I have already referred to the influence of the French language in Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century as presenting a somewhat similar case; but the influence upon German thought and German literature of the French language and literature, rendered fashionable under the Court of Frederick the Great, was of course slight and superficial as compared with the part played in the Roman world by the language and the thought of the Greeks.

Towards the end of the second century Carthage became of literary as well as commercial importance. Latin was the language of administration, and the literary culture of Carthage took upon itself, therefore, a Latin rather than a Greek form.[277] Among the authors who gave form, each in his own very distinctive manner, to the literary school of Carthage were Fronto and Apuleius, and a generation later the Father of the African Church, the theologian Tertullian.

Fronto’s books appear to have been made in Carthage, but were certainly on sale with Roman dealers, and the same was doubtless the case with the witty and popular Fables and Metamorphoses of Apuleius, but the evidence in regard to a publishing trade in Carthage is purely inferential. Aulus Gellius, writing about 170, speaks of picking up in a second-hand book-shop in Brundisium a volume from which he quotes a pretty story. The incident was probably imaginary, for, as Simcox points out, the story was taken from the elder Pliny; but the reference shows that the business of the bookseller was, at the date specified, already sufficiently systematized to support, even in the smaller towns, second-hand book dealers.

It was evident that by the close of the first century the machinery for the making and the distribution of books was sufficiently well organized to secure for authors the opportunity of a world-wide influence. It seems probable, however, that the works which at this date obtained for themselves the widest circulation and influence were not those of living writers, but were still the classics which Greece had originated, but which were so largely given to the world through Rome.

In the fourth century a certain Firmicus Maternus published an astrological work entitled Mathesis. The work was dedicated to the proconsul Mavertius Lollianus, who had suggested its preparation, and to him also the author appears to have assigned the control of the publication, with the curious instruction that the two final books (out of the eight of which the work was composed) must by no means be permitted to come into the hands of the general public (vulgum profanum), but that the reading of these should be restricted to those who had led holy and priestly lives.[278]

Birt, who is my authority for the incident, does not make clear what means were available for the proconsul by which to enforce this special and difficult discrimination among readers. Birt cites the case, however, as an evidence of the control that could be exercised, and that from time to time was exercised, by the government over the circulation of literature. It is certain, he says, that even the very considerable increase in the facilities for the reproduction of books did not prevent the authorities from undertaking to stop the sale of, and to confiscate, works which, for one reason or another, might work detriment to the State, or which conflicted with the personal interest of the ruler. The earliest example on record of a confiscation dates back to the time when the Athenian Republic was at its height. In the year 411 B.C., as mentioned in the chapter on Greece, the writings of the philosopher Protagoras were burned on the Agora, while the philosopher himself was held to trial for heresy.[279]

The emperors of Rome possessed, of course, a much more unquestioned authority and a more effective machinery for the suppression of doctrines and for the confiscation of books than belonged to the shifting authorities of Athens, and there are examples of a number of imperial decrees for literary confiscation, some of which were based on the real or apparent interests of the State, while not a few can be credited to personal motives.

The first instance of the kind was the order of Augustus for the burning of 2000 copies of certain pseudo-Sibylline books. Those charged with the task were directed not only to take all the stock that could be found in the book-shops, but to make thorough search also for all copies existing in private collections.[280] Caligula attempted a more difficult task, when, according to Suetonius, he undertook to suppress the writings of Homer—cogitavit de Homeri carminibus abolendis.[281] He also gave orders, says the historian, which were fortunately only partly carried out, to have destroyed all the writings and all the busts of Virgil and of Livy contained in the libraries. Tiberius ordered that the writings of a certain historian of the time of Augustus should be abolished, abolita scripta, by which we may properly understand simply that the copies were to be taken out of all public libraries.[282]

The rigorous measures adopted by Domitian to discourage the sale of the history of Hermogenes of Tarsus, by crucifying the publisher and all the booksellers who had copies in stock, have already been referred to.[283] This history was found objection to on the score of certain designs contained in it, propter quasdam figuras. Two other works which failed to secure the approval of this Emperor were the Laudations by Junius Rusticus and Herennius Senecio of Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. The two books, that is, all the copies of them that could be secured, were burned in the Forum after having been solemnly condemned under a senatus consultum. Senecio was nevertheless able to preserve his own copy.[284]

Not a few of the edicts of confiscation were, however, evidently carried out by a house to house visitation, extending at least to all domiciles known to contain collections of books. Diocletian caused to be collected and destroyed all the ancient manuscripts in Egypt, “which had to do with the chemistry of quicksilver and gold,” περὶ χημείας ἀργυροῦ καὶ χρυσοῦ, i. e., with the subject of alchemy.[285] The teachers in Africa of the doctrines of the Manichæans were also ordered to burn their books. The edict of Diocletian, issued 303 A.D., directing the persecution of the Christians, also provided for the destruction of the Christian Scriptures. According to Burckhardt, many Christians came forward with the acknowledgment that they possessed copies of the Scriptures, and, refusing to deliver the same, suffered the martyrdom for which they sought.[286]

Constantine permitted Arius to live unmolested, but his writings were, whenever found, committed to the flames, and any one concealing copies was liable to death. In 448, the Emperor Theodosius issued an edict for the destruction of all works the influence of which was opposed to the Christian faith, an instruction which, if it had been faithfully executed, would have annihilated a large portion of the world’s literature. Among other writers the loss of whose works, excepting only a few fragments, was probably due to the edict, was Porphyry of Tyre, who died about 300 A.D., and who was the ablest of the later scholarly opponents of the Christian doctrines.

St. Jerome relates that a certain Pammachius attempted to recall and to cancel almost immediately after publication the edition of Jerome’s controversial letters against the monk Jovinian, but that his efforts were unsuccessful, for copies of the book had already been distributed in every province.

The legislation of imperial Rome, which, as we have seen, made no specific provision for the protection of the rights of authors, also omitted to institute any measures for the public supervision of books. It was under the general provisions of the criminal law that the publication of writings on certain special subjects was prevented or was punished, and that the authors, publishers, and sometimes even the possessors of the works regarded as injurious to individuals or as likely to cause detriment to the State, became subject to penalties the severity of which varied with the times.[287] Several of the imperial edicts characterized libellous publications as acts of lese-majesté or treason.[288]

It would not be in order to bring to a close this sketch of the history of literary property under the rule of the Romans, without reference to the contribution made by Roman jurists to the analysis of its origin and nature, although such contribution was but slight. The theories and conclusions of these jurists are of interest not on the ground of their having had any effect on the status of literary production throughout the Empire, but on account of the far-reaching influence of Roman jurisprudence upon the conceptions and the legislation of the mediæval and of the modern world.

As Klostermann points out, the Roman jurists interested themselves in the subject of property in an intellectual or immaterial creation rather as a matter of theoretical speculation than as one calling for legislation; and, as we have already seen, there is no record of any such legislation, imperial or municipal, having been instituted during the existence of the Roman State. Some of the earlier discussions as to the nature of property in formulated ideas appear to have turned upon the question as to whether such property should take precedence over that in the material which happened to be made use of for the expression of the ideas.

The disciples of Proculus (a lawyer living at about 50 A.D.) maintained that the occupation of alien material, so as to make of it a new thing, gave a property right to him who had reworked or reshaped it; while the school of Sabinus (who was himself a contemporary of Proculus) insisted that the ownership of the material must carry with it the title to whatever was produced upon the material. Justinian, or rather, I understand, Tribonianus, writing in the name of the Emperor (about 520 A.D.), took a middle ground, following the opinion of Gaius. Tribonianus concluded, namely, that the decision must be influenced by the possibility of restoring the material to its original form, and more particularly by the question as to whether the material or that which had been produced upon it were the more essential. The original opinion of Gaius appears to have had reference to the ownership of a certain table upon which a picture had been painted, and the decision was in favor of the artist. This decision (dating from about 160 A.D.) contains an unmistakable recognition of immaterial property, not, to be sure, in the sense of a right to exclusive reproduction, but in the particular application, that, while material property depends upon the substance, immaterial property, that is to say property in the presentation of ideas, depends upon the form.[289]

The opinion, as given in the Institutes of Justinian, is as follows:

Si quis in aliena tabula pinxerit, quidam putant tabulam picturæ cedere, aliis videtur picturam, qualiscunque sit, tabulæ cedere; sed nobis videtur melius esse, tabulam picturæ cedere. Ridiculum est enim picturam Apellis vel Parrhasii in accessionem vilissimæ tabulæ cedere.[290]

It is certainly curious that a question of this kind, first presented for consideration in the middle of the first century, should have been still under discussion nearly five centuries later.

An application of this same principle is presented in legal usage to-day, under which authors and artists are empowered to take possession of reproductions of their works even against innocent third parties or against the owners of the material on which such reproductions have been made.

The fact that papyrus rather than parchment was the material adopted by authors during the fruitful period of Latin literature, had of course an important bearing in the continued existence of their works, for papyrus was an extremely perishable substance. Damp, worms, moths, mice, were all deadly enemies of papyrus rolls, but even if, through persistent watchfulness, these were guarded against, the mere handling of the rolls, even by the most careful readers, brought them rapidly to destruction. We find, therefore, that a constant renewal of the rolls was required in all public libraries, just as to-day our librarians find it necessary to replace their supply of copies of books of popular authors which have become worn out by handling. The ancient librarian had, however, a more arduous and a more expensive task with his renewals. A reference of Pliny gives us an impression of the average age that could be looked for for a papyrus book.

“Ita sint longinqua monumenta; Tiberi Gaique Gracchorum manus. Apud Pomponium Secundum vatem civemque clarissimum vidi annos fere post ducentos; jam vero Ciceronis ac divi Augusti Vergilique sæpe numero videmus.”[291]

We understand, therefore, that (with certain precautions) a book could last for one hundred years, but that a volume two centuries old was for Pliny something so exceptional as to be almost incredible.

The papyrus rolls were of course exposed to the most serious friction at the opening portions which were in immediate contact with one of the rollers where two rollers were employed, and which in any case were exposed to the most frequent handling. As a consequence, it was the initial page of books which first came to destruction, and of not a few works which were otherwise in readable condition these initial pages were lacking. A quotation from Eusebius, cited by Birt, shows that it was even a matter of surprise when a copy of the works of such a writer as Clement was found complete, with title and preface.[292]

In many of the libraries, it was also not uncommon to find that the different rolls of a particular work had been wrongly numbered in one of the transcribings, and had consequently been mixed up as to their arrangement. It was not infrequent even to find the rolls of the works of different authors jumbled together, in such a manner that no little scholarly skill was requisite for their proper understanding and correct rearrangement.[293]

The papyrus manuscripts from the Athenian, Alexandrian, and Roman workshops, as far as they have escaped destruction through imperial edicts, civil wars, and invasions, were permitted to fall into decay, and were not replaced. By the close of the fourth century, the great collections of papyrus rolls, in which were contained the classics of Greek and Roman literature, had practically disappeared. For later book-making, parchment replaced papyrus, a change which, if it had occurred two centuries, or even one century earlier, would, in spite of edicts of destruction, have preserved for future generations not a few of the lost “classics.” A small proportion of the Greek and Roman writings, in copies dating from the later literary period, had been placed on parchment, and some few of these have been handed down to us through the intervention of Christian monks, who had taken possession of the parchment for church documents or codices, but who in their own inscribing had not destroyed, or had only partially destroyed, the original writing. I have already made reference to this practice of making one piece of parchment do a double service, and to the name of palimpsest, by which such a doubly inscribed parchment was known.

In the early part of the fourth century several factors came into operation which checked the development and finally undermined the existence of the publishing and bookselling trade of Rome. First among these factors I should name the growing power and influence of the Christian Church.

In the centuries which elapsed between the downfall of the Roman Empire and the invention of printing, the centres of intellectual activities and of scholarly interests were undoubtedly the churches and the monasteries, and it is probable that if it had not been for the educational work done by the priests and monks, and for the interest taken by them (however inadequately and ignorantly) in the literature of the past, the fragments of this literature which have been preserved for to-day would have been much less considerable and more fragmentary than they are. As I understand the history, the literary interests of the world owe very much to the fostering care given to them by the Church, or by certain portions of the Church, during the troublous centuries of the early Middle Ages. During these centuries the Church not only supplied a standard of morality, but kept in existence whatever intellectual life there was.

At the time, however, when the Christian Church was rapidly extending its influence throughout the Roman Empire, and during the century after it had succeeded in winning over to the faith the emperors themselves, and had become the official Church of the Empire, the evidence goes to show that its influence was decidedly detrimental to the literary productiveness of the age and also inimical to the preservation of the literary masterpieces of previous ages.

As the range of membership of the Church increased, so that it came to include a larger proportion of men of cultivation and scholarship, there came into existence a considerable body of theological and controversial writings, the production of which has gone on steadily increasing until very recent times. But the reading of the works of “pagan” writers was discouraged, and the manuscripts themselves were first neglected, and later suffered to fall into decay. Such writing as was done by the Christian scribes was in the main limited to the transcribing of the books then accepted as scriptures and to the copying of prayers and hymns. The mental activities of both writers and readers were turned in other directions. Scholars gave their scholarship and trained copyists their clerical skill to the service of the Church. It was not merely that the Church took possession for its own work of so large a proportion of the best minds of the time. It directly discouraged then, as it did for many centuries thereafter, the study of any literature other than ecclesiastical. The writers of Greece and Rome were, for Christian believers, if not heretical, at least frivolous and time-wasting. Life was short and Christian duties left no free hours for Homer or Virgil, Plato or Epictetus. By the time of the accession of Constantine (306 A.D.) the book-shops on the Argiletum had lessened in number and in importance, the connections of the Roman publishers with the great towns of the provinces were for the most part broken off, and, most important of the signs of the times, there are no new books and no writers at work. Literary productiveness has for the time ceased.

The second cause which contributed to the destruction of the book-trade of Rome was the decision of Constantine to remove the capital of the Empire to Byzantium. The transfer was completed in the year 328, and for a number of years after that date there was no imperial Court in Rome. The “world of fashion” had migrated to the Bosphorus, and with the Court officials, the judges, the advocates, and the military leaders, had gone a large proportion of the active-minded men of the old capital, the men of intellectual interests. There remained the Bishop of Rome (soon to become Primate of the Latin Church) and his increasing staff of ecclesiastics, but to them, as pointed out, the literature of the classical period was either a matter of indifference or an abomination. The direction of the education of the young Romans must soon have come into the hands of the priests, and this would have increased their power to crush out the interest in, and the remembrance of, the literary productions of paganism.

A third factor which hastened the decline of Latin literature and the extinction of the book-trade of Rome, was the revival of the use of Greek, which, after the establishment of the capital at Constantinople, speedily became the official language of the Empire and the speech of the Court and of polite society generally.

I do not forget that there shortly came into existence an Empire of the West, under which Rome resumed (although with sadly reduced splendor) its position as an imperial capital. But the western emperors appear on the whole to have been a feeble lot, and they certainly did not succeed in gathering about them any number of men of “light and learning,” nor is there evidence of any substantial revival of the social or intellectual activities of Rome. The times continued troublous. The State had to fight almost continuously for its existence, and the fighting was not infrequently near at home, the city itself being from time to time menaced. The “peace of the Empire” existed no longer. It was not a time for the development of literature, and literature, excepting a small body of doctrinal and controversial publications of the Church, practically disappeared.

After the expansion, in 379, of the prerogatives of the Roman See, the literary activities of the ecclesiastics increased, but it does not appear that any bookselling machinery was required or employed for the sale or distribution of the works of devotion, of doctrine, or of controversy. This distribution was doubtless managed directly by the priests themselves. The capture of Rome by the Goths under Alaric, in 410, brought destruction upon the accumulated wealth and trade of the city, but it is not probable that the tradespeople whose shops were despoiled included any considerable number of booksellers, as, according to my understanding, the trade in books had in great part disappeared some years before. The Goths doubtless had, however, not a little to do with the destruction of as many of the classic manuscripts as still existed in the public libraries or in private collections. It is certain that they would have had no appreciation for and no use for any manuscripts that fell into their hands. The more recent and still inconsiderable collections of Church manuscripts shared, of course, in the general destruction, but these (apart from a few relics) could easily be replaced.

The Goths disappeared like the rolling back of a flood after its work of devastation has been completed; and the insignificant series of Emperors of the West resumed their sway over the ruins of the imperial city.

The city was restored to a semblance of its old self; but we find no further traces of the production or of the sale of books. It is probable that when, in 476, Odoacer, chief of the Herulians, gave the final blow to the Empire of the West, and took possession of its capital, he found there, outside of the few treatises and books of worship of the Church, practically nothing in the shape of literature.

The rule of the Herulian was short; in less than twenty years he was overthrown by the Goth, and Theodoric came into possession of Rome and undertook the task of organizing a kingdom out of the much harried territory of Italy.

In the later portion of his reign, after the city had been favored with a few years of peace and of freedom from the dread of invasion, there was some revival of intellectual and literary interests. Cassiodorus, prætor, prefect, quæstor, and later “master of the offices,” won fame as court orator and official letter-writer. He wrote a Gothic history in twelve books (which has disappeared), and a collection of letters and state-papers entitled Variæ, also in twelve books. Of greater permanent importance was the work of the philosopher Boëthius. Hodgkin says of him:

His greatest work was The Consolation of Philosophy, which was composed while the philosopher was in prison awaiting sentence of death. This was rendered into English by King Alfred and by Geoffrey Chaucer; translations were made into every European tongue, and copies were to be found in every mediæval convent library. The Consolation is written partly in prose and partly in verse. Hodgkin is of opinion that its writer was at the time a Christian.

The production of this work is the only literary event which marks the rule of Rome by the Goths, and in fact, unless we include the “master of the offices,” Cassiodorus, with his court orations and courtly letters, there appeared during the time no other writer of whose work record has remained. We can infer that some means existed in connection either with the Court or with the convents for the production of copies of the Consolation and of the translation of Aristotle. The latter work, having been prepared, as its translator says, “for the benefit of his countrymen,” was evidently planned for some general circulation.

As there is no evidence of the existence at the time of any bookselling machinery, it is probable that for the multiplication and distribution of his volumes, Boëthius depended upon the scribes of the Church and upon the connections with each other of the convents throughout Europe. It is undoubtedly through the libraries of the convents (the only places in Europe which were to any extent protected against ravages of war) that the Consolation was preserved.

After the death of Theodoric, Italy became the camping ground and the fighting place for successive hordes of Lombards, Saracens, and Franks. Social organization must have almost disappeared. Of scholarly or literary production there is again for some centuries hardly a trace. Inter arma silent styli. What intellectual life, outside of the monasteries, was still active in Europe must be looked for at the Court of the Greek Emperors of Constantinople.