ABSTRACT
Now that the classical writer has been equipped, let us send him to the library to do research. As I have already discussed in Chapter 4, both ‘public’ and private libraries were available. Since I am considering only the very highly literate, let us assume that our typical writer has access to one of the superb private libraries, such as those owned by Lucullus or Cicero, or one of the twenty-eight public libraries in Rome that were created from the end of the Roman Republic onwards.1 Next, let us generously assume that the writer has found the text he wants, since I have already discussed the issues of retrieval, as well as the storage and arrangement of books in libraries, in Chapters 4 and 5. In all likelihood, at least some of the time, the writer will use a multi-rolled work, since any given roll contained relatively little (a book of the Iliad or of Livy’s History of Rome). Where does the writer put the rolls? What happens when the writer wants to take notes? How are the libraries physically set up? In short, how does the writer work?
