CHAPTER II.
Greece.
THE literature of Greece has become the property of the world, but of the existence of literary property in Greece—that is, of any system or practice of compensation to writers from their readers or hearers, either direct or indirect—the traces are very slight; so slight, in fact, that the weight of authority is against the probability of such practice having obtained at all.
It is fortunate for the literature of the world that the Greek poets, dramatists, historians, and philosophers were content to do their work for the approval of their own generation, for the chance of fame with the generations to come, or for the satisfaction of the work itself, as their rewards in the shape of anything more tangible than fame appear to have been either nothing or something very inconsiderable.
Clement says: “After the most painstaking researches through the records left us by the Greeks, we are compelled to conclude that in none of the Greek states was any recognition ever given under provision of law, to the right of authors to any control over their own productions.”[18] Breulier writes: “Literary property, in any sense in which the term is understood to-day, did not exist at Athens.”[19] Wilhelm Schmitz concludes that “no such relation as that which to-day exists between authors and booksellers (publishers) was known among the Greeks. In none of the writings of the time, do we find the slightest reference to any such publishing arrangements as Roman authors in the time of Martial were accustomed to secure.”[20] This treatise of Schmitz’s is a painstaking and interesting study of the conditions of Greek literature in classic times and of the relations of Greek writers to their public, and for certain portions of this chapter I am largely indebted to the results of his investigations.
Géraud remarks that in the first development of written language and literature among the Hebrews and Egyptians, it is easy to recognize the “fatal influence of the spirit of priestly caste, an influence from which the Greek peoples were comparatively free.”[21] The richest literature of antiquity, he goes on to say, is that of Greece, and it was also in Greece that the art of writing made the most rapid advances. The teaching of the priests, whether given through the oracles or not, was purely oral, so that the Greeks did not come into possession of any body of sacred scriptures such as formed the original literature of other peoples. On the other hand, the ardent nature, inquiring and active intellect, and brilliant imagination of the Greeks, gave an early and rapid development to the arts, to poetry, and to speculative philosophy.
The old-time tradition credits the introduction of the alphabet in Greece to Cadmus, and fixes the date of the first Hellenic spelling-school at about the fifteenth century before Christ. I believe the authorities are divided as to whether this mythical Cadmus represents a Phœnician or an Egyptian influence, but this is a question which need not be considered here. I understand the philologists are in accord in the conclusion that the Cadmus story represents, not a first instituting of a Greek alphabet, but merely certain important modifications in the form of letters already in use. Birt asserts, as if it were now a settled fact, that while the Greeks derived their written characters from the Phœnicians, they were indebted to Egypt for their first ideas in the making of books. There is a very distinct family resemblance between the Greek characters as known in literature and those of the Hebrew, Phœnician, and Syriac alphabets, while the names of the Greek letters Alpha and Beta are found in all the Semitic dialects. It seems further to be certain that the earlier peoples of Greece, after for a time having written perpendicularly according to the fashion of the Chinese, began later to write from right to left according to the Oriental manner.
The so-called Boustrophedon, a term meaning “turning like oxen when they plough,” was a method of writing from left to right, and from right to left in alternate lines. Among the earlier specimens of this method were the laws of Solon (about 610 B.C.) and the Sigean inscription (about 600 B.C.). This system represents a period of transition between the earliest style and that of which the invention is credited to Pronapides, and is simply the modern European fashion of writing from left to right. The inscriptions of the Etruscans are largely written in Boustrophedon. Neither in Greece, however, nor elsewhere, did this method remain in use for any writings which are to be classed as literature.
While Greek literature, as far as known to us, must be considered as beginning with the Homeric poems, the date of which is estimated by the majority of the authorities at about 900 B.C., there appears to be no trustworthy example of Greek writing earlier than about 600 B.C. Curiously enough, this specimen was found not in Greece but in Egypt. Jevons describes it as follows:
“On the banks of the Upper Nile, in the temple of Abu Simbel, are huge statues of stone, and on the legs of the second colossus from the south are chipped the names, witticisms, and records of travellers of all ages, in alphabets known and unknown. The earliest of the Greek travellers who have thus left their names were a body of mercenaries, who seemed to have formed part of an expedition which was led up the Nile by King Psammitichus.”[22]
Jevons goes on to give the grounds for the conclusion (based mainly on the formation of certain of the letters, and in part, of course, on the references to King Psammitichus) that the inscription was written, or rather was cut, upon the statue between 620 B.C. and 600 B.C., according as we take the king mentioned to have been the first or second of his name.[23] We have, then, a date fixing a time at which the art of writing certainly existed among the Greeks, while it is further evident that if in the year 600 the art of writing was so well established that it was understood by a number of mercenaries, it must have been quite generally diffused through certain classes of society, and the date for its introduction into Greece must have been considerably earlier than 600. Jevons knows, however, of no example of Greek writing which can be ascribed to an earlier date than that above quoted.
The conclusion, based upon this inscription, that in the year 600 B.C. writing had for some time been known in Greece, enables us, however, says Jevons, to accept as probably authentic a reference to writing ascribed to an author who lived nearly a century earlier. Archilochus, a poet who is believed to have flourished about 700 B.C., uses in one of his fables the expression “a grievous skytale.”
“A skytale was a staff on which a strip of leather for writing purposes was rolled slant-wise. A message was then written on the leather, and the latter being unrolled, was given to the messenger. If the messenger were intercepted, the message could not be deciphered, for only when the leather was rolled on a staff of precisely the same size (i. e., thickness) as the proper one, would the letters come right. Such a staff, the duplicate of that used by the sender, was of course possessed by the recipient.”
This primitive method of cipher was for a long time in use with the Spartans for conveying State messages. In the figure of speech used by Archilochus, his fable was to outward appearance innocent of any recondite meaning, but would prove a grievous “skytale” for the person attacked.
It seems reasonable, continues Jevons, to accept this passage as indicating a knowledge of writing in Greece as early as 700 B.C. This date allows a century for the diffusion of the art and for the spread of the Ionic alphabet which are implied by the Abu Simbel inscription. And the passage does not prove too much. It does not imply even that Archilochus himself could write. The invention or introduction was sufficiently novel and admirable to furnish a poet with a metaphor; and the skytale was probably then, as in later times, a government institution. This mention of it accords with the probable supposition that writing was used for government purposes for some time before it became common among the people.
The next date or period which in connection with my subject it is of interest to fix, however approximately, is that when it is possible to speak of the existence of a reading public. On this point also I take the liberty of quoting one or two paragraphs from Jevons in which the probabilities are clearly presented:
“Reading and writing were certainly taught as early as the year 500 B.C., and half a century later, to be unable to read or write was a thing to be ashamed of. Herodotus speaks of boys’ schools existing in Chios in the time of Histiæus, who lived about 500.”[24]
“Instruction of this kind does not, however, prove the existence of a reading public. Enough education to be able to keep accounts, to read public notices, to correspond with friends or business agents, may have been in the possession of every free Athenian in the period between 500 and 450 B.C., and the want of such education may have caused a man to be sneered at; but this does not prove the habit of reading literature.”
There are, however, various references which indicate that by the year 450 B.C. the habit of reading was beginning to become general, at least in certain circles of society. Jevons quotes a passage from the Tagenistæ of Aristophanes, in which, speaking of a young man gone wrong, the dramatist ascribes his ruin to “a book, to Prodicus or to bad company.”[25] Jevons also finds in fragments of an old comedy such expressions as “an unlettered man,” “a man who does not know his A B C.” A passage in the lyric fragments of the poet Theognis (who lived 583-500) is of interest not merely as an evidence of some public circulation of literature, but as possibly the earliest example of an author’s attempting to control the circulation of his own productions. Theognis says he has hit on a device which will prevent his verses from being appropriated by any one else. He will put his name on them as a seal (or trade-mark) and then “no one will take inferior work for his when the good is to be had, but every one will say ‘These are the verses of Theognis, the Megarian.’” As Jevons says: “This passage certainly implies that Theognis committed his works to writing.” It also appears to imply that there was likely to be sufficient literary prestige attaching to the poetry of Theognis to tempt an unscrupulous person to claim to be its author, while it is at least possible to infer that the plan of Theognis had reference not only to his prestige as an author, but also to certain author’s proceeds from the sales of his works, which proceeds he desired to keep plagiarists from appropriating. Clement does not, however, believe that there is adequate ground for the latter supposition, but contends that if the poet caused copies of his poems to be multiplied and distributed, it was not for the purpose of having them sold, and not even in order that they might be read, but to enable his friends to learn them and to sing them at drinking parties or other social gatherings. In his opinion, the nature of the poetry of Theognis shows that it was not composed for a reading public.
Giving the fullest possible weight to the evidences for the early development of the knowledge of reading and writing, and the possible facilities for the multiplication and distribution of books in manuscript, it is certain that Greek literature between the ninth and the sixth centuries B.C. cannot have been prepared for a reading public. The epics which have come down to posterity from that period must have been transmitted by word of mouth and memory. Mahaffy and Jevons are in accord in pointing out that the effort of memory required for the composition and transmission of long poems without the aid of writing, while implying a power never manifested among people possessing printed books, is not in itself at all incredible. Memory was equal to the task, and the earlier Greek poems, memorized by the authors as composed, were preserved by successive generations of Bards. They were also evidently composed with special reference to the requirements of the reciters whose recitations were in the earlier periods usually given at the banquets of the royal courts or of great houses to which the bards were attached. The practice of reciting before public audiences can hardly have been begun before the year 600 B.C.
The early epics were as a rule much too long to be recited within the limits of a single evening, and they must therefore have been continued from banquet to banquet. The authors have apparently kept this necessity in mind, and have provided for it by dividing their narratives into clearly defined episodes, at the close of which the reciters could leave their audiences with some such word as that given at the close of a weekly installment in the “penny dreadful”—“to be continued in our next.”
As the practice was introduced of entertaining larger audiences in the open air with the recital of the Homeric and other epics, a class of professional reciters arose, known as Rhapsodists, who declaimed in a theatrical manner, with much gesture and varying inflection of the voice. The term rhapsody is believed by Jevons to be derived from ῥάπτω, to sew or stitch together. He quotes a line from Pindar, Ὁμηρίαι ῥάπτων επέων ἀοιδοί, “sons of Homer, singers of stitched verses.” Words are metaphorically said to be stitched together into verses, and the word ῥαχ-ῳδός Jevons derives from ῥάπτω, to stitch, and ἀοιδός, a singer.[26]
These rhapsodists travelled from place to place to compete for the prizes offered by the different cities, and while the national poems (carried in their memories) were probably common to all, each reciter doubtless had his own special method of declaiming these. This practice helps to account for the transmission and for the diffusion of the earlier epics. The rhapsodists may, therefore, be said to have served in a sense as the publishers of the period. The derivation of the word comedy throws some light on the literary customs of the time. It means literally “a song of the village,” from κώμη, a village, and ἀείδω, I sing.
The purposes of Greek writers were either political or purely ideal. The possibility of earning money by means of authorship seems hardly ever to have occurred to them, and this freedom from any commercial motive for their work was doubtless an important cause for the high respect accorded in Greece to its authors. In the time of Plato, the Sophists, who prepared speeches and gave instruction for gain, were subject to more or less criticism on this account—a criticism which Plato himself seems to have initiated.[27]
At the threshold of Greek literature stands the majestic figure of Homer; and to Pisistratus, the Tyrant of Athens, is to be credited the inestimable service of securing the preservation of the Homeric poems in the form in which they have been handed down to posterity. The task of compiling or of editing the material was confided to four men, whose names, as predecessors of a long list of Homeric editors, deserve to be recorded: Conchylus, Onomacritus, Zopyrus, and Orpheus, and the work was completed about 550 B.C.[28]
Another creditable literary undertaking of Pisistratus was the collection of the poems of Hesiod, which was confided to the Milesian Cecrops. We have the testimony of Plutarch that by these means the Tyrant did not a little towards gaining or regaining the favor of the Athenians, which speaks well for the early interest of the city in literature. There are no details on record as to the means by which these first literary products were placed at the service of the community, but there can be no question that the service rendered by the Tyrant and the editors selected by him, consisted simply in providing an authoritative text, from which any who wished might transcribe such number of copies as they desired. This Pisistratus edition of the Homeric books is said to have served as the standard text for the copyists and for Homeric students not only in Greece but later in Alexandria, and is, therefore, the basis of the Homeric literature that has come down to modern days.
Prof. Mahaffy remarks that the writings of Hesiod differed from those of the other early Greek authors in being addressed, not to “the powers that were,” but to the common people.[29] Referring to the style of Hesiod’s works, Simcox says, rather naïvely, “Hesiod would certainly have written in prose, if prose had then existed.” Works and Days (the only one of Hesiod’s poems which the later Greek commentators accept as certainly genuine) consists of ethical and economic precepts, written in a homely and unimaginative style, and setting forth the indisputable doctrine that labor is the only road to prosperity. Mahaffy is my authority for the statement that Hesiod’s poems came into use “at an early period as a favorite handbook of education.”[30]
I wish this brilliant student of Greek life had given us some clue as to the methods by which copies of this literature were multiplied and brought into the hands of the country people and common people to whom it was more particularly addressed. The difficulty of circulating books among this class of readers must have been very much greater than that of reaching the scholarly circles of the cities.
While it was a long time before authors were to be in a position to secure any compensation from those who derived pleasure from their productions, they began at an early date (as in the case before mentioned of Theognis) to raise questions with each other on the score of plagiarisms, and to be jealous of retaining undisturbed the full literary prestige to which they might be entitled.
Clement remarks that “an enlightened public opinion helped to defend Greek authors against the borrowing of literary thieves, by stigmatizing plagiarism as a crime, and by expressing for a writer detected in appropriating the work of another a well merited contempt instead of the approbation for which he had hoped.”[31] It seems probable, however, that this is too favorable a view to take as to the effectiveness of public opinion in preserving among Greek writers a spirit of exact conscientiousness, as the complaints in the literature of the time concerning unauthorized and uncredited “borrowings” are numerous and bitter.
Such terms as “accidental coincidence,” “identity of thought,” “unconscious cerebration” (in absorbing the expressions of another), were doubtless used in these earlier as in the later days of literature to explain certain suspicious cases of “parallelisms” or similarities. In fact, at least one Greek author, the sophist Aretades, wrote a volume, unfortunately lost, on the similarity or identity of thought creations.[32]
Clement gives some examples of borrowings or appropriations on the part of writers and orators, and his list is so considerable as to leave the impression that the public opinion to which he refers was either not very active in discovering the practice, or was not a little remiss in characterizing and in condemning it. Isocrates copies an entire oration from Gorgias; Æschines makes free use in his discourses of those of Lysias and Andocides. Even Demosthenes, the chief of orators, occasionally yielded to the temptation; and among other instances, Clement cites extracts from orations against Aphobos and Pantænetos which are identical with passages in the Discourses on Ciron by the old instructor of Demosthenes, Isæus.
Rozoir tells us that an anonymous work of six volumes (rolls) was published under the title Passages in the Writings of Menander which are Not the Work of Menander, and that Philostrates of Alexandria accused Sophocles of having pillaged Æschylus, Æschylus of having permitted himself to draw too much inspiration from Phrynichus, and, finally, Phrynichus of having taken his material from the writers who preceded him. Such charges become, of course, too sweeping to be pertinent, and can probably in large part be dismissed with the conclusion that each generation of writers ought to familiarize itself with the work of its predecessors, and may often enough with propriety undertake the reinterpretation for new generations of readers of themes similar to those which have interested their fathers and grandfathers.
One evidence that the subject of plagiarism was a matter which in later days engaged public attention is given by the Fable of Æsop on the Jay masquerading in the plumes of the Peacock.
Clement points out that in connection with the fierce competition between the poets of Athens for dramatic honors, no means were neglected by the friends of each writer to bring discredit upon the productions of his rivals, and that very many of the charges of plagiarism can be traced to such an incentive. Aristophanes, who amused himself by utilizing for his comedies the strifes between his literary contemporaries, puts into the mouth of Euripides, whom he makes one of the characters in The Frogs, the following biting words, addressed to Æschylus:
“When I first read over the tragedy which you placed in my hands, I found it difficult and bombastic; I at once made a severe condensation, freeing the play from the weight of rubbish with which you had overloaded it; I then enlivened it with bright sayings, with pointed philosophic subtleties and with an abundance of brilliant witticisms drawn from a crowd of other books; and finally I added some pithy monologues, which are in the main the work of Ctesiphon.”[33]
In the same comedy, Æschylus is made to accuse Euripides of having carried on literary free-booting in every direction. Further on, Bacchus, in expressing his admiration for some striking thought expressed by Euripides, asks whether it is really his or Ctesiphon’s, and the tragedian frankly admits that the credit for the idea properly belongs to the latter. Clement concludes that there must have been foundation for the raillery of the comedian, and refers, in this connection, to the remarks of Plato that if one wished to examine the philosophy of Anaxagoras, the simplest course was to read the tragedies of Euripides, the choruses of which reproduced faithfully the teachings of the philosopher. Aristophanes, while scoffing sharply at the misdeeds of others, was himself not beyond criticism, being charged with having made free use of the comedies of Cratinus and Eupolis.[34]
The philosophers and historians appear to have been little more conscientious than the poets in their literary standard. The historian Theopompus included, without credit, in the eleventh book of his Philippics a whole harangue of Isocrates, and with a few changes of names and places, he was able to make use of passages from Androtion and Xenophon. His appropriations were so considerable that they were collected in a separate volume to which was given the fitting title of The Hunters.[35] Lysimachus wrote a book entitled The Robberies of Ephorus. Timon, in some lines preserved by Aulus Gellius, charges Plato with having obtained from a treatise of the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus the substance of his famous dialogue the Timæus.[36] The lines, from the version of Clement, read as follows: “You also, Plato, being ambitious to acquire knowledge, first purchased for a great sum a small book, and then with its aid proceeded yourself to instruct others.”
Even our moral friend Plutarch does not escape from the general charge of borrowing from others.
“In reading,” says Rozoir, “the text of many of the Lives, one cannot but be struck with the very great differences of style and of forms of expression, differences so marked, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that many portions are extracts taken literally and without credit, from other authors.”[37]
From these examples, out of many which might be cited, it seems evident that during the centuries in which Greek literature was at its height, the practice of plagiarism was very general, even among authors whose originality and creative power could not be questioned. Emerson’s dictum that “man is as lazy as he dares to be” was assuredly as true two thousand years ago as at the time it was uttered.
We may further conclude that while plagiarism, when detected, called forth a certain amount of criticism and raillery, especially when the author appropriated from was still living, it did not bring upon the “appropriators” any such final condemnation as would cause them to lose caste in the literary guild or to forfeit the appreciation of the reading public. This leniency of judgment could doubtless be more safely depended upon by writers who had given evidence of their own creative powers. The acknowledged genius could say with Molière: “Je prends mon bien où je le trouve,” and such a claim would be admitted the more readily as, when a genius does to the work of another the honor of utilizing it, the material so appropriated must usually secure in its new setting a renewed vitality, a different and a larger value.
The case of a small writer venturing to appropriate from a greater one was naturally judged much more harshly, and if a literary theft was detected in a production which was submitted in open contest for public honors, the verdict was swift and severe.
An instance of such public condemnation is referred to by Vitruvius.[38] One of the Ptolemies had instituted at Alexandria some literary contests in honor of Apollo and the Muses. Aristophanes, the grammarian, who on a certain day acted as judge, gave his decision, to the surprise of the audience, in favor of a contestant whose composition had certainly not been the most able. When asked to defend his decision, he showed that the competing productions were literal copies from the works of well known writers. Thereupon the unsuccessful competitors were promptly sentenced before the tribunal as veritable robbers, and were ignominiously thrust out of the city.
“Itaque rex jussit cum his agi furti, condemnatosque cum ignominia dimisit.”
This was, however, certainly an exceptional case, as well in the clumsiness of the plagiarism as in the swiftness of the punishment. The weight of evidence is, I am inclined to believe, in favor of the view, that in the absence of any protection by law for the author’s “rights,” whether literary or commercial, in his productions, the protection by public opinion, even for living writers, was very incidental and inadequate; while it seems further probable that, especially as far as the works of dead authors were concerned, but a small proportion of the “borrowings” were ever brought to light at all or became the occasion for any criticism. Much, of course, depended upon the manner in which the appropriation was made. As Le Vayer cleverly says: “L’on peut dérober à la façon des abeilles sans faire tort à personne; mais le vol de la fourmi, qui enlève le grain entier, ne doit jamais être imité.”[39]
There is one ground for forgiving these early literary “appropriators” even of les grains entiers—namely, that by means of such transmissal by later writers of extracts borrowed from their predecessors, a good deal of valuable material has been preserved for future generations which would otherwise have been lost altogether.
In considering such examples of plagiarism as are referred to by Greek writers and the general attitude of these writers to the practice, it is safe to conclude that authors cannot depend upon retaining the literary control of their own productions and cannot be prevented from securing honor for the productions of others unless public opinion can be supplemented with an effective copyright law.
Suidas, the lexicographer, relates that Euphorion, the son of Æschylus, and himself also a writer, gave to the world as his own certain tragedies which were the work of his father, but which had not before been made known (nondum in lucem editis).[40] It does not appear that any advantage other than a brief prestige accrued to Euphorion through his unfilial plagiarism.
Such advantage was, however, more possible for the author of a drama than for the author of any other class of literature, for seats in the theatre, which had at first been free, were later sold to the spectators at a drachme (Plato’s Apology of Socrates). The drachme was equal in cash to about eighteen cents, and in purchasing power to perhaps seventy-two cents of our money. This price was, according to Barthelémi,[41] reduced by Pericles to an obolus, equal in cash value to about three cents.
The expenses of the presentation of a drama were very slight, and even this smaller payment by the audience should have afforded means, after the actors had been reimbursed, for some compensation to the dramatist.
Instances of compensation to orators are of not infrequent occurrence, and, as Paul Clement remarks, it seems reasonably certain that experienced orators were not in the habit of writing gratuitously the discourses so frequently prepared for the use of others. Isocrates is reported to have received not less than twenty talents (about $21,500) for the discourses sent by him to Nicocles, King of Cyprus.[42]
Aristophanes speaks of the considerable sums gained by the jurists, but the service for which Isocrates was paid was of course of a different character.
The intellectual or literary life of Athens, initiated by the popularization (at least among the cultivated circles) of the poems of Homer and Hesiod, was very much furthered through the influence of Plato. Curiously enough, notwithstanding Plato’s great activity as a writer, he placed a low estimate on the importance of written as compared with that of oral instruction. This is shown in his reference to the myth concerning the discovery of writing.[43]
The ten books of Plato’s Republic were undoubtedly prepared in the first place for presentation in the shape of lectures to a comparatively small circle of students, and were through these students first brought before the public. Plato’s hearers appear to have interested themselves in the work of circulating the written reports of his lectures, of which for some little time the number of copies was naturally limited. We also learn that the fortunate possessors of such manuscripts were in the habit of lending them out for hire. From a comedy of the time has been quoted the following line: “Hermodoros makes a trade of the sale of lectures.”[44]
Hermodoros of Syracuse was known as a student of Plato, and this quotation is interpreted as a reference to a practice of his of preparing for sale written reports of his instructor’s talks. Plato had evidently not yet evolved for himself the doctrine established over two thousand years later by Dr. Abernethy, that the privilege of listening to lectures did not carry with it the right to sell or to distribute the reports of the same. Abernethy’s student had at least made payment to the doctor for his course of lectures, while if, as seems probable, the teachings of Plato were a free gift to his hearers, his claim to the control of all subsequent use of the material would have been still better founded than that of the Scotch lecturer. But the time when it was not considered incompatible with the literary or philosophical ideal for the authors or philosophers to receive compensation from those benefited by their instruction, had not yet arrived. This reference to Hermodoros has interest as being possibly the first recorded instance of moneys being paid for literary material. The date was about 325 B.C.
Suidas calls Hermodoros a hearer (ἀκροατής) of Plato, and says, further, that he made a traffic of his master’s teachings (λόγοισιν Ἑρμόδωρος ἐμπορεύεται). Cicero, in writing to Atticus, makes a jesting comparison of the relations of Hermodoros to Plato with those borne by his publishing friend to himself, when he says: Placetne tibi libros “De Finibus” primum edere injussu meo? Hoc ne Hermodorus quidem faciebat, is qui Platonis libros solitus est divulgare.[45] “Possibly you may be inclined to publish my work De Finibus without securing the permission of the author. Even that Hermodorus, who was in the habit of publishing the books of Plato, was not guilty of such a thing.”
The term libros, employed by Cicero, is of course not really accurate, and ought properly to be interpreted as teachings, as Hermodoros appears not to have had in his hands any of Plato’s manuscripts, and to have used for his “publications” simply his own reports of his instructor’s lectures. It seems probable from these several references that Hermodoros secured from his sales certain profits, but it was evidently not believed that he considered himself under any obligation to divide such profits with Plato.
We have no word from Plato himself concerning the method by which his writings were brought before the public, but we find references in Aristotle to the “published works of Plato.”[46] Cephisodorus, a pupil of Isocrates, makes it a ground for reproach against Aristotle (considered at the time as a rival of his own instructor) that the latter should have published a work on Greek proverbs, a performance characterized as “unworthy of a philosopher.”[47]
The greater portions of the writings of Aristotle appear to have been composed in the course of his second sojourn in Athens, during which he was specially indebted to, and was possibly maintained by, the affectionate liberality of his royal pupil Alexander the Great. A curious claim was made by the latter to the ownership, or at least to the control, of such of the philosopher’s lectures as had been originally prepared for his own instruction. “You have not treated me fairly,” writes Alexander to Aristotle, “in including with your published works the papers prepared for my instruction. For if the scholarly writings by means of which I was educated become the common property of the world, in what manner shall I be intellectually distinguished above ordinary mortals? I would rather be noteworthy through the possession of the highest knowledge than by means of the power of my position.”
Aristotle’s reply is ingenious. He says in substance: “It is true, O beloved pupil, that through the zeal of over-admiring friends these lectures, originally prepared for thy instruction, have been given out to the world. But in no full sense of the term have they been published, for in the form in which they are written they can be properly understood only if accompanied by the interpretation of their author, and such interpretation he has given to none but his beloved pupil.”[48]
Alexander’s claim to the continued control of literary productions prepared for him and for the first use of which he, or his father on his behalf, had made adequate payment, raises an interesting question. It is probable, however, that the principle involved is at the bottom the same as that upon which have since been decided the Abernethy case and other similar issues between instructors and pupils; such decisions limiting the rights of the students in the material strictly to the special use for which he has paid, and leaving with the instructor, when also the author, all subsequent control and all subsequent benefit.
Aristotle made a sharp distinction between his “published works” (ἐξωτερικοὶ or ἐκδεδομένοι λόγοι) and his Academic works (ἀκροάσεις). The former, written out in full and revised, could be purchased by the general public (outside of the Peripatos). The latter were apparently prepared more in the shape of notes or abstracts, to serve as the basis of his lectures. Copies of these abstracts, such as would to-day be known in universities as Précis, were distributed among (and possibly purchased by) the students,[49] and could not be obtained except within the Peripatos.
From the bequests made by certain of the philosophers of their books, it appears that such a distinction between the two classes of books was general. In these legacies the copies of current publications, purchased for reading (Τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα), are distinguished from the unpublished works (ἀνέκδοτα). It was from such an unpublished manuscript (ἀνέκδοτον)[50] that in the Theætet. of Plato a reading is given.
It is easy to understand that the more abstruse works of Plato and Aristotle were not fitted for any such general distribution as was secured for the then popular treatises of Democritus on the Science of Nature, or for the writings of the Sophist Protagoras. It is by no means clear by what channels were distributed these works, which appear very shortly after their production to have come into the hands of a large number of readers not only in Greece itself, but throughout the Greek colonies. The sale of copies, made by students and by admiring readers, seems hardly to furnish a sufficiently adequate publishing machinery, but of publishers or booksellers, with staffs of trained copyists, we have as yet no trustworthy record.
Protagoras, who came from Abdera, was said to have been intimate with Pericles. He was the first lecturer or instructor who assumed the title of Sophist, and what is more important for our subject, was said to be the first who received pay for his lessons. Plato, whose view of the responsibilities of a literary or philosophical worker seems to have been extremely ideal, makes it a charge against Protagoras that during the forty years in which he taught, he received more money than Phidias. And why not, one is tempted to enquire, if his many hearers felt that they received a fair equivalent in the services rendered? The receipts of Protagoras appear to have come entirely from the listeners or students who attended his lectures; at least there is nothing to show that he himself derived any business benefit from the large sales of the copies of these lectures. His remunerated work is therefore an example of property produced from an intellectual product but not yet of property resulting for the producer of a work of literature.
The history, or histories of Herodotus were first communicated to the world in the shape of lectures or readings of the separate chapters of the earlier portions. We find references to four such lectures delivered respectively at Olympia,[51] Athens,[52] Corinth,[53] and Thebes[54] between the years 455 and 450, B.C. In 447 B.C. Herodotus was sojourning in Athens, still engaged in the work of his history, and becoming known, through his public readings, to Pericles, Sophocles, and other leaders of Athenian thought and culture. In 443 he joined the colonists whom Pericles was sending out to Italy, and became one of the first settlers at Thurium, where he remained until his death in 424. It was at Thurium that the great work, in the shape in which we now know it, was finally completed, about 442. The promptness with which the History became known in Greece and the very general circulation secured for it, seems to have been in large part due to the personal interest in it of Pericles and Sophocles and possibly also to the financial aid of the former in providing funds for the copyists. It is related, on uncertain authority, says Clement, that in 446, the Athenian Assembly decreed a reward to Herodotus for his History, after certain chapters of it had been read publicly. There appears to be no other reference to any compensation secured by the author for this great work to the preparation of which he had devoted his life and which had cost him so many toilsome and costly journeys. The History of Herodotus, the first work of any lasting importance of its class in point of time, and in the estimate of twenty-three centuries not far from the first by point of excellence, was practically a free gift from the historian to his generation and to posterity.
The system of instruction or literary entertainment by means of readings or lectures became one of the most important features of intellectual life in Greece. Mahaffy speaks of the culture and quickness of intellect of an Athenian audience as being far in advance of that of a similar modern assembly. Freeman says: “The average intelligence of the assembled Athenian citizens was unquestionably higher than that of the House of Commons.”[55]
It is stated by Abicht[56] that the young Thucydides, then a boy of twelve, was one of the listeners to a recital of Herodotus at the great Olympian festival, and, moved to tears, resolved that he would devote himself to the writing of history. Later, when he had entered upon his own historical work, Thucydides remarks with a confidence which later centuries have justified, that he “was not writing for the present only, but for all time.”[57]
His History was left unfinished, apparently owing to the sudden death of the author, although the exact date of this death is not known. It does not appear who assumed the responsibility for the first publication of the History. Marcellinus speaks of a daughter of Thucydides having undertaken the transcribing of the eighth book, and having provided means for the issue of the same.[58] If this daughter inherited the gold mine in Thrace which her father tells us he owned, there should have been no difficulty in finding funds for the copyists.
According to others the work was cared for by Xenophon and Theopompus. Demosthenes is reported to have transcribed the eight books with his own hand eight times, and there were doubtless many other admiring readers who contributed their share of labor in copying and distributing the eloquent chronicles of the Peloponnesian war. In the fourth century B.C. the dedication of literature to the public seems to have been emphatically a labor of love. Xenophon had at one time thought of writing a continuation of the narrative of Thucydides, but until the time of his withdrawal to Scillus, he had neither the leisure nor the service of the skilled slaves requisite for the work. Xenophon takes to himself the credit of having brought into fame the previously unknown books of Thucydides which he had been in a position to suppress (or to supplant).[59] Xenophon’s own literary activity, resulting in a considerable list of narratives and treatises, was comprised between the years 387 and 355 B.C., that is during the last thirty years of his long life. He died in 355, at the age of ninety-eight. On the estate at Scillus which the Spartans had presented to him, for services rendered against his native state of Athens, he had gathered a large staff of slaves skilled as scribes, by whom were prepared the copies of his works distributed amongst his friends. He speaks of having taken some of the scribes with him to Corinth, where the Cyropædia was completed.
In Xenophon’s Anabasis we find that each chapter or book is preceded by a summary in which are repeated the contents of the preceding chapter. The work was, as was customary, divided into books of suitable length for reading aloud from evening to evening, and such summaries were, says Isocrates, of decided convenience in recalling to the hearers the more important occurrences related in the previous reading, and in this manner sustained the interest in the narrative. The dialogues of Aristotle were said to have contained proems presenting summaries of the preceding conclusions together with an outline of the new situation. The similar proems in the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero are not prefaces to books but to situations, and occur only in those books in which a new situation is introduced.[60]
For the preservation of the writings of the earlier Greek authors, we are indebted to the first book collectors or bibliophilists. Athenæus[61] names as founders of some of the more important earlier libraries, Polycrates of Samos (570-522 B.C.), Pisistratus of Athens (612-527), Euclid of Megara (about 440-400), Aristotle (384-321), and the kings of Pergamum (350-200). Pisistratus, who died 527 B.C., bequeathed his books to Athens for a public library, and the Athenians interested themselves later in largely increasing the collection. This is possibly the earliest record there is of a library dedicated to the public. On the capture of Athens by Xerxes, the collection was taken to Persia, to be restored two centuries later by Seleucus Nicator.[62] The library of the kings of Pergamum, which Antony afterward presented to Cleopatra, is said by Plutarch[63] to have grown to 200,000 rolls, which stands of course for a much smaller number of works.
The most comprehensive of the earlier private collections of books was undoubtedly that of Aristotle, to whose house Plato gave the name of “the house of the reader.”[64] Diogenes Laërtius speaks of his possessing a thousand συγγράμματα and four hundred βιβλία. According to one account, the books of Aristotle were bequeathed to or secured by Neleus, and by him were sold to Ptolemy Philadelphus, who transferred them to Alexandria, together with a collection of other manuscripts bought in Athens and in Rhodes.[65] Strabo says that the heirs of Neleus, ignorant people, buried the manuscripts in order to keep them from falling into the hands of the kings of Pergamum, and that they were seriously injured through damp and worms. When again dug up, they were, however, sold for a high price to Apellicon, who had certain of the works reproduced, in very defective editions, from the imperfect manuscripts. On the capture of Athens, Sulla took possession of such of the books as still remained and carried them off to Rome, where they were arranged by the grammarian Tyrannion, and served as the text for the later editions issued by the Roman publishers.[66]
It is probable, says Schmitz, that Ptolemy secured only a portion of the collection, while a number of the manuscripts came into the possession of Apellikon, and reached Rome through Sylla. Another large library, according to Memnon, one of the largest of the time, was that of Clearchus,[67] Tyrant of Heraclea, who had been a student of Plato and Isocrates.
From the instances above quoted, it appears that it was as a rule only persons of considerable wealth who were able to bring together collections of books. An exception to this is the case of Euripides, who possessed no great fortune, but who had in his slave, Cephisophon, a perfect treasure. Cephisophon not merely took charge of the household affairs, but, as a skilled scribe, prepared for his master’s library copies of the most noteworthy literary works of the time.[68] Educated slaves were in the time of Euripides still scarce among the Greeks, while later it was principally from Greece that the Roman scholars and publishers secured the large number of copyists who were employed on literary work in Rome.
These references to the earlier collections of books are of interest in indicating something of the value in which literature was held as property, and of the estimates placed on books by their readers, while it must be admitted that they do not throw much light on the relations of these readers with the authors to whom they were indebted, and they are absolutely silent as to any remuneration coming to the authors for their labors. The earlier collections were comprised almost exclusively of works of poetry, and it is only when we get to the time of Aristotle that we begin to find in the libraries a fair proportion of works of philosophy and science, although Boeckh[69] mentions references to works on agriculture as early as the lifetime of Socrates. For a long period, however, poetry formed by far the most important division of the libraries, indicating the great relative importance given in the earlier development of Greek culture to this branch of literature. It is interesting to bear in mind that at a somewhat similar stage of their intellectual development, the literature of the Egyptians was almost exclusively religious and astronomical, that of the Assyrians religious and historical (provided the rather monotonous narratives of the royal campaigns are entitled to the name of history), while that of the Hebrews was limited to the sacred chronicles and the law.
It appears from such references as we find to the prices paid that, as compared with other luxuries, books remained very costly up to the time of the Roman occupation of Greece, or about 150 B.C. This is a negative evidence that there was as yet no effective publishing machinery through which could be provided the means required for keeping up a staff of competent copyists, and that the multiplication of books was therefore practically dependent upon the enterprise of such individual owners as may have been fortunate enough to be able to secure slaves of sufficient education to serve as scribes. Plato is reported to have paid for three books of Philolaüs, which Dion bought for him in Sicily, three Attic talents,[70] equal in our currency to $3240,—and the equivalent, of course, of a much larger sum, estimated in its purchasing power for food. Aristotle paid a similar sum for some few books of Speusippus, purchased after the death of the latter.[71]
If such instances can be accepted as a fair expression of the market value of literature, it is evident that the ownership of books must have been limited to a very small circle. The cost of books depended, of course, largely upon the cost of papyrus, for which Greece was dependent upon Egypt. An inscription of the year 407 B.C., quoted by Rangabé, gives the price of a sheet of papyrus (ὁ χάρτης) at one drachme and two oboli, the equivalent of about twenty-five cents.
On the other hand, Aristophanes, in his comedy of The Frogs, represented in 405 B.C., or about fifty years before the above purchase of Aristotle, uses some lines which have been interpreted as evidence of some general circulation, at least of dramatic compositions. According to the scheme of the play, Æschylus and Euripides, contestants for the public favor, have set forth each for himself the beauties and claims of their respective masterpieces. The Chorus then speaks, cautioning the poets that it will be proper for them to present more fully the distinctive features of their tragedies, and to explain the same for the judgment of the audience. That the audience is capable of such judgment is asserted in the following words (paraphrased by Müller[72]):
“Are you troubled with the fear that your hearers lack the intelligence to appreciate the fine points of your analyses? Let such fear vanish, for there can be no lack of understanding with these hearers. Some of them are men of experience in campaigns; others are in the habit of instructing themselves from books, and have come to the performance each furnished with a scroll with which to freshen his memory, while each also is fully armed with mother-wit. Have no fear therefore. They will have full understanding of all that you may wish to discuss before them.”
Müller proceeds to make an analysis of the purport of the references in this passage, pointing out that the experience of old campaigners would help them to the appreciation of the robust and stirring compositions of Æschylus, while the scholarly habits of the lovers of books would keep them in close sympathy with the complex intellectual problems considered by Euripides.
The sharper edge of the comparison is directed against Euripides, who is always referred to by Aristophanes as a book-worm. Müller further contends that the references to each hearer being “provided with his little book” (or book of the play) must be understood as merely a piece of humorous exaggeration, as during the last years of the Peloponnesian war, when the resources of Athens had been seriously diminished, when poverty was general, and men’s minds were agitated with the excitement of the campaign, few people could have had the money for the buying, or the leisure for the reading, of books.
Athenæus concludes, from a fragment of the comedy writer Alexis (a contemporary of Alexander), that it was not until the time of Alexander that the reading of books played any important part in the intellectual life of the Greeks.[73] In the comedy of Prodicus, entitled The Choice of Hercules, portions of which have been preserved in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, Linus, the instructor of Hercules, is represented as directing his pupil to select for his reading one out of a number of books which are lying before him. Among the authors whose works are specified in the list are Orpheus, Hesiod, Homer, Chœrilus, and Epicharmus. (The last named is the first Greek writer of comedy of whom we have any trustworthy account. His first work was produced about 500 B.C.)[74] Hercules, passing by the poetry, seizes a volume on cookery, the work of an actor named Simos, who was also famous as a cook.[75]
Artemon, a grammarian of Cassandria in Macedonia, who wrote shortly after the death of Aristotle and who made a collection of the letters of Aristotle, published a dissertation on the collecting and the use of books, which gives ground for the impression that in his time there was already in Macedonia or Northern Greece a circle of bibliophilists, ready to give attention to the counsels of this forerunner of Dibdin, and possibly able also to pay for the books.
A piece of evidence against the contention that the price of books was high in the time of Plato, is supplied, according to certain commentators, by Plato himself. From a paragraph in the Apology Boeckh[76] understands that some kind of book-trade must have been carried on in the orchestra of the theatre (during the time, of course, when no performance was going on), and that the writings of Anaxagoras were offered for sale for one drachme; and Buchsenschutz[77] takes the same view of Plato’s reference. The words used by Plato are put into the mouth of Socrates, who is represented as contending; first, that the opinions for the utterance of which he has been charged with heresy or impiety, are in substance the same as those already given to the world by Anaxagoras and others; second, that these views have been so widely published that they have become public property, for the quoting of which no single person can properly be held responsible; and thirdly, that they can be obtained in the theatre for a drachme. The particular writings of Anaxagoras to which Socrates here refers, contain his theories concerning the nature of the sun, the moon, the earth, and the creating power of divinity. Schmitz is, however, inclined to believe not that the books containing these doctrines could be purchased in the theatre, but that the theories of Anaxagoras were at the time freely quoted in the popular dramas (such as those of Euripides), and that it was in listening to these plays in the theatre that the public could without difficulty obtain a knowledge of the new views.[78]
The usual price of admission to the Athenian theatres was, in the time of Pericles, two oboli, or about six cents, but on special holidays, when the performance continued three days, this price was often raised to a drachme, or eighteen cents.[79] In the absence of any other references to this supposed practice of turning orchestra stalls into book-stalls, the weight of probability appears to favor the conclusions of Schmitz rather than those of Boeckh.
Schmitz admits that it is not practicable to find in the existing dramas of Euripides examples of such presentation of the Anaxagorian theories of the universe, but he points out that a large portion of the writings of this author was undoubtedly lost in the destruction of the great war, and that this same war prevented any wide distribution of the authenticated copies, although many of the tragedies were so popular that the songs from them were sung throughout the land. By the end of the war the fame of the tragedies had reached Sicily, although very few of the manuscripts could yet have got across the sea. After the defeat of the Athenians before Syracuse, some of those who had been captured or who, escaping from the Syracusans, had wandered over the island, found a temporary livelihood or even purchased their freedom by reciting the plays of Euripides, and on their return to Athens they took occasion to express to the poet their gratitude for the timely service rendered by his genius.[80]
To the coast cities of Asia Minor, as well as throughout the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean, had come the fame of the new tragedian, although here also copies of the plays themselves appear to have been very scarce. Plutarch relates[80] that the inhabitants of Caunus (a city of Caria), when besought for shelter by an Athenian vessel chased by pirates, wanted first to know whether the Athenians could recite for them the songs of Euripides.[81] It is to be hoped that the Caunusians did not insist upon being paid in advance, and upon having the recitations made before they permitted the hard-pressed vessel to gain the shelter of the harbor. In all places and among all classes where Greek was the language, the songs of Euripides appear to have secured an immediate popularity, while by the scholars also was given an appreciation no less cordial. Both Plato[82] and Aristotle[83] ranked Euripides above Sophocles and Æschylus.
Alexander the Great entertained the guests at his banquets by reciting long passages from Euripides.[84] Throughout Greece these tragedies appear for many years to have been the compositions most frequently selected for public readings. Lucian relates[85] that the Cynic Demetrius, who lived in Corinth in the first century, and whom Seneca refers to as a new friend, heard an “uneducated man” read before an audience The Bacchantes of Euripides. As the reader came to the lines in which the messenger announces the “terrible deed” of Agave and the fearful fate of Pentheus, Demetrius snatched the book from his hands with the words: “It is better for poor Pentheus to be murdered by me than by you.” The point of interest for Lucian (who wrote about 150 A.D.) was the play on the term “murdered,” and for us the example of the practice, in the first century, of the public reading of standard literature, so general that an audience (rather than not to hear the composition) would listen even to an “ignorant reader.”
Returning to the question of the distribution and price of books, we find a reference by Xenophon[86] to some “chests full of valuable books” having been saved “with other costly articles” from the cargo of an Athenian vessel shipwrecked at Salmydessus, a city on the Euxine.
This appears to be the earliest reference on record to any sending of supplies of books from Greece to the colonies, but even here there is no evidence that the volumes were forwarded by dealers, and it is probable that the “chests” contained the private library of some wealthy Athenian collector who had migrated to Pontus. There is no question, however, but that in the time of Xenophon (445-355 B.C.) Athens was the centre not only of the literary activity of Greece, but of any book-trade that existed.
It seems evident that in Greece, as later in Rome, the earliest booksellers were the scribes, who with their own labor had prepared the parchment or papyrus scrolls which constituted their stock in trade.
The next step in the development of the business was a very natural one, namely, the introduction of the capitalist, who, instead of working with his own hands, employed a staff of copyists and sold the products of their labor. It is only surprising that the continued high price paid for fair copies of noted works and the steady demand for such copies, should not have tempted dealers more rapidly into the business. The principal obstacle was for many years the difficulty of securing a sufficiency of skilled copyists the accuracy of whose work could be trusted. According to Schmitz, there is no mention of the appearance of booksellers in Athens earlier than the fifth century B.C.
The Athenian comedy, which touched with its keen raillery every phase of life, whether public or private, did not overlook this new mode of occupation. The references are as a rule not complimentary, but, as the comedians spared nothing in their mockery, the fact need not stand to the discredit of the first booksellers. Possibly the earliest mention of the trade is by Aristomenes, who, in a comedy entitled The Deceivers (performed about 470 B.C.), speaks of a “Dealer in Books.” Cratinus, in his play The Mechanics (written about 450 B.C.), mentions a copyist (βιβλιογράφος)[87]; Theopompus, writing about 330 B.C., uses the term “bookseller”[88] (βιβλιοπώλης); Nicophon gives a list of “men who support themselves with the labor of their hands” (χειρογάστορες), and in this list groups the bibliopoles in with the dealers in fish, fruit, figs, leather, meal, and household utensils.[89] It would seem as if in this instance the term βιβλιοπώλης must have been used as synonymous with or at least as including βιβλιογράφος, the scribe and the seller of the manuscripts being one and the same person. Antiphanes, born in Rhodes B.C. 408, who is credited by Suidas with having written over three hundred dramas, which were very popular in Athens, refers to “book-copyists,” and also to books which had been “sewed and glued.”[90] The comic writer, Plato, who was a contemporary of Socrates, makes first mention of “written leaves,” i. e., papyrus. The term used by him, χάρται, was, according to Birt, when standing alone, more usually applied to leaves of papyrus prepared for writing, but still blank; χάρται γεγραμμένοι standing for the inscribed leaves.
We may conclude from Nicophon’s having included the booksellers in his list of traders that they had their shops or stalls on the market-place. Eupolis also speaks of the “place where books are sold,” (οὗ τὰ βιβλία ὤνια),[91] and it appears therefore that as early as 430 B.C. a special place in the market must have been reserved for the book-trade—an Athenian Paternoster Row, or, more nearly perhaps, a Quai Voltaire. It was, however, not until the time of Alexander the Great that the business of making and selling books—that is, attested copies of the works of popular writers—appears to have developed into importance.
Until the business of book-making had become systematized, the admirers of a poet or philosopher were obliged to supply themselves with his works through their own handiwork, unless they were fortunate enough to possess slaves educated as scribes. This test of the reader’s admiration was assuredly rather a severe one. It is certain that the number of disciples of modern authors would be enormously limited if, as a first condition for the enjoyment of their writings, the would-be readers were under the necessity of transcribing the copies with their own hands. Imagine the extent of the task for the admirers of Clarissa Harlowe, or for those who absorbed their history through the ninety odd romances of G. P. R. James!
As the supply of educated slaves increased, there was, of course, less need for individual scholars to devote their own handiwork to copying of manuscripts for their libraries. It was cheaper to employ the labor of slaves, and to use their own time for more important work. The names of some of the slaves who did good service as scribes have been preserved in history. Mention has already been made of Cephisophon, the slave, secretary, and personal friend of Euripides. One of Plato’s dialogues is distinguished by the name of Phædon of Elis, who had been sold as a slave in his youth and had been employed as a scribe. The attention of Socrates was attracted by his capable work, and he persuaded Crito to purchase his freedom.[92]
The poet Philoxenus of Cythera was sold as a slave to Melanippides (the younger), whom he served as a scribe, and whose poetry he was said to have surpassed with his own productions. There are many similar instances both of slaves who succeeded in securing an education and in doing noteworthy literary work, and of men of education who had, through the fortunes of war or through the loss of their property, fallen into the position of slaves, and who were then utilized by their masters for literary work.
There is also evidence that the state caused intelligent slaves to be instructed in writing in order to be able to use them for work on the public records or as clerks for the officials.[93]
It is to be borne in mind that the (to us) extraordinary extent to which the Greeks were able to develop their power of memorizing enabled them often to trust to their memory where modern students would be helpless without the written (or the printed) word. “My father,” says Niceratus in The Banquet of Xenophon, “compelled me to learn by heart all the poetry of Homer, and I could repeat without break the entire Iliad and Odyssey.”[94] The boys in school were given as their daily task the memorizing of the works of the poets, and what was begun under compulsion appears to have been continued in later life as a pleasure.
Such an exceptional development of the power of memory, making of it almost a distinct faculty from that which the present generation knows under the name, may properly be credited with some influence upon the slowness of the growth among the ancients of any idea of property in an intellectual production. As long as men could carry their libraries in their heads, and when they desired to entertain themselves with a work of literature, needed only to think it to themselves (or even to recite it to themselves) instead of being under the necessity of reading it to themselves, they could hardly have the feeling that comes to the modern reader (if he be a conscientious person) of an indebtedness to the author, an indebtedness which is in large part connected with the actual use of the copy of the work. In the early Greek community, a very few copies (or even a single copy) of a great poem were sufficient in a short space of time to place the work of the poet in the minds of all the active-minded citizens, such men as would to-day be frequenters of the bookstores. In the Homeric times it proved, in fact, to be possible to permeate a community with the inspiration of the national epics without the aid of any written copies whatever. For the service rendered by these early bards, the community might, and very possibly did, feel under an obligation of some kind, but the individual reciter who had absorbed the poems into the possession of his memory, and the readers to whom he transmitted the enjoyment of these poems, could not have suggested to them any such feeling of personal obligation to the poet as is experienced by the reader of to-day who is called upon to buy from the author, through the publisher, the text of any work of which he desires the enjoyment. The Greek of these earlier times needed no texts and dreamed of no bookseller. He inherited from his ancestors the poetry of the preceding generation with the same sense of natural right as that with which he took possession of his ancestral acres; and he absorbed into his memory for his daily enjoyment the poetry of his own day with the same freedom and almost the same unconsciousness as that with which he took into his lungs the air about him. In this way the literature with which he had to do became really a part of himself, and he may be said to have become possessed of it in a way which would hardly be possible for one who was simply a reader of books. It is not easy to realize how much we have lost in these days of printed books in losing this magnificent power of memorizing our literature and carrying it about with us, instead of going to our libraries for it and taking it in by scraps. How much more to us, for instance, would Shakespeare’s plays stand for, if they could be stored in our heads ready for use when wanted, instead of being available, as at present, only in the occasional reading circle, or the still less frequent Shakespearian revival.
An author who seems to have taken exceptional pains to secure a circulation for his productions was Demosthenes, but it is to be borne in mind that his interest as a politician, or perhaps it is fairer to say as a statesman, desiring to arouse public opinion in behalf of his policy, was probably even keener than his ambition as an author hoping for a popular appreciation of his eloquence. Whatever the motive or combination of motives, it appears that after the delivery of an oration he would act as his own reporter, writing out revised copies and distributing the same among his friends for distribution.[95] He had a special interest in securing a wide popular circulation for his speeches in the matter of the guardianship, and for those against Æschines and in behalf of Phormion, and the copies of these,[96] prepared by his own hand or under his orders, certainly came into the hands of many readers. Copies of the speeches made by Demosthenes against Philip must have been brought to the latter by some of the orator’s opponents. Such at least is the interpretation given by Schmitz to the well known exclamation of Philip: “If I had heard him speak these words, I should myself have been compelled to lead the campaign against Philip.”[97]
An early reference to the practice of making publication of a book in any formal manner (as distinguished from the permission accorded to friends to make transcripts for their own use) is given by Isocrates, writing about 400 B.C. He speaks of hesitating to publish his Panathenaicus (φανερὰν ποιῆσαι, διαδιδόναι). He began the work, says Birt, when he was already ninety-four, was obliged to leave it on account of illness, but took it up again three years later, and it was then that (conscientious author as he was) he hesitated to give the volume to the public, because some friend to whom he had read it was not fully in accord with its conclusions.[98]
The development of the trade of making and selling books came but slowly, but received no little impetus through the taste for literature implanted by Aristotle in his royal pupil Alexander. The latter appears to have given frequent commissions to his friend Harpalus for the purchase of books. From the mention by Plutarch[99] it has been thought Harpalus must have been sent from Asia with instructions to procure for Alexander a long series of works whose titles are given. Schmitz points out, however, that Alexander could hardly have been in a position during his Asiatic campaigns and journeyings to collect a library, and these commissions to Harpalus must have been made at an earlier date, before Alexander had left Macedonia and while the “friend of his youth” was sojourning in Athens.
The one point that is clear and that is of interest to us in this connection is that, at about 330 B.C., Harpalus was able to purchase in Athens, which was already referred to as the centre of the book-trade of Greece, “many tragedies of Euripides, Æschylus, and Sophocles, dithyrambic poems by Telestes and Philoxenus, the historical writings of Philistus of Syracuse, together with a number of rare works.” From Athens also, at about the same time, Mnaseas, the father of Zeno, brought to his son, in the course of “various business journeys,” copies of all the “published writings of Socrates.”[100] There is also a reference in Dionysius of Halicarnassus[101] to the many volumes of Isocrates which had been published (literally “placed among the people”) by the Athenian booksellers. Schmitz speaks of the great impetus given to the production of books, that is, to the reproduction of copies of the works of the writers accepted as standard, by the literary taste and ambition of many of the successors of Alexander, notably the Ptolemies in Alexandria and the Attali of Pergamum. He mentions further that as one result of the greater and more rapid production of manuscripts there was a considerable deterioration in the quality and standard of accuracy of the copies. The complaints of readers and collectors concerning the errors and omissions in the manuscripts begin from this time to be very frequent. It would, in fact, have been very surprising if the larger portion of the manuscripts that came into the market had not been more or less imperfect. As soon as their production became a matter of trade instead of, as at first, a labor of love on the part of scholars, the work of copying came into the hands of scribes working for pay, or of slaves, and partly from lack of literary interest, partly also doubtless from pure ignorance, the many opportunities for blunders appear to have been taken full advantage of. Fortunately it was only the readers who suffered, and the authors, long since dead, were spared the misery of knowing how grievously their productions were mutilated. Different sets of copyists naturally came to have varying reputations for accurate or inaccurate manuscripts. Diogenes Laërtius[102] speaks of skilled scribes sent from Pella by Antigonus Gonatas to Zeno, the Stoic, to be employed in making trustworthy transcripts of that philosopher’s works, for which the Macedonian king had a great admiration. Diogenes tells us further that when Zeno, who came from Citium in Cyprus, first arrived in Athens, he had suffered shipwreck and had lost near the Piræus, just as he was reaching his journey’s end, both his vessel and the Phœnician wares which constituted its cargo. Discouraged by his misfortune, he strolled gloomily along the avenue from the harbor (“by the dark rows of the olive trees”) toward the city in which he was now a poverty-stricken stranger. As he reached the market-place and passed a bookseller’s shop, he heard the bookseller read aloud. He stopped to listen, and there came to him words of good counsel from the Memoirs of Xenophon. “Cultivate a cheerful endurance of trouble and an earnest striving after knowledge, for these are the conditions of a useful and happy life.” Cheered by this hopeful counsel, Zeno entered the bookseller’s shop and inquired where he should find the teachers from whom he could learn such wise philosophy. In reply, the bookseller, evidently well informed as to the literary life of his city, pointed out the cynic Crates who happened to be passing at the moment.[103]
The intellectual life of Athens, which a century before had centred about the dramatic poets, appears at this time to have been principally devoted to the study of philosophy. Among the other noteworthy changes that had been brought about during the hundred odd years since the death of Euripides, was the evolution of the bookseller or publisher who had now evidently become a permanent institution, and whose shop is recognized as a centre of literary information.
We can imagine some European student landing, two thousand years later, in Boston and applying, with an inquiry similar to that put by Zeno, at the corner shop of Ticknor & Fields. How easy would have been the answer if at the moment had passed along Washington Street the slender figure of Emerson!
The question has been raised whether the passage from Diogenes, above quoted, might not indicate that booksellers or others, owning manuscript copies of popular works, made a regular business of reading aloud to hearers paying for the privilege. Such a practice would apparently have fitted in very well with the customs of the time, and would have met the needs of many of the poorer students for whom the purchase of manuscripts was still difficult. It would also have formed a very natural sequence to the long-standing custom of the recital from memory of the works of the old poets. While it seems very possible from the conditions that public readers found occupation in this way, there is no trustworthy evidence to such effect.
While Zeno was teaching in Athens, a certain Callinus appears to have won distinction among the scribes of Athens for the accuracy and beauty of his manuscripts. The Peripatetic philosopher Lycon, who died about 250 B.C., bequeathed to his slave Chares such of his writings as had already been “published,” while the unpublished works were left to Kallinus “in order that accurate transcripts of the same might be prepared for publication.”[104]
As the rivalry which continued for some time between the Ptolemies and the Attali in the collecting of libraries caused the price of books in Athens to remain high, a further result was the establishing of other centres of book-production, of which for a long time the island of Rhodes was the most important. By about 250 B.C., the literary activity of the Alexandrian scholars, encouraged by Ptolemy Philadelphus, to whom the founding of the great library was probably due, caused Alexandria to become one of the great book-marts of the world.
After the first conquest of Greece by the Romans had been practically completed by the capture of Corinth in 146 B.C., there appears to have been a revival in Athens of the trade in books, owing to the increased demand from the scholars of Rome, where Greek was accepted as the language of refined literature and where Greek authors were diligently studied. Lucullus is said by Plutarch[105] to have brought from Rome (about 66 B.C.) many books gathered as booty from the cities of Asia Minor, and many more which he had purchased in Athens, together with a great collection of statues and paintings.
The great hall or library in which his collections were stored became the resort of the scholarly and cultivated society of the city, and its treasures of art and literature were, according to Plutarch, freely placed at the disposal of any visitors fitted to appreciate them. Sulla, without claiming to be a scholar, was also a collector of Greek books. He secured in Athens the great library of Apellicon of Teos, which included the writings of Aristotle and of Theophrastus. Apellicon, who died in Athens in the year 84 B.C., had a mania for collecting books, and was reputed to be by no means scrupulous as to the means by which he acquired them. If he saw a rare work which he could not purchase, he would, if possible, steal it; and once he was near losing his life in Athens in being detected in such a theft. His Aristotle manuscripts, which were said to be the work of the philosopher’s own hand, had been found in a cave at Troas where they had suffered greatly from worms and dampness.[106] After the manuscripts reached Rome they were transcribed by Tyrannion the grammarian. He sent copies to Andronicus of Rhodes, which became the basis of that philosopher’s edition of Aristotle’s works.[107] Pomponius Atticus utilized his sojourn in Athens (in 83 B.C.) not only to familiarize himself with the great works of Greek literature, but to cause to be made a number of copies of some of the more popular of these, which copies he afterwards sold in Rome “to great advantage.”[108]
There is a reference in Pliny to a miniature copy of the Iliad prepared about this time, which was so diminutive that it could be contained in a nutshell. He speaks of it as Ilias in nuce. Pliny refers to Cicero as his authority for the existence of this manuscript, in which he is interested principally as an evidence of the possibilities of human eyesight. Its interest in connection with our subject is of course as an example of the perfection which had been attained in the first century before Christ in the art of book production.[109]
Notwithstanding the stimulus given to the production of manuscripts by the increasing demand for these in Italy, books continued to be dear, even through the greater part of the first century. The men of Ephesus who were induced under the teachings of Paul to burn their books concerning “curious arts” counted the price of them and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver.
The history of Greek literature presents few other instances of the destruction of books, whether for the sake of conscience or for the good of the community, or under the authority of the state. There are, however, occasional references to the exercise on the part of the rulers of a supervision of the literature of the people on the ground of protecting their morals or religion. Probably the earliest instances in history of the prosecution of a book on the ground of its pernicious doctrines is that of the confiscation, in Athens, of the writings of Protagoras, which were in 411 B.C. condemned as heretical.
All owners of copies of the condemned writings were warned by heralds to deliver the same at the Agora, and search was made among the private houses of those believed to be interested in the heretical doctrines. The copies secured were then burned in the Agora. Diogenes Laërtius, by whom the incident is narrated, goes on to say that the destruction was by no means complete, even of the copies in Athens, while no copies outside of Athens were affected.[110] The attempt to suppress the doctrines of the philosopher by means of putting his books on an index expurgatorius was probably as little successful as were similar attempts with the doctrines of other “heretics” in later centuries.
The fact that high prices could be depended upon for copies of standard works ought to have insured a fair measure of accuracy in the manuscript. Complaints, however, appear repeatedly in the writing of the time (i. e., the century before and that succeeding the birth of Christ) of the bad work furnished by the scribes. Much of the copying appears to have been done in haste, and with bad or careless penmanship, so that words of similar sound were interchanged and whole lines omitted or misplaced, and the difficulties of obtaining trustworthy texts of the works of older writers were enormously and needlessly increased. In order to enable a number of copyists to work together from one text, it appears that the original manuscript was often read aloud, the work of the scribes being thus done by ear. This would account for the interchanging of words resembling each other in sound.
Strabo, writing shortly before the birth of Christ, refers to an example of this unsatisfactory kind of bookmaking.
The grammarian Tyrannion, in publishing in company with certain Roman booksellers his edition of the writings of Aristotle, confided the work to scribes, whose copies were never even compared with the original manuscript. And, says Strabo, editions of other important classics, offered for sale in Alexandria and Rome, had been prepared with no more care.[111] The reputation of the manuscripts transcribed at this period in Athens appears to have been but little better. The making, that is to say the duplication and publishing of books, had come to be a trade, and a trade of considerable importance, but the men who first engaged in it appear to have had little professional or literary standard, and not to have realized that profits could be secured from quality of work as well as from quantity, and that for a publisher a reputation for accurate and trustworthy editions could itself be made valuable capital.
The publishers of Greece appear to have been characterized by modesty, for not one of those who did their work at the time of the greatest prosperity of the book-trade in Greece has left his name on record for posterity. The days were still to come when every book would bear its imprint bringing into lasting association the name of its publisher with that of the author. The Greek publishers appear not to have assumed, like the later Tonson, an ownership in their poets, nor do we, on the other hand, find in the utterances of the poets any expressions corresponding to the famous “My Murray” of Lord Byron. Curtius speaks of a reference in an inscription to the “Ptolemy” or “Ptolemaic” bookstore, but the name of the bookseller is not given. It is only later, when the Greek book-trade was in its decline, that we come across the names of two dealers in books, Callinus and Atticus. They are mentioned as famous during the lifetime of Lucian (about 120 to 200 A.D.), the former for the beauty and the latter for the accuracy of his manuscripts. It is an interesting coincidence that this Callinus, noted for the beauty of his texts, bears the same name as the scribe commended three centuries before by Zeno for the beauty and accuracy of his manuscripts. Their copies were much prized and brought high prices, not in Athens only, but in scholarly circles elsewhere. It is evident that each of these booksellers began business as a scribe, selling only the work produced by his own hands, but that as their orders increased it became necessary for them to employ a number of copyists, whose script, receiving a personal supervision and doubtless a careful collation with the original texts, could be guaranteed as up to the standard of their own handiwork. Of the other booksellers who were in Athens in his time Lucian speaks very contemptuously. “Look,” he says, “at these so-called booksellers, these peddlers! They are people of no scholarly attainments or personal cultivation; they have no literary judgment, and no knowledge how to distinguish the good and valuable from the bad and worthless.”[112] Lucian had evidently a high standard of what a publisher ought to be.
Some of these Athenian booksellers whom Lucian thus berates for stupidity, appear also to have borne a poor reputation for honesty. Among other misdeeds charged against them was one, the ethics of which might have belonged to a much later period of bookmaking. In order to give to modern manuscripts the appearance of age, and to secure for them a high price as rare antiquities, they would bury them in heaps of grain until the color had changed and they had become tattered and worm-eaten. Lucian also satirizes the ambition of certain wealthy and ignorant individuals to keep pace with the literary fashion of the time, and to secure a repute for learning by paying high prices for great collections of costly books, which, when purchased, gave enjoyment “to none but the moths and the mice.”[113] It was partly due to the competition of wealthy collectors of this kind that, notwithstanding the great increase in the production of copies, the price of books remained high, much to the detriment of all impecunious students.
The beauty of the calligraphy of the manuscripts of Callinus is known to us only through Lucian, but there are several writers who bear testimony to the accuracy of the transcripts prepared by his rival Atticus, who must, by the way, not be confused with the Roman Atticus, the friend of Cicero. Harpocration of Alexandria, known principally as the author of one of the first Greek dictionaries, makes several references to the authority of the Atticus editions of the speeches of Æschines and Demosthenes. The famous Codex Parisinus of Demosthenes is believed by Sauppe to be based upon the excellent textual authority of a manuscript of Atticus, and Sauppe further contends that, if Atticus did not work from an absolute original, he must have had before him a very well authenticated copy. In the fragment of a work by Galen (who wrote in Rome about 165 A.D.) upon certain passages in the Timæus of Plato which had to do with medicine, Galen makes Atticus his authority for the passages quoted by him, as if we were indebted to this bookseller for the text of the Timæus that has been preserved.[114]
From the time of Lucian the interest in books steadily increased, book-collecting became fashionable, especially in Rome, and bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs were gradually evolved. At this time the beautifully written and carefully collated manuscripts which emanated from Athens bore a high reputation as compared with the much cheaper but less attractive and less trustworthy copies, which were produced in Alexandria and in Rome. In the book-shops of these two cities, during the first two centuries, a swifter and less accurate system of transcribing appears to have prevailed, the work being largely done by slaves or by scribes who did not have accurate knowledge of the literature on which they were engaged, while the necessity of a careful collating of each copy with the original appears frequently to have been overlooked. Origen, writing about 190 A.D., speaks of confiding his works to the “swift writers of Alexandria” in order to secure for them a speedy and a wide circulation. He was looking for no other return for his labors than a large circle of readers, and a large influence for his teachings, and the proceeds of the sales of these “swiftly written copies” were in all probability entirely appropriated by the booksellers who owned or who employed the scribes.
After the conquest of Greece by the Romans the centre of book production passed from Athens first to Alexandria and later to Rome. For centuries to come, however, the book production of the world was chiefly concerned with the works of Greek authors, and the literary activity of successive generations drew its inspirations from Greek sources; and the writers of Greece, whose brilliant labors brought no remuneration for the laborers, gave to their country and to the world a body of literature which at least in one sense of the term can properly be called a magnificent literary property.
