Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Roger Pearse · 09-10-2013, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Roger, I should have known better with mountainman. Thanks for that. But back to the topic at hand.

But were all Christian despised? Remember Irenaeus's statement in AH 4.30.1 - 4 and the parallel in the Philosophumena, Dio Cassius and Eusebius 5.27. They weren't despised at the time of Commodus nor through the Severan period. Yes Alexandrian and Egyptian Christians were persecuted but not the Roman Church.

How were books accepted into the library? Were they purchased or donated by citizens and could they be refused?

You are forgetting that Christianity remained illegal all through this period. And remember also ... we're not discussing moral, but literary reputation. Christian books didn't have a high reputation. They weren't classical, in this period.

I don't know in detail; or even whether we know, how libraries acquired books. Martial donated his to the emperor. The library of Alexandria acquired them in all sorts of ways.

I suspect ... guessing ... you have a modern idea of the public library in mind. I really don't think it worked like that.

Roger Pearse · 09-10-2013, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I think you did a good job answering these leading questions which were put forward by a participant who already 'knows' where he wants the evidence to go and will be unhappy that your answers contradict his presuppositions.

There speaks a man who has read too many online posts (as have I). You are probably right. But ... we were all newbies once. I try to remember that topics which are over-familiar to us are often quite unknown to others, whose questions may seem leading but are sincere. As a rule you are right, of course. But I try.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 09-10-2013, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Bart Ehrman speaks about Pionius bringing the text of the Martyrdom of Polycarp 'out of hibernation' but from where? What library?

http://books.google.com/books?id=-pT...%3A%22&f=false

Abandon this idea of "library". It's misleading you. Books just hung around.

His statements are all based on the colophon, at the end of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, which ends with a series of statements from copyists.

The "Life" of Pionius to which he refers is, I believe, spurious.

stephan huller · 09-10-2013, 12:23 PM

More from that article on the public library system in light of the discoveries of Galen:

Quote:

In either case it was at least in part the Palatine library’s impressive holdings that allowed Galen to rescue the lost or misattributed works, despite his triumphant demonstration of its mistaken labelling, for some works correctly named by the Catalogue were uniquely preserved there. Galen appears to say at PA 17 that he managed to procure some of the works from other sources, but the overall logic of this section depends on the clear statement at PA 12 – 13 that the Palatine libraries containedworks which could not be found anywhere else: they were the main source on which hiswork depended,71 and the losses in the fire meant that this work and the texts on whichit was based were permanently lost to the world.The overall impression of the organization and contents of the libraries that emergesfrom this new information is consistent with that given by authors such as Aulus Gellius. The imperial libraries seem to have been accessible to serious ‘scholarly’ readers as well as to those like Gellius who wanted to discuss texts or other matters withcolleagues, friends, and pupils; perhaps Galen was at the next table, poring over hismanuscripts and notebooks. They were full of treasures, invaluable to those interested ina huge range of intellectual disciplines; Galen’s new testimony adds a range of subjectmatter and specific items. The way in which this material was arranged and madeaccessible to readers was not random or careless — we have seen that the library keptprecious book and book collections intact for more than 200 years, and Galen seems tohave been able to read through a particular subject area — but it did have an elementof the haphazard in it. Galen finds discrepancies and misattributions, and Gelliusrecords similar glitches such as the incidents at NA 11.17 and 13.20, when books werebrought to him in the library that he had not ordered and in one case could notidentify. The libraries therefore seem to have had a system of recording and orderingcontents that was good enough to send a reader or library attendant close to the rightspot on the shelf, but which left room for error and ambiguity in their final selection of a book, and room for an unusually sophisticated reader (as Galen considered himself) tomake corrections.

Roger Pearse · 09-10-2013, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Twenty eight, possibly twenty nine public libraries in ancient Rome alone http://books.google.com/books?id=KSZ...q=open&f=false

I'd forgotten Boyd's book. It's a very useful list of data. What we would give, to have access to their contents!

Irritating that sources remain untranslated, tho ; makes it harder to read.

stephan huller · 09-10-2013, 12:26 PM

More on ability to browse shelves:

Quote:

He would not have been able to make his findings by asking a memberof staff to bring him, say, everything the library had by Theophrastus: he would havepicked up the misattributions this way but not the works by that author, missing fromthe Catalogue, which he claims to have found there (which were presumably not labelled 'Theophrastus’, but were among the mislabelled books of PA16). It soundsinstead as if he was able to consult and compare large numbers of bookssimultaneously, independently of the library’s idea of their authorship: he probably haddirect access to both Catalogue and bookshelves himself, then, and unless we are toassume that he went through every single scroll in the library one by one, it seems thathe was able to direct his particular attention to a section of the library containingHellenistic philosophy and especially Peripatetic work on science, the field to which hepays most attention in this discussion. This indirect evidence for readers’ ability tobrowse in shelving organized by genre usefully corroborates the picture built up from other sources.

stephan huller · 09-10-2013, 12:28 PM

They could not borrow books:

Quote:

It is not likely that readers were allowed to borrow books from thePalatine library: Galen tells us that the Domus Tiberiana library, whose bailiff couldfamously be bribed by a well-connected would-be borrower, was at one stage almostruined through the negligence of its custodians,73 but the Palatine library had kept itsstock of priceless autograph treasures intact until they burned in A.D. 192. We have nowseen that Galen kept all his working materials close to the library, which further arguesthat he could not have borrowed books, since such books could have been brought backto his house or anywhere else he chose: the immobility of his source material meant thathe needed to keep his own working collection close by.

stephan huller · 09-10-2013, 12:29 PM

On copying books:

Quote:

The most likely solution, then, is that Galen or hisassistants consulted the books he mentions in the Palatine library itself, and made hisinitial working copies, notes, and documents there too, carrying them down theso-called Clivus Palatinus to his lock-up at the end of the day before heading home.

Quote:

We can therefore conclude either that relatively low-status slave or commercial copyists werepermitted in the libraries, or that they had dedicated copying staff of their own. On the other hand, the intimate level of bibliophilic knowledge Galen displays in the PA suggests a personal familiarity with the Palatine library collections, and his concern withabsolute precision of copying meant that he probably, at the least, superintended theprocess, visiting the library to check difficult readings in his copies against the originalskept there (through which he had to search in the first place to find his source material).

the need for study rooms:

Quote:

Since we can presume that the books were not permitted to leave the libraries, we mustenvisage that this work took place there, whether by Galen himself, his own staff, or thelibrary’s own copyists. This would have necessitated facilities for writing and for longperiods of study within the libraries, which must therefore have had writing space,whether on the floor of the main book rooms or elsewhere.

stephan huller · 09-10-2013, 12:34 PM

This is interesting:

Quote:

This adds considerably to our understanding of the function of these imperial publiclibraries. Users like Galen were able to make or commission copies of the texts theyheld, for the reasons listed in PA 13: library collections were felt to contain some of theoldest and best-authenticated copies available anywhere, so a careful process of copyingfrom these books such as that spelled out by Galen allowed a diligent reader toshort-cut decades of scribal error and produce a volume in which he could be confident.This might help explain the cluster of booksellers near the Templum Pacis discussed above. For Galen the ability to consult and make notes from or reliable copies of authentictexts is a prerequisite for the sort of study he wished to undertake, a fundamental elementof his intellectual practice. His detailed insistence on this in the PA, to the extent of naminglibraries and books that are now lost, is a sort of literary manifesto, part of the point of writing the treatise: he puts on record the extent of the work he had lost, and remindshis readers that the need for caution and careful evaluation of manuscripts was all thegreater now that Rome’s great authenticating library collections had disappeared.

I don't see anything in any of this that answers the questions about what books got in, whether there were restrictions etc.

Roger Pearse · 09-10-2013, 12:35 PM

Galen, let us remember, was a very privileged man.

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Roger Pearse Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: N/A Posts: 4,370	Galen, let us remember, was a very privileged man.

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