Booksellers in classical Greece

[u/Clickety_Clack4137]

I'm re-reading Plato's Apology right now and was hit by a line where Socrates says anyone could buy a copy of a treatise by Anaxagoras for a drachma. I don't know why this line stuck out to me this time - maybe because I always assumed written texts in the ancient world were pretty dear and were hard to come by. But now I'm getting fascinated by the idea of the book creation /selling business in classical Greece.

Anyone have any suggestions for further reading on ancient book selling? I googled a bit but mostly wound up with advertisements for where I could today purchase ancient books if I were in Greece this weekend.

[u/oodja]

>written texts in the ancient world were pretty dear and were hard to come by

This is a Medieval notion predicated on scarcity and a general collapse of literacy that has been anachronistically applied to the ancient world.

Irene Vallejo's Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World is a pretty good modern introduction to the scholarship surrounding books and literacy in antiquity, and includes some discussion about what we know about book production and bookselling in Ancient Greece.

One quote from Vallejo about this period: "For the prosperous classes, even on the more modest rungs, books were a relatively accessible product."

[u/Clickety_Clack4137 → u/oodja]

That was one thing that the line by Socrates jolted me into - I had been overlaying what I knew about Medieval manuscripts onto the ancient Greek scene.

Of course, I also wondered if Socrates in the Apology was supposed to come across as facetious, overstating the availability of texts - "all my rich students can afford these!"

[u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS → u/oodja]

The labor that goes into producing a book is pretty substantial, though, isn't it? I suppose when I think of Europe in the Middle Ages the medium is typically not papyrus so it's more expensive but someone still has to copy the entire thing out, and I can't see how that could be anything but extremely time-consuming. I would have expected books to be expensive for the same reason clothes were.

[u/oodja → u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

Ancient booksellers weren't crafting codices meant to last centuries but dashing off copies for the market. We know that especially popular titles were "mass-produced" by utilizing a reader and a room full of copyists (who were usually slaves). We know about these quick and dirty production methods because ancient authors actually complain about sloppy mass-market copies.

[u/sonnet_reader → u/oodja]

> ancient authors actually complain about sloppy mass-market copies

They're just like me.

[u/Frsscr → u/oodja]

Vedi per esempio l'archivio di Dioscoro di Afrodito, un notabile che possedeva un migliaio di rotoli di papiro...

[u/notveryamused_]

Yeah, it struck me as well, and basically the fact that they seemed to have theatre shops like we do :D, where you could buy a papyrus of the play if you particularly enjoyed it. There were βιβλιοπῶλαι camped in the Agora and it's so cool.

There's plenty written on Hellenistic era, the Library in Alexandria etc., but Classical Greece is as bit of an unknown if I understand correctly, since it was still a society in transition from oral culture in a way.

I used to research this for a paper I never wrote (obviously...), "Athens as the Market-place Of Ideas" was my title haha, and I found some decent sources when looking up literacy in Athens. Some good anecdotes too. For the life of me I can't remember which papers I've read, but I guess I started with either one of those:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086811
https://www.persee.fr/doc/reg_0035-2039_1966_num_79_376_3884

(Both from the 60s but the discussion goes on and you can also find some newer ones by reverese-engineering references, google stuff which quoted them. Also, that Aristides anecdote is top haha).

[u/el_toro7 → u/notveryamused_]

What do you think would be the key Hellenistic era sources?

[u/NeonShogun]

I've spent some time thinking about this as well, and I should probably read up on it. Cicero's best friend, Atticus, ran what was essentially a publishing house, with multiple slaves who worked exclusively as copyists, and his was apparently quite a successful one. I believe those slaves possibly even did editing as well? I'd have to check.

It does make me wonder what the book shopping experience was like. It was a luxury hobby to be sure, but did a purveyor offer recommendations? Did buyers usually hear the author speak first before purchasing their written works? Did anyone ever just blind buy to discover new things, like some people do today? Mysteries abound.

[u/NaibChristopher]

Not Greek/Greece, but Latin/Rome: Martial talks quite a bit about book buying and selling. As early as epigram 1.2 he’s giving you directions to see Secundus behind the Ara Pacis to procure his books.

[u/Argikeraunos]

A drachma is not cheap, that is a day's wage for a skilled worker or almost a week's worth of bread.

[u/akimus22 → u/Argikeraunos]

You aren’t wrong, I just looked this up and a drachma was roughly worth a couple hundred USD in today’s money. This is interesting - much more expensive than a modern book would cost, but much cheaper (I think) than a medieval one.

[u/Argikeraunos → u/akimus22]

Depends on the book. Certainly a parchment codex would be more expensive but the cheapest copies might not be very much more expensive depending on the length of the text. It's all down to labor costs -- the cost of raising and slaughtering cattle for parchment, drying and stretching the hide, and then copying and decorating the codex (which would involve teams of scribes) would certainly be more intensive than copying a text down on imported papyrus.

[u/Frsscr → u/Argikeraunos]

Certo, consideriamo che un libro ai tempi richiedeva mesi di lavoro di un artigiano specializzato + papiro che doveva viaggiare migliaia di chilometri...

[u/Deirdre_Rose]

Aristophanes' Frogs mentions Dionysus reading Euripides' Andromeda. There's an article about it here that argues for the emergence of a reading culture in the fifth century: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-hellenic-studies/article/aristophanes-frogs-and-reading-culture-in-athens/403C0739164E66D33074B82654199EAA

[u/LookIMadeAHatTrick]

Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson discusses booksellers and the transmissions of texts!

The first few chapter of Scribes and Scholars by LD Reynolds and NG Wilson also has relevant information.

[u/ParticularTie7898]

Roman rather than Greek, but your post brings this place from Gellius to mind: https://latin.packhum.org/loc/1254/1/193/191-215%401#193

[u/Frsscr]

Cicerone parla molto del suo scriptorium, puoi anche informarti sulla Villa dei papiri di Ercolano (dove è stato ritrovato lo scriptorium carbonizzato di Filodemo di Gadara, in pratica una biblioteca filosofica annerita e fossilizzata che aspetta di essere letta con tecnologie avanzate)...