Book trade of the ancient world

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Although in classical antiquity the common form of text distribution was the private copy, there must have been a bookstore early on .

Greece to Hellenism

In ancient Greece , booksellers were first introduced to comedy poets of the 5th century BC. Mentioned in Athens . Socrates (died 399 BC), as Plato reports, knew booksellers at the Athens Agora . Also the traditional book purchases of the great philosophers of the 4th century BC. BC (Plato, Aristotle ) show that there must have been a book trade. But even for Hellenism , the time when the great library was founded ( Alexandria , Pergamon ), there are no testimonies that give information about an organized book trade.

Rome and Roman Empire

It was only through the book trade in Rome during the late Republic (since the 1st century BC) and the imperial era that more details are known from various mentions in contemporary literature.

Authors

Author royalties do not appear to have been paid. However, many of the great authors did not write to make a living. Cicero or Tacitus e.g. B. were wealthy. For them, literary production was part of their lifestyle. Anyone who had to earn money with book publications could dedicate their work to a patron who, at best, showed his appreciation in the form of financial support. Since there was no copyright protection , the writings of ancient authors could be copied and traded without their consent. The works of already deceased authors were also freely available, of which the Greek and Latin classics in particular had to be repeatedly procured for school lessons. Demand from private libraries will also have been significant. To make authors and their as yet unpublished works known, readings (lat. Recitationes ) were held. As Seneca mentions, Asinius Pollio is said to have held such events in the first library he founded in Rome. Pliny the Younger gives a detailed account of readings by authors in Rome during the early imperial period in one of his letters.

publisher

The author wrote the original of his work himself or dictated it to a writing slave . The author's manuscript was given to a publisher who had it reproduced by professional scribes who were often his slaves. Before delivery, a corrector (gr. Diorthotes ; Latin corrector ) was proofread; however, the geographer Strabo (63 BC - 19 AD) complains about uncorrected copies in the bookshops of Rome and Alexandria . Cicero's correspondence with his publisher and friend Atticus shows that at the request of the author he even had books that were already on the market recalled in order to make subsequent corrections.

The scribes were rewarded according to the number of lines written; in Diocletian's price edict (306 AD) three tiered tariffs are mentioned. The line count at the edge of the text was used to calculate the writer's wages (cf. engraving ). Since the price of private copies was determined in the same way, manuscripts with stichometric information do not necessarily have to come from the book trade. A bookseller's copy may include a papyrus roll from the University of Milan with the name Sosos at the end of a commentary on the Iliad in Greek. The papyrus found in Egypt could have come from the Roman publishing house of the Sosius brothers , where the epistles of Horace (65-8 BC) also appeared.

Dealer

The publishers often distributed their books themselves. A certain Dorus published and sold the history of Livy (59 BC to 17 AD). In the 1st century AD, Tryphon, who had Quintilian's textbook on rhetoric and Martial's poems, was both publisher and bookseller . In Rome, also in the 1st century AD, Atrectus and a certain Secundus were sort of assortments , who even then offered Martial's poems in a parchment code.

Bookstores are mentioned not only in Rome, but also in Brindisi and Lyon , and in Late Antiquity also in Carthage , Alexandria, Antioch ( Syria ), Constantinople and Trier . There were outpatient booksellers and book auctions. In addition to new publications, there were also old books on the market, which were often particularly valued for their quality. Fraudulent booksellers knew methods of treating new goods so that they looked old; in this way they hoped to get a higher price.

literature

  • Eduard Stemplinger : Book trade in antiquity. Heimeran, Munich 1927 (= Tusculum writings. New ways to the ancient world. Issue 9).
  • Severin Corsten, Günther Pflug and Friedrich Adolf Schmidt-Künsemüller (ed.): Lexicon of the entire book industry.
    • Vol. 1. Second, completely revised edition. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-7772-8721-0
    • Vol. 3. Second, completely revised edition. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7772-8721-0
  • Horst Blanck: The book in antiquity. Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-36686-4
  • Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (eds.): The new Pauly. Encyclopedia of Antiquity. Vol. 2. Metzler, Stuttgart a. Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X
  • Otto Mazal: Greco-Roman Antiquity. Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1999, ISBN 3-201-01716-7 (History of Book Culture; Vol. 1)