Atticus died, full of years and honors, in the year 32 B.C. If he had only had the consideration to leave some memoirs for posterity, we should have much more satisfactory knowledge than is now possible concerning the relations of Roman authors with their publishers and with the public during the first century before Christ. We have not even, however, any of his letters to Cicero, letters which would of course have had a special interest in making clear the nature of his publishing arrangements with his authors.

In the year 48 B.C. appeared a work whose vitality has proved exceptional, and which, thanks to the school-boys, is to-day, nineteen hundred years after the death of its author, in continued demand. I refer to Cæsar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. This book could certainly have been made a magnificent “property” for its author, but as he was literally intent upon “wanting the earth,” the ownership of one book was hardly worth any special thought. As a fact, we have no details whatever of Cæsar’s publishing arrangements, although we do know that by means of some distributing machinery copies of the Commentaries speedily reached the farthest (civilized) corners of the Roman dominion.

Virgil’s Æneid was, we are told, given to the world through Varius and Tucca, about 18 B.C. The sixth book was read to Augustus and Livia in 22, the year of the death of Marcellus. The publication of the Æneid took place at a time when the machinery for the production and distribution of books was beginning to be adequately organized. It seems evident that it was only after the institution of the Empire that the publishers of Rome were in a position to reach with their editions any wide public outside of Rome and the principal cities of Italy.

About the year 40 B.C. the poet Horace, then twenty-five years old, came to Rome with the hope, as he states, of obtaining a living through literature. His estate at Venusia had been confiscated, owing to his having borne arms at Philippi on the defeated side, and he was now dependent upon his own exertions.[179] He found at Rome a literary circle of growing importance. It was the beginning of the Augustan age, and literature was the fashion with the court circles of the new Empire, and therefore with the society leaders who took the court fashions for their model. Through the kindness of Virgil, the young poet was introduced to Mæcenas, the wealthy statesman whose princely patronage of literature has become proverbial.

The liberality of Mæcenas supplied the immediate needs of the poet, and he appears never to have had an opportunity of finding out whether, apart from the aid of patronage, he could actually have supported himself through the sale of his poems. In fact, a little later, when for a time at least he possesses, through the friendship of Mæcenas, an assured income he appears to have taken the position of refusing to permit his books to be sold, and of writing only for the perusal of his friends.[180]

His first expectancy, however, in regard to the possibilities of a literary career, give grounds for the belief that at the time of the beginning of the Empire the publishing machinery of the capital was already adequately organized, and that the writers whom Horace found in Rome, including Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, Varius, Valgius, and many others, were securing, apart from the gifts of the emperor or of other patrons of literature, some compensation from the reading public. On this point, however, Horace has himself given other evidence, which, if somewhat unsatisfactory concerning the matter of author’s compensation, is at least clear as to the existence of machinery for the making and distributing of books, and which also indicates that his resolution not to offer his books for sale had not been adhered to. He refers to the brothers Sosii as his publishers, and complains that while his works brought gold to them, for their author they earned only fame in distant lands and with posterity.

A complaint so worded is of course perfectly compatible with the existence of a publishing arrangement under which Horace was to receive an author’s share of any profits accruing. Precisely similar complaints are frequent enough to-day when all new books are issued under the protection of domestic copyright and under publishing agreements, and while sometimes an indication that the publisher has managed to secure more than his share of the proceeds of literary labor, they are much more frequently simply the expression of the difference between the author’s large expectations concerning the public demand for his books and the actual extent of such demand.

If publishing statistics could be brought into print, they would show numberless instances in which the author’s calculations concerning the number of copies of their books which the public “could be depended upon” to call for, or “must certainly have called for,” were as much out of the way as have been the estimates of defeated generals as to the numbers of the forces by which they had been overwhelmed. It is certainly to be regretted that the brothers Sosii have not left us some records from which could be gathered their side of the story of their dealings with the court poet. There are instances in later times of firms which have found the honor of being publishers for a poet-laureate bringing more prestige than profit.

The shop of the Sosii was in the Vicus Tuscus, near the entrance to the temple of Janus. In the first book of Horace’s Epistles we find the lines:

Horace finds occasion to inveigh against plagiarists as well as against publishers, and here his indignation is probably better founded. The literature of Rome was, as before pointed out, based on a long series of “appropriations” and adaptations from the Greeks, and the habit, thus early initiated, doubtless became pretty deeply rooted. Virgil complains:

Horace writes:[184]

It seems probable that by this stage in the development of literature, the indignation of an author against plagiarists was not merely on the ground of interference with literary prestige or of the wrongfulness of a writer’s securing honor falsely, but because plagiarism might involve an actual injury to literary property. The first application to literary theft of the term plagium (from which is derived the French plagiaire and the English “plagiarism”), was made by Martial. In the legal terminology of Rome, plagium was used to designate the crime of man-stealing, and a plagiarius was one who stole from another a slave or a child, or who undertook to buy or to sell into slavery one who was legally free. The use of so strong a term to characterize literary “appropriations” is sufficient evidence of the opinion of Martial that such a proceeding was a crime. Martial’s word has been adopted, but later generations of writers do not appear to have fully accepted his views of the criminal nature of the practice.[185]

Simcox is of opinion[186] that the poets of the Augustan age certainly expected to make a certain profit by the sale of their books. They also had expectations of profiting by the gifts of the emperor or of other rich patrons of literature, but there must have been not a few writers who were not fortunate enough to secure the favor either of the court or of the grandees who followed the fashion of the court, and to whom the receipts from the booksellers would have been a matter of no little importance and might frequently have provided only the means for continued sojourn in the capital. It could only have been the receipts from sales that Horace had in mind when he wrote that mediocrity in poets is intolerable, not only to gods and men, but to booksellers, as if to the poets the approval of the booksellers was of more importance than that of either the gods or their fellow-men.[187] It would seem as if either the gods or the publishers must have been too lenient during the past eighteen centuries in their treatment of the poets, for the amount of mediocre verse turned out from year to year is certainly no smaller, considered in proportion to the entire mass of poetry, than it was in the days of Horace.

The scanty references which can be traced in Latin literature of the first century to the relations of authors with the book-trade appear, as might be expected, almost exclusively in the writings of the society poets. In such chronicles as those of Sallust and Livy, narratives written for other purposes than for literary prestige or for bookselling profits, and which had perhaps almost as much to do with the politics of the day (“present history”) as with the history of the State (“past politics”), there was naturally no place for such an insignificant detail as the arrangements of the authors for placing their books upon the market. References to booksellers would have been equally out of place in such a national epic as the Æneid or a great didactic poem like the Georgics.

What little is known, therefore, concerning the bookselling methods of the time must be gathered from the casual allusions found in the verses of such writers as Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, and Martial, and particularly of the last-named.

When (about 7 A.D.) Ovid was banished by the aged Augustus to Tomi, a dreary frontier town somewhere near the mouth of the Danube, he complains that he finds there no libraries, no booksellers. He is surrounded by the din of weapons and the tedious talk of soldiers. He has no single associate who is interested in literature, or whose taste or judgment he could call upon for literary counsel.

From expressions like these, one can gather an impression of the circles the gay society poet had left behind him in his mourned-for Rome—the libraries and book-shops, where he could always find literary friends to whose appreciative criticism he could submit his latest lines. The picture recalls the literary resorts of London in the time of Wycherley and Congreve.

Ovid sends one of his productions to a friend in Rome, whom he requests to supervise its publication. He writes:

“O thou who art an instructor and a priest among the learned! I commend to your care this my offspring. Bereft of its parent (an exile), it must place its dependence upon you its guardian. Three of my (literary) progeny have preceded this. See that my future productions are given to the world through yourself.”[188]

Martial presents himself to the public with a cordial appreciation of his own merits:

“This is he whom you read and whom you seek—Martial, famous throughout the world for his brilliant volumes of epigrams.” He goes on to say:

“Lest, however, you should perchance not know where I am for sale, and should go astray and wander over the whole city, you shall be made sure of your way by my directions.” He then adds the direction:

“Look for Secundus, the freedman of the learned citizen Lucensis, (you will find him) behind the threshold of Pax and the forum of Pallas.”

Secundus appears to have been the Tauchnitz of his day, and to have prepared editions in compact form for travellers:

“You who desire to have my books with you wherever you are, and to make them the companions of your long journeys, buy those which have been put up in compact form” (literally, “which the parchment compresses into small pages”).

Martial was apparently a chronic grumbler, and the record of his various complaints about his publishers and his public has been of not a little service in throwing light upon certain details of the publishing methods of his time. He was evidently one of the writers who kept a close watch on the receipts from the sales of his books. He maintained that a poet was perfectly justified in refusing to give presentation copies, because these interfered with the receipts from his booksellers.

He writes, for instance, to his friend Lupercus:

Martial takes occasion to recommend to another acquaintance (but on an entirely different ground) the propriety of purchasing rather than appropriating his productions.

He writes to a certain Fidentinus:

It is possible that Martial intends by this to suggest to Fidentinus the purchase of the author’s “rights” in these verses, “‘rights,’ which he was willing to sell for a price.” It is more probable, however, that he wanted to shame the plagiarist at least into the buying of some copies.

Martial writes in a similar strain to Quintus:

It was Martial’s idea that the proper use of presentation copies was not for needy friends but for influential patrons, from whom substantial acknowledgments could be looked for in the shape of honoraria. He begs the court chamberlain, Parthenius, to bring his modest little book (timida brevisque charta) to the attention of the Emperor.[194] He asks Faustinus to give a copy to Marcellinus,[195] and begs Rufus to present two copies to Venulejus.[196]

The hopes of the author in connection with these presentation copies are indicated by such lines as the following:

Or by these:

It is evident that a book frequently secured through such personal distribution on the part of the author a certain circulation and publication before copies were placed upon the bookstands, or before it was given into the hands of any bookseller acting as its publisher. Haenny is of opinion that the anxiety of authors like Martial to come into relations with patrons and to secure from them honoraria may be taken as indicating that they could depend upon no receipts from the booksellers. It seems to me that another interpretation is equally plausible. We find an author like Martial needy, eager for money, taking pains to cultivate the favor of the wealthy and the influential in the hopes of securing benefits at their hands. We find him also doing all in his power to push the sale of his books through the booksellers, telling the public where to go and how much they will have to pay, himself writing the publishing announcements of his new books, and in every way evincing the keenest interest in the sales secured for them. It seems natural enough to conclude that he derived a direct business advantage from these sales, and such a conclusion is in accord with what we know of the character of the man, and is borne out by various references in his writings.

In one epigram[198] Martial laments that no one of his readers has felt moved, in return for the gratification secured from his writings, to make him a present such as Virgil received from Mæcenas: tantum gratis pagina nostra placet, an expression which has been interpreted as indicating that this author received no return either direct or indirect from those buying his books. In another utterance, however, he mourns his loss of receipts when for a long time he has published no new thing, but even then he considers that the loss to the public has been much more serious.[199]

In thus speaking of his indifference to the number of his readers, he appears to have either forgotten, or as a matter of affectation to have ignored, the fact that while a large sale for a particular book already paid for by the publisher, could not increase the author’s gains for that particular work, it would certainly put him in a position to secure a higher price from the publisher for his next similar work.

In this way the author would have a very direct pecuniary interest in securing the largest possible number of readers even for books which had been purchased outright by the publisher.

A. Schmidt is one of the students of the subject who believes there is evidence to show that, according to the usual practice, the author received compensation from the publisher not in the form of a royalty, but as an advance payment on the delivery of the manuscript or on the publication of the book.[200]

Among other quotations he cites the following:

The reader, however much pleased with the poem given, is supposed to be expecting a few additional verses; but the usurer Lupus is calling upon the poet for his money, and the poet’s children are crying for bread. (Therefore) O reader, make payment (to me, in need, from whom you have received benefit). (What!) You make no response. You pretend (not to understand). Farewell!—(“I have no use for you,” would be the modern slang.)

The passage presents difficulties, and has been variously interpreted. Schmidt reads for “solve” “salve.” I base my reading on the text given by Haenny.

In another epigram he notes that the edition of his Xenii could be bought from his publisher, Tryphon, for four sesterces (the equivalent of about twelve and a half cents).

He grumbles at the price as being too high, contending that Tryphon could have secured a fair profit from half the amount. He adds: “These verses, O reader, you will, however, find convenient for presents for your friends, at least if your purse is as scantily furnished as is my own.”

Here we have a reproach (which may also serve as a suggestion) to the reader. “You have sent me no gift [or honorarium] as an acknowledgment [of the pleasure given to you]. Others may be deceived by your words and your smiling countenance [into believing you to be a fair-minded man who would recognize his obligations]. To me it is evident you are a dissembler.” (The term is apparently used here to describe one shirking an obligation).

Martial is quite clear in his mind that no one who has read his productions and has not felt an indebtedness to their author, and who has not taken measures to discharge the same, can be an honorable man.

“My book gives so much pleasure at no cost” (to the receiver).

“It is said that (even in distant) Britain my verses are sung. What advantage is that? [to me]. My purse knows nothing of it.”

Such a complaint may be interpreted in one of several ways. The author may have had payment for his Italian editions, but have been unable to exercise control over unauthorized issues of his books in distant parts of the empire; or he may have sold to his distributing publisher, Tryphon, all rights in the verses, in which case the direct advantage of extended sales would accrue only to the publisher; or there may have been no actual sales in Britain, but single copies carried by officers or travellers may have found their way there, and their presence, referred to in correspondence or by returning travellers, have given to the author the impression that a large reading public in the far north was appreciating his poetry. A very slight reference would serve to excite the imagination of so self-confident an author as Martial.

Martial seems to have been in the habit, not unknown to modern writers, and particularly to English writers, of pitting one publisher against another, in order to secure the largest bid for a new work. At one time he had no less than four publishers in charge of the sale of his works, Tryphon, Atrectus, Polius, and Secundus.

The last named issued a special pocket edition of the Epigrams.

Atrectus, Secundus, and Tryphon have already been referred to. To the fourth, Quintus Valerianus Polius, had it seems been given over the earlier productions of the poet, which he terms his juvenilia. He commends Polius to the reading public in the following lines:

“The trifles that I scribbled in the callow days of my youth, productions which I myself hardly remember, these you may secure (if you have a grudge against your leisure and are willing to waste a few hours) from Polius, through whose care my trifles are preserved from oblivion.”

It seems probable that Atrectus gave special attention to the more elaborate and artistic editions, such as are to-day rather clumsily described as editions de luxe. It is in his shop that the volumes are to be found with the ornate purple covers. As far as can be judged from the references, Atrectus, Polius, and Secundus had simply a local trade. Tryphon, on the other hand, we know to have possessed a publishing and distributing machinery. As Haenny remarks, it was no small matter to provide with Martial’s writings not only Rome, but Italy, the provinces, and the outlying corners of the empire. While he was still a beginner in literature, Martial had to be satisfied with the services of Polius, who continued later to keep in sale the juvenilia. It was only after the poet had become known in the fashionable literary world that he was able to secure the co-operation of a leading publisher like Tryphon.

If we were to-day referring to such a publishing relation, we should speak of securing the imprint of the publisher. As has been explained, however, the practice of associating with a work the name of its publisher began with printed books. The Roman publisher sent out his manuscript copies with no indication of the address of the shop in which they had been prepared.

The poet tells us that he prepared the advertisements for the booksellers, putting these in the form of epigrams, but not neglecting to specify the form and price of each book as well as the place where it was offered for sale.

The idea of an epigrammatic advertisement recalls the announcement (identical with the rhyming title-page) of the first edition of Lowell’s Fable for Critics.

It is a pity that one of Martial’s advertisements could not have been preserved to compare with the above, which strikes one as quite Martialesque in its general style.

According to Schmidt,[207] Martial’s activities in connection with the sale of his books did not end even with the preparation of the advertisements. In certain cases he was himself engaged in finding buyers for copies. It is probable that such author’s copies formed part of the compensation paid by the publisher for the manuscript, and while by the wealthier authors these would be bestowed “with compliments” upon their friends, the needy writers like Martial would be compelled to turn them into cash. In the eighteenth century in London we find a similar condition of things in the accounts of what was then called publishing “by subscription,” when the needy author would, with his hat in one hand and his subscription list in the other, wait upon his “gracious patron” in expectation of an order for so many copies of his new volume at a guinea or more each.

In spite of the careful training given to their copyists by a few high-class publishers like Atticus, the complaints of inaccurate and slovenly texts, libri mendosi, were frequent. In order to be really trustworthy, each individual copy of the edition ought, of course, to have been carefully collated with and read verbatim by the original, but for an edition of any size, prepared as rapidly as we are told some of them were, such thorough verification was of course impracticable. Martial states[208] that a poem of his (we infer that he means an edition of the poem), comprising 540 lines, had been produced in one hour, hæc una peragit hora nec tantum nugis serviet ille meis. Such work would of course have been done by employing one or more readers to dictate to a number of copyists. The number of copies in the edition is not stated. It could only have been on rare occasions that the author himself would undertake to correct the copies. Martial speaks of doing such correcting work in an exceptional case.[209]

Cicero was evidently exacting concerning the accuracy of his copies. He tells Atticus that by no means must any copies of the treatise De Officiis be allowed to go out until they had been carefully corrected.

We find an occasional reference to a “press-corrector” known to Atticus and Cicero by his Greek name Διορθωτήρ. As the author, except in rare cases, did not get his manuscript again into his hands after this had gone to his publisher, and saw his work again only when the edition was completed and about to be distributed, he was saved from the temptation to make “betterments” by omissions or additions. All such revision he had attended to with due care before handing over his manuscript as “ready for publication,” and authors and publishers of classic times were thus saved the vexation of “extra corrections,” which so frequently forms a serious addition to the expense account and to the annoyance account of modern book-making.

The risks of errors in the transcription must certainly have been materially increased if in the larger publishing establishments the practice was followed of writing from dictation, one “reader” supplying simultaneous “copy” to a number of scribes. It seems probable that in no other way would it have been practicable to produce with sufficient speed and economy the editions required, and I find myself in accord with Birt in the conclusion that dictating was the method generally followed, at least in the more important establishments and for the larger editions. The scribes must of necessity have had a scholarly training, and ought also to have possessed some familiarity with the texts to which they were listening; while with the most skilful and scholarly scribes a careful revision of their copies would have been essential.

Haenny is of opinion that dictation was rarely if ever employed. He lays stress on the fact that the term employed by Cicero in referring to the multiplication of copies was describere, and he contends that this stands simply for copying and cannot be translated as writing from dictation.[210]

One indication of the size of the editions prepared of new books is given in the many references to the various uses found for the “remainders” or unsold copies. The most frequent fate of unsuccessful poetry was for the wrapping of fish and groceries, while large supplies of surplus stock found their way from the booksellers to the fires of the public baths.[211] Cooks also were large buyers of remainders of editions. An author who was voluminous and who had not been able to secure a publisher, might even, as the wags suggested, find it convenient to be burned upon a pile of his own manuscripts. It is evident that in these earlier days of publishing it was no easier than at present for authors or publishers to calculate with accuracy the extent of the public interest in their productions, while it is also probable that then as now an author would rather pay for the making of an abundant supply than incur the dreadful risk of not having enough copies to meet the immediate demand.

While the Augustan age witnessed a decided development in the literary interests of the Roman community, and while the organization of such bookselling establishments as those of Atticus, Tryphon, and the Sosii gave to authors the needed machinery for bringing their writings before the public, it is probable that for the larger number of the writers of the time the receipts from the books were very inconsiderable.

As before pointed out, question has in fact been raised by more than one student of the subject as to whether the Roman authors secured from the sales of their books any money return at all. Of the writers who find no satisfactory evidence for such returns, Haenny is by far the most important. I am myself, however, inclined to accept the conclusions of Birt, Schmitz, Géraud, and others to the effect that Roman authors, from the time of Cæsar down, were able to secure from the publishers or booksellers through whom their books were sold some portion of the proceeds of such sales. The absence of any protection under the law for either author or publisher, the competition of unauthorized editions, the competition (of a different kind) of books published solely for the amusement or the literary satisfaction of their wealthy or fashionable authors, and written without any desire for money return, and the lack of adequate publishing and distributing machinery, unquestionably all operated to make the compensation of such Roman authors as, like Martial, needed the money, fragmentary, uncertain, and at best but inconsiderable. The weight of the evidence, however, seems to me certainly to favor the conclusion that compensation there was, and that it served as one of the inducements for authorship as a career (or as a partial occupation), and served also to attract to the capital (where alone publishing facilities could be secured) literary aspirants from the rest of Italy and from the provinces. Schmitz gives his views as follows[212]:

Mihi quoque persuasum est, plurimos auctores Romanos gloriæ tantum ac honoris causa scripta sua bibliopolis divulganda tradidisse, quod tamen non impedit, quominus illi interdum pretium a bibliopolis acceperint. Et vere acceperunt.

In Rome, as centuries before in Greece, the compensation for stage-rights and the rewards for playwrights were much more assured and more satisfactory than any that could be secured by writers of books. Comedy writers like Plautus and Terence were able to sell their plays to the Ædiles. Haenny contends that the payments made by the Ædiles ought not strictly to be described as given for the purchase of the plays, but as a recognition on the part of the community, made through its official representatives, of a service rendered—a recognition that took the shape of an honorarium. I imagine the playwrights cared very little what the arrangement was called as long as they got the money. As a fact, however, it was the business of the Ædiles to provide plays for the public theatres, and I do not see why the arrangements made by them with Plautus and Terence did not constitute as definite an acknowledgment on the part of the State of the rights of dramatic authors as was the case with similar arrangements made fifteen hundred years later with Molière or Beaumarchais by the State manager of the Théâtre Français.

Schmitz goes on to say:

Sin autem scripta ab auctoribus cuiusvis generis vendebantur, non video cur non bibliopolæ quoque huic illive auctori pro scriptis certam mercedem solverint.

Is it likely, he contends, that Plautus and Terence, having been paid for their stage-rights (which they practically transferred or sold to the State), would have been satisfied to hand over to the publishers, without compensation, the book-rights of these same plays, the popularity of which had already been tested?

It seems to me possible, however, that in this contention Schmitz proves too much. The publisher might take the ground that a play which had been paid for by the Ædiles for the public welfare had become public property and belonged to the common domain, and that the author had surrendered or assigned to the State such rights in it as he had possessed. Such a theory would have given to the publisher a fair pretext for declining to pay compensation or honorarium for any play that had already been paid for by the Ædiles.

A similar suggestion was made as late as 1892 in the case of the official poems written by Tennyson as poet-laureate. It was contended that the nation paid to the laureate an annual stipend as a specific consideration for the production of poems on certain official occasions, and that the poems thus paid for were the property of the nation. This theory did not prevent the laureate from securing, first from the publication in a monthly, and later from a reissue (with other pieces) in book-form, a large compensation for his royal birthday odes and jubilee hymns. I am inclined to think, however, that if the question had been put to the test, the courts would have decided that the copyright of these productions had become vested in the nation, and that the poems belonged to the public domain.

In calling attention to the frequently quoted twenty-fourth epigram of Martial, Schmitz says: