The other day, I was rereading Papyrus by Irene Vallejo to research an article. I ended up scrapping it, but the book stuck with me longer than I was expecting. Within it, Irene Vallejo beautifully discusses the value and beauty of books in the ancient world, reflecting how truly magnificent the preservation of knowledge and opinion is. Seeping into my subconscious, this set my brain whirring little by little until I became obsessed.
Preservation is something that concerns me a lot. As a child, I used to hoard rocks and shells. I suppose I was fascinated by their individuality, that if I did not look after them then nobody would. But I was also an avid reader, and still am. As I developed my academic interests into the ancient world, my hoarding turned to my books. I sit and write this under my shelves of carefully curated literature and history. It is the older books that have always fascinated me, the ones with history. Notes in the margin from previous owners, stamps from long closed bookshops, leather-bound covers no longer in print, you know the ordeal.
So, when my mind started turning over Vallejo’s book, a thought struck me. Couldn’t I do more? I had a pile of damaged, nearly unreadable books sitting on my desk that I was afraid to throw away. Perhaps it was my duty to try to preserve them, like the Greek, Roman and Medieval scribes who copied them through the generations until they ended up in my room. Sure, they were mass-market paperbacks. Maybe they were always designed to fall apart. But they were unique, a piece of history, so I set about to do something about it.
The only way books could survive in the ancient world is if people loved them enough to copy them. There was no official publishing, and most of the texts passed down to us today have been copied over and over by generations of scribes, or survived by rare chance.
Even by ancient standards, the idea of collecting and preserving texts came pretty late, despite this scarcity. We often see Aristotle credited as one of the first librarians, at least in the classical world. Aristotle was a known collector, and he wrote on everything he collected. The Lykeion of Aristotle, or Lyceum as it is now known, was the site upon which he gathered a mass wealth of books, along with teaching and lecturing. Further, it seemed he gathered and sifted through things seemingly for fun. He had a reputation for it, as he is often written as collecting fables and tidbits of information. This reputation even earned him commissions for work, like organising the lists of Olympic victors (yes, really). It seems we owe a lot to him. I cant help but love how intrinsically human this picture of him makes collecting look.
And so, in turn, some of this delight for knowledge and its preservation found its way to his pupils. It just so happened that one of these pupils decided to conquer almost everything he could find. Alexander had a respect for written works, especially that of Homer. So the stories say, he kept an annotated copy of the Iliad gifted to him by Aristotle with his belongings on all his campaigns, taking Achilles’ rage with him from India to Egypt. By some turn of fate, whether through Alexander himself directly or by one of his generals, one of the new cities founded in his name was devoted to Aristotle’s vision of the preservation of knowledge.
The library of Alexandria is undoubtedly something that springs to mind whenever books in the ancient world are discussed. The next link in the chain of preserving knowledge and writing, and the one we still think of to this day. Over 200 years from its founding, the library of Alexandria still had the power to inspire the likes of Julius Caesar and his fellow Romans. Contrary to popular belief, it is very unlikely they burnt the library down. More feasibly, it is likely a warehouse was destroyed in the burning of Alexandria and not the library itself, which continues to be referenced by later writers. It is the library of Alexandria that Irene Vallejo opens her book on, and thus the cause of this tangent. The first pages paint the picture of a messenger for the library, tasked to seek out new books and bring them for the pharaoh, risking lives for new knowledge.
This is a somewhat romantic image, and likely a little distorted from the truth, but it struck me nonetheless. Risking life and limb for knowledge is not something we can easily reckon with nowadays. In the information age, we have more works at our fingertips than the Greeks and Romans could dream of. We have our own Alexandria, and we can access anything we want in a heartbeat. But will it last? After all, the library may have been a marvel, but it still didn’t stop thousands of texts being lost in the march of time.
The Herculaneum papyri have struck a similar chord with me. They seem to have been all over the news recently, and are undoubtedly one of the most exciting areas of Classics to date. In the 1700s, the Villa of the Papyri (it was not called this prior to this discovery) was found to contain over 1000 papyri scrolls, carbonised and preserved in the ash. This is the only full library to survive from antiquity, by sheer chance. Whats more, thanks to fancy technology that I can’t quite wrap my head around yet, we are now able to read them. I have followed the discoveries with a childlike amount of excitement, and remember the glee I felt when they deciphered the first word (purple). The study of these papyri started really heating up around the same time I started reading Irene Vallejo’s book, with the most recent news being a full deciphering of the final words of Plato. All this sort of catalysed something that seemed to have been buried in me all along.
Writing is precious. Books are precious. We can easily take their accessibility for granted. The printing press and mass market of books means that I can buy almost any work whenever I desire. This has not satisfied my inner hoarder. If anything, it made me crave more. I would never wish to live in a time where books were scarce, but it made me feel as if I were missing a true appreciation for what I had. The journey each text has had through time to arrive on my shelf could never be as profound as it was in history. There is no way to capture the feeling of borrowing a scroll off a friend, copying it and studying it deep into the night to create your own. And why would I even want that?
Most of my books are bought second hand. Many have details in the margins from unknown readers, notes from people I will never know. And many were in a sorry condition, with me likely to be their final owner. So, back to my question. Couldn’t I do more? Yes. I could. That was the moment I decided to learn how to bind books.
I have never been particularly good at arts and crafts, and it sure was a struggle on the first attempt. I watched hours of YouTube tutorials, read hundreds of words of guides and forums. I decided to risk it on a tattered and broken copy of a Greek Grammar book, something I had long ago bought a replacement for but couldn’t bring myself to throw away. It hurt at first, tearing off the old paperback cover and disassembling the spine. After a couple hours of work though, and many more waiting for it to dry, I couldn’t have been more please.
I had done it. I had made a fully functioning hardback. Sure, it wasn’t neat or professional, but it was beyond usable. I had revived a book, brought it back from the dead. Addicted, I made another. I repaired an ancient paperback that had travelled all the way from Athens. I fixed up a spare copy of an analysis of Homer. I made my well worn copy of Medea into a Penguin Clothbound Classics imitation. I was hooked on preserving history, saving my unusable or unreadable volumes and breathing new life into them.
Reflecting on this, I find that my desire to preserve and gather is likely what drives me to the classical world. There is so much we have lost in history, and so much that generations have dedicated themselves to preserving. Often, it feels like this is at odds with the world we live in nowadays, and it bothers me. With the rise of streaming and online content, we no longer own most of the stuff we enjoy. With the digitisation of photo and video, our precious memories can be deleted in an instant. And with social media algorithms, and the rise of AI, things often feels so deeply impersonal.
Maybe it shouldn’t, but it scares me. Changing with the times isn’t so bad, but I have begun to find so much joy in real things in the age of disposability. Curating and repairing my books almost feels as though I too am contributing to their preservation and to their history. When I do this, I like to think of Aristotle, scribbling down his notes in his library. I think too of Alexander, pouring over his Iliad in distant lands. And the unknown owner of the Villa of the Papyri, admiring the shelves of works that he prides himself on collecting.
Thank you for reading this essay! It was a bit more personal and not as educational as what I usually write. Part of why I write about the Classical World is because I love how human things can be, and sometimes that means I end up doing a lot of self reflection. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed reading it and I may end up doing some more personal pieces in the future!