run-up to the civil war, Cicero in his villa on the coast was able to read
acontiothat had been given at Rome by Mark Antony four or five days
earlier (Att. 7.8.5). A few years later, as the assassination of Caesar was
about to cause a new outbreak of civil war, Cicero was down on the Bay of
Naples, studying addresses given by the consul Dolabella, by Antony’s
brother, and by Octavian only a few days earlier.^37 For a last example,
when Cicero’s friend Sestius was tried in the year 56 for inciting public
violence as tribune in the previous year, his enemy Vatinius was able to
supply the prosecution with texts of the harangues that Sestius had
delivered while in office.
38
So far as I know, the publication of these speeches has not been
tied to booksellers before, but that is a plausible source for them. In several
if not all cases, the initiative clearly proceeded from someone other than
the speech giver. The fact that only speeches delivered in public and not
those delivered in the senate, whose meetings were closed, are said to have
circulated in this way suggests that the recording was done by persons
outside government. Most speeches brought out in rush editions seem to
be linked with crises or controversies of interest to a broad public, which in
turn makes a commercial motive likely. But above all, it is the method of
obtaining texts that points to booksellers. The ability to transcribe a speech
from oral delivery was a specialized skill possessed by a small subset even
of the literate population. Few private persons would have commanded a
clerical staff with the necessary training.^39
I have been arguing the unremarkable claim that booksellers had com-
mercial aims, and that their commercial practices underlie complaints
about shoddy workmanship, deceptive advertising, and bootleg editions.
Yet that was not the worst of it. It is likely that Roman booksellers
sometimes connived in perpetrating book frauds. In one of the publicity
pieces that Martial wrote to puff his books (Epigr. 1.113), he announces
that his youthful work can be found on sale at the shop of Pollius Vale-
rianus, who he says ‘‘does not let my trifles pass away’’ (‘‘per quem perire
non licet meis nugis’’). Valerianus himself surely offered bona fide verse
of Martial. But in making available the early work of a best-selling author,
he was catering to a demand that was as familiar in Rome as it is today, and
- Cic.Att. 14.17a.7, 14.20.2 and 5, 14.21.4, and 15.2.3. Later in the year, when
Cicero was again out of Rome, he received copies ofcontionesdelivered by Antony and
Octavian respectively,Phil. 1.8 andAtt. 16.15.3. - Cic.Vat. 3. Note that Cicero refers to Vatinius’s copies of Sestius’s speeches as
‘‘books’’ (libri). - It is precisely this specialty that seems to be depicted in a relief from Ostia, inv. no.
130, a photograph of which may be found as plate VI in Turner 1968, reproduced opposite
(figure 11.2). The interpretation of this image, which has yet to be adequately published, is
controversial. But in size and format it resembles shop signs that have been found at
Ostia. The center is occupied by a man on a platform in the characteristic stance of a public
speaker. In the foreground on either side of him, two men sit at tables before open codices in
280 Institutions and Communities