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]):