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Galen and Libraries in the Peri Alupias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2011

Matthew C. Nicholls*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, University of Reading

Abstract

This article examines the implications of Galen's newly-rediscovered Peri Alupias (On Consolation from Grief) for our understanding of the function and contents of public libraries in late second-century a.d. Rome. As a leading intellectual figure at Rome, Galen's detailed testimony substantially increases what we know of imperial public libraries in the city. In particular, the article considers Galen's description of his use of the Palatine libraries and a nearby storage warehouse, his testimony on the contents, organization, and cataloguing of the books he found there, and his use of provincial public libraries for the dissemination of his own works.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 The PA was previously known only from fragments quoted in Arabic and Hebrew and from its title, mentioned in Galen's On My Own Books. The text is preserved in manuscript Vlatadon 14 (henceforward V). It was first published by Boudon-Millot, V. as ‘Un traité perdu de Galien miraculeusement retrouvé, le Sur l'inutilité de se chagriner: Texte grec et traduction française’ in Boudon-Millot, V., Guardasole, A. and Magdelaine, C. (eds), La Science médicale antique: Nouveaux regards (2007), 73123 (henceforward BM)Google Scholar. As this article was in preparation two further critical editions were published: Boudon-Millot, V., Jouanna, J. and Pietrobelli, A. (eds), Galien, Tome IV: Ne pas se chagriner (2010)Google Scholar (with French translation and a very full commentary, henceforward ‘Budé’), and Kotzia, P. and Sotiroudis, P. (eds), ‘Galenou Peri Alupias’, Hellenika 60 (2010), 63148Google Scholar. The text is corrupt in places and further emendations have been suggested by Vivian Nutton (private correspondence); Jones, C. P., ‘Books and libraries in a newly-discovered treatise of Galen’, JRA 22 (2009), 390–7Google Scholar; Garofalo, I., ‘Congetture inedite’, Galenos 2 (2008), 137–8 (and apud Nutton)Google Scholar; and Stramaglia, A., ‘Libri perduti per sempre: Galeno, “De indolentia” 13; 16; 17–19’, RFIC 139 (forthcoming, 2011)Google Scholar. The Greek quoted here, and passages of the text in translation, are taken from the 2010 Budé edition unless designated otherwise. A new translation will be published by Vivian Nutton in 2011 as part of a first volume of a series of Galen in English translation (CUP), and another by Clare Rothschild and Trevor Thompson in Early Christianity, Vol. 2 (2011)Google Scholar. I am much indebted to Professor Nutton for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, to Professor Helen King, Professor Antonio Stramaglia, Professor Christopher Jones, Professor William Johnson, Trevor Thompson, and Professor Pier Luigi Tucci for useful and generous suggestions, and to the Journal's anonymous readers.

2 Dio 73.24.1–3 and Herodian 1.14.3–6 with Budé pp. XXIV–XXVII. For other Galen passages concerning the fire see n. 11 below.

3 Tucci, P. L., ‘Galen's storeroom, Rome's libraries, and the fire of A.D. 192’, JRA 21 (2008), 133–49Google Scholar; idem, Antium, the Palatine, and the Domus Tiberiana again’, JRA 22 (2009), 398401, replying to C. P. Jones, op. cit. (n. 1)Google Scholar.

4 See below n. 78.

5 Vivian Nutton's article ‘Galen's library’ (in Gill, C., Whitmarsh, T. et al. (eds), Galen and the World of Knowledge. Greek Culture in the Roman World (2009), 1934CrossRefGoogle Scholar) contains much valuable information on Galen's erudition and reading, both from the PA and from his wider corpus.

6 See Nicholls, M. C., ‘Parchment codices in a new text of Galen’, Greece and Rome 57 (2010), 259–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Libraries as backdrop for learned otium and discussion in Gellius: the Domus Tiberiana – NA 13.20.1; the Templum Pacis – NA 5.21.9, 16.8.2; the Forum of Trajan – NA 11.17.1. For Gellius’ self-presentation see Holford-Strevens, L. and Vardi, A. (eds), The Worlds of Aulus Gellius (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gunderson, E., Nox Philologiae. Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library (2009)Google Scholar.

8 PA 7. The reading of the name is difficult. V and Budé give Philides, but this is a very rare name. The man may be the Callistus (thus Kotzia-Sotiroudis) known from an Arabic translation of Galen's In Hippocratis librum sextum Epidemiarum comentarii, as Greek names are frequently mangled by transliteration into and out of Arabic (Budé pp. 41–2). BM gives Philippides; Garofalo prefers Philistus, Nutton Philistides. The man is otherwise unknown.

9 On Galen's self-presentation and ‘the foregrounding of self’ in his medical writings: Barton, T., Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire (2002), 143–9Google Scholar. For Galen's particular eagerness to identify and comment on errors of attribution or interpretation, cf. e.g. Libr. Propr. 1 (K.19.8–11), or the lecture incident of Libr. Propr. 2 (K.19.21–2) that is discussed further below.

10 For which latter see especially PA 49ff.

11 PA 2. Cf. De compositione medicamentorum per genera 1.1 = K.13.362; Libr. Propr. 2 = K.19.19; De Antidotis 1.13 = K.14.66.

12 The question of which warehouse is fully discussed in Tucci, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 137–9 and the Horrea Piperataria is favoured in a prescient article by Houston, G. W., ‘Galen, his books, and the Horrea Piperataria at Rome’, MAAR 48 (2003), 45–7Google Scholar; cf. M. Piranomonte, ‘Horrea Piperataria’, in E. Steinby (ed.), LTUR III, 45–6; Cassius Dio 72.24.1. For the Horrea Vespasiani see E. Papi, ‘Horrea Vespasiani’, in LTUR III, 49–50.

13 PA 4–6. See Budé pp. XXXI–XXXVIII for a discussion of the contents of Galen's storeroom.

14 PA 7. For the name see n. 8 above. Cf. Herodian 1.14.3 for similar descriptions of private loss in the fire.

15 We know nothing more about either property. The security of the warehouse might have appealed to Galen as he had suffered thefts from his household servants (Libr. Propr. 11 = K.19.41), but this does not by itself seem reason enough to move so much material to the warehouse.

16 PA 10. Cf. CIL VI.33747, a lex horreorum Caesaris that contains provisions for private depositors; G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (1971).

17 cf. Dio 73.24, who says that important archives were burned in the fire of a.d. 192.

18 Dio 73.24 (warehouses); 53.1.3 (Palatine) τάς τε ἀποθήκας τῶν βιβλίων; 68.16.3 (Trajan's Forum) βιβλίων ἀποθήκας.

19 Galen, Hippocratis Epidemiarum III et Galeni in illum Commentarius 2.4 = K.17.1.606–7.

20 Dio 73.24.1 — the warehouse was used for Arabian and Egyptian goods; cf. Houston, op. cit. (n. 12), 48–9.

21 For the difficulties of this passage see below n. 78. The Budé commentary on PA 18 p. 71 agrees that the text implies the destruction of all these libraries.

22 Budé pp. 47–8 for a list of the occasions on which Galen names the Palatine library or libraries. V names the Palatine library in the genitive singular at PA 16, τῆς … βιβλιοθήκης. Budé follows Garofalo in emending this to the accusative plural, τὰς … βιβλιοθήκας and the commentary ad loc. cites other cases in which Galen refers to this library in the plural (Budé p. 64). In fact various ancient sources refer to this library in both the singular and plural: see M. C. Nicholls, ‘Bibliotheca Latina Graecaque: on the possible division of Roman libraries by language’, in Y. Perrin (ed.), Neronia VIII: Bibliothèques, livres et culture écrite dans l'empire romain de César à Hadrien. Actes du VIIIe Colloque international de la SIEN (Paris, 2–4 octobre 2008), Collection Latomus 327 (2010), 11–21, and especially n. 6.

23 Iacopi, I. and Tedone, G., ‘Biblioteca e Porticus ad Apollinis’, Röm. Mitt. 112 (2005/6), 351–78Google Scholar.

24 The location of this last-named remains unknown. It has been associated with brick and concrete remains in the area of S. Maria Antiqua (Coarelli, LTUR I, 131), which Tucci, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008) identifies as the library of the Domus Tiberiana mentioned in the PA. At the time of writing, recent excavations in the area to the north of Trajan's Column have uncovered marble-floored buildings resembling lecture halls that have already been tentatively associated with the Athenaeum. Time may tell.

25 Gellius and libraries: see above n. 7.

26 For the codices in particular see above n. 6. Tucci, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008), 149 has a useful summary of the lost contents of libraries and storeroom.

27 Libr. Propr. 2 = K.19.21–2

28 The fact that very old book collections had apparently remained intact within the library/ies argues against the possibility that they could be borrowed: see below.

29 Athenaeus 1.1e.

30 It is possible that the destruction wrought by the fire meant that by the time of the composition of the Deipnosophistae, private libraries like those of Larensis really were the largest available.

31 Martial, Ep. 2.17 implies that the Argiletum was also still used by shoemakers in the late first century a.d. On the book trade at Rome see also White, P., ‘Bookshops in the literary culture of Rome’, in Johnson, W. A. and Parker, H. N. (eds), Ancient Literacies. The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (2009), 268–87Google Scholar, and R. Winsbury, The Roman Book: Books, Publishing and Performance in Classical Rome (2009), ch. 6.

32 Galen, Libr. Propr. 1.1 (K.19.8), ἐν γάρ τῷ Σανδαλιαρίῳ καθ᾽ ὃ δὴ πλεῖστα τῶν ἐν ‘Pώμῃ βιβλιοπωλείων ἐστὶν; Gellius, NA 18.4.1.

33 Martial, Ep. 1.2, 1.3, 1.117.

34 cf. Galen De locis affectis III.5 (K.8.148.12–15) for Galen's own use of public libraries alongside bookshops, also implied by the manner in which he says he obtained books in the PA.

35 καθ’ὄ τι καὶ πρὸ τοῦ καυθῆναι πᾶσιν ἦν ἔθος ἀθροίζεσθαι τοῖς τὰς λογικὰς τέχνας μεταχειριζομένοις. Galen, Libr. Propr. 2 (K.19.21).

36 For a similar library-related process of concentration in another part of Rome, see M. C. Nicholls, Roman Public Libraries, unpub. D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford (2005), 36–40.

37 This argument has wider ramifications beyond the scope of this paper, bearing on the question of the extent to which districts of Rome developed concentrations or specialisms in particular spheres of activity, an important question for urban historians. For a comparable suggestion of a cluster of baking-related activities, for example, see Coates-Stevens, R. et al. , Porta Maggiore: Monument and Landscape. Archaeology and Topography of the Southern Esquiline from the Late Republican Period to the Present (2004)Google Scholar, with Purcell, N., ‘The enigmatic Porta Maggiore and its setting’, JRA 20 (2007), 446–8Google Scholar.

38 I depart here from the Budé text, which reads ἐντὸς (ἐν τοῖς V; ἐν ταύταις BM; ἐν τισι Kotzia-Sotiroudis; ἐν <τού>τοις also possible) and therefore translates ‘conservés à l'intérieur (des bibliothèques)…’. See Budé commentary ad loc. p. 53 for discussion.

39 V ἀνεγράψαντο; Budé ἀν⟨τ⟩εγράψαντο. See commentary ad loc.

40 Thus BM and Kotzia-Sotiroudis (l. 64). Budé emends αὐτόγραϕα, ‘autographs’, to ἀντίγραϕα, ‘copies’, and in the commentary on pp. 54–6 suggests that these lost books were in Galen's private collection (the word ἔκειντο is ambiguous), though the logic of the text — following straight after Galen's lament that his source material has vanished beyond recall now the Palatine libraries have burned — seems to me to indicate that they were in the Palatine library; and since Galen explicitly says that the books there were ‘written by or copied for the individuals after whom the books were named’, autograph copies seem entirely possible. The Arabic summary of the work mentions autographs, and Stramaglia, op. cit. (n. 1), also prefers αὐτόγραϕα. See Budé pp. XXXVIII–XXXIX and commentary ad loc. for a full discussion. There is a comparable case in PA 19 where ‘νυνὶ’ suggests to the Budé editors (p. 74) that Galen has returned to discussing his own collection, while the logic of the argument and topographical considerations suggest that he is still talking about a lost library.

41 I largely concur here with the identifications suggested by Jones, op. cit. (n. 1), to whom I offer grateful acknowledgement, as does Budé where a full discussion can be found on pp. 49ff.

42 Nutton (unpublished), citing Pfeiffer (1968), 274–9 and West (1970). Aristarchus: Montanari, F., Der Neue Pauly 1 (1996), 1090–4Google Scholar.

43 Strabo 17.1.8 and note careers of Dionysius Alexandrinus (first century a.d.), Suda sv Dionysius p. 1183 Adler; L. Julius Vestinus (second century a.d.), IG XIV.1085, PIR 2 Part 4 p. 293 No. 623.

44 Suet., Dom. 20; cf. Dio 66.24.

45 Panaetius: B. Inwood, Der Neue Pauly 9 (2000), 226–8. Cf. Gourinat, J.-B., ‘Le Platon de Panétius; à propos d'un témoinage inédit de Galien’, Philosophie Antique 8 (2008), 139–51Google Scholar.

46 Isidore, Etym. 6.5.1; Plutarch, Aem. 28.11. Plutarch refers to the two sons, Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus and P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemlianus, as ϕιλογραμματοῦντες.

47 In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus (77c) (κατὰ τὴν τῶν Ἀττικιανῶν ἀντιγράϕων ἔκδοσιν) Comm. in Timaeum, ed. H. O. Schröder, Corp. Med. Graec. Suppl. 1 (1934) fr. 2, p. 13.3. Cf. Demosthenes 1.148, M. Dilts (ed.), OCT (2002). See further Budé pp. 50–2.

48 Lucian, Adv. Indoct. 2 αὐτὰ ἐκεῖνα κεκρικέναι, ὅσα ὁ Καλλῖνος εἰς κάλλος ἢ ὁ ἀοίδιμος Ἀττικὸς σὺν ἐπιμελείᾳ τῇ πάσῃ ἔγραψαν, ‘those very books which Callinus wrote for their beauty or the famous Atticus prepared with the greatest care’. Ibid. 24 τὸν Ἀττικὸν καὶ Καλλῖνον τοὺς βιβλιογράϕους.

49 Horace, Epist. 2.1.216.

50 Jones, op. cit. (n. 1) makes the case for this identification well, and the Budé editors largely concur. Cf. Irigoin in La Philologie grecque, Entretiens Hardt 40 (1993), 59–60. Pace Dziatzko, RE 2 (1896), 2238. Book connections to Cicero: Att. 4.4a.1, 4.5.3 (staff); Att. 2.20.6; 2.22.7 (loan of books); Att. 2.4.1 (purchase of a book); Att. 1.7.1; 1.10.4; 1.11.3; 1.4.3 (purchase of a library in Athens in 67/6 b.c.); Att. 4.14.1 (Cicero's use of Atticus’ own library); Att. 1.4.3, 1.11.3, Fam. 7.23.2–3 (decoration of Cicero's library and ‘Academy’ at Tusculum).

51 BM p. 105 n. 242.

52 F. Münzer, ‘Peducaeus 6’, RE 19 (1937), 50–1. Cicero, Att. 1.5.4, 7.13.3, 7.17.1, 9.7.2, 9.10.10, 9.13.6, 10.1.1, 12.51.1, 13.1.3, 13.2b.1, 15.7.1, 15.13.3, 16.11.1, 16.14.4, 16.15.4; Nepos, Att. 21.4.

53 Diogenes Laertius 5.73.

54 Horsfall, N., ‘Empty shelves on the Palatine’, Greece & Rome 40 (1993), 5867CrossRefGoogle Scholar; p. 59 with n. 10 suggests that the Palatine library may have inherited Atticus’ copying staff. Cf. idem, Virgilio: l'epopea in Alambicco (1991), ch. 2.

55 Agrippa on making artworks public: Pliny, HN 35.9.26.

56 For Aristotle's books, see n. 59. For the collection at Herculaneum, see, e.g., D. Sider, The Library of the Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum (2005).

57 See, e.g., Martial, below n. 72.

58 Whom Budé plausibly amends to Cleitomachus, the second-century b.c. pupil of Carneades and head of the Academy: pp. 61–2.

59 Strabo 13.1.54; cf. Plutarch, Sulla 26.

60 Att. 4.10.1.

61 Cicero, Att. 4.4a; 4.5.4; 4.8.2; 5.3.3; Nepos, Att. 13.3–4.

62 For Faustus Sulla's financial difficulties, and Cicero's involvement with the sale of his affairs, see Att. 9.11.4 and Plut., Cic. 27.3. On the possible sale of his books to Cicero — not universally accepted — see Shackleton Bailey's note on Att. 4.10.1 (SB 84); Starr, R. J., ‘The used book trade in the Roman world’, Phoenix 44 No. 2 (1990), 148–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 155 and nn. 27–9; Marshall, A. J., ‘Library resources and creative writing at Rome’, Phoenix 30 (1976), 252–64, especially 259–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lord, C.On the early history of the Aristotelian corpus’, AJP 107 (1986), 137–61Google Scholar.

63 I have translated the plural πίνακες with the singular ‘Catalogue’ here, since the plural is usually used for this sense (as in the name of Callimachus’ famous work; cf. Ath. 6.244a, 13.585b). The possibility remains that Galen was referring to genuinely plural catalogues.

64 Budé: Λυπήσει δέ σε καὶ ταῦτα μάλιστα ὡς τῶν ἐν τοῖς καλουμένοις πίναξι [τῶν] γεγραμμένων βιβλίων ἔξωθεν εὗρόν τινα κατά τε τὰς ἐν τῷ Παλατίῳ βιβλιοθήκας καί τ⟨ιν⟩α[ς] ἐναντίω⟨ς⟩ ἃ ϕανερῶς ⟨οὐκ⟩ ἦν οὗπερ ἐγέγραπτο, ⟨οὔτε⟩ κατὰ τὴν λέξιν, οὔτε κατὰ ⟨τὴν⟩ διάνοιαν…

There are textual difficulties here. Budé, BM, and Jones, op. cit. (n. 1) take Galen's ἔξωθεν as an adverb (‘I found certain books from the Catalogue outside the library’) while Nutton takes it to be a preposition (‘I found certain books outside (i.e. not in) the Catalogue’); I follow this latter reading here. See Budé commentary ad loc. (pp. 65–6) for the case against. Stramaglia, op. cit. (n. 1) proposes ἐκσωθέν⟨τα⟩: ‘Of the books recorded in the so-called Catalogue, I found some preserved in the Palatine library …’ τ⟨ιν⟩α[ς] ἐναντίω⟨ς⟩ is a crux: see below n. 78 for Jones’ alternative reading.

The facts that are germane to the discussion at hand remain, overall, the same: Galen has been able to compare numerous books, including at least some found among the holdings of the Palatine library, with the Catalogue and note some discrepancies, including books that do not appear in the Catalogue and misattributed volumes on the library shelves. At any rate, Galen practically repeats the argument at PA 17: the Palatine library contained various Peripatetic works that were not in the Catalogue.

65 Budé reads ‘… qui étaient inscrits mais avaient disparu’: Κατὰ δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ Θεοϕράστου καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν ἀνδρῶν παλαιῶν μὴ ϕερόμενα κατὰ τους πίνακας, τινὰ δὲ ἐν ἐκείνοις γεγραμμένα μέν, μὴ ϕαινόμενα δ’αὐτά. Although Galen's surprise that catalogued books should be missing would provide an interesting hint at the supposed specificity of the Catalogue to the Palatine collection, the reading here (again following Nutton) seems a better fit for the force of Galen's overall argument: the loss of the Palatine library is all the worse for the fact that it held irreplaceable unique copies of works (as Galen says explicitly at PA 12).

66 Boudon-Millot, op. cit. (n. 1), 80.

67 Budé pp. XIX and 63–4.

68 Plutarch, Sulla 26 τοὺς νῦν ϕερομένους πίνακας. Cf. Pfeiffer, R., History of Classical Scholarship (1968), 273Google Scholar.

69 Quintilian, Inst. 10.1.57.

70 Compare Vitruvius on Aristophanes of Byzantium: De Arch. 7 praef. 4–7. Cf. Too, Y. L., The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World (2010)Google Scholar.

71 As Budé p. 71 agrees: ‘les livres qui n'ont pas été trouvés dans les bibliothèques sont une minorité’. Cf. p. 47.

72 Shelving by genre: e.g. Martial's apparent plea to be admitted into a ‘poetry section’ of the Palatine library, Ep. 5.5. On the question of shelving divisions in Roman libraries see Nicholls, op. cit. (n. 22).

73 PA 18, Fronto, Ep. 4.5.

74 Compare the famous inscribed rules of the library of Pantainos at Athens which specify opening ‘from the first to the sixth hour’ and forbid borrowing: SEG XXI.500.

75 The Budé translation divides up this sentence slightly differently: ‘ceux que j'avais corrigés, les traités des Anciens que j'avais copiés de ma main, et ceux que j'avais composés’. See commentary p. 39.

76 PA 14 specifies the precision of the copying of the punctuation down to the very smallest detail, again strongly implying that Galen himself was able to check his copies against the libraries’ precious originals.

77 PA 28.

78 There are several questions about the nature and condition of the Domus Tiberiana library as revealed in the PA; the subject is too large for a full discussion here. In short, Galen appears to state that it had been full of useful books but had also suffered from neglect, theft and damp.

This passage at PA 18 is corrupt. Nutton and Tucci (op. cit. (n. 3)) conclude that Galen is talking about the library of the Domus Tiberiana here, though Tucci believes that it did not burn in a.d. 192. Part of the problem is a word or phrase that occurs three times in rapid succession in V and appears to be corrupt each time: τας ἐναντίω 16, τὰ δ’ἐναντία 17, τὰ δὲ ἐναντίω 18. Budé amends to the common Galenic adverb ἐναντίως throughout, which is a good logical fit and is followed here (though note n. 40 above on PA 19).

Jones, op. cit. (n. 1), ingeniously unamends BM and Nutton's ἐναντία to the Vlatadon manuscript's ἐν Ἀντίῳ, and suggests that this refers to the library of the imperial villa at Antium (which, in his reading, was severely neglected by the time of the fire). Opinion divides on this ‘Antium’ reading. In short, I have followed all the published texts of BM, Budé, Kotzia and Sotiroudis, and the translation of Thompson and Rothschild, which do not read Antium here.

If we were to accept the Antium reading, however, then the arguments made in this article would still stand: Galen makes it very plain that Rome's imperial public libraries (of which he lists three at PA 18) have been an invaluable source of irreplaceable books, including all those listed in paragraph 13 and many of the Peripatetic scientific volumes listed in 17. The arguments relating to the Catalogue also stand (and the conjecture respecting the Catalogue's and library books’ shared provenance is perhaps strengthened), since Galen seems at 16 to link them particularly to the books in the Palatine library rather than those at Antium, which at any rate was not destroyed by the fire and was in a state of disrepair by a.d. 192 that would have added to the importance of better-kept libraries in Rome itself.

Various articles in press or under review at the time of writing do accept the Antium reading. Stramaglia (op. cit. (n. 1)) argues in favour on the grounds that it is based on an unamended reading of the ms at a point for which no wholly convincing alternative reading can be found. So too do T. Thompson and C. Rothschild (not in their translation, but in an article currently under review which they kindly shared with me). On the other hand, it might be objected (as Budé p. 66 points out) that it seems odd for Galen casually to introduce a separate library in Antium to an account of book losses in Rome. Moreover, the situation of the villa at Antium is not really compatible with Galen's assertion that the location of this library was marshy and low-lying (thus Tucci, op. cit. (n. 3, 2008)); for that matter, neither is Budé's suggestion (p. 74) that this description refers instead to the burned warehouses on the upper Via Sacra. The problem of damp, incidentally, seems to have become a preoccupation of Roman library architects of the early second-century wave of library buildings: libraries such as those of Celsus at Ephesus and Flavia Melitine at Pergamum incorporate air circulation spaces separating the library room from the surrounding earth. Perhaps the experience of buildings like the library described by Galen had served as a lesson to them.

79 Including the libraries of Rogatianus at Timgad, and Hadrian and Pantainos at Athens. See also Claridge, A., ‘Hadrian's lost Temple of Trajan’, JRA 20a (2007), 5494, especially 78–80Google Scholar.

80 NA 13.20.

81 Pace e.g. R. Nicolai, Review of Penny, JocelynSmall Wax Tablets of the Mind, Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity, Athenaeum 88 (2000) Fascicolo I, 343–47Google Scholar: ‘la presenza di tavoli per la consultazione, prevista da alcune ricostruzioni moderne, è giustamente messa in dubbio.’ With regard to this subject, a fourth-century a.d. relief from Ostia (Inv. 130) deserves to be cited in discussion of library furnishings and the mechanics of writing. It shows two writers seated at horizontal tables apparently taking notes into bound wooden writing-tablets while a centrally placed togate figure holding a scroll and standing on a podium makes a gesture of address. An audience sitting behind the writers exhibits a lively reaction. The scene seems to depict a lecture or address of some sort at which the spoken word is being converted into the written word. See L. Del Corso, ‘L'Insegnamento alla luce delle testimonianze iconografiche’, in Huggonard-Roche, H. (ed.), L'enseignement supérieur dans les mondes antiques et médiévaux, Textes et traditions 16 (2008), 307–31Google Scholar at fig. 17 and p. 327. My thanks to Professor A. Stramaglia for providing a copy of this article.

82 Emperors could certainly place the work of favoured authors in their libraries at Rome (see e.g. Suetonius, Tiberius 70.2, Scribonius Largus, Compositiones 97, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.9.2, and Jerome, De vir. ill. 13.1 on Josephus; Anthologia Graeca 7.158 for Hadrian's favour towards Marcellus of Side). Authors could, like Galen, do the same for themselves in provincial libraries (TAM 2.910 (= IGR 3.733) for the medical poet Heraclitus of Rhodiapolis) or have their books included as a mark of civic honour (MAMA 8.418(a–b) for the Aphrodisian tragedian Gaius Julius Longianus so honoured at Halicarnassus in the reign of Hadrian).

83 PA 21: ἀξιούντων μὲν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι ϕίλων ἁπάσας αὐτοῖς πεμϕθῆναι τὰς ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ γεγονυίας πραγματείας ὅπως ἐν βιβλιοθήκῃ δημοσίᾳ στῶσι, καθάπερ καὶ ἄλλοι[ς] τινὲς ἤδη πολλὰ τῶν ἡμετέρων ἐν ἄλλαις πόλεσιν ἔθηκαν.

84 Nicholls, op. cit. (n. 36), 287.

85 On which see e.g. Swain, S., Hellenism and Empire (1998)Google Scholar; Whitmarsh, T., Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: the Politics of Imitation (2001)Google Scholar; Goldhill, S. (ed.), Being Greek under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire (2007)Google Scholar, and in particular T. Whitmarsh, ‘“Greece is the world”: exile and identity in the Second Sophistic’, 269–305.