Books And Readers In Ancient Greece And Rome (Hardcover)

BOOKS AND READERS IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME by FREDERIC G. KENYON. Originally published in 1932. PREFACE: THIS book is the outcome of a course of three lectures which I was invited by the University of London to deliver at King's College in March 1932. The material has been slightly expanded, but the general scale of treatment has not been altered. It does not claim to replace the standard works on ancient book-production, but to supple ment them, and that especially with regard to the period during which papyrus was the principal material in use. It is in respect of this period that our knowledge has increased in the course of the last two generations. The object of this book is to bring together and make available for students the results of these discoveries. In particular, use has been made of the remarkable collection of papyrus codloss . recently acquired by Mr. A. Chester Beatty, which has greatly extended our knowledge of this transitional form of book, which appears to have had a special vogue among the Christian community in Egypt. Although the subject of the book is primarily bibliographical, namely, the methods of book-con struction from the date of Homer ( whenever that may have been) until the supersession of papyrus. . in the fourth centur f yJLera ne of vi Preface its main objects has been to show the bearings of the material and form of books on literary history and criticism, and to consider what new light has been thrown by recent research on the origin and growth of the habit of reading in ancient Greece and Rome. F. G. K. Contents include: I. THE USE OF BOOKS IN ANCIENT GREECE i II. THE PAPYRUS ROLL . . . .38 III. BOOKS AND READING AT ROME . 73 IV. VELLUM AND THECODEX . . . 86 APPENDIX 120 INDEX . . . . . .134 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A poetess with tablets. and stylus. Naples Museum-Photograph, Anderson . . . Facing page 16 A papyrus roll open. British Museum . 40 Papyrus roll before opening. British Museum 48 Teacher and students with rolls. Treves Museum. Photograph, Giraudon . . . Facing page 56 A book-box ( capsa) containing rolls with sillybi page 59 A reader holding a roll of papyrus . . 64 Roman inkpots. British Museum . Facing page 74 Roman pens and styli. British Museum 80 A papyrus codex. Heidelberg University Between pages 88 and 89. THE USE OF BOOKS IN ANCIENT GREECE. UNTIL within a comparatively recent period, which may be measured by the lifetime of persons still living, our information with regard to the physical formation and the habitual use of books in ancient Greece and Rome was singularly scanty. Our ancestors were dependent on casual allusions in Greek and Latin authors, intelligible enough to those for whom they were written, but not intended for the information of distant ages, and in no case amounting to formal descriptions.