BOOK'SELL'ING. The earliest history of the production and sale of books is so obscure that little can be added to what is told in the article Boor: of the Chaldean tablets of baked clay, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and other similar productions, We find, however, in Athens, some thing approaching to an organized trade in books about the middle of the Sixth Century u.e., when Pisistratus paid scholars from the municipal treasury for preparing an authorized text of Homer and Ilesiod for the use of copy ists. Through the :Museum of Alexandria and the publishers of Nome, whose work was largely carried on by Greek scribes from Alexandria and Athens, this text has brought down to us the poems of Homer and llesiod. It is probable that the first regular sales of literature in Athens, and, therefore, the first in Greece, were carried on by students of philosophy. Diogenes Laertius says that the hearers of Plato inter ested themselves in the work of circulating the written reports of his lectures. sometimes sell ing them, but Inure frequently in the first place lending them out for hire. The facilities for the work of scribes in Athens were evidently, however. during the most important period of Athenian literature, inadequate to supply the demand of the scholars. Books continued to be very costly and their ownership was limited to the wealthy. Diogenes Laertius is the authority for the statement that Plato paid for three books of Philotails which Dionysius had secured for him in Sicily three Attic talents, equal in cur eucy to $3240, when money was worth much more than it is now. Aristotle says that Gel lias paid a similar sum for some few books of Speusippus. Beekh is of opinion that some kind of a book trade was carried on in the orchestra of the Athenian theatre, during the time, of course, when no performance was going on.
By the time of Xenophon (about n.c. 400) Athens was the centre not only of the literary activities of Greece, but of any book trade that existed. The first booksellers prepared with their own labor the scrolls, mainly papyrus, that constituted their stock in trade. The next step in the development of the business was the intro duction of the capitalist, who, instead of working with his own hands, employed a staff of copyists and sold the products of their labor. A comedy by Aristomenes refers to a dealer in books. Eupolis speaks, in B.C. 4:30. of the 'place where books are sold,' the inference being that a special place in the market was reserved for the book trade. Nicophon, in the next century, gives a list of men who support themselves with the labor of their hands. and groups the bookseller with the dealers in food and household utensils.
It would appear that the Athenian book sellers derived receipts not only from the sale or from the hire of manuscripts, but from the reading of these aloud in their shops to hearers who paid for the privilege. After the con quest of Greece by the Romans there was a revival in Athens of the trade in books owing to the increased demand from the scholars of Rome, where Greek was accepted as the language of refined literature and its authors were dili gently studied.
About B.C. 250 the literary activity encouraged by Ptolemy Philadelphus caused Alexandria to become one of the great book marts of the world. Its first publishing and bookselling were done in connection with the great museum founded by Ptolemy. This comprised in one organization a lending and reference library, a series of art col lections, a group of colleges endowed for research, a university for instruction, an :leadenly with functions like those of the French Academy, and a series of work-rooms where the scribes prepared from authenticated texts the papyrus manu scripts to he distributed throughout the civilized world. Ptolemy Soter gave authority to travel ing scholars to collect for the museum in Alexan dria all the authenticated mannseripts they could find. He is said to have supplied food to the Athenians during a famine only on condition that they would sell to his representatives au thenticated copies of the tragedies of .Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. For these, in addi tion to the promised shipment of corn, the sum of fifteen talents was paid. Through their enter prise in training numbers of skilled scribes (in cluding now not only educated slaves, but many of the impecunious scholars of the university), and by means of the distributing facilities af forded by the commercial connections of their capital, the Alexandrian publishers retained in their hands for more than two centuries the con trol of the greater part of the book production of the world. The publishers of Athens disap peared, while those who, in the last century B.C. and the first century A.D., were carrying on book businesses in Rome were obliged to have done in Alexandria the work of transcribing such of their issues as were in the Greek language. these form until the time of Trajan, a very large portion of their total production. The earlier Roman publisher found it usually to his advantage to send to Alexandria his original texts and to contract with some Alexandrian correspondent who controlled a hook-manufacturing establish ment for the production of the editions required.