Authors and their public in ancient times

AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC IN ANCIENT TIMES
A SKETCH OF LITERARY CONDITIONS AND OF THE RELATIONS WITH THE PUBLIC OF LITERARY PRODUCERS, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
BY GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM, M.A. AUTHOR OF “THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT,” ETC.
THIRD EDITION, REVISED
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press 1896
COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
In printing the second and third impressions of my essay, I have been able to take advantage of certain corrections and suggestions submitted by friendly critics, among whom I wish to make special acknowledgments to Mr. Charlton T. Lewis and to Mr. Otis S. Hill, whose aid in the verification of the quotations has been particularly valuable. I may mention that in the printing of the first edition, I had been obliged, in connection with the increasing limitations of my eyesight, to confide the verification and the proof-reading of the quotations to an assistant, whose services proved, unfortunately, incompetent and untrustworthy. As a result, a number of errors which had been repeated from the German editions, or which had crept into the work of the transcriber, of the typewriter, or of the compositor, found place with annoying persistency, in the volume as printed. While I may not hope that the text as now printed is correct (and a book free from typographical errors is an almost impossible production), I can feel assured that the more serious misprints at least have been duly cared for.
Attention has also been given to the correction of certain errors of statement or of interpretation, but in some of the instances in which my critics have not been in accord with the authorities upon which my own statements have been based, I have ventured to abide by the conclusions of the latter. My little essay made, of course, no pretensions to establish any conclusions or to maintain any individual theories on questions of classical literature concerning which there might be differences among the scholars. My purpose was simply to trace, as far as might be practicable, from the scattered references in the literature of the period, an outline record of the continuity of literary activity, the methods of the production and distribution of literature, and the nature of the relations between the authors and their readers. For the citations utilised for this study, I was, as stated in my bibliography, chiefly indebted to such scholars as Wilhelm Schmitz, Joh. Müller, Paul Clement, Theodor Birt, Louis Haenny, H. Géraud, and A. Meineke. The citations given from the Greek or Latin authors were in the main based upon or corrected by the versions of these German or French writers, and were specifically so credited.