Cambridge University PressEdition: Reprint, 9/29/2016EAN 9781316628843, ISBN10: 1316628841Paperback, 500 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 2.9 cmLanguage: EnglishThe circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. However, books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries - private and public, royal and civic - played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.Introductionapproaching the ancient library Greg WoolfPart I. Contexts1. Libraries in ancient Egypt Kim Ryholt2. Reading the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia Eleanor Robson3. Fragments of a history of ancient libraries Christian JacobPart II. Hellenistic and Roman Republican Libraries4. Men and books in fourth-century BC Athens Massimo Pinto5. From text to textthe impact of the Alexandrian Library on the work of Hellenistic poets Annette Harder6. Where was the Royal Library of Pergamon? An institution found and lost again Gaelle Coqueugniot7. Priests, patrons and playwrightslibraries in Rome before 168 BC Mike Affleck8. Libraries in a Greek working lifeDionysius of Halicarnassus, a case study in Rome Daniel Hogg9. Libraries and intellectual debate in the Late Republicthe case of the Aristotelian corpus Fabio Tutrone10. Ashes to ashes? The Library of Alexandria after 48 BC Myrto Hatzimichali11. The non-Philodemus book collection in the Villa of the Papyri George W. Houston12. 'Beware of promising your library to anyone'assembling a private library at Rome T. Keith DixPart III. Libraries of the Roman Empire13. Libraries for the Caesars Ewen Bowie14. Public libraries in the cities of the Roman Empire Matthew Nicholls15. Flavian libraries in Rome Pier Luigi Tucci16. Archives, books and sacred space in Rome Richard Neudecker17. Visual supplementation and metonymy in the Roman public library David Petrain18. Libraries and reading culture in the High Empire William A. Johnson19. Galen, Ptolemy III and the Athenianslibraries, perception and history Michael W. Handis20. Libraries and paideia in the Second SophisticGalen and Plutarch Alexei V. Zadorojnyi21. The professional and his booksspecial libraries in the Roman world Victor Martinez and Megan Finn Senseney.
