_The Decoration of Libraries with Ivory and with Glass. Bookcases
and Shelves, Tables and Seats._
I have now gone rapidly over the early history of libraries and have
mentioned those of which time has not destroyed all records. As to
what I have written, I must confess that it is but a trivial mention
of a great subject,--as the old saying goes, “a drop of water out
of a full bucket.” Yet I have said enough, perhaps, to act as an
incentive or to serve as an example.
I shall add a few words on the decoration of libraries and the
arrangement of their books.
From Isidore I learn that the more experienced architects did not
think that the ceilings of libraries should be gilded, or that the
floors should be made of any but Carystian marble; this because the
glitter of gold is rather tiring to the eyes, while the green of
Carystian marble rests them.
This is good advice from whomever it may have come. True it is, as my
own experience proves, that a brilliant light is disturbing to the
attention and makes writing difficult; and green is a colour which
seems to rest and refresh the eyes.
Boethius adds something further to this subject of decoration, when
he says, in his book on _Consolation_, “The walls were decorated
with ivory and glass.” Does he mean the walls of the room itself?
It would seem so, for the bookcases or shelves were not placed
against the walls, in which case the ornamentation of the latter
would not have been seen, but were set out in the room, just as they
are in most public libraries to-day. Glass cut in squares, circles,
ovals, and rhomboids was used like marble tiles, to ornament the
walls, though oftener the arches and the ceilings. Pliny says in his
_Natural History_, book XXXVI, “Tiles made of earth they transformed
into glass and put on the arches; and this is a recent invention.” It
was, then, still a novelty in the time of Nero and Seneca. Yet Seneca
speaks of it as a common thing, in letter LXXXVI, on baths, where he
says, “Unless the arch is covered with glass.” On this point consult
my work on the baths of the Romans.
That it was also used on the walls, Vopiscus, as well as Boethius,
shows when he says in speaking of Firmus, “The house appears to have
been covered over with squares of glass, with bitumen and other
material between the squares.” I think the bitumen was here used to
fasten the squares of glass to the wall, and not to join them to each
other. The joints between the pieces of glass were more appropriately
covered with ivory, as Boethius seems to say they were. Ivory was
placed also on the bookcases themselves; whence the phrase, “ivory
library,” in the _Pandects_. Seneca mentions bookcases made of cedar
and ivory.
Common sense and the general fitness of the thing of course make
it plain that there were bookcases in libraries; I would add the
fact that the cases were numbered. Vopiscus so indicates when he
says, “The Ulpian library has the elephant book in the sixth case.”
Whether by “elephant” he means made of ivory or of the skin of an
elephant, I cannot say. The old scholiast in commenting on this
phrase, from Juvenal, “Hic libros dabit et forulos” (This one will
furnish you with books and cases), gives as an equivalent phrase,
“Armaria, bibliotheca” (A library and the books in it). I think the
word _foruli_ (pigeon-holes), as here used, properly means either
compartments in the shelves, “nests” for the books, following
Martial’s use of the word; or, in Seneca’s use of it, separate little
cases for them. Sidonius speaks of these cases and of other things
found in libraries. “Here,” he says, “is an astonishing number of
books and you would think yourself in a library and could see the
shelves (_plutei_) of the grammarians; or the seats (_cunei_) of
Athenaeus; or the lofty bookcases (_armaria_) of the booksellers.”
_Plutei_ are the sloping tables on which books were placed for
reading; _cunei_, the rows of seats, as explained in Athenaeus; and
_armaria_, bookcases, generally wide and tall, as I have shown. These
last Cicero seems to call _pegmata_ in a letter to Atticus.