Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

AUTHOR AND PUBLIC
remained relatively powerless in large centralized societies until the coming of
the printing-press. Once again consideration of the effects of literature returns
us to the questions of its physical medium: the book itself, and the circumstances
under which it was copied and circulated.
4. BOOKS AND PUBLICATION
By 'book' in this section is meant papyrus roll; the change to the codex and its
implications are considered below, section 5. The manufacture of papyrus and
the make-up of the book in roll form have been described in Volume I, 1 and
what is said there applies for the most part, mutatis mutandis, to Roman books.
Something must be added, however, on the subject of terminology. The
ordinary Latin word for book, liber, originally meant 'bark'. Whether it was
used as the equivalent for Greek (JifiAiov because it already meant 'book', sc.
book written on bark (the existence of such books being entirely a matter of
inference from the name), or whether because bark was the native substance
most closely resembling papyrus (which is not indigenous to western Europe)
it is impossible to determine. The specifically Roman •word for book, to which
Greek offers no analogue, was uolumen 'roll'. This remained the term proper
to the book as a physical object; whereas liber might mean (i) 'roll' (= uolumen);
or (ii) a 'book' of a work written to occupy more than one roll, e.g. a 'book'
of Virgil or Livy; or (iii) a 'book' in the sense of a work of literature, e.g. the
Aeneid. This last sense is rare, and in most of the passages taken by lexicographers
and others to represent it, there is at least a tinge of senses (i) or (ii). 2
For a work consisting of more than one liber (sense (ii)) the normal designation
would be libri, as when Cicero refers to his De re publica as his ' books on the
Constitution* {Fin. 2.59 in nostris de re publica libris) or Quintilian to his 'books
on the teaching of oratory' {praef. 1 libros quos. . . de institutione oratoria
scripseram). 3 Use •was also made of such variants as opus 'work' (Ovid, Atnores
epigr. 2, referring to a work in three or five libelli), charta, properly ' papyrus,
paper' (Lucretius 3.10 tuis ex. . .chords'); and of descriptive terms such as
uersus, carmen, poemata, cotnmentarii, epistulae; or paraphrases with "words such
as scribere, dicere, canere, and the like. The use of these periphrastic expressions
is connected with the lack of a universally accepted convention for the identification
of books in the modern manner by title. A convenient alternative to liber
was its diminutive libellus, properly 'small book', used particularly of poetry
(Catullus 1.1, Ovid, Amores epigr. 1, Martial 1 praef., 1.3, Statius, Silvae 1 praef.,
etc.).
On the continuous strip of papyrus forming the book the text was -written
1 2
CHCL 1, ch. 1.
See below, Excursus 1, p. 30.
3
Contrast Vitruv. I praef. 3 his uoluminibus.
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