In some instances at least the guests must have found occasion really to value their literary as well as their gastronomic entertainment, as not a few works which had been left by their authors uncopied and uncared for, have been preserved for posterity only through the care of admiring friends.
Donatus says that Virgil had planned before his death to burn his Æneid, unwilling that it should be published without further revision, and that the work was only saved by the commands of Augustus.[227] Other writers, either by reason of dread of critical opinion or from an extreme standard of thoroughness, kept their manuscripts in their desks for a number of years after completing them. As Catullus says, after publication there can be no thought of further emendation. He speaks of one of Cinna’s volumes as given to the world after the ninth winter (edita nonam post hiemem).[228]
This term of nine years happens to coincide with the advice of Horace, that a literary work should be held back for nine years—nonum prematur in annum,—for the word once published can never be recalled.[229]
Pliny permitted his friend Saturninus to help him with the revision of his Schedulæ, but is not even then assured that he will be satisfied to permit them to come before the public: Erit enim et post emendationem liberum nobis vel publicare vel continere—“and after the revision of the books it still rested with us to decide whether to publish them or to hold them back.”[230]
Fronto, who was tutor to Marcus Aurelius, had written a pamphlet against a certain Asclepiodotus, and had arranged with a publisher for the issue of an edition. Hearing later that Verus (the adopted son of Antoninus Pius) was friendly to Asclepiodotus, he hastened to the publisher’s office to cancel the publication, but finds, to his regret, that he is too late, a number of copies having already gone out to the public, curavi quidem abolere orationem, sed jam pervaserat in manus plurimum quam ut aboleri posset.[231]
According to Birt,[232] the oldest book-shop—that is, retail book-shop—known to have existed in Rome was that in which Clodius hid himself (58 A.D.). Later, we find the stalls of the bibliopoles placed in the most frequented quarters of the city, by the Janus Gate of the Forum, by the Temple of Peace, on the Argiletum, in the Vicus Sandalarius, and on the Sigillaria. Martial speaks in fact of the street Argiletum as being chiefly occupied by booksellers, with whom, curiously enough, he tells us, were associated the fashionable tailors.[233] It would be pleasing to think that there was ever a time or a city in which the buying of books was as much of a fashionable diversion as the buying of clothes.
Both Horace and Martial speak of the book-shops as having become places of resort where the more active-minded citizens got into the habit of meeting to look over the literary novelties and to discuss the latest gossip, literary or social. On the door-posts or on columns near the entrance were placed the advertisements of recent publications and the announcements of works in preparation. Martial gives us the description as follows:
Contra Cæsaris est forum taberna
Scriptis postibus hinc et inde totis,
Omnes ut cito perlegas poetas.