Library fittings.With regard to the arrangement and fittings of Roman libraries, the usual method appears to have been this. Cupboards (armaria), fitted with shelves to receive the rolls or codices and closed by doors, were placed against the walls all round the room. These armaria were usually rather low, not more than from four to five feet in height, and on them were placed busts of famous authors; while the wall-space above the bookcases was decorated with similar portrait reliefs or paintings designed to fill panels or circular medallions.
| Library decorations. |
Library decorations.Pliny (Hist. Nat. XXXV. 9), speaks of it being a new fashion in his time to adorn the walls of libraries with ideal portraits of ancient writers, such as Homer, executed in gold, silver or bronze relief.
The public library of Asinius Pollio was, Pliny says, decorated with portraits, but whether the great libraries of Pergamus and Alexandria were ornamented in this way, Pliny is unable to say. Magnificent medallion portraits in gold and silver were fixed round the walls of the two great libraries of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and probably in the other still larger public libraries which were founded by subsequent Emperors.
| Recent discovery. Authors' busts. |
Recent discovery.The ordinary private libraries of Rome were decorated in a similar way, but with reliefs of less costly materials. A very interesting example of this has recently been discovered and then destroyed on the Esquiline hill in Rome. The house in which this library was discovered was one of no very exceptional size or splendour. The bibliotheca itself consisted of a handsome room; the lower part of its walls, against which the armaria fitted, was left quite plain. Above that the walls were divided into square panels by small fluted pilasters, Authors' busts.and in the centre of each space there was, or had been, a medallion relief-portrait about two feet in diameter enclosed in a moulded frame. All this was executed in fine, hard marble-dust stucco (opus albarium or marmoreum).
The names of the authors whose portraits had filled the medallions were written in red upon the frames. Only one was legible—APOLLONIVS THYAN.... No doubt the works of Apollonius of Thyana were kept in the armarium below the bust.
The library at Herculaneum, which contained the famous papyrus rolls, was a much smaller room. Besides the bookcases all round the walls, it had also an isolated armarium in the centre of the room; and this, no doubt, was a usual arrangement.
The room at Herculaneum was so small that there can only have been just enough space to walk between the central bookcase and the armaria ranged all round against the wall.
| Closed bookcases. |