Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome

A Note about Ancient 'Books'

| �� �� A Note about Ancient “Books”1 The shape of ancient “books” would, no doubt, surprise the modern reader. Furthermore, ancient authors would not recognize the form in which their writings are now available. Little of the physical evidence of ancient scientific books survives. Evidence that survives for the archaic and classical periods is scant; most of our knowledge about the physical characteristics of ancient “books” comes from Hellenistic material. (For our purposes, the death of Aristotle in 322 BCE provides an appropriate date for the beginning of the Hellenistic period.) The ancients used a wide variety of writing surfaces, including clay tablets, wood, and animal skins, but by far the most widespread material used for writing was papyrus. The plant is native to Egypt and from perhaps 3000 BCE the Egyptians manufactured papyrus sheets to be used for writing. The firstcentury CE Roman writer Pliny the Elder provided a description (in his Natural History 13.�4-�2) of their production. The sheets were pasted together to form rolls, which seem to have been the standard unit for the manufacture and sale of papyrus, although the widths of rolls varied, as did the length.2 Because the rolls could not accommodate a large amount of text, in many cases a single work required several papyrus rolls. This is the origin of the division of ancient works into “books.” The papyrus roll was, for much of antiquity, the most common form of “book” and the standard medium for publication. In addition to written descriptions of rolls, such as that contained in Pliny, ancient illustrations of rolls being used by readers exist, including vase paintings from fifth-century BCE Athens.3 Papyrus rolls, and fragments of rolls, have survived in scattered sites throughout the ancient world.4 �� | A Note about Ancient “Books”| A Note about Ancient “Books” A Note about Ancient “Books” Publication in the ancient world was, in contrast to much of modern publishing practice before the Internet, extremely casual; no copyrights existed nor were royalties paid.5 Very little is known about the actual production of texts on papyrus; for example, it is not known whether rolls were copied by dictation, by reading, or both. L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson have emphasized the difficulty of reading ancient texts, which contained rudimentary punctuation and no divisions between words. They suggest that “a high proportion of the most serious corruptions in classical texts go back to [the Hellenistic] period and were already widely current in the books that eventually entered the library of the Museum at Alexandria.”6 Although the papyrus was the standard form for the publication of literary texts and philosophical treatises, other formats were used, sometimes for specific purposes, such as letters. Between the end of the second and the fourth century CE, the papyrus roll was gradually displaced as the most usual form of book by the codex. The codex format utilized wax-coated wooden tablets and, eventually, parchment leaves. While the precise reasons for the adoption of the codex are not clear, in retrospect scholars have pointed to what may be regarded as its advantages, arguing that the codex was less costly to produce, held more text, and was easier to handle than a roll. Athenian vase-paintings depict readers having trouble with a twisted roll; Pliny the Younger reports that the aged Verginius Rufus broke his hip while trying to recover a dropped roll.7 C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat emphasized the role that the new Christian faith played in the adoption of the codex,8 but the shift from the papyrus roll to the parchment codex was gradual, involving many innovations and changes in practice. Evidence suggests that Romans, rather than Greeks, first used parchment notebooks. Strikingly, only two Greek writers in the first two centuries CE mention the parchment notebook; one is the physician Galen, who describes a treatment for baldness recorded in a parchment notebook.9 While the bulk of surviving A Note about Ancient “Books” | ��| �� �� ancient codices are devoted to Biblical and literary material, they also include astronomical tables, herbals, medical and magical prescriptions, as well as treatises on mathematics, Aristotelian physics, and astronomy.10 Many scholars have suggested that it was much easier to find a particular passage in a codex than in a papyrus. The physical difficulty of accessing text is very likely to have affected the ways in which ancient readers, commentators, and editors...