1 - Books and readers in the Roman world

Summary

For half a millennium the printed book has been the primary means of communicating ideas in the Western world. Now, with the development of film, radio, and television, together with alternative means of storing and retrieving information, the old empire of the printed word is under threat and has indeed already suffered some erosion. Nevertheless, for contemporary Western man the book, in the shape in which he has known it for centuries, still stands firmly at the centre of his literary and scientific culture. This shape is so familiar that it requires a considerable effort of the imagination to grasp the essential differences between the book as it is now and as it was in classical antiquity. In the following pages an attempt is made to sketch the conditions under which books were composed, copied, circulated, preserved, studied and used during the period covered by this volume. In this way it is hoped that the modern reader – who inevitably approaches this subject with certain preconceptions as to what a ‘book’ should look like and how it is to be read – may be helped to form an idea of some of the fundamental differences between ancient and modem literary culture, and hence achieve a clearer appreciation of the books and authors discussed in the body of the work. In some respects, as will emerge, the literary life of Greece and Rome retained the characteristics of an oral culture, a fact reflected in much of the literature that has come down to us.