saw outside.^29 But by far the most frequent complaint raised against
booksellers was that they took insufficient care over the quality of
what they manufactured.^30 In their concern for profit, they were apt to
dispense with the step of proofing and correcting copies against the
master text.
If a desire to increase profits motivated both storefront displays and
shortcuts in production, it played a still greater part in another area of
operations. Some booksellers acted aggressively to acquire material they
could market. Unlike their modern counterparts, they were not able
to order books ready made from publishing houses or jobbers. Except
for items they purchased from private hands, they had to manufacture
every book they sold. Furthermore, the distinction between ‘‘in print’’ and
‘‘out of print’’ that largely differentiates new bookstores from secondhand
or antiquarian bookstores for us was obviously meaningless to the
Romans. A hundred-year-old title was no more or less complicated to
copy and market than a modern author’s newest work.
Because Roman booksellers could not count on being automatically
supplied with books, they had to exercise initiative in order to acquire
them. How they acquired the works of Aristotle has been mentioned
earlier. But calculations of profit are described as guiding decisions
about what to market, too,^31 and they evidently expected new titles
to sell more briskly than old. At any rate, it is usually new work that
we find them pursuing. Quintilian’s opus on theTraining of the Orator
is a case in point. The text is headed by a letter to the bookseller Trypho
in which Quintilian writes that he is acceding to the clamor of the
public and to repeated requests from Trypho that he deliver the manu-
script for publication. We have every reason to take his word that Trypho
did press to acquire this work. Quintilian enjoyed unrivaled prestige in
his field. After a career as the first officially appointed rhetor of the city
of Rome, he had been called to the palace, where he was tutoring
the princes who were to be Domitian’s heirs.^32 Moreover, Trypho’s inter-
est in theTraining of the Oratorshould be seen against the background of
Quintilian’s publication history. Two of his earlier essays and several
forensic speeches had been transcribed from oral presentations and pub-
lished without his permission.
33
By the time Trypho approached him,
therefore, he was an author for whom there was a certified demand.
29.Epist. 33.3. Although Seneca does not say explicitly that the shops he has in mind are
bookshops, booksellers are elsewhere described as making use of outside displays, and books
are what Seneca is talking about before and after his remark aboutocliferia.
- Strabo 13.1.54 [609], Cic.QFr. 3.4.5, 3.5.6, Livy 38.55.6, Quint.Inst. 9.4.39, Mart.
Epigr. 2.8, Suet.vita Luc. p. 300.6 Roth, GalenIn Hipp. Off. Med. comment. 18.2.630 Ku ̈hn. - For booksellers’ concern about the profitability of their inventory, see Hor.Ars345,
Mart.Epigr. 13.3, 14.194, and Sulp. Sev.Dial. 1.23.4. - The details of Quintilian’s career are set out inPIR^2 F 59 (Stein) and Schwabe 1909.
Mart.Epigr. 2.90 also guarantees Quintilian’s prestige at this time.
33.Inst.1pr. 7 and 7.2.24.
278 Institutions and Communities