it is certain that in other cases, the demand was satisfied with spurious
compositions.^40 Few readers nowadays credit Vergil with authorship of
theCatalepton, for example, a brochure edition that in poem 15 presents
itself to the public as a collection of the poet’s first fruits.^41
In another form of book fraud, the target of fabrication was not the
substance of a text but the material support on which it was written.
Zetzel 1973 drew attention to variant readings in Vergil and other classics
that he argued cannot be author variants, but which ancient critics never-
theless claimed to have discovered in author copies or in other manu-
scripts of exceptional age and authority. Given that the readings are false,
Figure 11.2Relief from Ostia, inv. no. 130.which they are writing, while in the background the heads of listeners are visible. Because the
composition is dominated by the two recorders, it can be plausibly interpreted as the shop
sign of alibrarius, and connected with a note at Asc.in Milon. 29, p. 33, Clark, describing
how a mob in the Forum cremated Clodius’s body ‘‘subselliis et tribunalibuset mensis et
codicibus librariorum.’’
- As Fraenkel 1952, 7, noted in this connection, ‘‘When there is an urgent desire for a
particular commodity, it will be satisfied in one way or another. The missing juvenile works
of the great poets did at last turn up.’’ - Another fake put into circulation was a letter of Horace introducing himself to
Maecenas (Suet.vita Hor. 298.24 28 Roth). The juvenilia that circulated under the name of
Julius Caesar may not have been bogus, although Augustus disavowed them (Suet.Jul. 56.7).
Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome 281