Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/337

* BOOKSELLING. 297 BOOKSELLING. Xaertiiis says that the hearers of Plato inter- ested themselves in the work of circulating the written reports of his lectures, sometimes sell- ing them, but more frequently in the first place lending them out for hire. The facilities for the work of scribes in Athens were evidently, however, during the most important period of Athenian literature, inadequate to supply the demand of the scholars. Books continued to be very costly and their ownership was limited to the wealthy. Diogenes Laertius is the authority for the statement that Plato paid for three books of Philolaiis which Dionysius had secured for him in Sicily three Attic talents, equal in cur- rency to .'53240. when money was worth much more than it is now. Aristotle saj's that Gel- lias paid a similar sum for some few books of Speusippus. Bockh is of opinion that some kind of a book trade was carried on in the orchestra of the Athenian theatre, during the time, of course, when no performance was going on. By the time of Xenophon (about B.C. 400) Athens was the centre not only of the literary activities of Greece, but of any book trade that existed. The first booksellers prepared with their own labor the scrolls, mainly papyrus, that constituted their stock in trade. The next step in the development of the business was the intro- duction of the capitalist, who, instead of working with his own hand^, employed a staff of copyists and sold the products of their labor. A comedy by Aristomenes refers to a dealer in books. Eupolis speaks, in B.C. 430. of the 'place where books are sold.' the inference being that a special place in the market was reserved for the book trade. Nicophon, in the ne.xt centuiy, gives a list of men who support themselves with the labor of their hands, and groups the book.seller with the dealers in food and household utensils. It would appear that the Athenian book- sellers derived receipts not only from the sale or from the hire of manuscripts, but from the reading of these aloud in their shops to hearers who paid for the privilege. After the con- quest of Greece by the Romans there was a revival in Athens of the trade in books owing to the increased demand from the scholars of Rome, where Greek was accepted as the language of refined literature and its authors were dili- gently studied. About B.C. 2n0 the literary activity encouraged by Ptolemy Philadelphus caused Alexandria to become one of the great book marts of the world. Its first publishing and bookselling were done in connection with the great museum founded by Ptolemy. This comprised in one organization a lending and reference library, a series of art col- lections, a group of colleges endowed for research, a university for instruction, an academy with functions like those of the French .cademy, and a series of work-rooms where the scribes prepared from authenticated texts the papyrus manu- Bcripts to be distributed throughout the civilized world. Ptolemy Soter gave authority to travel- ing scholars to collect for the museum in Alexan- dria all the authenticated manuscripts they could find. He is said to have supplied food to the Athenians during a famine only on condition that they -would sell to his representatives au- thenticated copies of the tragedies of -Esehylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. For these, in addi- tion to the promised shipment of corn, the sum of fifteen talents was paid. Through their enter- I>rise in training numbers of skilled scribes (in- cluding now not only educated slaves, but many of the impecunious scholars of the university), and by means of the distributing facilities af- forded by the commercial connections of their capital, the Alexandrian publishers retained in their hands for more than two centuries the con- trol of the greater part of the book production of the world. The publishers of Athens disap- jjcared, while those who, in the last century B.C. and the first century a.d., were carrying on book businesses in Rome were obliged to have done in Alexandria the work of transcribing such of their issues as were in the Greek language, these form- ing, until the time of Trajan, a very large portion of their total production. The earlier Roman publisher found it usually to his advantage to send to Alexandria his original texts and to contract with some Alexandrian correspondent who controlled a book-manufacturing establish- ment for the production of the editions required. It is in Rome that we find the first records of publishers whose names liave been preserved. During the Second Century B.C. a number of im- portant and costly literary enterprises were under- taken ; and the continued production of books ad- dressed to a general public implies the existence of machinery for their distribution. Here, as in Athens, those who first interested themselves in publishing undertakings were men who com- bined with literary tastes the control of sufficient means to pay for the production of the editions. Their aim was not at the securing of profits, but the service of literature and of the State, and these earlier publishing enterprises must fre- quently have resulted in a deficiency. As the size of the editions could easily be limited to the probable demand, and as further copies could always be secured when called for, one would imagine that the expense need not have been con- siderable. The high prices, however, which under the competition of a literary fashion it became necessary to pay for the educated slaves trained as scribes, constituted a .serious item of outlay. Horace speaks of slaves competent to write Greek as costing 8000 sesterces, about .$400. Calvisius, a rich dilettante, paid for each of his servi lite- rati as much as 10,000 sesterces. In one of the laws of Justinian in which the relative price of slaves is fixed for the division of estates, notarii or scribes are rated fifty per cent, higher than artisans. The man whose name is most intimately con- nected with the work of publishing in. the time of Cicero was his friend Titus Pompunius .tti- cus, who organized, about B.C. 65, a great book- manufacturing establishment in Rome with con- nections in .thens and Alexandria. The editions issued by him came to be known as the 'ArTiKtava, Attikiana, and secured wide repute for their ac- curacy. Atticus did not confine his book business to his publishing house, but established retail dealers, tabcniarii, in diflferent quarters of Rome, and also in one or two of the provincial capitals. The publishers of Horace were the brothers Sosii. Their shop was in the Vicus Tus- eus, near the entrance to the Temple of .Tanus. It was in a book-shop that Clodius hid himself (B.C. US) from his pursuers. Later we find the stalls of the bibliopoles placed in the most fre- quented quarters of the city, by the .Tanus gate of the Forum, by the Temple of Peace, on the Argiletum, in the Vicus Sandalarius, and on the