The Care of Books Part 3

My ill.u.s.tration (fig. 10) is from a fresco at Herculaneum. It will be noticed that each roll is furnished with a ticket (_t.i.tulus_). At the feet of the statue of Demosthenes already referred to, and of that of Sophocles, are _capsae_, both of which show the flexible handles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10. Book-box or capsa.]

I will next collect the information available respecting the fittings used in Roman libraries. I admit that it is scattered and imperfect; but legitimate deductions may, I think, be arrived at from it, which will give us tolerably certain ideas of the appearance of one of those collections.

The words used to designate such fittings are: _nidus_; _forulus_, or more usually _foruli_; _loculamenta_; _pluteus_; _pegmata_.

_Nidus_ needs no explanation. It can only mean a pigeon-hole. Martial uses it of a bookseller, at whose shop his own poems may be bought.

De primo dabit alterove _nido_ Rasum pumice purpuraque cultum Denaris tibi quinque Martialem[71].

Out of his first or second pigeon-hole, polished with pumice stone, and smart with a purple covering, for five denarii he will give you Martial.

In a subsequent epigram the word occurs with reference to a private library, to which the poet is sending a copy of his works.

Ruris bibliotheca delicati, Vicinam videt unde lector urbem, Inter carmina sanctiora si quis Lascivae fuerit locus Thaliae, Hos _nido_ licet inseras vel imo Septem quos tibi misimus libellos[72].

O library of that well-appointed villa whence a reader can see the City near at hand--if among more serious poems there be any room for the wanton Muse of Comedy, you may place these seven little books I send you even in your lowest pigeon-hole.

_Forulus_ or _foruli_ occurs in the following pa.s.sages. Suetonius, after describing the building of the temple of the Palatine Apollo by Augustus, adds, "he placed the Sibylline books in two gilt receptacles (_forulis_) under the base of the statue of Palatine Apollo"[73]; and Juvenal, enumerating the gifts that a rich man is sure to receive if burnt out of house and home, says,

Hic libros dabit, et _forulos_, mediamque Minervam[74].

The word is of uncertain derivation, but _forus_, of which it is clearly the diminutive, is used by Virgil for the cells of bees:

Complebuntque _foros_ et floribus horrea texent[75].

The above-quoted pa.s.sage of Juvenal may therefore be rendered: "Another will give books, and cells to put them in, and a statue of Minerva for the middle of the room."

The word _loculamentum_ is explained in a pa.s.sage of Columella, in which he gives directions for the making of dovecotes:

Let small stakes be placed close together, with planks laid across them to carry cells (_loculamenta_) for the birds to build their nests in, or sets of pigeon-holes made of earthenware[76].

In a second pa.s.sage he uses the same word for a beehive[77]; Vegetius, a writer on veterinary surgery, uses it for the socket of a horse's tooth[78]; and Vitruvius, in a more general way, for a case to contain a small piece of machinery[79]. Generally, the word may be taken to signify a long narrow box, open at one end, and, like _nidus_ and _forulus_, may be translated "pigeon-hole." Seneca, again, applies the word to books in the pa.s.sage I have already translated, and in a singularly instructive manner. "You will find," he says, "in the libraries of the most arrant idlers all that orators or historians have written--bookcases (_loculamenta_) built up as high as the ceiling[80]."

_Pegmata_, for the word generally occurs in the plural, are, as the name implies, things fixed together, usually planks of wood framed into a platform, and used in theatres to carry pieces of scenery or performers up and down. As applied to books "shelves" are probably meant: an interpretation borne out by the _Digest_, in which it is stated that "window-frames and _pegmata_ are included in the purchase of a house[81]."

They were therefore what we should call "fixtures."

A _pluteus_ was a machine used by infantry for protection in the field: and hence the word is applied to any fence, or boarding to form the limit or edge of anything, as a table or a bed. _Plutei_ were not attached so closely to the walls as _pegmata_, for in the _Digest_ they are cla.s.sed with nets to keep out birds, mats, awnings, and the like, and are not to be regarded as part and parcel of a house[82]. Juvenal uses the word for a shelf in his second Satire, where he is denouncing pretenders to knowledge:

Indocti primum, quamquam plena omnia gypso Chrysippi invenias, nam perfectissimus horum est Si quis Aristotelem similem vel Pittacon emit Et iubet archetypos pluteum servare Cleanthas[83].

In the first place they are dunces, though you find their houses full of plaster figures of Chrysippus: for a man of this sort is not fully equipped until he buys a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus, and bids a shelf take care of original portraits of Cleanthes.

This investigation has shewn that three of the words applied to the preservation of books, namely, _nidus_, _forulus_, and _loculamentum_, may be rendered by the English "pigeon-hole"; and that _pegma_ and _pluteus_ mean contrivances of wood which may be rendered by the English "shelving."

It is quite clear that _pegmata_ could be run up with great rapidity, from a very graphic account in Cicero's letters of the rearrangement of his library. He begins by writing to his friend Atticus as follows:

I wish you would send me any two fellows out of your library, for Tyrannio to make use of as pasters, and a.s.sistants in other matters. Remind them to bring some vellum with them to make those t.i.tles (_indices_) which you Greeks, I believe, call [Greek: silluboi]. You are not to do this if it is inconvenient to you[84]....

In the next letter he says:

Your men have made my library gay with their carpentry-work and their t.i.tles (_constructione et sillybis_). I wish you would commend them[85].

When all is completed he writes:

Now that Tyrannio has arranged my books, a new spirit has been infused into my house. In this matter the help of your men Dionysius and Menophilus has been invaluable. Nothing could look neater than those shelves of yours (_illa tua pegmata_), since they smartened up my books with their t.i.tles[86].

No other words than those I have been discussing are, so far as I know, applied by the best writers to the storage of books; and, after a careful study of the pa.s.sages in which they occur, I conclude that, so long as rolls only had to be accommodated, private libraries in Rome were fitted with rows of shelves standing against the walls (_plutei_), or fixed to them (_pegmata_). The s.p.a.ce between these horizontal shelves was subdivided by vertical divisions into pigeon-holes (_nidi_, _foruli_, _loculamenta_), and it may be conjectured that the width of these pigeon-holes would vary in accordance with the number of rolls included in a single work. That such receptacles were the common furniture of a library is proved, I think, by such evidence as the epigram of Martial quoted above, in which he tells his friend that if he will accept his poems, he may "put them even in the lowest pigeon-hole (_nido vel imo_),"

as we should say, "on the bottom shelf"; and by the language of Seneca when he sneers at the "pigeon-holes (_loculamenta_) carried up to the ceiling."

The height of the woodwork varied, of course, with individual taste. In the library on the Esquiline the height was only three feet six inches; at Herculaneum about six feet.

I can find no hint of any doors, or curtains, in front of the pigeon-holes. That the ends of the rolls (_frontes_) were visible, is, I think, quite clear from what Cicero says of his own library after the construction of his shelves (_pegmata_); and the various devices for making rolls attractive seem to me to prove that they were intended to be seen.

A representation of rolls arranged on the system which I have attempted to describe, occurs on a piece of sculpture (fig. 11) found at Neumagen near Treves in the seventeenth century, among the ruins of a fortified camp attributed to Constantine the Great[87]. Two divisions, full of rolls, are shewn, from which a man, presumably the librarian, is selecting one. The ends of the rolls are furnished with tickets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11. A Roman taking down a roll from its place in a library.]

The system of pigeon-holes terminated, in all probability, in a cornice.

The explorers of Herculaneum depose to the discovery of such an ornament there.

The wall-s.p.a.ce above the book-cases was decorated with the likenesses of celebrated authors--either philosophers, if the owner of the library wished to bring into prominence his adhesion to one of the fashionable systems--or authors, dead and living, or personal friends. This obvious form of decoration was, in all probability, used at Pergamon[88]; Pollio, as we have seen, introduced it into Rome: and Pliny, who calls it a novelty (_novitium inventum_), deposes to its general adoption[89]. We are not told how these portraits were commonly treated--whether they were busts standing clear of the wall on the book-cases; or bracketed against the wall; or forming part of its decoration, in plaster-work or distemper.

A suitable inscription accompanied them. Martial has preserved for us a charming specimen of one of these complimentary stanzas--for such they undoubtedly would be in the case of a contemporary--to be placed beneath his own portrait in a friend's library:

Hoc tibi sub nostra breve carmen imagine vivat Quam non obscuris iungis, Avite, viris: _Ille ego sum nulli nugarum laude secundus, Quem non miraris, sed puto, lector, amas.

Maiores maiora sonent: mihi parva locuto Sufficit in vestras saepe redire ma.n.u.s_[90].

Placed, with my betters, on your study-wall Let these few lines, Avitus, me recall: _To foremost rank in trifles I was raised; I think men loved me, though they never praised.

Let greater poets greater themes profess: My modest lines seek but the hand's caress That tells me, reader, of thy tenderness._

The beautiful alto-relievo in the Lateran Museum, Rome, representing an actor selecting a mask, contains a contrivance for reading a roll (fig.

12) which may have been usual in libraries and elsewhere, though I have not met with another instance of it. A vertical support attached to the table on which two masks and a MS. are lying, carries a desk with a rim along its lower edge and one of its sides. The roll is partially opened, the closed portion lying towards the left side of the desk, next the rim.

The roll may be supposed to contain the actor's part[91].

It is much to be regretted that we have no definite information as to the way in which the great public libraries built by Augustus were fitted up; but I see no reason for supposing that their fittings differed from those of private libraries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12. Desk to support a roll while it is being read.]

When books (_codices_), of a shape similar to that with which modern librarians have to deal, had to be accommodated as well as rolls, it is manifest that rectangular s.p.a.ces not more than a few inches wide would be singularly inconvenient. They were therefore discarded in favour of a press (_armarium_), a piece of furniture which would hold rolls (_volumina_) as well as books (_codices_), and was in fact, as I shall shew, used for both purposes. The word (_armarium_) occurs commonly in Cicero, and other writers of the best period, for a piece of furniture in which valuables of all kinds, and household gear, were stowed away; and Vitruvius[92] uses it for a book-case. A critic, he says, "produced from certain presses an infinite number of rolls." In later Latin writers--that is from the middle of the first century A.D.--no other word, speaking generally, occurs.

The jurist Ulpian, who died A.D. 228, in a discussion as to what is comprised under the term _liber_, decides in favour of including all rolls (_volumina_) of whatever material, and then considers the question whether _codices_ come under the same category or not--thereby shewing that in his day both forms of books were in use. Again, when a library (_bibliotheca_) has been bequeathed, it is questioned whether the bequest includes merely the press or presses (_armarium vel armaria_), or the books as well[93].

The Ulpian Library, or rather Libraries, in Trajan's Forum, built about 114 A.D.[94], were fitted up with presses, as we learn from the pa.s.sage in Vopiscus which I have already quoted; and when the ruins of the section of that library which stood next to the Quirinal Hill were excavated by the French, a very interesting trace of one of these presses was discovered.

Nibby, the Roman antiquary, thus describes it:

Beyond the above-mentioned bases [of the columns in the portico] some remains of the inside of the room became visible on the right. They consisted of a piece of curtain-wall, admirably constructed of brick, part of the side-wall, with a rectangular niche of large size in the form of a press (_in foggia di armadio_). One ascended to this by three steps, with a landing-place in front of them, on which it was possible to stand with ease. On the sides of this niche there still exist traces of the hinges, on which the panels and the wickets, probably of bronze, rested[95].