The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World

Abstract

Abstract The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World takes the reader not just to Alexandria, the home of the famed library of Greco‐Roman antiquity, but far beyond it. Reading across antiquity from the fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE with Photius, the Byzantine scholar, this study recognizes that ‘library’ in antiquity comes in various forms and shapes. It can be a building with books, but it can also be individual people and individual books themselves. Its functions in antiquity are also numerous. The library is an instrument of power, of memory, of which it has various modes; it is an articulation of a political ideal, an art gallery, a place for social intercourse. The book indirectly raises issues about the contemporary library as a collection and in this way it demonstrates that antiquity offers insight into the topics that the library now raises.

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