RICERCA ITALIANA     

"King's Library". Books and Power in Mediterranean World, from Hellenism to Byzantium

Università degli Studi di Bari

Abstract

The focus of the project is a phaenomenon which can be considered the fil rouge of the Graeco-Roman civilization up to the Byzantine era: the connection between political power (in particular the regal one, its enduring and charismatic expression) and the setting of conspicuous book collections aiming at both the prestige and the education of the élites or of the circles near to the "center of power". This research will be organized in specific steps and representative examples, such as, for instance, the "book of the kingship" par excellence, Xenophon's Cyropaedia. In this context, the relation between the intellectual élites and the power appears preminent. Few examples will suffice: in the Hellenistic age, the librarian-poets; the extraordinary "library" of Plutarchus, writer and dignitary during the reign of Trajan. The medium between the surrounding society and this extraordinary connection (book and power, book of the power) is the school, mostly in the age of the Roman Empire. Specific sample inquiries will be dedicated to the function and effects of this important factor.

Principal Investigator

Luciano CANFORA Università degli Studi di BARI

Research Objectives

Each team, pursuing its own specific aims, is directed to this goal: the constitution of the necessary databases (because of the continuous increase of the papyrological and epigraphical evidence, surveys such as Platthy, Sources on the Earliest Greek libraries [1968], are now aged); further, an annotated prosopography (librarians, kings, scholars) concerning the most relevant cultural centres: the Hellenistic reigns, the Roman Republic and Empire, and Byzantium, the "second" Rome. The history of ancient book and its evolution in relation to the changing forms of the kingship and of the libraries will be also investigated.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The ancients, and particularly the Greeks, believed that early libraries were established at the initiative of kings or tyrants. A very distant precedent was found at some time in the foundation by Egyptian Pharaos, since the battle of Kadesh, of a "sacred library" inside the temple allegedly built by Ramses II. A line was ideally drawn in this way from ancient Egypt to the VIth century tyrants libraries by virtue of a presumed strong connection between Egypt and Greece. This line went on with Aristotle's library, which was born from the collaboration with Alexander the Great and was in turn the starting point for the establishment of the Ptolemaic library in Alexandria, the "Great Library". Alexandria provided the example for all other libraries established in the Hellenistic monarchies originated from the break-up of the multinational and multiethnic empire set up by Alexander. The result was an exceptional multiplication of that model in Pergamus, Antioch, Carthage, and Rome under Caesar and Augustus. Though the story proves to be partly reconstructed afterwards, yet Egypt is clearly the core of it, and not by chance. Egypt was the major producer of papyrus, the widespread writing material in ancient Mediterranean world, and our knowledge of its forms and uses, from bookrolls to single pages, including different kinds of re-use, comes mainly from Egyptian finds. For this purpose, some important ancient sources are to be examined again and in different ways: Pliny's >>>