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these legacies the copies of current publications, purchased for reading (Τὰ ἀνεγνωσμένα), are distinguished from the unpublished works (ἀνέκδοτα). It was from such an unpublished manuscript (ἀνέκδοτον)[50] that in the Theætet.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.