and many other goods, is that they more or less required loitering. It took
longer to inspect a stock of books than of cabbages, especially in the era of
the handwritten bookroll, when a closed book was tightly closed and
when no two copies of a given work harbored the same set of defects.
But apart from that, booksellers seem to have encouraged leisurely visits.
In Gellius’s tales of encounters in bookshops, customers are described as
seated (NA5.4.1 and 13.31.1), a detail worth noting because sitting down
in public places was not widely encouraged in Rome. What is more,
the shops that Gellius and Galen frequented were spacious enough to
accommodate several loungers at a time.
19
Four of the anecdotes that Gellius connects with the book market
revolve around the presence ofgrammatici.
20
In one (NA2.3.5), a gram-
marian has purchased an ancient copy of theAeneidthat guarantees a
particular spelling variant. In another (NA5.4), a prospective purchaser
brings in a grammarian to examine an old copy of Fabius Pictor’s history.
In both cases, thegrammaticifigure as book specialists, which was the
same role that, two centuries earlier, Cicero hoped Tyrannio would
undertake. This affinity with grammarians suggests that, in addition to
the experience of sociability, customers could look to bookshops for
bibliographic expertise.
Their initial source of information had to have been the shop propri-
etors themselves, however. Not that booksellers—by contrast with gram-
marians—could pretend to liberal learning: commerce and culture were
reckoned contradictory pursuits. In fact, to judge by their names, Roman
booksellers were often freedmen, like other vendors.^21 It was because
booksellers lacked a liberal education that Lucian could assert that they
were ignorant of books (Ind. 4). Yet even in antiquity, as certainly today,
- Gellius and at least two others atNA5.4; Gellius, agrammaticus, andcomplures alii
atNA13.31.1 6; and acoetus multorum hominumatNA18.4.1. Galen also describes
browsing amid other customers atLib. Propr. 19.8 10 Ku ̈hn. In the discussion that
followed presentation of this paper, it was suggested that Roman bookstores offered a
shopping experience less like that of a Barnes and Noble than of a Levantine bazaar.
20.NA2.3.5, 5.4.1, 13.31.1, and 18.4.1 2. Gellius does not explicitly setNA1.7 in a
bookshop, but that is a likely setting for a discussion in which people argue about a reading they
have found in an ancient copy of Cicero, and have their uncertainties resolved by an expert on
grammar who is present. Theغüºïªïòwho takes center stage in a bookstore anecdote told by
Galen (Lib. Propr.19.8.4Ku ̈hn)was surelyagrammaticus, and ‘‘Ulpian ofTyre,’’ the pedantand
habitue ́of bookshops whom Athenaeus introduced as a symposiast at 1.1d e, has the earmarks
of being another (see Baldwin 1976, 29 36). Again, these vignettes are all set in Rome, which
suggests that if Horace had cared to ‘‘canvass the tribes of the grammarians’’ (Epist. 1.19.40), he
had only to resort to bookshops in order to find them. - Four of seven identifiable booksellers have Greek names (Atrectus [Mart.Epigr.
1.117.13)], Sextus Peducaeus Dionysius [CIL6.9218], Dorus [Sen.Ben. 7.6.1], and Trypho
[Quint.Epist. ad Tryphonem, Mart.Epigr. 4.72.2, 13.3.4]), whereas a fifth, Secundus, is
identified as thelibertusof Lucensis (Mart.Epigr. 1.2.7). The subject is discussed by
Brockmeyer 1972.
Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome 275