Book Description

Excerpt from Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome The idea of founding public libraries in the capital of the Roman Empire originated with Julius Caesar: the actual realization of this idea was effected by Augustus. In the era of peace, so auspiciously dawning but soon so ruthlessly disturbed, none of the dictator's plans for the development of Rome was more significant than that of instituting libraries for public patronage. Caesar had doubtless long since learned to appreciate the value of the public libraries already established in important literary centers in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Greece, and could therefore easily foresee the function they were destined to perform among the Romans themselves. A twofold motive on Caesar's part is set forth by Suetonius:' first, to reduce all existing codes of civil law to a more simplified form by extracting only the essential features and combining them in a select series of legal documents; and, secondly, to throw open to public use as many libraries' as possible, both Greek and Latin, the duty of organizing and managing them to devolve upon Marcus Terentius Yarro. Before so worthy an undertaking could be executed, however, political conditions suddenly changed. Caesar was assassinated, and Varro, likewise thwarted by his enemies, suffered at the hands of the proscriptionists - events which augured ill for the furtherance of literary interests at Rome. But, fortunately, the affairs of the new Empire were to be administered by a successor whose ambition lay in the direction of literary as well as political supremacy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.