John Crumbley says:

Many of us that use libraries extensively seldom think about their origin.

This book gives an excellent survey of the greatest libraries of the world while leaving much to be discovered on our own. I don’t think I’ll ever view libraries quite the same. A great read.
Rating: 5 / 5

A. Briggs says:

In 642 AD the library holdings of the Serapeum at Alexandria supplied the public baths with six month’s supply of kindling. To the city’s Muslim Arab conquerors, these thousands of books and scrolls were clearly worthless: if their contents agreed with the word of the Prophet, they were superfluous; if they disagreed, they were blasphemous. And so the last great collection of antiquity was consigned to the flames.

This account of the end of the second great Alexandrian library is less than established fact – it is equally possible that the collection of the Temple of Serapis was destroyed somewhat earlier, in 391 AD, on the orders of a Christian patriarch. What is not in dispute is the existence of great collections of writings at Alexandria, the first of which was the Library of Alexandria founded by Ptolemy I around 300 BCE. The Library was the foremost of its kind throughout antiquity, boasting a collection of perhaps 490,000 scrolls. It was established as a research library for the first “Museum” – a kind of ancient think tank stocked with intellectuals lured from every corner of the Hellenistic world. Dedicated to the Muses, the Alexandria Museum and its Library were also semi-sacred places associated with religion. To learn and to study was to worship.

The Library of Alexandria was the greatest though certainly not the only literary collection of antiquity. In fact, as NYU classicist Lionel Casson demonstrates in his book-length essay _Libraries in the Ancient World_, widespread literacy and pride in cultural achievement ensured that few cities of the ancient Mediterranean were without libraries of their own. While Alexandria holds a central position in library history and in Casson’s account, his book seeks to cover a far wider scope.

In fact this book sets out to relate “whatever is known” about ancient libraries “from their debut in the ancient Near East… down to the early Byzantine period.” Considered in terms of this goal narrowly defined, the book is a success. With modern text search technology and the availability of research assistants, a complete list of references to libraries, scrolls, codices, administration and collection can be readily extracted from the corpus of surviving classical literature. All that remains is to arrange the source material in thematic and chronological order and provide an elegant prose framework on which to hang the pertinent information. This is, I think, a very fair description of the author’s methodology and achievement with _Libraries in the Ancient World_.

The history of ancient libraries begins in the near east with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. The first library worthy of the name and of which we have direct knowledge belonged to an Assyrian king of the late 2nd millennium BCE. Lacking papyrus, the Mesopotamians had no books or scrolls; records were kept on clay tablets. “Records” is by and large the appropriate term – Assyrian libraries were mainly archive collections, though some literary works have come down to us – the Epic of Gilgamesh is the most significant example.

No library collections survive from ancient Egypt prior to the Hellenistic period. While Casson’s conclusion is that nothing can be known of Egyptian libraries, it seems like the extensive papyrus literature recovered from Egyptian burial sites would suggest something about the kinds of works Egyptian collections contained.

From Mesopotamia the scene shifts abruptly in space and time: to Greece and the Mediterranean world of the 5th century BCE. There is some brief discussion of probable Mycenaean palace archives. However the transition is too abrupt to do justice to the strong eastern influences at work on Greek civilization during the 8th and 7th centuries – that era of ancient Greek history known as the Orientalizing Period. Greek libraries, like Athena, spring full-grown into the light of day. Our knowledge is severely constrained by the fragmentary state of the historical record. But the presentation also suggests perhaps an idealized view of the classical era no longer in fashion.

Certainly Casson shows that great library collections were renowned throughout the classical world. The Library of Alexandria was the centerpiece of the Ptolemaic kingdom’s cultural identity and its agents were famous for their acquisitiveness. Aristotle’s library, said to be the inspiration for the Ptolemies, was sought out and seized by Sulla in the Mithridatic Wars of the 1st century BCE. Through the Republican period Roman generals and proconsuls included the library collections of conquered Hellenistic kingdoms among the spoils of war. In fact Casson suggests that Rome’s first significant library collections were not home-grown but carted back as loot from newly conquered provinces in Greece and Asia Minor.

Substantial library resources existed at Rome by 150 BCE; by the imperial period, public and private library collections were widespread. As early as the time of Julius Caesar, libraries were seen as prestige projects by Rome’s absolute rulers. Tiberius, Vespasian and Trajan each contributed large libraries for the betterment of the capital city. It turns out that Trajan’s Column was flanked by the Greek and Latin wings of a giant three-level library facility – lending a new dimension of interest to an already impressive monument.

The segregated layout of Trajan’s Library was typical of Roman libraries – Greek on one side, Latin on the other. The body of works in Greek was vastly larger than the Latin literature, but the Romans improbably allotted equal space to both, in a physical layout not necessarily conducive to serious research. All of this suggests something about the Roman approach to literature and Roman culture in general.

Casson’s short book is conceived and executed as a strictly “just the facts” approach to the subject of ancient libraries. That is more than fair, but one can’t help but think that there is more to explore here. What do the architectures of Greek and Roman libraries say about their respective societies? How did the library function within the carefully plotted urban plan of the Hellenistic city, or the Roman town? Questions such as these go unexplored here, but this carefully researched and nicely crafted work will no doubt serve as a valuable aid to future scholars.

Rating: 3 / 5