The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum

Citation

James, S. (2006), "The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 7, pp. 459-460. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610682245

It remains one of the alluring, but ever elusive prospects of scholarship: to unearth a treasure trove of lost Greek or Roman classics. The prospect seemed near reality with the discovery in the 1750s of the remains of a villa in Herculaneum containing a library of papyrus rolls, untouched since the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed the town in AD 79. In the event the results were disappointing and the literary pickings slim. But they have a great intrinsic interest in various different ways – the history of ancient book production, the history of writing, the history of language among them – and in the 1970s scholars again turned their attention to these charred, but still legible, documents.

Now David Sider, a professor of classics at New York University, gives us a wide‐ranging and fairly exhaustive account of the papyri themselves and more widely of ancient books and libraries. His account is aimed at the general reader, although there is much here too for the classical scholar, and is as entertaining as it is informative. His story begins with the villa itself: who owned it, how it was destroyed in the eruption and the recovery of the papyri in the 1750s. He then discusses the form of the book in ancient Greece and Rome, including a very practical and entertaining account of the practicalities of reading a book in a papyrus roll: the moral seems to be that if you were wealthy enough you employed somebody to read it to you. In a primarily oral culture, reading may have been a much more social function than we are used to. After an overall account of ancient books and libraries, we are then given an account of how the surviving but damaged rolls were opened and read.

That occupies almost the first sixty pages, and then the remaining thirty or so are devoted to the contents of the papyri. Latin texts include a second rate poem on the Battle of Actium and some fragments from Lucretius, Ennius and Caecilius Statius. The Greek texts comprise philosophical works of Philodemos. Not particularly rich pickings, but interesting enough both in themselves and within their contemporary contexts which Professor Snider elaborates among his discussions of the texts.

The book is completed by a couple of appendices (translations of Epikouros and Philodemos and the publishing history of the Herculaneum papyri), notes, a glossary, an annotated bibliography and an index. The book is fairly copiously and very relevantly illustrated throughout. Professor Snider's excellent text is matched by the usual very high standards of book production of the Getty Museum. The result is an accessible, attractive book which explains and illuminates a significant small chapter in the long history of books and libraries.