market transactions. We rely on more or less plausible inferences from
context, and not every context can be brought into sharp focus.
But although the particular activities of booksellers often elude us, we
can say something about them in the aggregate. At Rome it was possible
to purchase Greek books and Latin books, newly authored works
and established titles, recently copied manuscripts and antiquarian
ones, books written to order as well as books ready made, and by the
time of Martial, codices as well as bookrolls.^7 This range of offerings
implies that collectively, booksellers were able to organize a variety
of resources in terms of materials, bibliographic information, and produc-
tion techniques.
BOOKSHOPS IN THE ROMAN CITYSCAPE
As described by our informants, bookselling at Rome was a retail trade
carried on almost exclusively in indoor shops. In that respect, their experi-
ence may seem not so far removed from our own, at least until recently,
but some details bear thinking about. All evidence suggests that, unlike
baths or bars or food markets, Roman bookshops were not dispersed
throughout the city, but concentrated in and around the center. The places
in which books were sold are mentioned in about ten cases, and those
that can be mapped (see figure 11.1) lie immediately south of the central
forum on the Vicus Tuscus, or north and east of it, near Nerva’s Forum and
along the Argiletum and its cross street, the Vicus Sandaliarius, where
Galen says that ‘‘most’’ or ‘‘very many’’ bookshops were located in his day.^8
Like Galen in this instance, other sources indicate that a number of
bookshops operated in proximity to one another.^9
- (Some examples only) Greek authors: Strabo 13.1.54 [609], GalenLib. Propr.
19.8 10, Ku ̈hn; Latin authors: Cat. 14.17 19, StatiusSilvae4.9.20; new titles: Hor.Epist.
1.20, Quint.Epist. ad Tryph.; old titles: Sen.Ben. 7.6.1, Mart.Epigr. 14.194; new copies:
Mart.Epigr. 1.66, 2.8.3 4; antiquarian (or perhaps pseudo antiquarian) editions: Gell.NA
2.3.6, 18.5.11; books written to order: Cic.QFr. 3.4.5, Aug.Conf. 6.10.16; codices: Mart.
Epigr. 1.2, 14.190. I cannot point to evidence that illustrated texts were also on sale in Roman
shops. But because it required at least as much skill to illustrate a text as to write book hand,
there can be little doubt that anyone who wanted a copy, say, of Varro’sHebdomadeswith its
700 portraits of famous men (PlinyHNat. 35.11) would have had to acquire it from a shop. - Bookshops on the Vicus Tuscus: Hor.Epist. 1.20.1 2 with Porphyrio’s note; on
the opposite side of the Forum, near Nerva’s Forum and the Temple of Peace: Mart.Epigr.
1.2.7 8; along the Argiletum: Mart.Epigr. 1.3.1, 1.117.9 12; the Vicus Sandaliarius: Gell.
NA18.4.1, GalenLib. Propr. 19.8.4 Ku ̈hn. If a medieval subscription has been correctly
emended by De Bruyne 1913, it attests a late antique book dealer not far from the Argiletum,
near the church of St. Peter in Chains. The location of the Sigillaria, associated with book
sales in three passages (Gell.NA2.3.5 and 5.4.1, Auson.Cento Nupt. pr.), remains unknown.
For the sites, see SteinbyLTUR1: 125 6 (Argiletum), 4: 310 (Sigillaria), 5: 189 (Vicus
Sandaliarius), and 5: 195 7 (Vicus Tuscus). - Other texts implying the presence of several bookshops in proximity to one another
are Cat. 55.4, Mart.Epigr. 1.3.1, and GelliusNA18.4.1. For the clustering of shops of a given
Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome 271