The book therefore differs from the other supports for writing in that it
is autonomous. What is written on it is read for itself and not because it is
written or scratched on an object. One can therefore already classify
Roman books according to what motivates their reading and so distin-
guish the literary book from the others.
By the end of the Republic, Rome is full of books. Public archives—
political, judicial, and religious—pile up in Rome as well as the provincial
capitals. Families have their own archives in which they store the political
careers of their ancestors and their private cults. To these are added, first
in the great families and then in Rome itself starting at the beginning of
the Principate, certain private and public libraries that gathered books in
Greek and Latin.
Roman books do not all have the same reasons for existence. Annals,
sibylline books,fasti, and books of prayers have a form of reading and
writing that are regulated by the ritual that is their reason for existence.
So, too, for the archives and all the administrative documents that flour-
ished at Rome, such as the legal rulings preserved in large books in the
form of enormous collections of tablets, thecodex.
4
Such books served as
a sort of data bank.
The status of literary books is less evident. To what social practice do
they respond? To what do they serve as supports?
We should recall that at Rome literary activities in the broad sense—
studia—are ‘‘Greek’’ because they belong to the space of leisure, the
nonpolitical,otium.^5 The literary activities to which the Roman elite are
devoted are written in Greek as well as Latin. Thelitterae latinaeare, so to
speak,litterae graecaein Latin. Rome, like every Hellenistic city, adopts the
Alexandrian book preserved in a library whether public or private. It also
inherits its use, because the Alexandrian book was used in a quite parti-
cular process of reading and writing which should be recalled. To the
question, ‘‘What made people read or write literary books at Rome?’’ the
initial answer is Greek practice, more precisely Alexandrian.
However, there is not complete continuity between Alexandria and
Rome. Though the book remains a Greek practice even when it speaks
Latin, it can allow inclusion of Greek culture in the Roman world that can
be negotiated, like other inclusions, in multiple ways.
6
To the Alexan-
drian use of the books in libraries, new social practices are added involving
the book as autonomous object. Given by a client to his patron, the book
can bring its author glory and riches even though it has only a few readers.
On the other hand, sold at the stall of the booksellers, it may bring some
money to its author, but it will pass from hand to hand and finally
disappear, victim of the brittleness of the papyrus, without leaving a
trace in the memory. The value of the text plays no role.
- Nicolet 1994.
- Cordier 2005.
- Dupont 2005.
144 Books and Texts