Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

The opinion, as given in the Institutes of Justinian, is as follows:

Si quis in aliena tabula pinxerit, quidam putant tabulam picturæ cedere, aliis videtur picturam, qualiscunque sit, tabulæ cedere; sed nobis videtur melius esse, tabulam picturæ cedere. Ridiculum est enim picturam Apellis vel Parrhasii in accessionem vilissimæ tabulæ cedere.[290]

It is certainly curious that a question of this kind, first presented for consideration in the middle of the first century, should have been still under discussion nearly five centuries later.

An application of this same principle is presented in legal usage to-day, under which authors and artists are empowered to take possession of reproductions of their works even against innocent third parties or against the owners of the material on which such reproductions have been made.

The fact that papyrus rather than parchment was the material adopted by authors during the fruitful period of Latin literature, had of course an important bearing in the continued existence of their works, for papyrus was an extremely perishable substance. Damp, worms, moths, mice, were all deadly enemies of papyrus rolls, but even if, through persistent watchfulness, these were guarded against, the mere handling of the rolls, even by the most careful readers, brought them rapidly to destruction. We find, therefore, that a constant renewal of the rolls was required in all public libraries, just as to-day our librarians find it necessary to replace their supply of copies of books of popular authors which have become worn out by handling. The ancient librarian had, however, a more arduous and a more expensive task with his renewals. A reference of Pliny gives us an impression of the average age that could be looked for for a papyrus book.

“Ita sint longinqua monumenta; Tiberi Gaique Gracchorum manus. Apud Pomponium Secundum vatem civemque clarissimum vidi annos fere post ducentos; jam vero Ciceronis ac divi Augusti Vergilique sæpe numero videmus.”[291]

We understand, therefore, that (with certain precautions) a book could last for one hundred years, but that a volume two centuries old was for Pliny something so exceptional as to be almost incredible.

The papyrus rolls were of course exposed to the most serious friction at the opening portions which were in immediate contact with one of the rollers where two rollers were employed, and which in any case were exposed to the most frequent handling. As a consequence, it was the initial page of books which first came to destruction, and of not a few works which were otherwise in readable condition these initial pages were lacking. A quotation from Eusebius, cited by Birt, shows that it was even a matter of surprise when a copy of the works of such a writer as Clement was found complete, with title and preface.[292]

In many of the libraries, it was also not uncommon to find that the different rolls of a particular work had been wrongly numbered in one of the transcribings, and had consequently been mixed up as to their arrangement. It was not infrequent even to find the rolls of the works of different authors jumbled together, in such a manner that no little scholarly skill was requisite for their proper understanding and correct rearrangement.[293]

The papyrus manuscripts from the Athenian, Alexandrian, and Roman workshops, as far as they have escaped destruction through imperial edicts, civil wars, and invasions, were permitted to fall into decay, and were not replaced. By the close of the fourth century, the great collections of papyrus rolls, in which were contained the classics of Greek and Roman literature, had practically disappeared. For later book-making, parchment replaced papyrus, a change which, if it had occurred two centuries, or even one century earlier, would, in spite of edicts of destruction, have preserved for future generations not a few of the lost “classics.” A small proportion of the Greek and Roman writings, in copies dating from the later literary period, had been placed on parchment, and some few of these have been handed down to us through the intervention of Christian monks, who had taken possession of the parchment for church documents or codices, but who in their own inscribing had not destroyed, or had only partially destroyed, the original writing. I have already made reference to this practice of making one piece of parchment do a double service, and to the name of palimpsest, by which such a doubly inscribed parchment was known.