The Social Life of Ancient Libraries

This paper argues for a closer relationship between biography and portraiture than has previously been realized, in particular when the subject is an author. The relationship between biography and portraiture has been somewhat neglected, partly as a consequence of the disciplinary divide: classicists study biography, art historians portraiture. Analyses bringing both together are rare (though briefly Zanker 154-58).

In an anecdote often repeated in discussions of the history of ancient libraries (most recently Johnson, forthcoming), Cicero reports having run into the younger Cato in the library of Lucullus’s son at Tusculum, perhaps in the mid-60’s BCE (De finibus bonorum et malorum 3.7 ff.). What is not widely recorded in such scholarship is that the two then proceed, in situ, to have an extended discussion about philosophy (Books 3 and 4). Cicero twice calls the room a bibliotheca (both 3.7).

While the self-representation of the Letter of Aristeas is appropriate for second-century BCE Alexandrian Jews seeking to legitimize use of a Greek text as their holy scriptures, the author of Aristeas seeks to give further credence to the Septuagint text by lending the Library at Alexandria a veneer of holiness by setting up an implied comparison with the ancient Near East practice of depositing laws and treaties in a god’s temple.