|
| book
banning/burning in antiquity |
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1993
From:
Kenneth Kitchell
Subject:
book banning
Our
local bookstore is running a nice exhibnit of books which were
banned in the past (especially in Louisiana). It started me
wonderning how much of this went on in antiquity. To save my life I
can not think of much of this sort of activity, even under the
emperors. Does anyone have good examples of book banning and/or
burning in "classical" times? What would the earliest
known example be?
Date:
Mon, 4 Oct 1993
From:
"Mark A. Keith"
Subject:
Re: book banning
I happen to remember reading that the Christians made a very nice
bonfire out of the Library at Alexandria. I don't remember the
source - am I way off base here?
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Arthur Pomeroy
Subject:
Re: book banning
A
good starting-place is Seneca Rhetor Controversiae 10 pref. 5-7 on
Titus Labienus, whose books were burned under Augustus (for
excessive support for Pompey?). Other include Aemilius Scaurus
(speeches burnt under Tiberius - Sen Rhet. Contr. 10 pref. 3),
Cremutius Cordus (Sen. Marc. 1.3; Tac. Ann. 4.35 -- the classic
attack on such practices, who also mentions the revival of Cordus'
works under Gaius), Cassius Severus (books burnt under Gaius: Suet.
Cal. 15), and Arulenus Rusticus and Herrenius Senecio (biographies
of earlier Stoic politicians burnt under Domitian). Must be a lot
more. There is a rather brief article by Moses Finley on censorship
in antiquity (sorry, I don't have the reference to hand).
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Robert Baker
Subject:
Re: book banning
Can't
be sure about the earliest; but two good examples are at Dio 56.27.1
and Tacitus 4.35.4
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From: Tim Parkin
Subject:
Re: book banning
My
colleague Art Pomeroy writes: >There is a rather brief article by
Moses Finley on censorship in antiquity >(sorry, I don't have the
reference to hand). Do you mean Finley's'Censorship in classical
antiquity', *TLS* 29 July 1977, 923-5?
Date:
Mon, 4 Oct 1993
From:
Mark Williams Subject:
Re:
book banning
How much of the library of Alexandria was lost in disturbances
during Caesar's attempt to move some chunk of it from Alexandria? I
seem to recall this being on a bibliographer's list of historic
nightmares. Doubtless some books were lost, too, during riots by the
Christians; was this the time when Hypatia was killed also? Maybe
Nancy Nietupski can help us out here.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Arthur Pomeroy
Subject:
Re: book banning
Also
there is the burning of prophetic writings (more than 2,000) by
Augustus after he became Pontifex Maximus (Suet. Aug. 31.1), and the
selection made of Sibylline oracles (ibid.). Like banning the
National Inquirer? Correct my comments on Cassius Severus: books
burnt under Tiberius, reprinted under Gaius (Suet. Cal. 16).
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Tim Parkin
Subject:
Re: book burning
As
regards the earliest example of this practice, it might be worth
noting that Seneca E. states (Contr. 10 pref. 5) in regard to
Labienus (aka Rabienus!): "in hoc primum excogitata est nova
poena; effectum est enim per inimicos= ut omnes eius libri
comburerentur: res nova et invisitata supplicium= de studiis sumi."
(tr. Winterbottom: "It was for him that there was first devised
a= new punishment: his enemies saw to it that all his books were
burnt.= It was an unheard of novelty that punishment should be
exacted from literature.")
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Kenneth Kitchell
Subject: Library of Alexandria
Many
thanks to those who have responded already to the book banning
issue. For those interested in a nice and fact-filled article on the
library at Alexandria, especially tracing what really happened to
the collection, see: Diana Delia, "From Romance to Rhetoric:
The Alexandrian Library in Classical and Islamic Traditions,"
American Historical Review 97,5(Dec., 1992) 1449-1467.
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
MALCOLM HEATH
Subject:
Re: book banning
Also
relevant is K.J.Dover 'The freedom of the intellectual in Greek
society', in *The Greeks and their Legacy*, pp.135-58 (the
additional note has a rather waspish reference to Finley).
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Bob Develin
Subject: Re: book banning
Replies have come in already, but let's go earlier. Livy 40.29, 181
B.C. One L. Petilius found two chests containing "books of
Numa." The Urban praetor foun d the contents dangerous and the
senate ordered the books burned, as they were, ritually in the
*comitium*.
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
David Tandy
Subject:
book banning
No
one has mentioned Gallus yet. And I would add that it is not
irrelevant to consider the earliest case to be Thersites. Wait, even
earlier would be Agamemnon's aoidos in Od. 3.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From: "Martha J. Payne"
Subject:
Re: book banning
The
Christians made a bonfire out of the Library at Alexandria? I
thought the Library burned accidentally when Caesar was attacking
Alexandria in the war against Pompey et filios.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
"S. Georgia Nugent"
Subject:
Re: book banning
Ovid
certainly suggests (Tr.I.1 et passim) that his books are being
excluded from public libraries--though they may still find favor in
the private collections of his supporters.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Eugene Lane
Subject:
Re: book banning
In
Antioch in the time of Valens (?) magical codices were publically
destroyed. Exact reference can probably be gotten from Ammianus. A
student just came in, so no time for checking.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Judith Creighton
Subject: book burning
Diogenes
Laertius says that the Athenians burned the books of Protagoras in
the marketplace after collecting them by public messenger from all
who owned copies (D.L.9.52). If this story is true it would provide
a still earlier example of book burning but it seems inconsistent
with the portrait of Protagoras in Plato and is not universally
accepted.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Thomas Jenkins
Subject: Re: book burning
All
this talk of book-burning and libraries has compelled me to take
Luciano Canfora's "The Vanished Library" (trans. Martin
Ryle, Berkeley 1990) off the shelf. Canfora, in fact, devotes his
last two chapters, brief though they are, to conflagrations and
other unpleasant matters, at Alexandria and elsewhere. Though
Camfora's volume is far from exhaustive in its treatment of
libraries and literature, it may well be worth a look.
From:
"Martin F. Kilmer"
Subject:
Re: book banning
Just
read yesterday in one of the later chapters of Rosalind Thomas's
excellent (Cambridge 1992) several references to Roman imperial book
burning (and one alleged incident in Greece, done by Romans, but
during the Republic) with lots of reference to recent writers who
have collected the sources. There is something to be said for the
'flu.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Kenneth Kitchell
Subject:
Library at Alexandria
I
would be remiss if I did not remind everygody about the novel
_Treasure_ by Clive Cussler in which the remarkable "Dirk Pitt"
finds the "lost" riches of the library in a most unlikely
place. Most unlikely indeed.
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
Mark Williams
Subject:
Re: Library at Alexandria
As
was probably evident from the tentative nature of my note of last
night, it has been years since I thought about the fate of the
Alexandrian library. But I now recall a couple of sources that may
be of interest but that have not yet been mentioned in this thread:
V. Burr, Handbuch der Bibliothekswissenschaft (2. edition), Milkau,
1955. Jeno Platthy, Sources on the earliest Greek libraries with the
testimonia, Amsterdam, 1968. Reynolds and Wilson's Scribes and
Scholars discusses the scholarly enterprise of the library at some
length (beginning on p. 5 of the second edition; I do not have the
third). Finally, while lamenting the loss of the Alexandrian library
we ought to bear in mind that there was at least one other
fabulously endowed institution in the hellenistic world: the library
of Pergamum, even though far less is known about it than about
Alexandria. The fate of the collections at these libraries is
closely tied to the fate of the corpus aristotelicum, interestingly
enough--but *that's* a topic that we probably don't want to get
into, eh?
Date:
Tue, 5 Oct 1993
From:
"William M. Calder"
Subject: book banning and burning
Rather
than a partially remembered reference here and another there, one
should start with the fundamental modern gathering of references by
a great American scholar: Arthur Stanley Pease, "Notes on
Book-burning," Munera Studiosa: Studies in Honor of W.H.P.
Hatch (Cambridge MA,1946) 145-160. The obvious follow-up would be a
glance at LAFC under some three lemmata, often excellent on pagan
material. If anyone can add to Pease's collection that is worth a
note in a journal of repute. Few epigoni add to Pease.
Date:
Wed, 6 Oct 1993
From:
Bob Develin
Subject: Re: Library of Alexandria
Should
we not consider that such things as the burning of the library at
Alex have made Classics what it is? Do we not thrive on lacunae? Can
you imagine how much more difficult our job would be if we had ALL
of Livy - not to mention a ll the interpretations that would be shot
to bits? Though I would love to see all of Theopompos, for example,
I really am glad that we have so little. This is not merely
self-serving (though it is that too). I've long been adamant that
the scarcity of information available to ancient historians makes us
ideally s uited to the exploration of the essentials and limitations
of methodology. When you can control all the known information in an
area, you are aware, in a way that I imagine no historian of more
fully documented periods can be, of what you don't have and have to
think about whether and how you can supplement. Pity is that more
haven't appreciated this and have allowed themselves to be the poor
cousins among historians. Should we start the Antiquity Liberation
Front (ALF)?
Date:
Wed, 6 Oct 1993
From:
Ian George Tompkins
Subject:
Re: book banning
Christians
in late antiquity were very adept at burning books, particularly
those of opposing heretical groups. A particular way in which the
fruits of this are manifest is that several texts survive only
through translations in oriental languages, e.g. Syriac and
Armenian, through their use in communities beyond the orthodox and
imperial reach. The most notable case of this is probably Nestorius'
*Liber Heracleidis*. For a case of a bishop actually seen removing
'heretical' texts, there is the case of Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the
420s in northern Syria, who reports that he found over two hundred
copies of the *Diatessaron* in the churches of his diocese, all of
which he removed and replaced with copies of the separate four
gospels.
Date:
Wed, 6 Oct 1993
From:
Barry Powell
Subject: Re: Library at Alexandria
I thought that the invention of the codex in the 3rd A.D. was a big
factor in the loss of ancient literature: what wasn't transferred
from rolls to codices at this time, didn't survive. What does
survive reflects the tastes of scholars of the 3rd and 4th centuries
Date:
Wed, 6 Oct 1993
From:
Doug Burgess
Subject:
Re: Library at Alexandria
There
is a quick overview of the problem in the Penguin version of the
Nicomachean Ethics (that is, the works of Aristotle).
Date:
Thu, 7 Oct 1993
From:
John Muccigrosso
Subject:
Burning down the lib
All
the discussion of the burning of the library reminds me that someone
once remarked to me that the lib was said to have been burned many
times over, not all of which likely occurred. |
| .Culled
from
classics.log9310a |
|