Book Production in Ancient Rome
F.R. Cowell describes how the Romans were keen book-collectors; and the works they bought were often expensive and beautifully produced.
According to Oscar Wilde, cynics ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing’. Kinder words might therefore be applied to those who strive for the best, regardless of cost. Many Romans certainly valued books very highly; but only one, the poet Martial, said anything about their price. Cicero, that avid book-collector, who begged his friend Atticus to save a splendid collection of books for him, did not say how much he was prepared to pay for them. He would have gone to the limit, judging by his later remark that ‘what one must have, is cheap at any price’.
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