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]