Scriptoria of late empire
Ancient history is full of stories about libraries that burn and not only because of lightning or fallen lamps, but also and above all for the looting and vandalism by invaders and, not least among the causes, the political will to overpower the losers. In Rome it was the advent of Christianity that caused the destruction of many libraries and of many books by ancient and, above all, pagan authors.
After Theodosius recognized Christianity as the only religion and had pagan temples closed, the custom of erasing opponents by destroying the written word led Christians to burn all the books that belonged to previous times and so indiscriminately that in the fifth century the governor of Constantinople was forced to issue a decree with the aim of safeguarding the heritage of books that was in Rome; but a law was not enough to defend books that were not considered "Christian" and they continued to be burned. The so-called ecclesiastical authors had more luck for whom Cassiodorus, senator, Roman scholar and particular secretary of Theodoric, tried to carry out a project, the Vivarium, for the translation from Greek to Latin of all known literary works.
He was a man of vast culture who initiated that great movement that would allow to safeguard and pass on the literary heritage of the ancients, but being a man of the institutions he was able to identify the way in which to do it: he gave orders that in the monasteries the monks not only had to devote themselves to material work, agriculture, but also transcribing manuscripts and thus helping to transmit the great culture to future generations.
In this great project that engaged him throughout his long life (485-580 AD), he was also helped by both the emperor and the popes, in particular Pope Agapetus established a library that had a model that one of Alexandria, where it had to keep all the manuscripts of the Vivarium monks. Agapetus built his library on the Celian hill where the remains of an apsed hall are still referred to as the "Agapetus Library" even though archaeologists believe that despite being in that area the library was in fact where the St Andrew monastery stands now. The library as a place for meditation and writing - it is known that St. Gregory wrote the Dialogues here - has been lost and so did the manuscripts that preserved.
To the work of the scriptoria of the late empire we owe the rescue of part of the work of Livy "Ab Urbe Condita", composed of 142 books of which 107 have been lost. The work was very large and therefore circulated in parts of ten books and, for this reason, remained still books 1-10, 21-45 plus another few fragments of other books. The content of these lost books came to us through the "periochae" or summaries that were compiled between the third and fourth centuries AD. Scholars believe that the Livian periochae were written "second hand", or composed using the epitomes (summaries) of Livy's work as a source. Also by Varro, who was a very fruitful Latin author, few writings remain today: of the 150 books of the Saturae Menippeae - satirical compositions partly in prose and partly in verses concerning his contemporary characters and events - we have only the titles of 70 and about 600 verses. Of many erudite or historical works by Varro remain only the citations that made late-ancient authors, such as those ones of St. Augustine did from the 16 books of the Rerum Divinarum that dealt with the gods, temples, rites and ceremonies.
The Latin epitomes were summaries, comparable to the American "digest books", which had didactic and popular purposes. As the etymology suggests, the term derives from the Greek epi = above and tomè = cut; in the long books many parts were "cut" and united by summaries to the parts considered most interesting; clearly the choice of the parts to be kept and how they were tied together depended on the compiler or epitomator's point of view ...
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by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 08/04/2020)