Sumerian and Akkadian libraries were utilitarian and hard to organize; Greek ones were literary and slightly better catalogued; Roman ones bilingual, mostly literary, and perhaps too much given to showy architecture instead of investment in books. The Library of Alexandria was probably as good as its myth. Early Christians were unusually attached to the codex instead of the scroll, but not uniquely so.
And, although this book is packed full of details supporting that summary, it's a short book. We know of libraries by accident. A clay-tablet one survived the fire and abandonment of a palace; likewise scraps of one were preserved at Pompeii; but libraries take so much maintenance that they die easily. Some are known to have existed only because a letter in another town refers to borrowing a book or scribe from the lost one.
This would be less unnerving if the libraries had been only elitist, little-used buildings, but that doesn't seem to have been true from the Hellenic period on. Bequests were made to provide libraries, books, teachers for whole towns; in at least one case, the bequest provided for teaching both boys and girls. We know people read for fun (antique potboiler novels are tremendously, thunderingly bad). They were built next to the Forum, in Rome, to be useful; and built into the baths and gymnasiums, to be popular. But if cities are an epiphenomenon of population, then libraries are an epiphenomenon of cities, and even more fragile.
There's nothing about ancient Chinese libraries; they're entirely outside Casson's remit. Fair, but frustrating.
ISBN: 0-300-08809-4
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