Ancient Libraries

by Jason König (Editor), Katerina Oikonomopoulou (Editor), Greg Woolf (Editor)

The circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. But books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries private and public, royal and civic played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.

Genres: Classics, Nonfiction, History

500 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2013

About the author

From University of St. Andrews website:

"My current work is focused broadly on the Greek literature of the Roman Empire and on the Greek and Roman novel. My new book Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, is forthcoming with CUP. I am working particularly on Philostratus; also on a new project on landscape in ancient culture and literature."
Interests include: Greek literature and culture of the Roman Empire, including the Greek and Latin novels and early Christian narrative literature; ancient athletics; the literature and culture of the symposium; ancient miscellanistic and technical writing.

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this volume, a birthday gift from my love. It is a collection of papers that grew out of a 2008 conference on ancient libraries. It varies all over the place: archaeology, historical records, culture, politics, modern understandings, etc. The introduction by one of the editors, Greg Woolf, is good and sets the stage for the volume.

Part I is called “Contexts” and its three articles are the best part of this volume. Kim Ryholt's piece on "Libraries in ancient Egypt" sets out an interesting argument that it wasn't only Greeks who created the concepts seen in the Library of Alexandria, showing that Egypt had at least a millennia's worth of indigenous library tradition. Eleanor Robson's "Reading the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia" was also good, touching on four 'libraries' in these areas. The section concludes nicely with Christian Jacob's very good "Fragments of a history of ancient libraries." Using fragments from ancient texts as a jumping off point, he seeks to "try to locate ancient libraries in their political, social, and cultural frame, and to consider them as historical artifacts shaped by manifold variables" (p. 58).

Part II is titled "Hellenistic and Roman Republic Libraries" and I enjoyed Myrto Hatzimichali's "Ashes to ashes? The library of Alexandria after 48 BC". I especially liked her overview of the Alexandrian library, scholia written there, its head librarians and the 10th century Suda. T. Keith Dix's piece on "Beware of promising your library to anyone: Assembling a private library at Rome" was interesting for its discussion of Cicero building and using his library. It will be a very useful future tool for me for its many references to his letters and works.

Part III, "Libraries of the Roman Empire," contains many good articles, starting with Ewen Bowie's "Libraries for the Caesars". I like it as a reference article, especially for who was in charge of what and its many references to Suetonius. For those with an interest in Galen and the fire at the library of the Temple of Peace (Templum Pacis) in 192 CE, Pier Luigi Tucci's "Flavian libraries in the city of Rome" is a good source. This article, along with those by Richard Neudecker ("Archives, books and sacred space in Rome") and William Johnson ("Libraries and reading culture in the High Empire") discuss, among other things, that fire, based on a newly discovered (2005 CE) fragment of Galen’s “On the avoidance of grief”. Michael Handis’s “Myth and history: Galen and the Alexandrian library” started off as a great read, but the second part on the legacy of the library is definitely a weaker part of the whole and for me, the article spirals downward the further I read into it.