make men’s talents public property.”6
Set up in the atrium of the Offices of the Censors on the Aventine Hill, south of the Palatine, this first library was said to contain a large collection of books on civil law and general culture following a wish of Caesar’s for the consolidation of works in these areas of study.
Though it was called a “public” library, the people who used it were members of the literati who, when they referred to “public access,” had in mind an exclusive public made up of people like themselves.7 Such libraries were more accurately called imperial libraries because they were housed in buildings built by imperial fiat, such as in temples, federal office buildings, even palaces. What then was their function? Matthew Nicholls from the Department of Classics at the University of Reading felt they were designed from the outset with an ostentatious public function in mind, part of a wider program of cultural display in Emperor Augustus’s new Rome. They were meant to serve as magnificent backdrops for cultural activities of various sorts, events such as readings by popular authors that involved lots of people.8 Excess books, archives, and scroll copies that were not needed immediately were stored in nearby storehouses, which were among the buildings burned down in the fire of 192 A.D.9
Pollio’s library was followed by two libraries established by Augustus, who in 28 B.C. built the Temple of Apollo on the southwest side of the Palatine Hill to commemorate his victory over Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium. He included a Greek and Latin reading room among the buildings. This was the second public library in the city. Winsbury suggested that it was in fact built to house books that were part of the loot Augustus confiscated from some of his generals who found themselves on the outs. At that point he may have had “a lot of books to put somewhere.”
The third library in Rome was that erected by Augustus inside the Portico Metelli located between the Tiber River and the Capitoline near the Theater of Marcellus. This portico was built in 146 B.C. by an army commander who fought in the Macedonian wars. Architecturally, it was one of the most beautiful buildings in Rome.10 At the center were the Temples of Juno and Jupiter, among the first marble temples built in Rome. When Emperor Augustus rebuilt the portico between 33 and 23 B.C., he dedicated it to his sister Octavia and it was known from then on as the Portico of Octavia. It included the Library of Marcellus, which was commissioned by Octavia in memory of her son, while her brother, Augustus, completed the large popular theatre nearby, also in honor of Marcellus that became the largest and most important theater of its time.11
We see in all this activity that libraries, and the papyrus scrolls deposited in them, had risen to a new level of sophistication, almost an obsession with those interested in creating these “Temples to the Book” or “Sanctuaries of Paper.” It is important to note that they were built in proximity to a place of worship or palace of a patron god or deified hero. Presumably the link between books and immortality was becoming more apparent, especially when we see that Octavia chose such a thing as a memorial for her son. This is a statement in itself, as she was an extraordinary person. One of the most prominent women in Roman history, she was respected and admired by contemporaries for her loyalty, nobility, and humanity, and for maintaining traditional Roman feminine virtues. Called Octavia Minor to distinguish her from an elder half-sister, she was the fourth wife of Mark Antony; their marriage was severely tested by Antony’s abandonment of her and their two children in favor of his lover, Queen Cleopatra.
Antony divorced her in 32 B.C. but only after she had supplied him with men and troops in 35 B.C., to be used in his eastern campaigns. Octavia returned to Rome from the East following Antony’s suicide in 30 B.C. and became the sole caretaker of Antony’s children from her own marriage as well as his pervious ones. Her undying love, however, was reserved for her firstborn, Marcellus. Emperor Augustus also adored him and when Marcellus died unexpectedly of illness in 23 B.C., Augustus was thunderstruck. Octavia was disconsolate; she never fully recovered and retired from public life. The popular poet of the age, Virgil, added the name of Marcellus to the very end of the list of illustrious future Romans whom Aeneas sees in the underworld in the Aeneid. Several verses in Virgil’s epic recount Marcellus’s life, connect him back to his illustrious ancestors, and lament his tragic early death.
When Virgil recited this part of his work during an audience with Augustus and his sister, it caused Octavia to faint with grief. Revived only with difficulty, she later sent Virgil 10,000 sesterces, a very generous token of respect for what he had done.12
The whole scene is captured for us in a painting by Jean-Baptiste Wicar, a French historical painter, where we see Virgil reciting as he holds on to one scroll of papyrus paper, while several others stand ready on a nearby table. The scene is perhaps taking place in the Latin room of the new library commissioned by Octavia. Urged on possibly by Pollio, a great supporter of Virgil, the poet is following the popular mode of reciting from his books, memorializing himself, as well as his works and his patrons, and commemorating Octavia’s son and the medium that made it all possible, papyrus paper.
The Library in the Portico of Octavia burned in 80 A.D. and was restored, probably in 90 A.D. by Domitian. It burned again in a second fire in 203 A.D. and was again renovated, this time by Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla in ca. 200 A.D. in honor of Caracalla’s great-grandmother.
The portico was used as a fish market from the medieval period up to the end of nineteenth century. This role is remembered in the name of the annexed church of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, or “the Holy Angel in the Fish Market,” perhaps even a reflection on Octavia, a saint and an angel by any measure. The building, which lies in the rione (or district) of Sant’Angelo, represents the center of the Roman Ghetto.
All three of these early Roman libraries stayed open and in operation for years. After the time of Caesar and Augustus, the next imperial library, was built by Tiberius near the colonnade around which he built his palace, the Domus Tiberius.13 He built another in the Temple of the Deified Augustus (37 A.D.) as a tribute to his stepfather who died in 14 A.D. Vespasian continued the tradition of building libraries with one next to the Temple of Peace in 71 A.D. That temple lasted all of 120 years, after which it burned down in 191 A.D.14
The greatest enemy of these ancient libraries seems to be fire. Presumably the dry paper rolls and wooden cabinets were easy to set alight. Even if precautions were taken inside the library, fires could break out in the neighborhood, which was always a problem because of the close quarters inside the city. The Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D. caused terrific losses to the book collections and archives of the time. This fire destroyed the Palatine Library in the Temple of Apollo and was later followed by a fire in the library of the Portico of Octavia in 80 A.D. In 192 A.D., during the reign of Commodus, a fire destroyed the Temple of Peace together with many warehouses and storehouses in the Via Sacra, in which the overflow of the local imperial library was stored. A warehouse of papyrus paper, or horrea chartaria, was also located here and must have contributed significantly to the blaze.15
The two rooms of the Ulpian Library straddling the Column of Trajan in ancient Rome (Wikipedia).
The most impressive Roman library of all, the Ulpian, was established by Trajan in 113 A.D. as part of his Forum. The sumptuously appointed Greek and Latin rooms spanned the area on either side of his famous column. Two enormous rooms (each sixty by eighty feet) provided matching, two-storied temples to books, the rooms of which were paved in granite and marble from Egypt and Africa, with columns and walls of variegated marble. Green marble was used liberally throughout, as the color was thought to refresh the eyes.16 The thousands of papyrus paper scrolls rested in white-marble niches lined with citrus wood and ivory decorated cabinets, a luxury and elegance that befitted the pharaoh’s own as well as immortalizing an emperor.
The Ulpian lasted many years and was followed by the libraries of Domitian, Hadrian, and Severus, all of whom followed the imperial tradition; by the fourth century A.D. there were twenty-nine public libraries in Rome. They were supplemented by at least twenty-four others throughout Italy and more in other parts of the empire, such as the Grecian provinces, as well as Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Africa. The imperial libraries served the Empire well. Michael Affleck, librarian at the University of Queensland, summed up their usefulness when he noted that the Palatine Library ended its life when destroyed by fire in 363 A.D.—a lifespan of nearly 400 years. The Ulpian Library of Trajan built in 114 was still operating in 456 A.D. He compared this to the two most significant library collections in the world today, the British Library and the Library of Congress, both of which are infants in comparison, having been in existence for only a little more than 200 years.17
Though they were powerful reminders of Rome’s literary ideals, these enormous imperial library buildings served more like archives, record offices, or meeting places than libraries as we know them. One emperor used his as an audience hall, a place to hold meetings of the Senate, and receive foreign ambassadors. It was practically an extension of his house. The Ulpian served as part of the state archives along with the Tabularium, which was the Public Record Office.
Though imperial libraries were well founded, several researchers have pointed out that Romans preferred to work in their private libraries or those of their friends. Private libraries had been in existence well before public libraries appeared on the scene. The idea that books were worth taking as loot occurred about the time General Paullus returned from his conquests in Macedonia in 167 B.C. He brought home the contents of King Perseus’s royal library, which he presented to his sons, who were fond of letters. Pompeius Strabo took many manuscripts during the sacking of Asculum in 89 B.C., and later still, Sulla, the Roman general and statesman, while master of Athens (86 B.C.) seized the remains of Aristotle’s library, and just as Ptolemy had taken the body of Alexander back to Egypt, Sulla brought home Aristotle’s great corpus of knowledge. Aristotle, who by chance had been Alexander’s tutor, affected the minds of men so gravely that perhaps some felt that just being close to the Master’s books and his works would allow the greatness to rub off. In any event while they were housed in Italy, and until they finally went missing, they were much in demand.18 Sulla, well-read, intelligent, and fluent in Greek, a sign of education in Rome, obviously knew what he was doing, as he shortly became dictator of Rome.
Lucullus, the remarkable and skillful conqueror of the eastern kingdoms, returned to Rome with so much captured booty that it is said the whole could not be fully accounted. He poured enormous sums into private buildings and patronized the arts and sciences lavishly, transforming his hereditary estate in the highlands of Tusculum into a retreat house for scholars and philosophers. He stocked the library there with loads of papyrus scrolls acquired during his conquests in 70 B.C. It was this family library that was the noted exception to the policy of privacy at all costs. Lucullus’s library was thrown open to men of letters, including the Greek literati of Rome. “Accordingly his library and the neighboring walks were much resorted to, especially by Greeks” who would “pass whole days together, happily staying away from their other duties.”19
Lucullus, Cicero, and Atticus set the fashion and many followed. Tyrannion, a Greek grammarian who organized Sulla’s and Cicero’s libraries, is said to have had 30,000 volumes of his own; Varro, the Roman scholar and writer, had a large collection; and Sammonicus, a savant and tutor to Caracalla, left one of his pupils, the young Gordian, no less than 62,000 volumes.
And so the idea grew that rich men could profit by furnishing their libraries with something other than chairs and tables. By then perhaps a library was as much the signature of affluence as in modern times, when we occasionally hear about a large house with a library in which the owner has never set foot.
The average library in ancient days held 30,000–100,000 scrolls; of these, the number of complete works might be less. Consider the writings of just one of the most prolific of the ancient philosophers, Epicurus, whose entire production filled 300 papyrus rolls. His longest single work, On Nature, took up thirty-seven rolls. Thus, a large number of scrolls might represent only about 20,000 complete books, not much in comparison to modern libraries.
Stocked with shelves, niches, and cabinets containing thousands of scrolls, the imperial and large private libraries were bilingual with two reading rooms, mostly because the Greek classics were still in vogue; many lesser Greek documents had yet to be translated, and wealthy Romans, even if they couldn’t read Greek, were terrific snobs and would attach a certain hubris to being seen as bilingual.
Our library in the Baths of Caracalla is not in the same league as the large Roman libraries with their stately porticos, colonnades and restricted admittance, but it was a lot easier to get into. Admission was free, although the bath attendant received a copper coin called a quadrans, the equivalent of less than a penny. It also opened at sunrise, as did the Ulpian, but it was not in an ideal location since the reading rooms were oriented to the southwest so the light was not as good as it could be, the better libraries had rooms facing east to catch the morning light. Locating the library with eastern exposure also helped preserve the papyrus scrolls, since the morning air from that direction was drier. That, and sunlight itself discouraged the insects and dampness that ruined the books.
Another problem with our library in the baths was that it was close to the water intake and reservoirs. Luckily, the baths are covered with vaulted roofs, so the humidity was less of a problem. The sound of hundreds of bathers echoing throughout the large open halls of the main baths would have been a real headache but for the fact that our reading room was located some distance from the main area where people congregate.
Libraries located in baths and gymnasia were kept going by donations and perhaps subscriptions from members. In 275 B.C., Ptolemy II presented the city of Athens with a gymnasium and the people were ordered by popular mandate to increase its library holdings by a hundred rolls each year, while prominent citizens were expected to provide 150 rolls or 200 drachmas.20
In the early days, one inscribed roll was perhaps worth slightly more than two drachmas, but this changed by the time of Cicero (106–43 B.C.) when dealers pushed up the cost of the finished book scroll. Cheap copies could be had in Rome from Cicero’s wealthy friend Atticus, who was producing the equivalent of the first Penguin Classics of history. But still, even though the scrolls in the bath libraries would probably not be of the highest quality, it would take years to accumulate a decent collection. Quick copies of the classics, satires, and gossipy journals of the day and ordinary material by the minor authors would be dashed off and well thumbed. So we can’t expect too much as we sit waiting for our scrolls to arrive.
If we intend to make notes as we read we are most likely going to use a palimpsest notebook, a collection of small leaves of parchment that acted as a scratchpad or better yet a wax tablet, the pugillare that was in common use throughout the empire. In that case the writing, quick notes and dictation, could simply be smoothed over to start anew once transcribed to papyrus. But it might still be a while before we get to the final stage of our work. Meantime, perhaps we have dallied too long as the light is fading, or perhaps you’ve spent too much time in the baths.
“Can’t we just take a few of these home?” you ask.
It was possible to do that, but remember: the fine for not returning on time could be quite steep. There was no such thing as a dollar or two as today. Spoon tells us that in one library in Athens a patron who would not return an original ancient text was punished with a fine of fifteen skilled slaves! Hoping to appease the librarian he sent the library a copy of the original, apparently to no effect. So, we had better make plans to return to the library some other day, and look forward to the time when libraries will be better equipped. We know things will change because John Willis Clark, in his 1901 classic, The Care of Books, tells us that in 538 A.D., when our mentor Cassiodorus started his religious brotherhood in southern Italy, he provided his library with self-supplying lamps to enable readers and copyists to work at night, careful always, we hope, to extinguish all open flames before they retired for the night.
But all that was yet to come, during our visit we are lucky to have had as much daylight as we did.
Now for dinner and a good night’s sleep before we leave for Pompeii.
