Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

In the early part of the fourth century several factors came into operation which checked the development and finally undermined the existence of the publishing and bookselling trade of Rome. First among these factors I should name the growing power and influence of the Christian Church.

In the centuries which elapsed between the downfall of the Roman Empire and the invention of printing, the centres of intellectual activities and of scholarly interests were undoubtedly the churches and the monasteries, and it is probable that if it had not been for the educational work done by the priests and monks, and for the interest taken by them (however inadequately and ignorantly) in the literature of the past, the fragments of this literature which have been preserved for to-day would have been much less considerable and more fragmentary than they are. As I understand the history, the literary interests of the world owe very much to the fostering care given to them by the Church, or by certain portions of the Church, during the troublous centuries of the early Middle Ages. During these centuries the Church not only supplied a standard of morality, but kept in existence whatever intellectual life there was.

At the time, however, when the Christian Church was rapidly extending its influence throughout the Roman Empire, and during the century after it had succeeded in winning over to the faith the emperors themselves, and had become the official Church of the Empire, the evidence goes to show that its influence was decidedly detrimental to the literary productiveness of the age and also inimical to the preservation of the literary masterpieces of previous ages.

As the range of membership of the Church increased, so that it came to include a larger proportion of men of cultivation and scholarship, there came into existence a considerable body of theological and controversial writings, the production of which has gone on steadily increasing until very recent times. But the reading of the works of “pagan” writers was discouraged, and the manuscripts themselves were first neglected, and later suffered to fall into decay. Such writing as was done by the Christian scribes was in the main limited to the transcribing of the books then accepted as scriptures and to the copying of prayers and hymns. The mental activities of both writers and readers were turned in other directions. Scholars gave their scholarship and trained copyists their clerical skill to the service of the Church. It was not merely that the Church took possession for its own work of so large a proportion of the best minds of the time. It directly discouraged then, as it did for many centuries thereafter, the study of any literature other than ecclesiastical. The writers of Greece and Rome were, for Christian believers, if not heretical, at least frivolous and time-wasting. Life was short and Christian duties left no free hours for Homer or Virgil, Plato or Epictetus. By the time of the accession of Constantine (306 A.D.) the book-shops on the Argiletum had lessened in number and in importance, the connections of the Roman publishers with the great towns of the provinces were for the most part broken off, and, most important of the signs of the times, there are no new books and no writers at work. Literary productiveness has for the time ceased.

The second cause which contributed to the destruction of the book-trade of Rome was the decision of Constantine to remove the capital of the Empire to Byzantium. The transfer was completed in the year 328, and for a number of years after that date there was no imperial Court in Rome. The “world of fashion” had migrated to the Bosphorus, and with the Court officials, the judges, the advocates, and the military leaders, had gone a large proportion of the active-minded men of the old capital, the men of intellectual interests. There remained the Bishop of Rome (soon to become Primate of the Latin Church) and his increasing staff of ecclesiastics, but to them, as pointed out, the literature of the classical period was either a matter of indifference or an abomination. The direction of the education of the young Romans must soon have come into the hands of the priests, and this would have increased their power to crush out the interest in, and the remembrance of, the literary productions of paganism.

A third factor which hastened the decline of Latin literature and the extinction of the book-trade of Rome, was the revival of the use of Greek, which, after the establishment of the capital at Constantinople, speedily became the official language of the Empire and the speech of the Court and of polite society generally.

I do not forget that there shortly came into existence an Empire of the West, under which Rome resumed (although with sadly reduced splendor) its position as an imperial capital. But the western emperors appear on the whole to have been a feeble lot, and they certainly did not succeed in gathering about them any number of men of “light and learning,” nor is there evidence of any substantial revival of the social or intellectual activities of Rome. The times continued troublous. The State had to fight almost continuously for its existence, and the fighting was not infrequently near at home, the city itself being from time to time menaced. The “peace of the Empire” existed no longer. It was not a time for the development of literature, and literature, excepting a small body of doctrinal and controversial publications of the Church, practically disappeared.

After the expansion, in 379, of the prerogatives of the Roman See, the literary activities of the ecclesiastics increased, but it does not appear that any bookselling machinery was required or employed for the sale or distribution of the works of devotion, of doctrine, or of controversy. This distribution was doubtless managed directly by the priests themselves. The capture of Rome by the Goths under Alaric, in 410, brought destruction upon the accumulated wealth and trade of the city, but it is not probable that the tradespeople whose shops were despoiled included any considerable number of booksellers, as, according to my understanding, the trade in books had in great part disappeared some years before. The Goths doubtless had, however, not a little to do with the destruction of as many of the classic manuscripts as still existed in the public libraries or in private collections. It is certain that they would have had no appreciation for and no use for any manuscripts that fell into their hands. The more recent and still inconsiderable collections of Church manuscripts shared, of course, in the general destruction, but these (apart from a few relics) could easily be replaced.

The Goths disappeared like the rolling back of a flood after its work of devastation has been completed; and the insignificant series of Emperors of the West resumed their sway over the ruins of the imperial city.

The city was restored to a semblance of its old self; but we find no further traces of the production or of the sale of books. It is probable that when, in 476, Odoacer, chief of the Herulians, gave the final blow to the Empire of the West, and took possession of its capital, he found there, outside of the few treatises and books of worship of the Church, practically nothing in the shape of literature.