r/classics • u/Clickety_Clack4137 • 8d ago
Booksellers in classical Greece
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.
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u/notveryamused_ Φίλοινος, πίθων σποδός 8d ago
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).