is delicate and a succession of lovers (amator) is enough to ruin the book
(laeserit), and then the Romans will quickly get tired of it (5–10). Sold,
repurchased, resold, the book circulates not as a precious gift in a system
of symbolic gifts but merely as a piece of merchandise (Ep. 1.20.11–13):
contrectatus ubi manibus sordescere uolgi
coeperis, aut tineas pasces taciturnus inertis
aut fugies Uticam aut uinctus mitteris Ilerdam.(When you begin to get grubby from being fondled by the hands of the crowd,
you will either silently feed the uncultured bookworms
or escape to Utica or be sent bound to Ilerda.)He will be passed from hand to hand (contrectatus) loved by all and
sundry (uulgi); he will become ugly and dirty (sordescere) like a wretched
vagrant. Vermin will get hold of him. He will no longer have a lover, that
is, a reader; he will be dumb (taciturnus). He will be too ugly to find a
buyer in Rome and the bookseller will have to send him to the provinces
of Africa or Spain, in such bad shape that he has to be tied up with string
to keep from falling to pieces—employing an image of a fugitive (and
therefore valueless) slave, dispatched to remote markets (17–18):
Hoc quoque te manet, ut pueros elementa docentem
occupet extremis in uicis balba senectus.(This fate, too, awaits you: as you teach the boys their ABC’s
babbling old age will overtake you in some remote village.)He will finish his life in a primary school, where he/it will be used to teach
the children the rudiments of reading (elementa). Its text will be nothing
more than a series of syllables to be pronounced (balba senectus).
The papyrus book is not made to be opened and read frequently,
or to be sold to amateurs. This corresponds closely to its symbolic
status. The book is a beautiful, fragile object whose beauty deserves
a reading reduced to the minimum. The book is only a support, but
valuable as such. Its existence consecrates the authorasan author, pro-
vided that it is preserved, and preserved in a library. This is its second
destiny.
The second part of the poem shows without transition—in an asyn-
deton marking a strong opposition—the book being read publicly on a soft
summer’s evening, during arecitatioamong friends (19):
Cum tibi sol tepidus pluris admouerit auris...(When the warm sun brings you more ears. .. )This reading does not have the effect of either informing the listeners or of
pleasing them; what the book makes heard (loqueris) is the poet’s career as
an author of verse letters. This is in keeping with the life of a poet of the
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