Inside a Roman Bookshop on the Argiletum

Marcus Valerius

...always watch your heels when you cross the cobbler's stalls right where the Argiletum narrows. If it is not a stray scrap of tough ox-hide underfoot, it is some-some apprentice shoemaker screaming at you to move, all while the heavy carts are rattling down from the Subura behind you. But, uh, but then, the moment you slip past the leather-cutters... oh, the air changes. It is the strangest thing. One step you are breathing in wet hide and horse sweat, and the next, it is this-this clean, sharp, almost sweet smell. Cedar oil. Fresh pine rosin. And that thick, sticky wheat paste they boil up to glue the sheets together. You know you have reached the booksellers.

Marcus Valerius

I stepped inside the shop of Atrectus just this morning—he has the best spot, right near the Forum of Nerva—and who do I run into but old Lucius, squinting over a roll of parchment with ink on his nose. I told him he looked like a scribe who had forgotten his reed pen. But he just waved me off, too busy marveling at the quiet of the back room. That is the real shock of it. Outside, the street is a madhouse, but inside Atrectus's shop, it is nearly silent, save for the dry, rhythmic scratch-scratch-scratch of the pens. He has about twenty Greek slaves back there, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on low stools, their backs bent like bows. They do not speak. They do not look up. They are Rome's living printing presses, copying out the latest verses of Martial or the histories of Tacitus, letter by painstaking letter, from dawn until the lamps run out of oil.

Marcus Valerius

Lucius was holding this absolutely miserable little scroll—a cheap two-sesterce copy of Martial's Epigrams. I took it from him, and, ah, it was wretched. The papyrus was rough, made from the coarse outer strips of the reed, and the ink was already flaking off because the copyist had rushed through it to hit his daily quota. It was full of stupid mistakes too—words skipped, names misspelled. I told Lucius, I said, "You get what you pay for, my friend." If you want something that will not crumble in your hands by the next Kalends, you have to look at the top shelf. Atrectus saw us hovering and brought over a proper luxury edition. Five denarii. That is, what, twenty sesterces? A working man's wages for a week, easily. But oh, it was beautiful. The edges of the papyrus were perfectly shaved and smoothed down with abrasive pumice stone so they did not prick your fingers, the wooden rollers at the ends were tipped with polished ivory knobs, and the whole thing was wrapped in a protective parchment sleeve dyed a deep, rich Tyrian purple. It even had a little red slip of leather—the *titulus*—hanging off the end, showing the title so you do not have to unroll the whole thing just to see what it is.

Marcus Valerius

And that-that is the thing people do not realize about our bookshops. They do not look like libraries. There are no flat shelves with spines facing out. Instead, you see these big bronze and wooden buckets—we call them *capsae*—stuffed full of scrolls, all standing on end like a bunch of tightly packed firewood, with those little red name tags dangling out over the rim. It makes the whole place look like a treasury. But the noise... actually, it is not a complete silence. When you stand there long enough, you start to hear this low, collective hum. Like a hive of very educated bees. You see, because we write in *scriptura continua*—without any spaces between the words, no commas, no periods, no capital letters to mark a new sentence—it is nearly impossible to read silently. Your eyes just get lost in the sea of letters. To make any sense of it, you have to speak the words aloud, letting the rhythm of your own breath find the pauses. So every customer in the shop is standing by the buckets, holding a scroll open with both hands, gently murmuring the verses to themselves. *Itur-ad-astra...* It is like a soft, whispering gallery of dead poets. I bought Lucius a cup of cheap wine to get him away from the expensive shelves before he ruined himself, and we walked back out into the sun. But I still have that smell of cedar oil on my tunic. Well... off to the baths before the evening rush. Let us see if the water is hot today.