The Used-Book Trade in the Roman World

Abstract

IT IS COMMONLY ASSUMED that the Romans knew a much like that of today.' Most of the ancient sources cited by modern scholars to prove the existence of a in books, however, do not stand up to critical examination. In fact, although the Roman world appears to have had a small second-hand-book trade, that left almost no traces of itself in the surviving sources. It was probably restricted largely to school texts circulating outside the circles of aristocratic readers and writers who provide most of our surviving evidence. At most, a potentially affected a comparatively small group: those lucky enough to have had a literary education but not wealthy enough (or inclined) to own or employ their own copyists or to buy many new books (see below, 155-156). For the aristocracy, the was probably of very limited significance for the circulation of almost all literary texts.2 First, a word of definition: the phrases used-book trade and secondhand-book trade may seem at first to have a self-evident meaning, but that is deceptive. English distinguishes between or second-hand books and books, but scholars writing in German would speak of an antiquarischer book trade, which embraces what one might call antiquarian books or rare books as well as simply books. Different cultures place radically different values on items and on items of various types. In recent years, for instance, advertisements proclaim the virtues of previously owned luxury cars, wishing to avoid the negative associations called up by the phrase used cars. The status of a